Color Music, 1999-2003 by Wayne Slawson

CD YGM-01
Published by Yank Gulch Music
Copyright © 2004. All rights reserved.

General Notes

The works on Color Music, 1999-2003 are all computer-synthesized using Slawson's SYNTAL system for producing music based on speech-derived sound. The vowel-like dimension in the sounds of these pieces, called ``sound color'', is introduced in the composer's 1985 book, Sound Color, which has been reissued by Yank Gulch Music in 2007 in paperback. The music on this CD is discussed in detail in Wayne Slawson. "Color-Class and Pitch-Class Isomorphisms: Composition and Phenomenology." Perspectives of New Music 43:1 (Winter 2005); the article recasts and extends concepts from the book, and examines additional perceptual and compositional issues.

Notes on the Music

Havana Rounds (1999) [8m 31s].
Composed for the 2000 Spring in Havana Festival, this work is in five sections, each with a prolog and epilog. The central parts of the sections are four-voiced rounds. Regular cycles of tempo changes, offset temporally in each voice, make the rounds ``crooked''. In the fifth round, the phrases are spaced out and the over-all tempo slows markedly with each successive phrase, with the result that the "crooked" canonic structure is especially easy to hear.

Here's an excerpt from the prolog and Round 1:

Rap Soft (2000) [5m 3s].
This is an outsider's homage to Rap. The beginning has something of the up-tempo characteristic of rapping, but soon the tempo slows and the music quiets down. The piece progresses to a center---where color and pitch change roles---and then zig-zags its way back out. I've tried to capture something of the rappers' play with vowels in a different context of mood and rhythm.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of Rap Soft:

Snow (2002) [5m 20s].
Snow was first presented at the Bourges Festival in 2002. The following haiku sets the tone:

Snow, silent, dulls the
brittle soundings of coldness...
A flash of sparrows!

Vowels from the words for snow in French (``neige''), German (``Schnee''), Swedish (``snö''), and English provide the fundamental color motive of the piece.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of Snow:

Papa (2003) [4m 34s].
An homage to the father of us all, J. S. Bach, and to Luigi Dallapiccola, whom I also count as a musical father. The vowels in the English spelling of Bach's name serve as a ground throughout. Pitches and corresponding colors recall Dallapiccola's own tribute to J. S. Bach, in the ``Simbolo'' movement from Quaderno Musicale de Annalibera (1952).

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of Papa:

Autumn Rounds (2000) [8m 31s].
Another version of Havana Rounds, with a fresh selection of colors and pitches that seem autumnal.

This excerpt is from the prolog to Round 2 and the beginning of the round:

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About the Composer

Wayne Slawson is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of California, Davis. He has served on the faculties of Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh, and presently teaches part-time at Southern Oregon University. Born in Detroit in 1932, he attended Cass Technical High School and earned a B.A. in Mathematics and a M.A. in Music Composition at the University of Michigan. He was introduced to computer technology while in the U. S. Air Force in the late 1950s and was employed as a computer programmer at the Mitre Corporation. Studies at Harvard University in the early 1960s led to a PhD in Psychology with a specialty in psychoacoustics. He was granted post-doctoral fellowships in computer music at MIT and in acoustic phonetics and speech perception at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He has published in the fields of music theory, psychoacoustics, acoustic phonetics, and computer music. His computer system, SYNTAL, has been used by him and others for specifying and synthesizing speech-derived music. In addition to many pieces of electroacoustic ``color music'', his compositions include works for orchestra, a variety of instrumental ensembles, solo instruments, and vocal ensembles.

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