Featured artist: JERRY GERBER
If the
sensibility of ears accustomed to orchestral music does not auger
a predilection for electronic music, Jerry Gerber’s accessible
and sonorous compositions argue the contrary. The San Francisco
based composer is currently at work on his Sixth Symphony
for Virtual Orchestra. The tools of his trade belie the nature
of his work, including a 24 channel mixing board, synthesizers,
digital samplers plus a variety of digital devices and libraries.
Of course, computers are an integral part of his set up as are
the notational programs with which he creates the final scores.
Although
he has focused on music for virtual orchestra for nearly a decade,
Jerry Gerber’s work is far-ranging. He created the music
for Loom, a Lucas film computer game, and he has composed
the music for Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Gumby.
As a good netizen, Gerber’s works are well documented
with a web site rich in content at
www.jerrygerber.com. There,
one can find generous offerings, such as complete downloadable
mp3s of his work and music scores one can print out with a SibeliusScorch
© score reader, available for free at
www.sibelius.com.
An enjoyable
surf through Gerber’s posted compositions begs the question:
“Why would a composer of works that would be compatible
with a real-life orchestra choose electronics as a means of expression?
The artist himself answers the question in his web essay: Why
Do I Compose for Electronic Instruments? His reasons are
many, including the logistical and political complications of
getting orchestras to play new music. Then there is the question
of music’s ever changing aesthetic standards in a world
where the young are umbilically attached to their headsets. Which
is to say,
electronica is here to
stay. Meanwhile, orchestras concentrate on music written in former
centuries. Bach, Beethoven and Mozart will never sound dated,
but culture marches on and there must always be room for new composers.
It couldn’t be any other way. It is ironic that folk music,
a.k.a. “people’s music,” inspired the great
composers of old, yet music of the academy these days couldn’t
be farther away from the street.
Jerry
Gerber’s works stand apart from much of the art music written
today to the effect that his inspired example is breathing life
into the hope of serious musicians becoming relevant again. Composers
today have succeeded in alienating the serious music-loving public.
Poor attendance at new music concerts and festivals is testimony
to that.
A half
a century ago, the modern world was excited about the explosion
of electronic technology and its affect on music that modern composers
quickly embraced. Out of this ferment came Stockhausen, Xenakis,
the Moog synthesizer, and later on Wendy Carlos. Frank Zappa once
described Egard Varèse, regarded as the Father of electronic
music, as his mentor, which would be a foretelling of the direction
electronic music would take. Today, it informs music as diverse
as hip-hop, house, ambient and techno. Meanwhile, the audience
for modern art music is dwindling, which is another way of asking
where are the electronic sounds that are so much a part of the
zeitgeist of the Third Millennium? If things went awry
for the serious composer about 50 years ago, it hasn’t stopped
Jerry Gerber from quietly creating music that convincingly integrates
conventional melody and atonality.
In
1958, the American composer and electronic music pioneer Milton
Babbitt wrote a famous essay for High Fidelity entitled,
“Who Cares if You Listen,” in which he argues for
the support of music of the academy, describing its new tonal
vocabulary as more “efficient” than the tonal language
of other centuries. Babbitt concludes his essay with a warning
that lack of support of music uninteresting to most listeners
is a death knell to the evolution of music. Perhaps a better
question could be posed to Milton Babbitt: “Who Cares
if You Compose?”
Jerry
Gerber writes for serious music lovers, not ivory tower musicologists,
and for this, the music world is more varied and richer. Which
means when a young person downloads a file of orchestral music
from the Internet, it may well be a symphony composed by Jerry
Gerber.
Listen
to "Rebel
Planet."
