Paul Lansky

Paul Lansky (born June 18, 1944, inNew York) is an American composer.

Contents
Biography
Computer music
Software
Instrumental music
Harmony
Discography
References
Sources
External links

Biography
Paul Lansky (born 1944) is an American composer. He was educated at Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art, Queens College
and Princeton University, studying with George Perle and Milton Babbitt, among others. Originally intending to pursue a career in
performance, during 1965–66 he played the French horn with the Dorian Wind Quintet. He left the group to attend graduate school.
From 1969 until his retirement in 2014 he was on the faculty at Princeton University where he retired as the William Shubael Conant
Professor of Music. He chaired the Department from 1991–2000. In 2000 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Society
for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. In 2009–10 he was the inaugural composer in residence with the Alabama
Symphony. In 2016 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received grants and awards from the
Guggenheim Foundation, the Fromm Foundation and the Koussevitsky foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and
Chamber Music America, among others.

Computer music
Beginning in the mid 1960s Lansky was among the first to experiment with the computer for sound synthesis. Until 2004 this was his
predominant focus. Since then he has concentrated on instrumental composition without any electronic involvement.

Sounds originating from "real-world" sources are the predominant focus of Lansky’s computer music: traffic, kids in the kitchen,
musical instruments, and most of all speech. Electronic synthesis is frequently used but the main sonic resources are transformations
of recorded natural sounds. One of his first large pieces, Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion (1979) set the stage. It is
based on a reading by his wife Hannah MacKay of a famous poem. The piece is not so much a setting of the poem as it is a study of
the contours of a live reading of the poem. The work uses a technique known as Linear Predictive Coding, LPC, which was
developed in the 1960s by scientists as a data-reduction technique meant to economize on the amount of data needed for digital voice
transmission and is used today in some cell phone communication. It allows for the separation of pitch and speed and the pitch
contours of the speech can be altered independently of the speed. Each of the six movements explores a different aspect of speech.
This led to a series of “chatter” pieces, Idle Chatter, etc. that fragment the speech into a percussive rap-like texture. Other projects
included folksong settings (Folk Images), a portrait of a woman (Things She Carried), a contemplation of letters and numbers
(Alphabet Book), sounds of the highway Night Traffic, Ride, blues harmonica, electric guitar, piano improvisation and casual
conversation. The bulk of his approximately 70 electronic compositions are contained on ten solo CDs. (see Discography). While
there are a few pieces for electronics and live instruments the bulk of Lansky's pieces are recorded "tape" pieces.

Lansky's works have attracted interest in various realms. They have been used by dance companies (Bill T. Jones, Eliot Feld Ballet,
New York City Ballet). His works frequently have a rhythmic "groove" that is attractive to dancers. In 2000 he was the co-subject
(along with Francis Dhomont) of a documentary film made for the European Arte network by Uli Aumueller, My Cinema for the
Ears that deals with the use of natural sounds. A four-chord sequence from Lansky's first large computer piece Mild und leise (1972)
was sampled by the English rock bandRadiohead for the track "Idioteque" on their 2000 Kid A album.

Software
Lansky used any available computing hardware:IBM mainframes at first (1966–84), then mini and micro computers byDEC, (1984–
89), and finally personal computers by NeXT, Silicon Graphics and Apple. During the mainframe era computer time was scarce and
expensive and this prompted Lansky to write his own software package called Mix, in Fortran. This made it easier to assemble a
composition voice-by-voice, section-by-section, even note-by-note, avoiding large expensive runs to create an entire piece at once.
Mix had no scheduler (meaning that it could create notes in any order) and thus was not suitable for real-time synthesis. Mix used
additive writes to the output device, analogous to overdubbing on tape. When the move was made to minis and micros Lansky ported
Mix to the C programming language and called it CMix. During the late 90’s a group led by Brad Garton at Columbia University
created a version of this with a scheduler, RtCmix, that was capable of real time synthesis. Starting in the mid 1990’s Lansky used a
well-known software package called SuperCollider. Programs like Cmix and SuperCollider are script-based rather than driven by a
graphical interface. (Input data is frequently in the form of a program rather than a notelist.) This facilitated the creation of complex
textures in works such as Idle Chatter, which contain thousands of short notes, frequently selected using random methods. This is
sometimes called algorithmic composition.

