On Sun­day last I had the almost unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend a per­for­mance of George Antheil’s Bal­let mécanique at the West Road Con­cert Hall in Cam­bridge, part of the Cam­bridge Music Fes­ti­val. The con­cert also marked the 100th anniver­sary year of the pub­li­ca­tion of the Futur­ist Man­i­festo.

My atten­tion was drawn to the event by my friend Paul Lehrman, whom I knew orig­i­nal­ly as a bril­liant jour­nal­ist who used to write for me when I was Edi­tor of Stu­dio Sound back in the 1980s. Since then we’ve done a bunch of stuff togeth­er includ­ing music for KPM Music Library and much more.

Today, Paul is a music pro­fes­sor based at a uni­ver­si­ty in the Boston area, and he has made quite a name for him­self for his real­i­sa­tion of a ver­sion of Antheil’s work which calls (at least in its full ver­sion) for a per­cus­sion orches­tra of three xylo­phones, four bass drums and a tam-tam (gong); two live pianists; sev­en or so elec­tric bells; a siren; three aero­plane pro­pellers; and 16 syn­chro­nized play­er pianos. As you can imag­ine, it’s a flam­boy­ant, con­tro­ver­sial, down­right noisy piece of avant-garde music.

This large-scale ver­sion of the piece, com­posed around 1923, was nev­er per­formed in Antheil’s life­time, appar­ent­ly because the friend of Antheil’s who told him you could sync up 16 play­er pianos was wrong: the tech­nol­o­gy of the time did not allow it. Paul Lehrman, how­ev­er, was com­mis­sioned by music pub­lish­ers G. Schirmer to realise the work for the 16 play­er pianos called for in the orig­i­nal man­u­script, using mod­ern dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in the form of dig­i­tal play­er pianos, MIDI, and sam­ples for the air­craft propellers.

This he did, and the first per­for­mance took place at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts, Low­ell, exact­ly ten years ago (on 18 Novem­ber, 1999). Since then it’s been per­formed on numer­ous occa­sions around the world. You can read more about it, and about Antheil, at Paul’s site which you can find here at antheil.org.

Cam­bridge: rat­tles, pianos, Pianola and elec­tric bells

This was not the ver­sion per­formed at West Road on Sun­day, how­ev­er. That was a some­what more restrained ver­sion per­formed on this occa­sion on a sin­gle Pianola plus two live pianists, three xylo­phones, drums and per­cus­sion, rat­tles (per­form­ing the pro­peller parts), two elec­tric door­bells and a hard-cranked siren. Musi­cal­ly, it was a ver­sion first per­formed in 1927 (and not very often there­after). Paul asked me if I could go along and inter­view Paul Jack­son, the con­duc­tor, expe­ri­ence the per­for­mance and find the answers to some ques­tions about this par­tic­u­lar version.

This sound­ed as if it could be enor­mous fun (which indeed it was) so I duly turned up for the event, Music hard and beau­ti­ful as a dia­mond, part of the 2009 Cam­bridge Music Fes­ti­val, con­sist­ing of three works per­formed by Rex Law­son on Pianola, Julio d’E­scriván on iPhone, the Anglia Sin­fo­nia, Anglia Voic­es and MEME, con­duct­ed by Paul Jackson.

Pianola mech­a­nism with roll

The con­cert itself was pre­ced­ed by a 45-minute pre­sen­ta­tion by Law­son and d’E­scriván about the Pianola and the iPhone as an instru­ment respec­tive­ly (d’E­scriván’s piece start­ed the evening). I was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in Law­son’s expo­si­tion on the Pianola.

The Pianola is quite dif­fer­ent from the Repro­duc­ing Piano and is not even tru­ly the stuff of “play­er pianos” in saloons in cow­boy movies, though they all use a “piano roll” to pro­vide the notes. In the case of the Repro­duc­ing Piano, the roll con­tains not only the notes but all the tem­po, expres­sion and oth­er aspects of an actu­al per­for­mance. Thus the big sell­ing point of these sys­tems, there­fore, was to get famous per­form­ers and com­posers to per­form their works, which could then be flaw­less­ly repro­duced at home.

