Bebe Barron, pioneira da Música Electroacústica

8/12/2019 Bebe Barron, pioneira da Msica Electroacstica

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From: Barry Schrader Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:09:49 -0500

Bebe Barron (1925 - 2008)

It is with great sadness that I report the death of Bebe Barron on

April 20, 2008 at the age of 82, of natural causes. Bebe was the lastof the pioneering composers of classical studio electronic music. Shewas a close friend, an enthusiastic colleague, and a most gracious lady.

Bebe Barron was born Charlotte Wind in Minneapolis, on June 16, 1925.She received an MA in political science from the University ofMinnesota, where she studied composition with Roque Cordero, and shealso spent a year studying composition and ethnomusicology at theUniversity of Mexico. In 1947 she moved to New York and, while workingas a researcher for Time-Life, studied composition with WallingfordReigger and Henry Cowell. That same year, she met and married LouisBarron (1920 - 1989). Shortly thereafter, the Barrons began theirexperiments with the recording and manipulation of sound material bymeans of a tape recorder that they received as a wedding gift. Theycreated a private studio in New York and, in 1955, composed the firstelectronic music score for a commercial film, Forbidden Planet. In1962 the Barrons moved to Los Angeles; they divorced in 1970. In 1973,Bebe married Leonard Neubauer, a screen writer. Bebe became the firstSecretary of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the UnitedStates (SEAMUS) in 1985, and also served on the Board of Directors. In1997 Bebe was presented the SEAMUS Award for the Barrons life work in

the field of electro-acoustic music. She is survived by her husband,Leonard, and her son, Adam.

Bebe!s last public appearance was on January 12, 2008, at an eventheld at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, celebrating the work of hergood friend, Anais Nin. Bebe was too ill to speak in public at thispoint, but she agreed to be interviewed for a video piece that wasshown at the event. This is her final interview, and you can see it onYouTube.

Bebe!s final composition, Mixed Emotions (2000) was composed in the

CREATE studios of the University of California at Santa Barbara. I!llbe putting this work up on the Downloads 2 page of my website, alongwith some photos of Bebe and myself taken in 2005 at her home on thePhotos page within the next week.

I first met Bebe Barron in the middle 1970s; I don!t remember exactlywhen, but I think it was around 1975. I had asked Bebe and her formerhusband and composing partner Louis to attend a showing of ForbiddenPlanet that I had arranged as part of a class at CalArts. They agreedto do it, and I quickly became good friends with Bebe and we remained

close over the years.

In writing about Bebe Barron, it!s impossible not to focus on thepioneering work that she and Louis did in electronic music. They began

In: http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804&L=POETICS&P=326148
http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804&L=POETICS&P=326148http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804&L=POETICS&P=326148


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their experiments in 1948, shortly after they were married. This earlywork was done using a tape recorder, preceding the work of Luening andUssachevsky and the switch from disks to tape by Pierre Schaeffer andthe GRM. But, to my knowledge, the Barrons!early experiments did notresult in any completed works, a state of affairs not uncommon withearly pioneers in the field. In 1949 they set up one of the earliest

private electro-acoustic music studios and began their experimentswith electronically generated sounds. They built their own circuitswhich they viewed as cybernetic organisms, having been influenced byNorbert Weiner!s work on cybernetics. The circuits, built with vacuumtubes, would exhibit characteristic qualities of pitch, timbre, andrhythm, and had a sort of life cycle from their beginnings until theyburned out. The Barrons recorded the sounds from the amplification ofthese circuits and this formed the basis of their working library.They also employed tape manipulation techniques as part of theircompositional procedures. The sound qualities of these variousamplified tube circuits and the tape manipulations that they underwentformed the musical language that the Barrons created in their studio.Unlike some of the work being done elsewhere, the Barrons!musicreveals long phrases, often stated in tape-delayed rhythms, with thestark finesse of the tube circuit timbres. They created a style thatwas uniquely their own yet married to the technology they were using.

The Barrons earliest finished work, Heavenly Menagerie (1951) does notseem to have survived in a complete form. But their score for IanHugo!s film Bells of Atlantis (1952), based on a poem by Anais Nin,who appears on screen, does exist on the film sound track. This may be

the earliest extant work of the Barrons and presages what was to comewith Forbidden Planet, the music for which was composed in 1955, thefilm being released the next year.

The music for Forbidden Planet is truly a landmark in electro-acousticmusic. This was the first commercial film to use only electronicmusic, and the score for the movie displays an attitude towards filmscoring that was different from anything that had happened before. InForbidden Planet, while there are themes for characters and events inthe film, as was traditional in the scoring of that day, the themesare composed and perceived as gestalts, rather than as melodies in

traditional movie music. Even more important is the fact that thescoring of Forbidden Planet breaks down the traditional line betweenmusic and sound effects since the Barrons!electronic material is usedfor both. This not only creates a new type of unity in the film soundworld, but also allows for a continuum between these two areas thatthe Barrons exploit in various ways. At some points it!s actuallyimpossible to say whether or not what you!re hearing is music, soundeffect, or both. In doing this, they foreshadowed by decades the nowcommon role of the sound designer in modern film and video.

The Barrons composed many other works for tape, film, and the theaterin the 1950s. Their studio became the home for John Cage!s Project ofMusic for Magnetic Tape, and they assisted in the creation of Cage!sfirst chance piece Williams Mix (1951-52), as well as works by other



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members of the group such as Earle Brown and Morton Feldman. As astudio for the creation of their own and other composers!works, theBarrons!studio served as a functioning center for electro-acousticmusic at a time when there was no institutional support of the mediumin the United States. It!s curious, then, that, for many years, theBarrons, their studio, and their works were largely overlooked by

composers and historians in the field. Fortunately, that injustice hassince been corrected, and, in 1997, it was my great honor to presentto Bebe and, posthumously, to Louis, the SEAMUS Lifetime AchievementAward. Bebe was involved with SEAMUS from the very beginning of theorganization. She was one of the ten original members who responded tomy organizational call and met at CalArts in November of 1984 to formthe group, and she was SEAMUS!s first secretary. There may have been alittle strong-arming on my part to get her to be involved so actively,but Bebe was always ready to support the cause of electro-acousticmusic in whatever way she could.

Bebe created a firm legacy in her music. If the importance of one!swork is to be judged in any regard by it!s influence, acceptance,longevity, and innovative qualities, then the score for ForbiddenPlanet is an enormous success. It remains the most widely knownelectro-acoustic music work on this planet. For me, Bebe Barron willalways be the First Lady of electronic music.


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Bebe Barron, pioneira da Música Electroacústica