The pieces created by the students were regularly accumulated. While gathering the material, S. Filatov-Beckman paid attention that the quality of the pieces created on the basis of the computer lines and constituting the fund of mathematical music was steadily increasing.
Mathematical music as a new means of developing compositional skills
The Twelfth Essay
S. Filatov-Beckman constantly demonstrated mathematical music at the scientific conferences, described its artistic possibilities in dozens of articles and books. During these demonstrations for various audiences in Moscow, other cities and abroad, S. Filatov-Beckman pursued a double goal: on the one hand, to interest listeners in the richness and variety of the sound of mathematical music in the colorful timbre palette of the instrumental and computer effects. And, on the other hand, the scientist persistently emphasized the growth of the creative imagination of the beginner composers in their works. S. Filatov-Beckman commented in detail on the process of composing these examples and elucidated the phased structure of his methodology intended for developing the creative potential of the young musicians.
Let's summarize some results. The students' work on the mathematical music proceeded, as already mentioned, on a broad front. The beginner musicians learned how to handle a computer sound line and create polyphony, whereas more experienced students composed study melodies from the interesting fragments found in the sound lines, choosing their own accompaniment thereto. The students, who had mastered S. Filatov-Beckman's method well and displayed their creative imagination, composed whole complete works, for example, “Waltz”, “Duet”, “Invention”, etc. Many of them became interested in transcribing the pieces to other instrumental ensembles.
For the sound engineering students, the work of transcribing pieces to the computer sound and searching for the computer effects of various kinds turned out to be especially interesting. These pieces made a great impression on the audience during the conferences.
The experiments on “re-instrumentation” of the pieces created for the acoustic instruments into the versions that use purely computer sonorities proved themselves to be very interesting. Of course, their computer versions could not be performed in open concerts and did not have musical notation, but they were quite suitable for the role of applied music in performances, films, and television shows.
These experiments entailed changes in the musical form of the original versions of the pieces, the introduction of additional timbre effects, various “spatial” coloristic findings during the repetitions of the material, as well as the polyphonic enrichments of the original material, as happened while instrumenting the piano pieces.
One of the very successful examples of a purely computerized “re-instrumentation” was the revision of the “Scherzo” piece, the original piano version of which had already been arranged for an ensemble of percussion instruments and piano. The computerized version of the “Scherzo” enhanced the disturbing and ominous nature of the piece, conveying it even some “infernal” features. The voices seem to arise from nowhere and disappear, there are influxes of some rustles, noises in the piece. The volume of the piece has increased significantly. We introduce the computer edition of the “Scherzo”.
{EXAMPLE No. 52}
We recommend to listen to all three versions of the “Scherzo”: piano (example No. 48), instrumental (example No. 50), computer (example No. 52) and compare them with each other.
Example 48:
Example 50:
Example 52:
Several professional composers, having familiarized themselves with the methodology of S. Filatov-Beckman, became seriously interested in it and decided to create their own pieces based on it. We look forward to the results of their work.