Actu­a­tors in posi­tion over the Stein­way keyboard

The Pianola, on the oth­er hand, began life as a “cab­i­net play­er” – a box on cas­tors that you wheel up to a con­ven­tion­al piano (a Stein­way grand in the case of the Sun­day per­for­mance) and lock into place so that its felt-cov­ered actu­a­tors can press the keys. It’s pow­ered by ped­als, which dri­ve the roll and also force air through the holes in the roll to sound the notes. By chang­ing the pres­sure on the ped­als (eg by stamp­ing on them) you can also change the loud­ness of the notes – in oth­er words, give the per­for­mance dynam­ics – that can be applied to dif­fer­ent parts of the range. There’s also a tem­po slid­er – and even tech­nol­o­gy that picks out the top line automatically.

This is all rather impor­tant, because the piano roll for a Pianola con­tains only the notes – the play­er deter­mines the tem­po and expres­sion (in a solo per­for­mance, for exam­ple, includ­ing visu­al cues print­ed or writ­ten on the roll). Thus a Pianola per­for­mance actu­al­ly is a per­for­mance, and not a play­back. Yes, the notes are pro­vid­ed, but the expres­sion is man­u­al­ly applied.

Pianola rolls were not cre­at­ed by play­ing the instru­ment and record­ing what the per­former did, as in the case of the Repro­duc­ing Piano. Instead, they were cre­at­ed sim­ply from the score. Imag­ine a MIDI sequence cre­at­ed in step-time with no veloc­i­ty infor­ma­tion and you get the idea.

Most peo­ple could­n’t be both­ered to learn the sub­tle nuances of Pianola per­for­mance, how­ev­er, and sim­ply ped­alled away, giv­ing the instru­ments a rather life­less, mechan­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion which was entire­ly unde­served. Ulti­mate­ly, mech­a­nisms were built into (usu­al­ly upright) pianos – and hence the play­er pianos in the bars depict­ed in the cow­boy movies aforementioned.

The drum sec­tion and Paul Jack­son, Conductor

Rex Law­son, who per­formed the Pianola part in Sun­day’s con­cert, is a lead­ing expert on the instru­ment, and his pre­sen­ta­tion dis­posed of quite a few myths, espe­cial­ly when it came to the per­for­mance of Bal­let mécanique. The fact that the play­er con­trols the tem­po means that the Pianola can actu­al­ly fol­low a con­duc­tor in the con­ven­tion­al way – the Pianola does not have to set the tem­po and have every oth­er play­er sync to it. In Paul Lehrman’s per­for­mances, in con­trast, the MIDI replay sys­tem that dri­ves the play­er pianos also gen­er­ates a click track that every­one follows.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the fact that you can con­trol the dynam­ics of the Pianola means that the instru­ment does not sim­ply bash out all the notes at full blast. As a result, pri­mar­i­ly, of these two fac­tors, Bal­let mécanique takes on a whole new degree of light and shade. Yes, it’s still a cacoph­o­ny of 20s avant-garde exu­ber­ance, but it takes on a good deal of addi­tion­al subtlety.

Law­son feels that the piece is designed to be played on these Edwar­dian instru­ments rather than mod­ern dig­i­tal sys­tems, and that you need to actu­al­ly per­form the Pianola part – as he puts it, you need to “sweat”. How­ev­er, he is inter­est­ed in get­ting some fel­low Pianola-own­ing friends togeth­er to per­form the work on four Pianolas syn­chro­nised as far as tem­po is concerned.

