Summary.
One of the earliest pioneers to investigate the revolutionary role that computers could have on music performance and composition was sound engineer David Behrman (USA, 1937),
a distinguished sound engineer who had designed the studio of the Mills College and who had contributed to several milestone recordings of the avantgarde (notably the first recordings of Terry Riley's "In C" and "Rainbow In Curved Air").
His Cloud Music (1978), for example, completely removed humans (both composers and performers) from the process: the music was generated by digital machines based on the light in the sky, each cloud causing a variation in the sound. Experiments with interactive computer music such as On The Other Ocean (1977), in which the performers improvise based on the sounds created by the computer, which in turn creates sound based on what the performers play, peaked with the computer-interactive opera My Dear Siegfried (2004).
He applied his method of interactive computer music to Jim Horton's
League of Automatic Music Composers, which he joined in 1978, the world's first
computer network band.
Other innovative works include:
Interspecies Smalltalk (1984),
Leapday Night (1986), and the studies for "mutatrumpet" and computer
of his album Unforeseen Events (XI, 1992).
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Engineer of sound and behind-the-scenes protagonist of minimalist masterpieces such as Terry Rileys Rainbow In Curved Air, David Behrman is one of the pioneers of interactive computer music.
He studied at Harvard, where he befriended Frederic Rzewski and Christian Wolff. He met La Monte Young in 1959 when they were both attending Stockhausen's classes in Darmstadt. He also befriended David Tudor there. In 1964 he learned from Gordon Mumma how to use transistors to make electronic instruments.
He designed and built the recording studio at Mills College; he studied electronics, computer science and sociology; he built, for himself and for his colleagues, various types of synthesizers, multi-oscillators, traditional instruments and computerized instruments (before Moog began making synthesizers). In Wavebrains (1967), for example, the sound from the loudspeakers makes the strings of two pianos vibrate, and the pianos in turn send the vibrations back to the speakers. Wave Train (Source, 1966 Alga Marghen, 1998) includes Canons and Ricecar (both for prepared piano), Wave Train and Players with Circuits (two sound sculptures composed with Gordon Mumma), Sounds for a Film by Bob Watts, Runthrough.
Behrman co-founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966 together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma.
Walkaround Time (1968), restaged in 2017 for the Paris Opera Ballet, was his first collaboration with Merce Cunninghams dance company.
In 1977 he designed (more than composed) two pieces that lie beyond gesturalism and improvisation. On The Other Ocean, for electronic keyboards, flute, bassoon and computer, arises from the interaction between the three performers and the computer: the machine is programmed to respond to every acoustic input with a musical output through two peripheral synthesizers; the musicians improvise on the basis of what the computer offers them, but the computer behaves in the same way toward them. It is a closed circle, an endless feedback process, a play of mirrors that can go on forever. The ensemble nonetheless produces tonal, calm and meditative music. Figure in a clearing, for thirty-three electronic generators, cello and computer, is a free improvisation by David Gibson on rhythmic and harmonic material produced by the computer, which selects motifs from a series of pre-programmed generators according to the rhythm of a satellite orbiting the Earth. The result is closer to La Monte Youngs mantra-like stases.
A virtuosic example of his engineering abilities is Cloud Music (1978), generated by a computer based on the brightness of the sky: each cloud causes a variation in sound.
Interspecies Smalltalk (1984) follows the same principles, but the performers are Rhys Chatham on trumpet and Takehisha Kosugi on violin, and the overall sound is less ethereal. Leapday Night (1986), with the same musicians and the same interactive approach, instead sustains a more dramatic tension. A neurotic tremor shakes it from start to finish, exhaling in a disorderly way Riley-style organ dervishes and Miles Davis-like trumpet phrases. The hypnotic raga-like structure dissolves in the second part into a subdued, muted hymn. (The self-titled CD also contains A Traveler's Dream Journal and Interspecies Smalltalk.)
In the mid-1980s Behrman began collaborating with jazz improviser George Lewis on interactive sound installations presented at various international venues (A Map Of The Known World in Lincoln, Mbirascope in Paris).
Behrman is a typical exponent of the tendency to use the computer as a means of dynamic, real-time composition. The role of the composer then consists solely in establishing the rules of the game. Even more important is the role Behrman has played in combining acoustic sounds and electronic sounds: he even made them interact.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Unforeseen Events (XI, 1992) contains studies for "mutatrumpet" and
computer.
Other compositions include:
All Thumbs, on Virtuosity with Purpose (Ear-Rational, 1991);
A Traveller's Dream Journal, on Utopia Americana (New Tone, 1992);
Navigation and Astronomy, on Music from Japan (CMC, 1992);
Refractive Light, on Musique Submergides (Nova Era, 1994).
My Dear Siegfried (XI, 2005) is a double-disc anthology that contains
both My Dear Siegfried, a six-movement interactive opera performed by a cast including vocalists Thomas Buckner, Eric Barsness and Meria Ludovici, Ralph Samuelson on shakuhachi, Peter Zummo on trombone, David Behrman on keyboards, and Tom Hamilton on special effects, as well as
five lesser compositions from different periods of Behrman's career.
The six movements of My Dear Siegfried are based on texts (simply
read in normal voices, except in the last movement, Everyone Sang,
when they are sung) written by an English poet and an American journalist.
The musicians improvise around the texts, and computer software reacts to their
improvisation, and viceversa.
Occasionally, as in the fourth piece (Letter from S. N. Behrman August 22 1939), the music toys with the voices themselves, but mostly Behrman contents
himself with letting the voice float over a sparse background of timid
instrumental sounds. At times (as in Watercress Well), the instruments
are given enough room to "jam", albeit at a snail pace and never cluttering
the sonic space.
QSRL (1998) is also an interactive piece, in which a computer generates
music based on what the improvisers are playing.
Viewfinder (2002) is rather static sound produced by software.
A New Team Takes Over (1969) is an exercise in manipulation of voices.
Of the two older pieces, Pools of Phase Locked Loops (1972) is the
most interesting: a slowly changing drone that tests different frequencies
of the spectrum.
Pen Light (2002) and View Finder (2005) were multimedia installations.
