Editor's Note: The following is the text of the talk given by bassoonist Charles Lipp prior to his performance of these two compositions at the IDRS Conference in Lubbock on Thursday, August 13, 1981. Persons interested in performing these pieces can contact him directly at 306 W. Hill #3, Champaign, Illinois 61820.
During the 1978-79 school year, I studied composition with Boguslaw Schaffer in Krakow, Poland, as part of a Fulbright Fellowship. Professor Schaffer explained problems of composing for string instruments suggesting that I compose a string sextet and a string trio. While I worked on these assignments, Professor Jozef Patkowski invited me to use the Experimental Music Studio at the Krakow Music Academy. There, I composed an eight-minute piece for electronic tape alone. As the year ended, Schaffer asked me to start composing a chamber concerto for bassoon and small ensemble.
During the year of composition study, I had many opportunities for bassoon playing and discussing new performance techniques with other performers and composers. For example, apart from my composition lessons, Professor Schaffer met with me for three two-hour sessions to ask questions about new performance possibilities. The result of these conferences was Schaffer's composing Project for Bassoon and Tape.
Project for Bassoon and Tape is a fifteen minute composition which is part of an ongoing series of Schaffer's. Each work of the series is called "Project" for solo instrument and tape. To date there are "Project" scores for the following soloists, each accompanied by the same electronic tape: bassoon, piano, prepared piano, double bass, tuba, 'cello, oboe, and saxophone. The tape was realized in the Experimental Music Studio of the Polish Radio Network, Warsaw, in 1970. Each solo part was written in close collaboration with an instrumentalist and features many techniques that were, at the time, of interest to the collaborator. The Project for Bassoon and Tape, for example, makes reference to the styles of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman; uses the normal, assembled as well as the disjoined instrument; asks for various hand positions and body movements, and blends the bassoon timbres with the pure electronic sounds on the tape. The performance score uses two staves for graphic representation of the tape part and one staff for the solo part. Other guides for co-ordination are a system indicating tape amplitude and "bar lines" marking every ten seconds of clock time. Audiences familiar with different "Project" scores always comment on the significant differences of the solo parts' relations to the same tape material.
For studying the score, I used a cassette copy of the tape and a stopwatch in the practice room. I learned the tape part by heart practicing the solo part with one eye on the stopwatch and one ear on the tape. Without the stopwatch, making chamber music with the tape came next.
Schaffer heard the piece three times before the premier and made suggestions after each hearing. Most of the remarks were about energy -- the performer's energy needed to balance the bassoon sound projection with both the soft and loud sections of the tape. With tape material in the foreground and an energetic and active approach to music making on my part, we found that the bassoon's timbre is still heard. This active approach, rather than one of pure strength, is a lesson that's best learned in chamber music contexts. Until now I've performed the piece a dozen times and recorded it for the Polish and Finnish radio networks.
Schaffer suggested that I compose a work of my own for bassoon and tape. Jozef Patkowski also director of the Experimental Music Studio, Warsaw, turned Schaffer's suggestion from mere speculation to reality. He arranged during the 1979-80 year for the Warsaw studio to commission a large scale work of fifteen minutes for bassoon and tape. The finished work, Expectations' Refutations, was recorded in a broadcast version for the Polish radio.
Rather than use electronic sound sources or transformed string instrumental sounds for the tape, as Schaffer did, I used and transformed only recorded bassoon material. The first stage of composing the tape part consisted of making a recording of material in the sound studio of the Polish radio. One hundred thirty two motives were recorded ranging from single tones and short melodies to quotations from orchestral excerpts and etude books. Then the recorded material was transformed in the Experimental Studios in Warsaw and Krakow. Collages of up to eight layers combining original and altered material were made and the final editing was done in Warsaw. The realization for the tape was only possible with the help of Bohdan Mazurek and Marek Choloniewski, technical directors in Warsaw and Krakow.
The bassoon part was composed after the tape had been finished. This instrumental part consists of different bandwidths of pitch alternations, looped material of varied length and compass, sustained tones with rapid timbre changes, as well as simple melodic gestures. For synchronization between the instrumental and tape parts, the instrumental part is learned with a metronome and is only coordinated at the beginning of each tape section. With an accurate memory of the metronome markings and some latitude in the number of repetitions of final patterns in each section, performances vary little from one to another.
In February, 1980, after finishing Expectations' Refutations, I travelled through Western Europe meeting composers and performers and visiting electronic music studios. Project and Expectations' had performances before audiences of professional musicians in Utrecht, Netherlands (Institute for Sonology); Salzburg (Mozarteum); Liege, Belgium (Royal Conservatory); Paris (IRCAM); and in the home of Vienna Symphony bassoonist, Milan Turkovic. Performing and discussing these pieces during this four-week tour was one of the best lessons I've had in presenting new repertoire.
These two pieces, fifteen minutes each, formed the second half of my recital in Helsinki, May, 1980, which was part of the Young Scandinavian Composers' Festival. (The first half of the concert was the Spisak Duetto Concertante for bassoon and viola, Eero Hameenniemi's Untitled for bassoon alone, and Tom Johnson's Scrawls for bassoon and piano.) During the festival I presented a week-long seminar on new performance techniques for bassoonists and composers. Here we discussed my recital material and other new works. The eight bassoonists in the seminar were successful in trying most of the demands the new pieces made. The composers present were satisfied that the reliability of the new techniques was high enough to meet their own compositional demands.
Equipment for tape realization of Expectations' Refutations
2 Telefunken microphones
5 Telefunken 2-channel tape decks (15 ips)
2 Nagra 2-channel tape decks (15 ips)
1 Teac 4-channel tape deck (15 ips)
EMS pitch to voltage converter
EMS random voltage generator
EMS quadrophonic effects generator
Putney "150" synthesizer
envelope follower
band pass filter
voltage controlled oscillators
Eventide Harminizer
Eventide Instant Flanger
Warsaw Studio-built reverberation unit
Warsaw Studio-built third-octave filters
Warsaw Studio built mixing console