Law­son thinks the idea of 16 play­er pianos was Antheil show­ing off, that it was prob­a­bly orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for four live pianists, and that the big prob­lem with per­form­ing it at the time was that there were not near­ly enough play­ers in Paris who knew the sub­tleties of the Pianola and how to use its tem­po and expres­sion capa­bil­i­ties. In his planned 4‑Pianola per­for­mance, he would set the tem­po at his Pianola and the oth­ers would fol­low the tem­po he set by using step­per motors to sync them to his unit. Which sounds like a great idea, though there might be issues due to stretch­ing or slip­page of the rolls: it might need sprock­et­ed piano rolls, which did actu­al­ly exist.

The box­es for the three pianola rolls

The Sun­day per­for­mance of the sin­gle-Pianola ver­sion used three piano rolls, and to allow chang­ing them the per­for­mance was split into three movements.

The per­for­mance, for me, shed new light on a fas­ci­nat­ing com­po­si­tion from the 1920s. A rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion from Paul Lehrman’s, it sug­gests inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for a Lawson/Lehrman collaboration.

• The pro­gramme also includ­ed Grand Pianola Music by John Adams (no Pianolas involved), and Julio d’Escriván’s inge­nious and expres­sive Ayayay! Con­cer­to for iPhone, Pianola and orchestra.

Last night I went along to the sec­ond Cam­bridge Geek Night, held upstairs at the May­pole pub in Park Street, Cam­bridge (right next to the Park Street car park) for an evening of net­work­ing, chat­ting and short presentations.

In addi­tion to good com­pa­ny, the evening includ­ed free drinks (cour­tesy of The Guardian’s Open Plat­form!) and the pub serves excel­lent food. What more could you ask?

The three pre­sen­ta­tions con­sist­ed of Richard Boul­ton on Xapi­an, an inter­est­ing open-source search engine; a pair of local lawyers from Tay­lor Vint­ners solic­i­tors giv­ing an overview of the legal­i­ties of entre­pre­neur­ship (and although I knew some of it, it was most def­i­nite­ly direct­ly use­ful); and final­ly Michael Brun­ton-Spall from The Guardian, who gave us a fas­ci­nat­ing view of the paper’s API and what you can do with it, and a tiny glimpse into the future of what I believe is the best news­pa­per in the coun­try. And between pre­sen­ta­tions, time for a good chat with a few of the (about 30+) attendees.

Kudos to Véro Pep­per­rell, “Social Media Con­sul­tant and Geekette”, aka “that­cana­di­an­girl”  for a great evening: next event is in about six weeks, so if you live or work in the Cam­bridge area, keep an eye on the Cam­bridge Geek Night blog for details of the next one. Plus you can sign up for an email list here.

The Dig­i­tal Britain Uncon­fer­ences Report is now avail­able. There’s an Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry and the full Report itself, and you can read them both below. Most impor­tant of all, assum­ing that you agree with the con­tent, I would encour­age you to put your name to the doc­u­ment by adding a com­ment on the web site with your full name.

The whole process by which this Report came togeth­er is almost as amaz­ing as the final doc­u­ment itself. Feb­ru­ary saw the release of the offi­cial inter­im Dig­i­tal Britain report and the Dig­i­tal Britain Sum­mit, both of which seemed to many to leave a great deal of ques­tions unan­swered and not go near­ly far enough. Com­ments were sought in advance of the release of the final offi­cial report lat­er in the year.

Giv­en vir­tu­al­ly no time, a groundswell of pop­u­lar activism around the coun­try led groups and “Uncon­fer­ences” to be set up to explore and col­lect com­ments to sub­mit for con­sid­er­a­tion, using all the lat­est inter­net tech­nolo­gies and social media sys­tems to organ­ise, pub­li­cise, and allow live par­tic­i­pa­tion in meet­ings all over the coun­try. From rooms full of peo­ple in some loca­tions to a hand­ful of par­tic­i­pants in anoth­er, we all came togeth­er and thrashed out our ideas for how Britain should move for­ward into a dig­i­tal future of uni­ver­sal high-speed sym­met­ri­cal Inter­net access in which we can all par­tic­i­pate. We all added our con­tri­bu­tions to what we felt “Dig­i­tal Britain” should real­ly mean.

