Cette pièce fait partie d’une trilogie écrite en 1982 qui comprend les œuvres In the Accumulate Mode, Interlude in Pelog, and Solo for Three Pianos) ; l’œuvre fait également partie du cycle Piano Piece (Richard Teitelbaum Piano Plus – Piano Music 1963-1998, New World Records, n. 80756-2).
« The Digital Piano System is a computer-controlled, electro-mechanically driven acoustic player piano system. As configured in the performances recorded here, it interfaced three Marantz Pianocorder-equipped pianos and three micro-computers to create both a multiinstrumental composing and a real-time performance system: musical material played on one piano keyboard was picked up by switches under the keys on the piano I was playing and instantly read into computer memory where it was processed, stored, and/or simultaneously output for playback by two Marantz Pianocorder Vorsetzers attached to the two additional pianos. The musical data manipulations and responses, all under immediate, run-time control of the performer, were programmed with a high-level, modular Patch Control Language (PCL), which was designed in collaboration with software engineer Mark Bernard and implemented by him. PCL currently consisted of some thirty-five software modules and their interconnections, much as Robert Moog, Don Buchla, Serge Tcherepnin and others utilized universal hardware patching for their analog synthesizers. A module is a building block that performs certain functions, such as track record/playback, transposition, inversion, delay, randomization, etc. … Prior to a concert, the composer-performer writes a patch, using English commands to define the modules that are to be used, and their interconnections. As many of each module-type as desired can be used simply by “defining” (listing) them. The patch as written here is four tracks, each configured in its own way »
[R. Teitelbaum, “The Digital Piano and the Patch Control Language System”, Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, ed. By William Buxton, Paris, France, Published by: International Computer Music Association, San Francisco, USA, 1984. ISSN: 1026-1087, pp. 213-216].
« Interlude in Pelog is shaped formally and sonically by the resonance and time of Indonesian gamelan music; its melodic curves and flavors and harmonic/rhythmic/percussive contours are unmistakably evocative but—as I’ve come to expect from Richard—totally nonliteral and newly invented » [Benjamin Boretz, liner notes in Richard Teitelbaum Piano Plus – Piano Music 1963-1998, New World Records, n. 80756-2; https://nwr-site-liner-notes.s3.amazonaws.com/80756.pdf]