Example outline, for Olly Wilson’s Cetus

1) Olly Wilson. Born 1937 in St. Louis, MO. Pianist, composer, conductor, and teacher. Music includes orchestral and chamber works, as well as works for electronic media. In 1971 received a Guggenheim fellowship, used to study West African music and languages, and in 2008 received a Rome Prize. He is also known for establishing the TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts) program at Oberlin Conservatory, the first-ever conservatory program in electronic music.

2) The majority of Wilson’s output is for chamber ensemble or orchestra, a small portion for acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sound, and even less for electroacoustic sound alone, so Cetus, being a piece for stereo acousmatic sound, is in a somewhat unusual medium for Wilson. The piece was created in a tape studio, which Wilson used frequently pedagogically, so the technology used to create this piece was familiar.

3) Cetus (1967) is for stereo acousmatic sound and was realized in the Studio for Experimental Music of the University of Illinois, currently run by Scott Wyatt (whose piece “All Sink” was on the Technosonics concert), that was also used by Xenakis and Cage to create computer music in the 60s. There is heavy use of sine wave oscillators and noise generators (tools of elektronische musik) in this piece, combined with tape editing techniques and effects, but no use (at least perceptibly) of “real world”, musique concréte sounds.

4) The elements present in the piece change as it unfolds. The piece begins with a “cyber melody” created using an oscillator recorded onto tape with volume automation, which is then layered over a noisy timbre cloud. The next section consists of more cyber melodies, with the composer modifying note length and experimenting with pitch range (low, high) and volume of the texture. The melodies then get noisier, possibly with the help of some form of modulation, and the notes get longer. This is juxtaposed with fast, stochastic melodies, possibly created with a sequencer or sample-and-hold circuit. The textures build to a loud, quickly panned timbre cloud, which then dissolves into layers of cyber melodies, which then fade to just a single cyber melody, as at the beginning of the piece.