Klarinet Archive - Posting 000079.txt from 1995/12

From: Inho Song <ixs7@-----.EDU>
Subj: If not the end of music, then...
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 09:47:01 -0500

I would like to share "some" news that were forwarded to me (from horn list
to flute list then to me). I am a scientist. I've (any many others,
especially physicists) been saying 'we are facing the end of scientists,
if not the end of science.' Now, I must ask "Are we facing the end of
musicians, if not the end of music?"

Things are changing, for sure and fast. Attached is the content of the posting.

>From: PiccPete@-----.com
>Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 02:13:27 -0500
>To: Violinist1@-----.com
>cc: Egalitz@-----.ca
>Subject: Fwd: Digital Orchestras (fwd)
>Sender: owner-flute-m@-----.ca
>Precedence: bulk
>
>the thing speaks for itself.
>Sandy <PiccPete@-----.com>
>---------------------
>Forwarded message:
>From: ron@-----.com (Ron Boerger)
>Sender: owner-community-music@-----.com
>To: community-music%sauron.mpd.tandem.com@-----.com
>Date: 95-12-04 21:12:09 EST
>
>>From the horn mailing list. Forwarded without comment.
>
>> From: "John E. Mason" <jem3a@-----.edu>
>> Subject: Digital Orchestras
>> Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 15:42:49 -0500 (EST)
>>
>> Greetings, all. I thought many of you would like to see the
>> following. I've excerpted this very depressing news from
>> todays's Washington Post. Forgive me if this has already
>> shown up on the list; I haven't been following the postings
>> closely recently.
>>
>>
>> WASHINGTON POST, 4 DECEMBER 1995, pp. B1, B4.
>>
>> HEADLINE: FAIRY TALE OR MUSICIAN'S NIGHTMARE--HANSEL AND
>> GRETEL TAKES TRIP DOWN DIGITAL PATH
>>
>> By Tim Page
>>
>> (Louisville, KY) The Kentucky Opera has found a radical way to
>> cut its production costs: In a new staging of Engelbert
>> Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel that opened Saturday night
>> here, it has eliminated the orchestra.
>>
>> In place of the vast, 100-player, post-Wagnerian ensemble that
>> Humperdinck called for, the orchestra pit held only the
>> conductor, Robin Stamper, and two musically trained
>> technicians, who stared into their video monitors with an
>> impressive calm that would have done justice to seasoned bank
>> tellers, following the baton with corefully synchronized
>> entries in the computor bank.
>>
>> It was not a fully satisfying performance by any means, but it
>> may have been a historic one. For this was the debut of a new
>> technology--a digitized orchestra created by the Cincinnati
>> firm of Bianchi and Smith. This innovation my eventually have
>> enormous implications for opera companies--and could possibly
>> prove disastrous for orchestra musicians.
>>
>> Indeed, this Hansel and Gretel could not have come at a worse
>> time for the struggling Louisville Orchestra. After several
>> years of intense... negotiations that have threatened to fold
>> this excellent and innovative ensemble, one of its key
>> constituents (the... Kentucky Opera...) has, in effect, come
>> along and suggested that its work might be accomplished by a
>> machine.
>>
>> And so, at curtin time, members of the Louisville Orchestra
>> Musicians Association were passing out leaflets at the door of
>> the Palace Theater.
>>
>> ...Thomson Smille, the general manager of the Kentucky Opera,
>> insists that the digital technology is not intended to put
>> orchestra players out of work. Rather, he said, "this allows
>> us to put singers TO work."
>>
>> ...according to Smille, the savings are enormous. "It costs us
>> between $40,000 and $60,000 ub archestral costs every time we
>> do an opera--and that's for only three performances. We're
>> doing eight performances of Hansel and Gretel this year and
>> it's costing us less than $25,000--roughly $19,000 to create
>> the digital mix and $5,000 to rent the sound equipment.
>>
>> ...the procedure begins with sounds played by live musicians,
>> which are then recorded and digitally transferred. (For
>> instance, the violin passages, solo and collective... were
>> originally recorded by members of the Prague Symphony
>> Orchestra.) Then the score is intered into the computer's
>> memory.... A performance is then played out by the technicians
>> in real time.
>>
>> "This is quite different from using a tape or prerecorded
>> material," Smith and Bianchi [said]. "The computer-based
>> orchestra surpasses any of the prerecorded methods because the
>> system behaves like a musical instrument. Like an orchestra,
>> it is... able to adjust to subtle tempo inflections... and
>> expressive nuances...."
>>
>> Smith and Bianchi believe that "it would be accurate to say
>> that a computer-based orchestra will soon be indistinguishable
>> from the original.
>>
>> Perhaps, but that day has not yet arrived, on the evidence of
>> Saturday's performance. The woodwind sounds were probably the
>> most convincing (a poignat oboe, a gutteral bassoon), but the
>> strings sounded chilly adn Space Age, and the brass and
>> percussion might have fit right into an old '70s synth-pop
>> recording. Much of the time, the "orchestra" sounded like an
>> elaborate theater organ.
>>
>> ...Patrick Smith, the editor of Opera News... believes that
>> what has just been done in Louisville will be carefully watched
>> by other small- and medium -sized companies.
>>
>> END
>>
>> To which I add... ugh.
>>
>> --
>> John Edwin Mason
>> Department of History
>> University of Virginia
>> Charlottesville, Virginia
>> jem3a@-----.edu
>>
>
>
>----
>Ron Boerger Unix Systems Admin, Tandem http://www.io.com/~rboerger/
>ron@-----.46]
>Hornist at LARGE & adminstrator of the "community-music" mailing list :-)
>
> ---

Inho Song, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
Dept. Materials Sci. & Eng.
The Case School of Engineering
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7204
Voice: 216-368-8935
Fax: 216-368-3209