Then came the remark­able efforts of a small team of edi­tors to col­late the reports from the indi­vid­ual meet­ings and bring them togeth­er to cre­ate the final Report and Sum­ma­ry. Every­one involved is to be hearti­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed for a tremen­dous job.

I was mild­ly (though hap­pi­ly) sur­prised that my per­son­al account of the Cam­bridge meet­ing end­ed up as the Cam­bridge group’s sub­mis­sion to the report. Inevitably I did­n’t cov­er every nuance of the dis­cus­sion, but I hope oth­er atten­dees feel that I pre­sent­ed it fair­ly and effec­tive­ly. My per­son­al thanks to Bill Thomp­son for con­ceiv­ing the Cam­bridge meet­ing and help­ing to bring the entire effort together.

Now the Dig­i­tal Britain Uncon­fer­ences Report is out there – and is being con­sid­ered by those prepar­ing the offi­cial Gov­ern­ment Dig­i­tal Britain report for pub­li­ca­tion in just a short time – and I am very hap­py to put my name to it. I would like to thank every­one who helped put the Uncon­fer­ences and the result­ing Report togeth­er, for all their hard work assem­bled in a remark­ably short time. I am very pleased to have been able to con­tribute a small part to the process.

I am more than hap­py to endorse the final Dig­i­tal Britain Uncon­fer­ences Report and the rec­om­men­da­tions con­tained there­in. I sin­cere­ly hope it pos­i­tive­ly impacts the Gov­ern­men­t’s plans and deci­sions in this vital­ly impor­tant aspect of the coun­try’s future.

Please read the report, or at least the sum­ma­ry, and if you agree with it and its rec­om­men­da­tions, please add your name to it in the Com­ments sec­tion by click­ing here.

Dig­i­tal Britain Uncon­fer­ences

Dig­i­tal Britain Uncon­fer­ences Report

Cam­bridgeshire Coun­ty Coun­cil ‑4 June, 2009

I am stand­ing for pub­lic office to make a state­ment about stand­ing for what one believes:  pol­i­tics needs to be trans­formed into efforts on behalf of the ben­e­fit of all the peo­ple - not a means of pow­er where a few peo­ple make prof­its on behalf of them­selves and a small minor­i­ty of fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues, using a pub­lic office to make prof­its at pub­lic expense by ‘flip­ping’ or over­charg­ing for any num­ber of spu­ri­ous reasons.

I am stand­ing on behalf of the Lib­er­al Democ­rats for Cam­bridgeshire Coun­ty Coun­cil because the Lib­er­al Demo­c­rat Par­ty stands for a high per­cent­age of what I believe in.

What do I believe in? Once upon a time I called myself a Social­ist — and once upon a time, an Old Labour Par­ty might have cov­ered my aims, but that time has long passed. The Lib Dems are my best bet — and yours too, if you want fair­ness and jus­tice and reform in the polit­i­cal sphere.

The Tories are hid­ing their true elis­tist colours behind the green façade of their youngish leader; Labour has foundered under end­less years of would-be Thatch­erism. UKIP is a divi­sive and dan­ger­ous side­track. Let’s bring back the true face of Liberalism.

I was born in Cana­da but have lived in the UK (Scot­land and Eng­land) for well nigh 30 years — and have been mar­ried to an invet­er­ate (but adorable) Eng­lish­man for over twen­ty years. Once upon a time I  ran for the Greens (1992 Gen­er­al Elec­tions) and in Cana­da I sup­port the New Democ­rats. I want to bring light and air — maybe trans­paren­cy is the buzz word — into pol­i­tics; but above all, we need gov­ern­ment account­able to the peo­ple. Right on, eh ?