Bulent Arel, "Mimiana III: Six & Seven"

Mimiana III: Six & Seven (12:23)

The music is buoyant in nature and was composed following a list of various rhythms and tempos previously designed by the choreographer Mimi Garrard. The dance consists of a total of seven dancers, numerically identified by changeable neon-light number displays on the helmets of their costumes, and grouped into a set of six against the single seventh dancer. Throughout the dance, the six reject the seventh dancer by either ganging up on, or retreating from her. The music opens with an exposition of the numbers from 1 through 7. As # 1 appears, the single basic beat is heard in the music. When #2 and # 3 arrive, the beat is subdivided into two and three (triplet) pulses respectiveIy. So it continues, in the manner of an inventory of the numbers through the introduction of the work. When a certain number is highlighted in the dance, its musical motive reappears. This beginning section uses overlapping phrases of these subdivisions forming smooth layers of sounds. The music progresses toward a gradually introduced double-bass type sound which outlines each beat clearly and dominates the ending section of the work. In the end, as the seventh dancer finally expires, repetitions of a high seven-tone ostinato are heard, as the music erds by gradually fading away.

Mimiana III was composed using electronic sounds including the Buchla synthesizer as an elaborate source material generator in combination with tape mixing and editing techniques.

Bulent Arel, "Mimiana II: Frieze"

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MIMIANA 11: FRIEZE
(By Bulent Arel; Time: 13:02)

The choreography for Frieze was completed some time before the musical score was composed. After seeing the dance, the composer's general impression was that of early Egyptian reliefs in which the human faces are seen in profile, while their torsos are facing outward. The dance suggested a feeling of a completely ritualistic procession consisting of slow and deliberate movements of the dancers. Except for a few contrasting short bursts of fast, active sequences, the dance never lost its hypnotic character.

In the musical score, all sounds are electronically produced and, coincidentally, the work reflects some tonal feelings. From the middle part of the score, where "pure sounds" or sine waves x e used, microtones are introduced and begin to give a descending character to the previously existing- pitches by gradually shifting the pitch structure downward-creating an intentionally blurred pitch relation. The sound colors and articulations are restricted only to those which seemed to best reflect the feeling of the dance.

BULENT AREL (b. Istanbul, Turkey, 1919) graduated from the State Conservatory of Ankara, with a diploma in composition, piano, and conducting. He taught harmony and counterpoint in the same conservatory and piano and history of music at the Teacher's College in Ankara. He was one of the founders of the Helikon Society of Contemporary Arts, and was the regular conductor of !he Helikon Chamber Orchestra for four years.

He studied sound engineering in Ankara under Joze Bernard and Willfried Garret of the Radio Diffusion Francaise, both members of the Club d'Essai of Paris. This collaboration marked the start of his interest in musique concrete, which later led him to electronic music. From 1951 until 1959 he worked at Radio Ankara as recording engineer and then as the Musical Director. In 1958 he pioneered in the field of electronic music combined with conventional instruments, with Music for String Quartet and Oscillator.

In 1959 he came to the United States as the recipient of a Rockefeller Research Grant for work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and in 1961 worked as an assistant to Vladimir Ussachevsky. The next year, he was lecturer at Yale University, where he installed an electronic music studio. Back in Turkey between 1963 and 1965, he composed the score for a musical which ran in Istanbul for over a year. In 1969 he was appointed Associate Professor and Director of the Electronic Music Studio at Yale and in September 1971, he became Professor of Music and Director of the Electronic Music Studio at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In 1974 he was completing a work for viols and electronic sounds commissioned by the New York Consort of Viols under a New York State Council of the Arts grant. He also received a National Endowment of the Arts grant in 1974, for completion of a large-scale piano work for pianist, Robert Miller.

He has composed symphonic works, chamber music, including For Violin and Piano (1966) recorded on CRI SD 264, and music for solo instruments. Of his many electronic works is Stereo Electronic Music No. 2 recorded on CRI SD 268.

The composer writes:

"Mimiana 11: Frieze was commissioned by the Mimi.Garrard Dance Company. The choreography was completed some time before the musical score was composed. My general impression of the dance was of early Egyptian reliefs in which the human faces are seen in profile, while their torsos are facing outward. The dance gave me the feeling of a completely ritualistic procession consisting of slow and deliberate dancers' movements. Except for a few contrasting short bursts of fast, active sequences, the dance never lost its hypnotic character.

"In the musical score, all the sounds are electronically produced. Coincidently, the composition reflects some tonal feelings. From the middle part of the score, where the 'pure sounds' or sine waves are used, micro-tones are introduced and begin to give a descending character to the previously existing pitches by very gradually shifting the pitch structure downward - creating an intentionally blurred pitch relation.

"I restricted my sound colors and articulations only to those which would reflect the feeling of the dance. The MlMlANA II: FRIEZE musical score was composed and realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1969."

Bulent Arel, "Mimiana I: Flux"

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The myriad, diverse sonorities, expressions, and articulations of the electronic music medium provide a remarkable array of musical colors especially suitable for combination with the visual medium of dance.

The electronic music works on this recording were composed expressly for modern dance and were commissioned by choreographer Mimi Garrard in the spac of nearly a decade. Each individual musical work is uniquely related to its own choreography. Collectively, the compositions reflect varying degrees of complexity and diversity of both an aesthetic and technical nature, and a wide range of emotional expression.

