Featured Composer
Gustav Ciamaga

Special Announcement:

As we move on from Featured Composer Adam Stansbie, we are very pleased to announce that he has been awarded First Prize for Escapade in the Foundation Destellos' Third International Competition of Electroacoustic Composition and Visual-Music, 2010 – "...a CDP piece in all but a few processes."

Gustav Ciamaga has been our featured composer for some time now. We would like to let you know that he died on 11 June 2011 after a long battle with cancer. He was active up until his last few months working with the CDP software, and helped us on a regular basis by his observations and bug reports. He was distinguished in so many ways, particularly in balancing his dedication and leadership in music technology with exceptional warmth, humour and willingness to help. The link below will take you to an interview he gave in Boston in 2008 in which he talks about some of the people in the field of music technology he has known, and the equipment they used:
http://www.utoronto.ca/tmu_dpatr/GCiamaga_boston2008.mov.

About the Composer

Gustav Ciamaga is a composer and educator living in Toronto, Canada. He was born in London, Ontario in 1930 and attended the University of Western Ontario (1951-54) while studying privately with Gordon Delamont. Further studies in composition were pursued with John Weinzweig and John Beckwith at the University of Toronto (1954-56) and with Arthur Berger, Harold Shapero and Irving Fine at Brandeis University (1956-63). While at Brandeis he founded the Electronic Music Studio in 1961.

Gustav Ciamaga, 2005

Gustav joined the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, in 1963 and became Director of its Electronic Music Studio in 1965. During his tenure at the University of Toronto he chaired the Theory and Composition Department and also served as Dean from 1977-84. In 1994 he retired as Professor Emeritus.

Gustav Ciamaga is a member of the Canadian League of Composers and honorary founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. His music demonstrates tremendous inventiveness, a comprehensive range of techniques and an irrepressible joie de vivre, qualities well-illustrated by audio example below. All of his compositions from 2003 to the present employ CDP software. These include:

Selected Compositions ...

2003: Prologue and Postscript 2003: Spadina Minilogues 2003: Possible Spaces no.8 2003-04: Order of Ideas 2004: Possible Spaces no.9 2004: For L: 2004: Paradigm Lost 2004: "Waiting..." 2004: Possible Spaces no.10 2004: For DL: 2004: Facing North no.2 2005: PizzA 2006: Possible Spaces no.11 2006: Three part invention no.5 2006: Possible Spaces no.12 2007: The Computer in my Life 2008: It's about time again

Featured Music: The Computer in my Life

Audio Example:
The Computer in my Life (5493k Stereo .mp3 file, 5'51")

The original intent of this work was to have another 'look' at some of the classic sounds found in musique concrete – the sound of a slamming door, spinning roulette wheel ball and a succession of spoken (meaningless) utterances. While examining the possibilities of these sounds, a possible surprise ending suggested itself (a re-working of a gamelan-like sample) and the conclusion of the composition was, in a sense, completed first.As in many of my works, the number of primary sound sources is limited; in this instance some fifteen sounds comprise the source library. These sounds, as is or transformed, are combined or set into motion to create the narrative or form of the work.

For CDP users, my employment of the available library functions might be of interest.

For the opening of the work, I wanted to give the listener the feeling that the composition was in progress or had already begun, i.e., "in medias res". I believe that I achieved this with a CDP STACK in octaves.The surprise ending had to be prepared in a sense, so I disguised it with BLUR and introduced it at 2'50". This 'plaintive' transformation is brought in again at 5'14" and 5'22", i.e., just before the actual ending.Other instances of CDP functions:

• 1'54" BAKTOBAK (bouncing ball)
• 2'10" PITCH TUNE with a ENVEL PLUCK
• 2'45" BAKTOBAK (door slam)
• 3'18" to 3'49" TEXTURE (development of bouncing ball)

To find out more about Gustav Ciamaga and hear selections from his many and varied compositions, please go to his Website

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If you are a composer who has made use of the CDP sound transformation software in your compositions and would like to be featured in a future edition, please contact Archer at:
archerhgm(a)talktalk.net

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September 2010