A Tuner of His World: An Interview with Paul Lansky
Date
1998
Authors
Riddell, Alistair
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Publisher
University of Melbourne
Abstract
Few composers in recent years have explored the boundaries of computer music as imaginatively as Paul Lansky. Recognizing that Lansky's creative stature is as palpable in the exquisiteness of his music as it is in the detail of his curriculum vitæ, I decided to think of this interview as a collection of corridor chats (non-linear, of course!). Over time, I was hoping to gain insight into his current creative concerns the way I had through incidental daily contact as a graduate student at Princeton in the early 1990s. Although this interview was conducted by email, the text, I hope, has an imprint of candid spontaneity and informality to the extent possible through this type of exchange and under the imperative of general publication. The fact that we are seasoned emailers-communicating this way for more than a decade now-would, at least, ensure that the interview mechanics were natural and relaxed. Certainly, this text is considered. It's measure is different from that of a conversation transcribed from a recording because it evolved over a much longer period. A slow dialogue in electronic letters. I like to imagine he composed his responses on the same computer he composes his music (I know I did). Entirely probable, and an observation I'm sure would appeal to his sense of technological engagement. To view Lansky as a computer hacker or boffin is to see him with only one of his hats on (others he wears are Professor of music at Princeton University, composer, guitar freak and folk music lover). Certainly his computer is a complex audio tool and he has toiled in its evolving creative domain now for more than two decades on both software and sound. Yet his enthusiasm for the computer is always mediated by a richly humanistic perceptiveness, tuned to a world most of us recognize with little difficulty. Like Walt Whitman or Henry Thoreau, Lansky's creative palette is the world he inhabits and his creative offerings reveal this world as far richer, far more complex, than we might have first thought. While listening to his music, we sometimes recall that the computer is operative in the scheme of sounds. We then marvel at how technology has contributed to our experience and how Lansky has used it. More often than not, however, the technological processes are transparent against the musical narrative. Interestingly, he compensates for this lack of overt technological statement by making much of the software he uses freely available on the Internet, effectively saying,'Well, here's how I compose my music. Try it for yourself.' Many of us found this an irresistible and deeply engaging challenge. To think of Lansky's music as 'computer music,' after one has heard it, is difficult. Under this rubric what we probably wish to recognize is the potential of digital technology in the hands of someone with considerable skill and creativity. The label certainly fails to invoke the sheer magic of his ideas unfolding in sound but it does say something about the openness of the future of this musical genre. Certainly, a glance over his uvre on CD is enough to indicate a breadth of musical direction that seems to be ever-expanding and defiant of simple descriptions. In one direction, his music is a synthesis of traditional musical gestures and real-world sounds. Night Traffic, based on Doppler-shifting traffic sounds tuned in diatonic harmony, is a good example. In another direction, many of his works employ text in ways that are not merely innovative but ground breaking. Frequently, the text is given deeper resonance through readings by his wife and creative partner, Hannah MacKay Lansky. The intimacy this invokes within a work is breathtaking, reminiscent of a private reading between two people or a soliloquy of complex hue, as in Things She Carried. Traditional music often struggles to achieve this state of emotional directness, perhaps because from conception it is imbued with the imperative of performance. When music is manifest solely in the recorded domain, the composer can frame the experience as a communion between him- or herself and an imaginary immediate listener. I think this arises certainly because the listening experience tends to be private but also because the composition process is reflexive; the composer creates the sound, then listens, rejecting or accepting the result. In due course, the work freezes, possibly definitively, the result of a particular mode or context of working; a creative undertaking not easily duplicated or reentered at a later time. The idea of a music not performed but composed into existence, is a difficult concept to grasp for those who have never thought of music as something not performed. Even in our culture of listening to music on CD we find it hard to disassociate music from human activity in the physical world. The experience of reading a book is, I think, an analogy useful in appreciating Lansky's music. Perhaps this is a consequence of technology that we can step away from something to look at it afresh. Indeed, another direction of his music also confirms that he is finding new ways to define his music in this way. For instance, Lansky has taken an interest in presenting familiar musical genres replete with a mixture of real and synthetic instruments such as the guitar interpreted through the 'plucked string' algorithm. With these sounds he carefully constructs the genre until the composition possesses a compelling raison d'être, not easily ignored, but not authentic. Here he is working through his passion for certain musical styles in a meta-compositional manner that positions him at once as both aficionado and practitioner. In particular, Lansky has expressed his appreciation of certain Folk and Rock music and more recently certain piano music styles in this way. A truly innovative stance. In all, we find evidence of a musical sensibility not constrained by academic or high art contexts but one which reaches out to an increasing complex musical world. In doing so, Lansky articulates the importance of intimate musical expression and the role technology plays in achieving this, not only for himself but for many composers today. The following interview took place between mid May and early October 1998.
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Interview., Paul Lansky
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Journal article