Equipment 1 Horn

University of Illinois Press
Chapter Title: Two Cybersonic Works: Horn and Hornpipe (1970–71/2012)
Book Title: Cybersonic Arts

Book Subtitle: Adventures in American New Music
Book Author(s): GORDON MUMMA
Book Editor(s): MICHELLE FILLION
Published by: University of Illinois Press. (2015)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt17w8g01.18
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CHAPTER 8
Two Cybersonic Works

Horn and Hornpipe
(1970–71/2012)
For several years Robert Ashley and I performed a remarkable work for horn and
piano, Duet II (1961) by Christian Wolff. This and several of Wolff’s other works
inspired me to compose for the horn. In 1961 I began a series of compositions for
horn with various accompanying resources, including live cybersonic process-
ing. Two of these, Horn (1965) and Hornpipe (1967), were widely performed and
have been recorded. Of these, Hornpipe would prove a major touring vehicle for
me until 1976, with at least thirty-two performances across the United States,
in Europe, and in Japan.
Horn
Horn requires a hornist, two voices, and a technician to operate the cybersonic
console. The sounds of all three players were modified in live performance
with cybersonic circuits, by which the sounds of one performer automatically
and drastically modify the sounds of another. Technically, the process was an
ensemble of ring-modulators in which the carrier frequency -input was derived
from the other performers’ complex sounds.
Source: New material was written in 2012 that draws liberally on earlier writings, including
Mumma’s program notes for the Mainstream and Tzadik recordings, his unpublished “Notes
on Cybersonics” (1971; typescript, GMC), and his contributions to an unpublished essay
co-written with Stephen Smoliar, “The Computer as a Performing Instrument (20 February
1970),” Artificial Intelligence Memo 213 (MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, February 1971):
1–11 (typescript, GMC).
8. Two Cybersonic Works: Horn and Hornpipe • 55
Horn employed two or three cybersonic units interconnected by audio cables,

with the outputs directed to a stereo sound system. There were three audio
inputs for live processing, two for the voices and one for the horn. A minimum
of output control was left to the technician, who operated the control units,
primarily to balance the spatial placement of the processed sounds and levels
of output to the loudspeakers in the audience.
Except for the sounds of the horn near the end of the performances, the per-
formers generally avoided producing loud sounds in order to facilitate balance in
the cybersonic processing. The result was a gritty, spectral sound that obliterated
the sonic identities of horn and voices. The process of variable interconnected
circuitry in Horn became the basis for further design and development of the
later Mesa (1966), Beam (1969), and Cybersonic Cantilevers (1973).
Horn was premiered and recorded at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ann
Arbor in March 1965, with an ensemble of ONCE regulars (Gordon Mumma,
Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, and William Ribbens). One of its notable
performances took place on November 26, 1966, as a last-minute request for
London’s Saville Theatre during a Cunningham Dance Company residency.
John Cage and David Tudor supplied the voice parts to my performance of the
horn and cybersonics.
Hornpipe
Hornpipe is for solo hornist (playing Waldhorn and valve horn) and cybersonic
console. Its origins extend back to the early 1960s with a related conceptual
piece then titled Hornpipes, an acoustical experiment using an assortment of
vertical metal pipes placed at varying distances behind the bell of my horn.1 The
vertical pipes, of different lengths and mass, resonated with my horn practice
as I moved about the performance space. The invitation from Luigi Nono for
Milton Cohen’s Space Theatre project to perform at the 1964 Venice Biennale
inspired me to rethink the cumbersome, fixed apparatus of my Hornpipes ex-
periment. I put aside the collection of metal pipes, transferring their previous
function to the smaller “pipes” created by the tube-like valve slides of the horn
and my developing electronic processing.
This shift from acoustical to electronic resources was a significant factor
in my development of the interactive acoustical ecology of Hornpipe over its
multi-year gestation. I developed a single control unit: the cybersonic console,
housed in a small metal box to be attached to my belt in live performance. This
arrangement allowed me to move about freely in the performance space, as
seen in figure II-4.
56 • Part II. Cybersonics and the Sonic Arts
Fig. II-4. Gordon Mumma performing Hornpipe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, February 19, 1972. (Photo by Jumay R. Chu, with her permission.)
The cybersonic console for Hornpipe was a small analog-type computer and
signal processor of my own design. The signal inputs to the console were two
small lavalier-type microphones to be attached to opposite sides of my belt.
The line-level outputs of the console traveled by an umbilical cable to the ste-
reophonic amplifier and loudspeakers elsewhere in the performance venue.
Figure II-5 shows a close-up of the cybersonic belt-box with its accessory cables
Fig. II-5. View of Mumma’s cybersonic belt-box for Hornpipe in 1974, facing the jack panel
on the top of the unit. It shows the belt clip control-switch cable (L), two microphones
(input) to be attached to the belt, and (top) the output umbilical cable to be attached to
the stereo sound system (amplifier to loudspeakers). The black knobs on the front side of
the unit include volume and sound system controls. (Photo © Gordon Mumma.)
in 1974. Though I continued developing the internal cybersonic circuitry, the