Instrumental music
During the mid 1990s Lansky began to be approached by performers who were attracted to the performative-like aspects of his
computer music. Percussionists in particular were attracted by pieces such as Table’s Clear, which resembles a gamelan made of pots
and pans, and the "chatter" series. One of his first large percussion pieces was Threads, 2005, written for the Sō Percussion quartet.
Since then there are about a dozen pieces for percussion instruments, alone and in various ensembles. Another focus has been
classical guitar, alone and in combination:Semi-Suite, With the Grain (concerto), Partita (guitar and percussion.) A residency with the
Alabama Symphony led to several orchestral pieces (Shapeshifters, Imaginary Islands). Significant commissions came from the
Library of Congress and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for the wind quintet The Long and Short of It, and Chamber
Music America for a trio for the Janus Trio, Book of Memory, and for Sō Percussion, Springs. The 2004 trio for horn, violin and
piano, Etudes and Parodies won the 2005 International Horn Society prize. Lansky's instrumental music is published by Carl Fischer.
The bulk of his computer music as well as much instrumental music is available on
Bridge Records.

Harmony
Most of Lansky’s works are basically tonal. In general terms this means the apparent background source for his pitch language is the
diatonic scale rather than the chromatic or microtonal scale. He frequently uses traditional tonal syntax. During 1969–72 he
collaborated with George Perle on an expansion of Perle’s 12-tone tonality, which led to Perle’s book of the same name. This
approach basically establishes another metric for measuring and relating harmonies that has to do with symmetry
. It is related to some
music by Bartok. Some of Lansky’s work such as Notes to Self, for piano, and It All Adds Up, for two pianos, use this approach.
Lansky’s instrumental music generally eschews extended instrumental techniques.He writes that he scratched that itch with computer
music.
A long-term interest of Lansky's is music "about" music. Earlier examples of this are his computer pieces Guy's Harp, about blues
harmonica, and Not So Heavy Metal, about rock and roll guitar. More recent examples are Book of Memory, which comments on
music from Machaut to Scriabin, Ancient Echoes, based on late-16th-century dance music, and Ricercare Plus, inspired by 17th-
century counterpoint.

Discography
Smalltalk, 1990 (New Albion Records 030)[1]
Homebrew, 1992 (Bridge Records 9035)[2]
More Than Idle Chatter, 1994 (Bridge 9050)
Fantasies And Tableaux, 1994 (Composers Recordings, Inc.683)[3]
Folk Images, 1995 (Bridge 9060)
Things She Carried, 1997 (Bridge 9076)
Conversation Pieces, 1998 (Bridge 9083)
Ride, 2001 (Bridge 9103)
Alphabet Book, 2002 (Bridge 9126)
Music Box, 2006 (Bridge 9210)
Etudes and Parodies, 2007 (Bridge 9222)
Threads, 2011 (Cantaloupe Music 21064)[4]
Imaginary Islands, 2012 (Bridge 9366)
Comix Trips, 2012 (Meyer Media)
Notes to Self, 2013 (Bridge 9405)
Textures and Threads, 2014 (Bridge 9435)
Contemplating Weather,2015 (Bridge 9447)
Book of Memory',2016 (New Focus Recordings fcr 176)
Idle Fancies, 2015 (Bridge 9454)

References
1. Smalltalk on Discogs [1] (https://www.discogs.com/Paul-Lansky-Smalltalk/release/1111455)
2. Paul Lansky's recordings on Bridge Records(http://www.bridgerecords.com/search?page=1&q=Paul+Lansky)
3. Fantasies and Tableaux on Discogs (https://www.discogs.com/Paul-Lansky-Fantasies-And-Tableaux/release/149362
2)
4. Threads on Cantaloupe Records(http://cantaloupemusic.com/albums/threads)

Sources
Antokoletz, Elliott. 2001. "Lansky, Paul". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , second edition, edited
by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
Code, David L. 1990. "Observations in the Art of Speech: Paul Lansky’ s Six Fantasies". Perspective of New Music
28, no. 1 (Fall): 144–69.
Roads, Curtis. 1983. "Interview with Paul Lansky".Computer Music Journal7, no. 3:16–24.

External links
Paul Lansky's page at Carl Fischer

Paul Lansky's Homepage on Princeton.edu

MP3 of Mild und Leise
NewMusicBox.org: In the 1st Person: Three Generations of eaching
T Music Compositionwith George Perle and
Virgil Moorefield
Short biography and a photo
Archived article and interview with Lansky from a defunct music website, "soundout"
 Listen to Lansky's "Notjustmoreidlechatter" at Acousmata music blog
Interview with Paul Lansky, April 6, 1988

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