In creating a dance work, often the choreographer may chart out a meticulously detailed plan of action on stage, including each beat or count of the dance in exact tempos, descriptions of dancers' movements which may form essential and recurring motives in the dance, and elaborate lighting effects. Then, the musical score is composed to synchronize with these aspects of the choreography. The dancers, in turn, synchronize their own movements to the music throughout the choreography, and the composer's musical score must be lucid, technically precise, as well as a sensitive aesthetic interpretation of the dance. Sometimes, the situation is reversed and the choreography is based on an already composed, previously commissioned electronic work, perhaps itself based on an overall expression or programmatic idea suggested by the choreographer, or else created by the composer as a work purely abstract in nature. In any event, the composer's intention is to create a work which complements the dance and is one of its essential components, and which can exist also as a complete musical work in its own right

In this recording, the composers' virtuosity and musical mastery of the medium is unmistakably evident in these singular and engaging works of electronic music for dance. Bulent Arel's series of Mimianas was produced at the Columbia-Princeton E!ecmnic Music Center, and Daria Semegen's Arc: Music for Dancers was realized at the Electronic Music Studios at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Long Island. The complete works combining choreography, music, and lighting images have been performed by the Mimi Garrard Dance Theatre initially in New York City and subsequently on' tour.

MIMIANA 1: Flux
(By Bulent Arel; Time: 10:40)

The dance work includes a film which projects changing colors, patterns, and numbers on the dancers, creating continuously changing abstract designs. This first electronic music score of the Mimiana series was composed after the choreography was completed, and consists of purely electronic sound phrases which parallel the overall gestures of the dancers, without indicating any specific beats or metric patterns, as such.

Bulent Arel, "Stereo Electronic Music No. 1"

BULENT AREL (Turkey) has taught, and composed symphonies, ballets, and chamber and theatre music. Until recently, he was a research assistant at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, having come there on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. STEREO ELECTRONIC MUSIC NO. I, composed of sounds completely derived from electronic sources, is conceived in two general sound groups: undifferentiated continuous sound texture as background, contrasted with more clearly articulated signals. Throughout the work, the motifderived texture remains as a constant, while the articulated signals are developed and expanded by a process which the composer likens to the growth of the branches of a tree.

Bulent Arel, "Electronic Music No. 1"

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ELECTRONIC MUSIC NO. 1 (1960)

The music on this record was produced at the original Columbia University Tape Music Studio and its successor, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, and at the University of Illinois Electronic Music Studio. It includes some of the earliest electronic music released on commercial records, and is reissued by CRI after its deletion on the Son Nova and Heliodor labels. The tapes used in this reissue are all freshly mixed from the original materials.

Three fundamental types of electronic music are represented: (1) tape music composed from materials created from 'natural' (concrete) sounds such as gongs, voices, and instruments; (2) tape music composed from sounds which were generated by electronic instruments such as audio oscillators and manipulated by diverse processing devices; (3) tape music composed from mixtures of concrete and electronic sound sources.

In all of the compositions, the composers employed the customary techniques of manipulating basic source-sounds recorded on magnetic tape. For example, complex sounds were constructed by splicing together short pieces of tape cut from recordings of various basic sounds. The ear perceives a total impression of complexity without being able to distinguish each of the simple components. This mosaic-like technique, which demands considerable patience on the part of the composer, was, in the early days of tape music sometimes regarded as sufficient to the completion of a tape composition.

In these works, however, the composers found it compositionally desirable to further process basic sound sources by way of semi-automatic devices. For example, tape recorders and associated equipment were used to develop continuous patterns of sound, usually characterized by certain rhythmic rigidity, but nevertheless useful. Between the extremes of handicraft and machine work, the composers used a variety of other specialized techniques, made possible by the flexibility of tape and the versatility of electronic equipment. For example, varying speed was used to produce different pitches and timbres; filtering was used to suppress some of the timbral characteristics of a given sound; reverberation to let the echo add color, liveliness, and a sense of spaciousness.

The composers represented here all composed a number of works for conventional instruments prior to turning to the electronic medium. BULENT AREL, (b. 191 9, Istanbul, Turkey) graduated from and taught at the Ankara State Conservatory. He was the first Music Director of Radio Ankara and pioneered in the field of electronic music combined with conventional instruments with his Music for String Quartet and Oscillator (1957), later revised and retitled Music for String Quartet and Tape. In 1959 he came to the United States as the recipient of a Rockefeller Research Grant to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and contributed significantly both to the technical development and the literature of electronic music with over a dozen major works in his more than a decade association with the Center. He has taught composition at Yale University where he designed and installed the Electronic Music Studio in 1962 and has taught composition and electronic music for several years as visiting lecturer at Columbia University. Since 1971 he has been Professor of Music and Director of the Electronic Music Studio at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has composed a large number of instrumental, chamber, vocal, and symphonic works as well as music for the ballet, theatre, modern dance, television and film. His works include MlMlANA I, 11, 111 for modern dance of which No. II appears on CRI SD 300, FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO (CRI SD 264) and STEREO ELECTRONIC MUSIC NO. 2 (CRI SD 268). He is recipient of National Endowment for the Arts commissions for instrumental and electronic works, Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center commissions, and a New York Cultural Council Foundation commission for his work Fantasy and Dance for Five Viols and Tape.