David Tudor and Composers Inside Electronics — Rainforest IV (Neuma)
Composers Inside Electronics perform David Tudor's Rainforest IV by Composers Inside Electronics
“Why shouldn’t there be a thousand or more ways of building loudspeakers? [...] Every sculptured loudspeaker has certain special characteristics, so my problem becomes that of finding what sound I can put in so as to reveal the unique properties of the material.” — David Tudor
The evolution of David Tudor’s “Rainforest” goes back to a 1968 commission by Merce Cunningham. Tudor was asked to create a sonic element for Cunningham’s dance piece of the same name, also featuring Andy Warhol’s “Silver Clouds,” floating mylar pillows filled with helium and costumes by Jasper Johns. Using 8 audio transducers (essentially speakers without cones), phonograph cartridges, contact microphones and two sets of loudspeakers, Tudor came up with an approach to investigate the resonance of physical objects, utilizing simple signal generators, real-time filtering and feedback processes. Within a year, Tudor had expanded upon that initial vision, morphing the concept into a multi-channel system for performing in concert settings. He also added in field recordings of birds and insects to the initial use of electronic sounds, all modified by an interactive array of filters and resonant objects. (Realizations of both of these versions of “Rainforest” can be heard on the David Tudor & Gordon Mumma release.)
Tudor explained his strategies for evolving his pieces, noting “My preference is to use modular materials which can change from piece to piece. And also, it enables me to expand a piece by adding components to it which were not in the original piece.” For “Rainforest II” Tudor expanded the system with real-time processing of voices singing or speaking, further abstracted through antiphonal diffusion across speakers placed around the concert hall. In a 1988 interview, Tudor explained the developments of the next version of the piece. “The third version had to deal with the ability to have any input go to any transducer. I made that system for a simultaneous performance with John Cage (“Mureau”). It was one of those pieces that changes all the time, so I needed to have a sort of continuous thing, so I used tape sources, but having the ability to mix them or separate them into different output channels."
“Rainforest IV” built on all that proceeded and evolved the piece into an enveloping, spatialized, sculptural sonic environment. In an article in Volume 14 of the Leonardo Music Journal, John Driscoll describes the origins of this next version. The initial realization of “Rainforest IV” evolved out of a series of workshops by Tudor, Gordon Mumma and David Behrman at the New Music in New Hampshire festival in Chocorua, NH in the summer of 1973. A core group of workshop attendees collaborated with Tudor on the prototyping and construction of an installation consisting of resonant found objects and specially fabricated pieces suspended from the ceiling of a large barn and activated using electronic and tape sources. Sound transducers were attached to metal bedsprings, cast-iron wagon wheel rims, stainless-steel milk containers and a variety of other objects. Contact microphones were attached to the objects and fed to speakers, further amplifying the resonant frequencies of the sculptural elements which debuted for a performance lasting about 5 hours. Members from that initial performance, along with Tudor, went on to form the group Composers Inside Electronics (CIE), collectively installing and performing the work in a multitude of locations around the world.
Driscoll describes the work and the way that CIE functions. “Each composer has designed and constructed a set of sculptures that function as instrumental loud speakers under their control, and each independently produces sound material to display their sculptures’ resonant characteristics. The appreciation of “Rainforest IV” depends upon individual exploration, the audience is invited to move freely among the sculptures.” He further explains, “Given the duration of the work, it is possible to create large shifting sound characters that evolve over extended periods interspersed with short-duration local sound events unique to one object… It is an improvisational coordination of the sound materials, but one that has become extremely familiar and ingrained in the performers. Since there is no single listening point, the work is never heard in the same way by any two audience members or performers who are arranged in the periphery of the space.” David Tudor provides a great introduction here:
This recording captures a realization of “Rainforest IV” at the Center for Music Experiment (CME) at UC San Diego in February 1977 at the invitation of Pauline Oliveros, an old friend and collaborator of Tudor’s who was the director of the program. Tudor and CIE were in residence for two weeks, offering workshops, scouring for speaker/sculpture materials and embarking on field recording expeditions. The center was housed in a former military bowling alley, offering an expansive setting for the installation. Because of the spatialized and diffused sonic character intrinsic to the work, it is impossible to create a definitive recording of the any realization of the piece. But musician David Dunn, who was an audio engineer working at the school and musician/composer Warren Burt hit on an approach, capturing soundwalks through the installation with an early binaural microphone system. Dunn explains “Warren and I took turns wearing the microphones while walking through the installation, stopping here and there to listen or insert our microphone laden ears into the sounding objects. The session (as evidenced by the final recording) started from outside the renovated military bowling alley where CME was housed and ended by walking back outside.”
As with any binaural recording, listening with headphones reveals a sense of spatialization and from the very first moments, one becomes immersed in a constantly morphing sonic environment. The layers of sound waft like clouds, with an ever-changing focus against a shifting ground of clattering resonance, chattering oscillations, metallic clangs and the filtered transformation of natural sounds. While there is an overall density to what transpires, the details of the underlying components continually emerge with entrancing fidelity. With Tudor’s pieces, any notion of compositional structure or dynamic development is eschewed. Instead, an aural world is constructed and put in to motion and the piece takes on a life of its own. That said, one can readily hear how the members of CIE were acutely attuned to the inputs and resulting outputs of the system. That sense of overarching attentiveness always comes through. Anyone who has toyed with the commixture of a system of outputs feeding inputs is well aware of how resulting feedback can run rampant, mounting into a skirling mess. Here, a dynamic balance is maintained, allowing sources to build and veer toward the edges of pandemonium and then dialled back at just the right moments to create a vital tension throughout.
Of course, the act of constructing the release from recordings of multiple soundwalks through the installation inserts a degree of structural intent. But Dunn and Burt did a masterful job of capturing the overall sense of the realization, weaving their recordings into an engulfing whole. The occasional appearance of people chattering as they walked through the work adds an engaging complement to the overall mix. Over the course of 70 minutes, the music unfolds with an even, unhurried pace while constantly revealing new elements and permutations of the mercurial sonic stratums. The choice of starting by entering the installation from outside and closing by exiting proves an effective framing convention, preserving the inherent notion of the piece existing in the installation space rather than having a performative start and end. Dunn’s mastering bring out the nuances of the installation within a natural-sounding spatialization. Coming up on 50 years since that initial realization of “Rainforest IV” in NH, this recording displays how timeless Tudor’s vision remains.
