The Frenchman Jean-Claude Risset is one of the pioneers of computer music. In the 60s, he conducted research at the Bell Laboratories in the USA, which set standards for computer-aided sound synthesis at the time. In the 70s, he became head of the computer music department at the newly founded IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris. »Music From Computer« brings together three compositions from the period 1968 to 1985. In chronologically reverse order, you can listen to how Jean-Claude Risset kept rediscovering the computer as an instrument. The title is a little misleading: in »Sud« (1985), for example, Risset does not work exclusively with computer sounds, but uses recordings of birds and insects from the south of France to alienate them and expand the various effects increasingly. »Mutations« (1977) and »Computer Suite From Little Boy« (1968) feature pure computer music. »Mutations« consists mainly of bell-like, crystalline sounds – sometimes percussive, sometimes organ-like, sometimes like a fluid trickle – culminating in a huge glissando at the end. Finally, »Computer Suite From Little Boy« is one of the first works to have been created entirely on the computer. In it, Jean-Claude Risset not only tests the acoustic independence of the new medium, but also reconstructs the overtone spectra of brass instruments here and there. Fortunately, he never succumbs to the temptation to completely exhaust the scope of possibilities for synthesis available to him – and thereby becoming arbitrary – but always concentrates on a strictly limited palette.
Horacio Vaggione
Schall / Rechant
Recollection GRM