external configuration of this box remained largely unchanged from its con-
struction in 1966 to the final performances of Hornpipe in 1976.
The inside of the cybersonic belt-box contained four parallel voltage control
amplifiers (VCA) per channel (the left channel is illustrated in the functional
diagram shown in figure II-6). The microphone preamp delivered the acoustical
information supplied by the horn player and the acoustical resonances of those
sounds in the venue on a straight-line audio path to the VCA amplifiers. Each
Fig. II-6. Mumma’s functional diagram of the left channel of the cybersonic belt-box for
Hornpipe (adapted from Cope, New Directions, 238).
amplifier connected via resonant circuits to a feedback loop (see dotted lines),
which converted the acoustical sounds to electronic signals and held them in
time-information storage (T) until the cybersonic unit determined that it had
collected sufficient acoustical information. At that point the gate control (G)
opened, passing the stored sound signals via the output umbilical to the external
amplifier and loudspeakers. The “open” time of the gates was determined by the
complex interactions of the sounds obtained from the microphones. Overload
was controlled by a peak-limiting function.
An important aspect of Hornpipe was its instrumentation for horn, performed
both traditionally and with extended techniques, including multiphonics. Two
different horns were used: a Waldhorn or “natural” horn (without valves), the
heroic hunting horn of the past, and a modern valve horn (a double horn or
so-called French horn), to which a secondary control cable was attached. The
valve horn used for Hornpipe was a 1949 Conn 6D horn modified by Carl Geyer
to make the bell easily removable (as depicted in fig. II-4). Its sounds could be
directed either from the traditional conical bell or from the cylindrical valve
tubes when the curved slide-inserts (or “crooks”) were removed. Finally, the
horn sounds were generated not only with a traditional embouchure-based
cone-shaped horn mouthpiece but also with special double reeds (as used with
the Sarrusophone, which was still played in U.S. military bands into the mid-
twentieth century). The rapid switching between horns and embouchure pro-
cedures was part of the theater of Hornpipe as I moved through the performance
space, exploring the diversity of its resonances.
The basic structural premise of Hornpipe was preconceived, and was de-
termined by a combination of the technical capacities of the equipment, the
acoustical properties of the venue, and the musical input of the hornist. Be-
cause the microphones “heard” both the original sounds of the horn and the
resonances of those sounds from within the venue, interactive cross-influences
occurred, somewhat as in an ecological—or “echo-logical”—situation. Dur-
ing the performance the hornist learns the constellation of resonances of the
particular space.
Hornpipe begins as a solo for horn, during which the cybersonic console is si-
lently “listening,” monitoring the resonances of the horn in the acoustical space
and adjusting its electronic circuits to complement these resonances. When it
has stored sufficient information, a gate opens and the electronic “response”
of the console is heard from the loudspeakers. The hornist responds in duo, as-
sessing the resonances of the performance space and choosing sonorities that
will support, rebalance, or subvert the activities of the cybersonic console. The
hornist is also able to deactivate the cybersonic circuitry by playing sounds that
are outside the resonant constellation. The performance ends when the hornist
provides new sound information that purposely contradicts the accumulated
resonances and effectively shuts down the response activity of the console. In
performance this basic game plan influenced both performance decisions and
theatrical movement throughout the space.
The horn part of Hornpipe is without notated score. It was improvised in
response to the acoustical properties of each distinctive performance space
from diverse instrumental idioms and materials that I collected and prepared
