Visions: Music for Orchestra, 2 Pianos, and Computer Generated Tape

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

David Cope

1978

Music/Sound

The Listening Room

Description

David Cope is best known for his experiments in the 1980s and ’90s using algorithms to imitate the style of Bach and other classical composers, but Visions is a testament to his earlier engagement with computation to write music in his own voice, and to think through the relationship of electronics and recorded tape to the ensembles of classical music.

Visions is a five-movement composition for orchestra, two pianos, and computer-generated tape, performed by the Santa Cruz Chamber Symphony under the composer’s direction. Central to the work is its exploration of spatial relationships: the score specifies the placement of musicians on stage, and the recorded elements were digitally spliced to extend these spatial effects into sound itself. Motifs evolve organically across movements, weaving together live performance and computer-generated textures. Blending human and machine-made elements, Visions is a study in music’s articulation of space, both in the concert hall and through the medium of recording.