Giga-Hertz-Preis 2023 | Konzert Hauptpreis Lebenswerk Laurie Spiegel

General Statement about my music and music tech:

Why do I make this music? What is it for? What do I hope to experience or accomplish by doing it? More than anything else, it’s to document my internal experience, and to communicate. I also love doing both the coding and the music and following them where they lead. It's exciting and I get swept away. I want to record an existence proof for the depth and exhilaration of whatever my life seems to be. My work pulls me in, the same way that the arts and imagination pull technology toward innovation. You might find your own different ideas about this all when you listen because there are quite a lot of ideas which can be linked with this music - how logic and intuition and imagination can support each other instead of conflicting and then end up expressing emotion, many thoughts about algorithmic logical and the many procedures involved composition, the relationship between the planned and the spontaneous, the unity of tool maker and end user in a single person compared to when those are different individuals, or about the design of human interfaces to sound in general. But ideas, methods, processes and forms miss the point, which is mainly to deal with, capture, document, express and communicate emotions and the previously incommunicable products of imagination. For me, music is more than anything else a way to deal with the extreme intensity of being alive. I use the process of making music, and also whatever new tools and methods I need, in order to do it the way I feel it, and as a way to prove to myself that it is somehow possible to positively embrace the full intensity of being alive without being overcome by it. In doing music, am trying to document the process of being alive on some level where other means of communication are not adequate. I hope to accomplish this in such a way that it will make you glad to be alive too as you listen, or less alone or more inspired or whatever else it might be that you’re looking for. I’ve limited the notes for the individual pieces to technical data and context because music is something not dealt with at all well in words. I hope you can find feeling and maybe some beauty in this concert.

 – Laurie Spiegel, New York, December 2023

00:00:13 Laurie Spiegel »Four Short Visits to Different Worlds: I. Swells, II. Mines, III. Crying Tone, IV. A Garden«, (ca. 1971), für Buchla-Synthesizer

00:09:31 Laurie Spiegel »Pentachrome«, (1974), für das Hybridsystem GROOVE (Minicomputer, angeschlossen an ein analoges Klangsynthesesystem)

00:16:53 Laurie Spiegel »Three Modal Pieces: I. A Cosmos, II. A Legend, III. A Myth«, (1982 – 83), für den computergesteuerten Analogsynthesizer Mcleyvier

00:31:22 Laurie Spiegel »Passage«, (1987), für Mac IIci, Amiga 1000 & Yamaha TX816 FM Tone Generator System 00:45:44 Laurie Spiegel »Sound Zones«, (ca. 1988), für »Music Mouse«, Mac & Yamaha TX816 FM Tone Generator System

00:53:44 Laurie Spiegel »Improvisation on a ‘Concerto Generator’«, (1977), für Alles Machine (Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer) als Videoaufnahme Laurie Spiegel »A Paraphrase«, (2019), für Theremin & Klavier

Credits:

Dominik Kautz (Project lead & curator)

Ludger Brümmer (Curator) Sebastian Schottke (Tonmeister)

Laurin Lücking (Video editing)