Live Electronics im/in the SWR Experimentalstudio ed. by Dániel Péter Biró et al.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Live Electronics im/in the SWR Experimentalstudio ed. by Dániel Péter Biró et al. Jennifer Iverson Live Electronics im/in the SWR Experimentalstudio. Edited by Dániel Péter Biró, Jonathan Goldman, Detlef Heusinger, and Constanze Stratz. Hofheim am Taunus, Germany: Wolke, 2019. [390 p. ISBN 9783955930851 (paperback), €34.] Illustrations, charts, music. This dual-language volume, with essays in German and English, focuses on the works, composers, and technologies in use at the Südwestrundfunk (SWR; Southwest Broadcasting) studio from the 1970s to the present day. The editors’ introductions to the volume, which admirably situate readers historically, aesthetically, and technically, are translated into both languages. The subsequent nineteen essays are offered in the preferred language of the writer, with about 60 percent of the volume’s chapters in German and about 40 percent in English. The SWR studio often flies under the radar of scholars. Established in 1971, it followed the first wave (ca. 1950–60) of more famous postwar studios such as the GRM in Paris, the WDR in Cologne, the RAI in Milan, Columbia-Princeton in New York, the CLAEM in Buenos Aires, and the NHK in Japan. Like many of these earlier studios, it consolidated the institutional resources of government-funded radio. SWR studio was situated in the Southwest German Radio station in Freiburg im Breisgau, where the studio benefited from broadcast technology innovations as well as the connections to impresarios such as Heinrich Strobel and Otto Tomek. Some of the famous works composed at this studio include Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mantra (1970), Pierre Boulez’s explosante-fixe (1971), Luigi Nono’s Prometeo (1984), and Chaya Czernowin’s Shu Hai mitamen behatalat kidon (1998/2007). Though there has been relatively less scholarly attention on the SWR studio and its works, its specialty in producing live electronic music makes it an important site. This volume, correspondingly, is an important contribution that fills an existing gap in the literature. “Live electronic music” refers to works that use both a live performer and electronic sounds, either prere-corded fixed media or live-generated sounds. In many live-electronic scenarios, the performer improvises with electronic sounds in a live-action fashion, for instance tuning ring modulators, manipulating feedback, or live coding on stage. Given the SWR studio’s expertise in live electronics, the studio has been a pioneering site for hardware and software innovation, has maintained a knowledgeable staff of engineers and technicians, and has played host to several international visiting composers. Many of the essays focus on the technical capabilities and constraints of the studio’s machines at a given time. The technological focus is particularly welcome given that so many live electronic works intimately exploit particular technological affordances. Essays by Stefan Jena, Detlef Heusinger, and Reinhold Braig explain the function [End Page 57] of historical technologies in use, with particular emphasis on mixing, spatialization, and diffusion. Understanding the studio’s technological premises is crucial to understanding the compositional and aesthetic premises of these early works. Some authors focus on composer-specific analyses, often close readings of a single piece. These include contributions by Jürg Stenzl on Luigi Nono, Björn Gottstein on Brian Ferneyhough, Lydia Jeschke on Marc Andre, Daniel Ender on Georg Friedrich Haas, and Thomas Hummel on Emmanuel Nunes. Reading these composer-specific studies together with the technology essays provides a clearer understanding of how composers collaborated with machines and engineers in the studio to develop, revise, and realize their ideas. Sketch study is particularly important in Rudolf Frisius’s analysis of Karl-heinz Stockhausen’s Cosmic Pulses. The colored graphic scores and technology maps are enticing traces of a complex musico-engineering process. I especially enjoyed Martin Iddon’s philosophical, interpretive discussion of Chaya Czernowin’s acoustic and electronic music. Extending far beyond an analysis of a single piece, Iddon places Czernowin in a techno-feminist lineage. In this capacious essay, we have a chance to contemplate how her sound-worlds interface with the provocations of psychoanalysis and modernity broadly construed. The essays do not stop with historical figures and outdated technologies. The SWR studio continues to exist, to evolve, and to host composers, a point well reflected in the volume...