Ian Fredericks: Requiem For A Planet

Abstract

"Requiem fora Planet is a radiophonic work commissioned by the Sydney radio station 2MBSFM with financial assistance from the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. That is, the work's primary venue for performance is intended as broadcast from two channel stereo radio and other like recorded media. The entire work was synthesised and edited on my own PC based computer music workstation in the '.WAV' multimedia format using mainly the software base IANSMUSE which I originally developed for the multi user, eight audio channel (phase coherent) computer music system project called JESSIE in the Music Department at the University of Sydney. Sometimes I like to work with strong dramatic images, particularly in relation to the 'radiophonic' concept. The imagery in the Requiem Mass, especially the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), provides excellent material for a dramatic piece. If a 'modern' translation of this text is attempted, then the picture painted of the end of the world in the light of modern cosmological knowledge is quite astonishing. For example the first two verses of the Dies Iras: There will come a day of great wrath and on that day all of humanity will be broken down into the ashes of the dead and this will be witnessed by David (son of God) and the prophetess Sibyl. This time of great trembling is destined to come and at that time the Judge will come in the form of a mighty wind and each and every human being will be summarily shattered to pieces. Compare this 'word picture' with the scenario of the sun going supernova! One of the most demanding aspects of the work was the computer synthesis of all the voices, both 'spoken' and 'sung'. Two synthesis techniques were used. The first is an additive synthesis technique, which I wrote as part of IANSMUSE, which allows for continuous specification of musical parameters over an arbitrary time scale. The specification is then interpolated by the computer programs add and space. Continuous and very precise specification of pitch, volume, timbre and spatial position is possible, and results in a well animated sound which constantly evolves in 'natural' ways. This technique was used for the synthesis of the sustained sung vowel tones in the Requiem and Kyrie, and forthe bell-like sounds in the Bell Storm and Sanctus. The second technique uses the commercially available so called 'speech synthesis engine' called 'Text Assist' for 'Windows'. This 'speech synthesis engine' uses a DSP chip driven by a windows software package which calls for the specification of a phoneme followed by a number that represents pitch (1 -37) in semitones and time length to sustain that particular phoneme (milliseconds). Of great use was the 'Speech Dictionary', which gives a phonetic interpretation of the words typed into the dictionary. This provided a means of translating the Latin words into the set of phonemes which the speech synthesiser could 'understand'. The one big problem was, however, that the phonetic structures provided are all based on models of American English. I spent quite a lot of time trying to remedy this." -- Ian Fredericks Show more