over the course of several years. Thus the substructures and internal details of
Hornpipe could vary widely from one venue and one performance to another.
Nor was the process foolproof. There were occasions when it would not work,
as for example in a recording studio for the Italian radio network (RAI) in Rome.
The space was practically anechoic, leaving nothing to resonate.
By late 1967 Hornpipe was ready to travel. Its premiere was at Pomona Col-
lege in Claremont, California, on December 5, 1967, followed by a performance
the next day on the First Festival of Live-Electronic Music at the University of
California, Davis. The original recording of Hornpipe at the Rose Art Museum
at Brandeis University, released on compact disc by Tzadik (TZ 7074), provides
ready access to this work in a particularly lush sonic environment.2 With its
ample glass and marble multi-level space, reflecting pool, and direct access to
the outdoors, the venue provided rich acoustical resources.
This fifteen-minute version of Hornpipe begins outdoors with the Waldhorn
playing traditional hunting calls, followed by multiple interchanges with the
valve horn. The sounds are sustained, articulated, or staccato. While the hornist
is moving into the gallery, a loud chorus of birds makes an unscheduled musical
entry (at 2:04). Following the shift indoors (at 2:26), the hornist moves con-
tinuously through the space, exploring its acoustics with increasingly diversified
sound materials (beginning at 4:50), including multiphonics, double reeds,
valve clicks, breathing and water sounds, and “open-pipe” sonorities (with one
or more horn crooks removed). Many listeners are surprised to learn that the
wide range of these sounds and timbres, some of which are barely recognizable
as emanating from a horn, are purely acoustical in origin. The complexity of
sound resources is partly responsible for the silence of the cybersonic console,
occupied with processing the sound data until its dramatic entry at the halfway
point (7:47).
In the second half of Hornpipe three kinds of ensemble interactions occur:
horn in ensemble dialogue with electronic sounds (8:46–9:23), long solo se-
quences from the cybersonic console (9:23–10:36), and electronic sounds di-
rectly articulated by the horn (10:36–11:46). Following a dramatic duo for reed
horn and electronics (11:46–12:38), their trio with the acoustical space reaches
a highpoint (12:38–14:03). The performer then devotes major efforts to sub-
verting the responses of the cybersonic console with various complex horn
techniques. Following a closing section for console with reed horn (beginning
at 14:04), the work ends when the horn produces the previously unheard sus-
tained pitch of B-flat (14:58), which deceives the console into switching into
dormant mode. The general time proportions of the structure varied from one
performance to another but usually achieved a similar or newly appropriate
balance for the situation.
The Hornpipe circuitry box has an elementary computer-1ike function. It
receives and stores information in an analog rather than digital form, mak-
ing “decisions” essential to the composition. By its responses the console in-
forms the hornist which sounds are more likely to unbalance and rebalance the
system. Thus the cybersonic console could well be considered independently
“intelligent,” although its range of capacity is limited to the highly specialized
purpose designed by the composer. The “intelligent” decisions of the human
horn player involve a history of vastly complex habits, performance virtuosity
skills, and interactively responsive experiences.
Fig. II-7. Gordon Mumma self-portrait, Paris, February 1971. (Photo © Gordon Mumma.)

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University of Illinois Press

Chapter Title: Two Cybersonic Works: Horn and Hornpipe (1970–71/2012)

Book Title: Cybersonic Arts

Two Cybersonic Works

Horn employed two or three cybersonic units interconnected by audio cables,

in 1974. Though I continued developing the internal cybersonic circuitry, the

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