Musique Et Complexité
MUSIQUE ET COMPLEXITE. AUTOUR D’E. MORIN ET J.-CL.RISSET – COLLOQUE PARIS 2008,
NICOLAS DARBON (DIR)
Musique et
complexité
autour d’Edgar Morin et
Jean-Claude Risset
Colloque
9,10, 11 décembre 2008
• Cdmc
Texte de John Chowning
Homage to Jean-Claude Risset
It is my honor to write these words in tribute to my inspiring
colleague, Jean-Claude Risset, for this celebration of his musical and
scientific contributions on this, his 70th birth year. In 1964, enabled
and guided by Max Mathews, we both began this grand adventure
of computers and music, Jean-Claude Risset at Bell Telephone
Laboratories and I at Stanford University. Standing behind Max
Mathews at Bell Laboratories was John Pierce, then director of
research, who not only provided the corporate protection that
allowed Mathews to pursue his decidedly artistic interests using
computers, but who also contributed seminal ideas to this incipient
field. Following his retirement from Bell Laboratories, Pierce
pursued fulltime his musical research interests and remained
through his life an outspoken admirer and champion of Jean-
Claude Risset’s research and compositions.
Risset’s first research using computers focused on the
analysis and synthesis of trumpet tones, a class of timbres that had
eluded previous attempts at analysis. This work, exemplary of all of
his research – a fusion of his scientific knowledge and his
phenomenal ability to hear the internal structure of sound –
uncovered the acoustic “signature” of this class of timbres. The
MUSIQUE ET COMPLEXITE. AUTOUR D’E. MORIN ET J.-CL.RISSET – COLLOQUE PARIS 2008,
NICOLAS DARBON (DIR)
unprecedented success of this research set apart computer based
acoustic analysis from the preceding technologies because of its
generality, precision and reproducibility. In addition, Risset realized
substantial reduction in the amount of data required to reproduce
these tones through careful subjective experiments that not only
contributed
to
computational
efficiency
but
elevated
psychoacoustics to a position of direct musical relevance. A few
years later, in 1971, I exploited these results to make a critical
advancement in the development of Frequency Modulation
synthesis.
From the beginning of his work Risset’s scope included
auditory perception, a field that he saw early on as critical to the
evolution of the medium of computer music – and to which few
other technology oriented musicians paid attention. Risset’s
penetrating understanding of this often speculative scientific field
let him create compelling auditory illusions and perceptual
paradoxes that not only enriched the field of research but which he
magically integrated into his compositions.
Based upon his success in synthesizing brass timbres, Risset
extended this approach of analysis through synthesis to include a
number of complex and refined timbres that indicated further the
unlimited possibilities of this new medium. By 1969 he had
compiled this work into An Introductory Catalogue of Computer
Synthesized Sounds that comprised a complete description of these
timbres–their inner acoustic structure. For the incipient field of
computer music, this catalogue quickly became an enticing beacon
for that which was possible.
The last entry in the catalog is of particular importance
because it defines an altogether new possibility in creating sound
that has had far-reaching consequences. Risset, in an extraordinary
moment of insight and invention, realized that the spectrum of a
sound could be composed such that the frequencies of its partials are
derived from a pitch space. In nature, the frequencies of a sound’s
partials, whether harmonic or inharmonic, are locked within
boundaries defined by the source’s physical properties. Risset had
un-locked timbre or the quality of a sound from a physical source,
creating complex structured sound spectra that cannot exist in the
natural world– inharmonic spectra that are precisely organized,
supple through time, that cohere, and are imprinted with pitch
MUSIQUE ET COMPLEXITE. AUTOUR D’E. MORIN ET J.-CL.RISSET – COLLOQUE PARIS 2008,
NICOLAS DARBON (DIR)
material, providing an intimate structural link to the music of which
it is a part. He had opened the door to the concept of composing
spectra, an idea that is at the root of my own composition Stria; an
idea that has been imaginatively extended beyond computer
synthesized music and embraced as a new musical aesthetic by
composers of acoustic media.
The totality of Risset’s body of work constitutes a
remarkably rich contribution to the domains of both science and
music. But he has linked his work–his science also finding
expression in his music, a part of each sharing the same frame. It is
this, his presence as both scientist and artist that has made Jean-
Claude Risset such a commanding and unique cultural force.
John Chowning
December 1, 2008
Palo Alto, California
• Ce texte dans sa traduction française a été lue et peut être entendu
sur le site du CDMC : http://www.cdmc.asso.fr/.
• Il sera publié dans un livre rassemblant les actes du colloque.
