CMJ Editor's Notes

Douglas Keislar Computer Music Journal The imagination of the ancients cavorted through mythic zoological gardens where no taxonomic fences stood. Animals of different species, genera, and even classes seem to have interbred freely, judging by the wondrous composite creatures that appear in mythology. Like many others visiting Greece for the International Computer Music Conference last September, I took time to explore some of the country's museums and archaeological sites. Here, one can gaze at ceremonial gryphons, fearsome minotaurs, enigmatic sphinxes, predatory harpies, salacious satyrs, gallant centaurs, and much more. All these fanciful creatures combine elements of more than one animal, often including a human. In each case, part of one animal's body is grafted onto another part of another animal: bird's head with lion's torso and legs, bull's head on human body, and so on. A generic term for a composite creature is "chimera." In Greek mythology, the chimera was a specific monster combining a lion, a goat, and a serpent, but the word is used more broadly as well. Metaphorically, of course, it refers to any entity consisting of incongruous parts. (It can also connote an illusion, but I am not using that dismissive sense in this editorial.) We have chimeras in computer music. I am referring not only to relatively literal examples, such as the cross-breeding of human voice and birdsong in David Jaffe's Impossible Animals. More generally, the tools of computer music make it easy to splice together sonic features from unrelated sources and to cross-synthesize timbres. Sometimes, compositions ungraciously graft incompatible elements together, with a result like the Frankenstein monster: intentional but out of control. More-skillful composers are able to combine unrelated parts into a sensible whole. But the very field of computer music itself can also quite rightly be called a chimera. Few disciplines bring together two more disparate realms of human endeavor. On one hand, the computer: the ultramodern child of science, rationalism, mathematics, engineering, and industry--a concrete, logical, soulless machine. And on the other hand, music, one of the oldest expressions of the human identity: sublime, invisible, emotional, mysterious, equally capable of inciting people to dance and of soothing them into slumber. True, music has always been, of all the arts, the most intimately tied to technology; this truism has already become something of a cliche among practitioners of computer music. For centuries, musical instruments have evolved by incorporating the relatively sophisticated technological developments of their time. And music has long been tied to mathematics; one can cite the Pythagoreans, the inclusion of music among the disciplines of the medieval Quadrivium, and so on. Yet, even if music is the art form that most naturally fits with digital technology, the marriage between music and computers has often been uncomfortable. Artists and engineers have different training and perspectives. Composers struggle with trigonometric functions and C++ syntax, and complain that "their" field is being dominated by engineers. Engineers build tools based on narrow assumptions about music, and then wonder why composers neglect these tools. In the worst case, each defends his or her own turf and belittles those whose understanding or appreciation of the chimera of computer music seems to be inadequate. "I'm going to skip his presentation about his new piece. He couldn't even figure out how to run the compiler!" "I don't consider her a true composer--her undergraduate degree was in math!" The chimera's head bites at its tail. This clash of perspectives brings to mind John Godfrey Saxe's poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant," which retells a fable also found in Jalaluddin Rumi's Mathnavi. Six blind men encounter an elephant for the first time. Each man grasps a certain part of its body and promptly makes a corresponding pronouncement about the nature of the beast. The one who feels the tusk proclaims the elephant to be exactly like a spear; another clutches the trunk and disagrees, saying it is like a snake; and so on. None can comprehend the whole. The poem states: "And so these men of Indostan / Disputed loud and long, / ... Though each was partly in the right / And all were in the wrong!" The chimera that is computer music has been with us for four decades. It cannot be unmade. One can try to ignore it. One can try to argue, lacking the creativity of the ancients, that it is composed of only one animal. Or one can embrace the multiple beast, stroke its fur, climb up onto its wings, whisper in its ear, and ride it into the future.

	Vol. 22 Issue 1 Editor's Notes	CMJ Library >
	Riding the Chimera
	Douglas Keislar Computer Music Journal The imagination of the ancients cavorted through mythic zoological gardens where no taxonomic fences stood. Animals of different species, genera, and even classes seem to have interbred freely, judging by the wondrous composite creatures that appear in mythology. Like many others visiting Greece for the International Computer Music Conference last September, I took time to explore some of the country's museums and archaeological sites. Here, one can gaze at ceremonial gryphons, fearsome minotaurs, enigmatic sphinxes, predatory harpies, salacious satyrs, gallant centaurs, and much more. All these fanciful creatures combine elements of more than one animal, often including a human. In each case, part of one animal's body is grafted onto another part of another animal: bird's head with lion's torso and legs, bull's head on human body, and so on. A generic term for a composite creature is "chimera." In Greek mythology, the chimera was a specific monster combining a lion, a goat, and a serpent, but the word is used more broadly as well. Metaphorically, of course, it refers to any entity consisting of incongruous parts. (It can also connote an illusion, but I am not using that dismissive sense in this editorial.) We have chimeras in computer music. I am referring not only to relatively literal examples, such as the cross-breeding of human voice and birdsong in David Jaffe's Impossible Animals. More generally, the tools of computer music make it easy to splice together sonic features from unrelated sources and to cross-synthesize timbres. Sometimes, compositions ungraciously graft incompatible elements together, with a result like the Frankenstein monster: intentional but out of control. More-skillful composers are able to combine unrelated parts into a sensible whole. But the very field of computer music itself can also quite rightly be called a chimera. Few disciplines bring together two more disparate realms of human endeavor. On one hand, the computer: the ultramodern child of science, rationalism, mathematics, engineering, and industry--a concrete, logical, soulless machine. And on the other hand, music, one of the oldest expressions of the human identity: sublime, invisible, emotional, mysterious, equally capable of inciting people to dance and of soothing them into slumber. True, music has always been, of all the arts, the most intimately tied to technology; this truism has already become something of a cliche among practitioners of computer music. For centuries, musical instruments have evolved by incorporating the relatively sophisticated technological developments of their time. And music has long been tied to mathematics; one can cite the Pythagoreans, the inclusion of music among the disciplines of the medieval Quadrivium, and so on. Yet, even if music is the art form that most naturally fits with digital technology, the marriage between music and computers has often been uncomfortable. Artists and engineers have different training and perspectives. Composers struggle with trigonometric functions and C++ syntax, and complain that "their" field is being dominated by engineers. Engineers build tools based on narrow assumptions about music, and then wonder why composers neglect these tools. In the worst case, each defends his or her own turf and belittles those whose understanding or appreciation of the chimera of computer music seems to be inadequate. "I'm going to skip his presentation about his new piece. He couldn't even figure out how to run the compiler!" "I don't consider her a true composer--her undergraduate degree was in math!" The chimera's head bites at its tail. This clash of perspectives brings to mind John Godfrey Saxe's poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant," which retells a fable also found in Jalaluddin Rumi's Mathnavi. Six blind men encounter an elephant for the first time. Each man grasps a certain part of its body and promptly makes a corresponding pronouncement about the nature of the beast. The one who feels the tusk proclaims the elephant to be exactly like a spear; another clutches the trunk and disagrees, saying it is like a snake; and so on. None can comprehend the whole. The poem states: "And so these men of Indostan / Disputed loud and long, / ... Though each was partly in the right / And all were in the wrong!" The chimera that is computer music has been with us for four decades. It cannot be unmade. One can try to ignore it. One can try to argue, lacking the creativity of the ancients, that it is composed of only one animal. Or one can embrace the multiple beast, stroke its fur, climb up onto its wings, whisper in its ear, and ride it into the future.