Bang on a Can

"Mario Davidovsky came to the United States from Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the early sixties, just when electronic music was becoming interesting," says David Lang. "And just as people were starting to figure out what cool sounds were possible with electronics, it became clear that there was an inherent humanity problem. How to do a very human activity - make music - with machines? And how do these machine noises fit into the tradition of Western music? Mario's solution to this problem was unique and ingenious: he made the confrontation between human and machine both the subject and context of his work. It's not that the human and the machine fight, but that a new object is created that presents these sounds in a way that is understood - in the context of classical music's idea of the heroic soloist."

"I was trying to invent an entirely new space out of both media," explains Davidovsky, "to extend traditional instruments with electronic sounds and to humanize electronic sounds with traditional instruments. Synchronism #6, written in 1970, is part of a series of ten pieces combining the acoustical space of conventional instruments with electronically generated sounds from loudspeakers. I felt that if electronic music was performed live with a virtuoso player, a person playing a known instrument, there would be a psychological continuity that would enable a concert audience to make the transition."