'''Paul Lansky''' (born 1944) is one of the 'original' [[electronic music]] or [[computer music]] composers who has been producing works from the seventies right up to the present day (see discography, below). A former student of [[George Perle]], he is a professor of music composition at [[Princeton University]], and in addition to his music is known as a pioneer in the development of computer music [[languages]] for [[algorithmic composition]] (see [[Real-Time Cmix]]). He is a former student of [[George Perle]], [[Milton Babbitt]], and [[Edward Cone]].
Lansky's first album, ''Smalltalk'' was not released until [[1990]]. It features four tracks, two covering aspects of the human voice, and two looking at two styles of music ([[metal music|metal]] and [[harmonica]]).
His second album (''Homebrew'', 1992) contains five tracks, including the percussive and aural 18-minute classic, "Table's Clear", featuring samples of his children playing [[kitchen utensil]]s. Following that came ''More Than Idle Chatter'', the six compositions of which focus on processings of the human voice using LPC, granular synthesis, and plucked string synthesis; its three highlights are [[Granular synthesis|granular synth]] pieces called "Idle Chatter", "just_more_idle_chatter" and "Notjustmoreidlechatter" which look at the same thing from multiple perspectives. In 1994, he released ''Fantasies And Tableaux'', a collection of two earlier works, "Six Fantasies on a Poem by [[Thomas Campion]]" and "Still Time". 1995 brought ''Folk Images'', Lansky's personal interpretation and reworking of a "good few folk songs."
At around this point there was a slight change in the style of Lansky's music that made it sound slightly more, for want of a better word, 'modern', and 1997 heralded a one hour 'computer opera', ''Things She Carried'', a musical portrait about an unnamed woman in a series of eight movements. During the following year "Conversation Pieces" was released, to try and "gain a fresh perspective on things we may have come to take for granted."
For three years Lansky failed to bring out any new albums, but in early 2001 "Ride" arrived, featuring a new addition the Idle Chatter family: 'Idle Chatter Junior' and the 19 minute title piece, which tries to simulate a ride through various towns and country.
The [[Radiohead]] song "Idioteque" (''Kid A'', 2000) features a prominent sample from Paul Lansky's computer [[tape music | tape piece]] ''Mild Und Leise'' (1973). The sample provides the entire [[harmony]] for the song through four looping chords taken from a few seconds of Lansky's original composition. Lansky has written an essay about Radiohead that appears in [[The Music and Art of Radiohead]].
==Discography==
* ''Smalltalk'', [[1990]]
* ''Homebrew'', [[1992]]
* ''More Than Idle Chatter'', 1992 or 1994(?)
* ''Fantasies And Tableaux'', [[1994]]
* ''Folk Images'', [[1995]]
* ''Things She Carried'', [[1997]]
* ''Conversation Pieces'', [[1998]]
* ''Ride'', [[2001]]
* ''Alphabet Book'', [[2002]]
==See also==
[[Charles Dodge]].
==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*[http://silvertone.princeton.edu/~paul/ Paul Lansky's Homepage on Princeton.edu]
*[http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=37fp00 NewMusicBox.org: In the 1st Person : Three Generations of Teaching Music Composition] with [[George Perle]] and [[Virgil Moorefield]]
[[Category:1944 births|Lansky, Paul]]
[[Category:20th century classical composers|Lansky, Paul]]
[[Category:Living classical composers|Lansky, Paul]]
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