Yesterday – April 21, 2011, Max Mathews passed away. He was a computer music pioneer who is famous for writing the first computer-sound generating program called MUSIC in 1957. So many amazing technological breakthroughs in computer music, not to mention great art, have been discovered because of his work at Bell Labs. (The “Max”, in Max/MSP/Jitter is named after him) He will be greatly missed. Here are some links to find out more about him:

A good bio

The Cycling ’74 forum on Max’s passing

The Wikipedia page

I recently stumbled upon two funny and interesting links that I had to share:

1. Hipster Composers

This post by Evan Kuchar on chicagonow.com asks the age-old question:  Which composers were hipsters and which were nerds?  If you ever wanted to know CLICK HERE and all your questions will be answered.  (Unless it was about Beethoven or Crumb evidently…)  *sidenote*  I seem to dig the hipster composers more – what does that say about me?

2. Wind Band Composers BRACKET

It’s March Madness, and you know what that means…Time to arbitrarily pit wind band composers against one another in an internet popularity contest devoid of any consideration towards the quality of their compositions.  Sure, some should survive the carnage relatively unscathed, and there are some who will survive that should be “scathed” (?).  Either way, kind of a funny exercise…  CLICK HERE to go to the voting – you might have to find the most recent post in order to vote.  (And if you are a super nerd, go here to fill out your own bracket to compare!)

I am currently studying Igor Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments and I thought it would be interesting to post my discoveries regarding the tempos that this piece has been recorded at. For those not “in-the-know”, the tempos in Symphonies have metronome markings that all relate to one another. There are three tempos:

• Tempo 1: eighth note = 144
• Tempo 2: eighth note = 216
• Tempo 3: eighth note = 288

You will notice that Tempo 3 is twice the speed of Tempo 1. In Tempo 2, 2 eighth notes are equal to 3 eighth notes in Tempo 1 (3:2). The same goes for Tempo 3 to Tempo 2 (3:2). Because of this obvious interrelationship, and my upcoming performance of the piece, I wanted to get these burned into my brain! I currently have seven different recordings of Symphonies of Wind Instruments, so I set out to discover if any of these conductors were close to the written tempos. I used a “tap-tempo” feature on my iPhone “Tempo” app from Frozen Ape and began to track all three tempos in each recording. I soon realized that many of the conductors were taking a different (often more indulgent) tempo in the final chorale of the piece, so I added a 4th Tempo to see if that proved interesting. The recordings I studied were as follows:

Detroit Chamber Winds and Friends – H. Robert Reynolds, conductor







Nash Ensemble – Sir Simon Rattle, conductor







Netherlands Wind Ensemble – Thierry Fischer, conductor







United States Marine Band – Col. Timothy Foley, conductor







Prague Chamber Harmony – Libor Pesek, conductor







Berliner Philharmoniker – Pierre Boulez, conductor







Columbia Symphony Winds & Brass – Robert Craft, conductor




There are also 2 versions of Symphonies of Wind Instruments – the original 1920 publication and the revised 1947 edition.  I included both in this study since the tempo indications are the same in both revisions.  I also included information on how much each tempo deviated from Stravinsky’s markings in order to come up with a “total deviation” score.  Considering the fact that the tempo does fluctuate occasionally and the metronome “tap-method” is not exactly 100% proof positive, I included a “handicap” of about +/- 5 clicks per tempo, which brought the total deviation score down by 20.

Well without further ado here are the results…

(This is BY NO MEANS a commentary on which recording is “better” or even which one I prefer, but merely a quasi-statistical look at tempo in Symphonies)

*Foley’s score was actually 10, but with the handicap it goes to 0*

Opening Tempo I:
BEST:  Foley/Rattle
WORST:  Boulez/Pesek

Tempo I (Chorale)
BEST:  Foley/Boulez
WORST:  Pesek

Tempo II
BEST:  Foley
WORST: Boulez

Tempo III
BEST:  Foley
WORST:  Reynolds/Rattle

1920 Original
BEST:  Foley

1947 Revision
BEST:  Craft

Widest Margin of Deviation
Presek – Tempo I (Chorale) – nearly 40 clicks under!

Interesting things to note:
*   The Reynolds and Ratttle recording tempos are very similar
*   Pierre Boulez also has a video with the LSO – the tempos are the same…
*   ALL the conductors took the final chorale a little under tempo, though some more than others.
*   Reynolds, Rattle and Boulez took Tempo III under by about 25 clicks or so

For anyone who is interested in seeing my spreadsheet data, let me know and I can send one to you.  Any feedback is welcome.  This was not meant as strict science, but merely as a teaching tool for me as I study this incredible piece!