Jerry Gerber
  The Art of MIDI Sequencing

* Symphony No. 5 (2002)
* Essay for Virtual Orchestra (2001)

Ottava Records 03-007 (available at www.ottavarecords.com) Total time:
47:09

Summary for the Busy Executive: Music by Faberge.

Jerry Gerber, virtuoso MIDI-meister, gets us to drop our jaws in
astonishment yet again.  Most of us habitually think of MIDI files as
somewhat crude boops and blats or the sound of a piano played by dead
people in a totally sterile room. I've used MIDI technology to help me
write, to let me hear better what I imagined, but I'd never let anyone
else hear it.  Gerber's MIDI files, to a great extent, are indeed the
final product.  Comparing my files to his is comparing stick men to a
Titian.  Gerber gives us a vast sonic stage with sounds - not life-like
exactly - resembling, rather, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Cleveland
Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony.  Yet the only human in the entire
enterprise is Gerber himself.  He strikes me as a pioneer. As symphony
orchestras die off, as fewer and fewer people turn to classical music
out of choice, as audiences and repertoire ossify - in short, as resources
become scarcer for the amount of new and not-so-new music out there -
composers will probably have to join Gerber's enterprise, radicals and
conservatives alike, just to hear what they have written and to make a
basic effort to distribute the works to others.

Aside from understanding his samplers, sound generators, Sibelius software,
and mixing boards inside out, Gerber is also a composer who knows his
business.  Much of his success comes from recognizing the limits as well
as the advantages of his medium and writing music which hides the first
behind the second.  The variety of sounds, the ability to perfect balance,
the sharpness of electronic rhythm counterbalance the inflexibility of
tempo (an electronic Mengelberg, for example, isn't yet possible), the
stiffness and crudity of the phrase, and the independent contribution
of the individual player.  If you can't get a Pierre Fournier subtlety
of phrase, you can throw in a lot of interesting lines at once and the
ear will probably pass over it.  Also, Gerber goes as far as anybody
I've heard in "humanizing" the sequencer, of creating the illusion of,
say, Stokowski at the helm.

I don't know the extent to which Gerber's music can be performed by
humans, but it certainly resembles traditional music, rather than the
music from Nebulon-5.  One can judge it accordingly.  The ambitious work
is the fifth symphony.  I've heard his fourth symphony and the latest
one represents both an advance and a retreat. On the one hand, he has
expanded his musical and technical resources.  There's a lot more different
kinds of music going on - Hovhaness-like evocations of the Far East,
a rapprochement with classic serialism, Coplandian Americana, and John
Williams movie scores, among other things - than in the earlier symphony.
Gerber has expanded his basic eclecticism.  On the other hand, he has
difficulty holding it all together convincingly.  The symphony follows
a traditional architecture - allegro moderato, slow movement, scherzo,
and allegro finale.  Despite the high quality of all the movements, only
the second and fourth seem to belong to the same work.  Furthermore, the
first movement is really a bunch of beautiful episodes, rather than a
sustained symphonic argument.  The same discombobulation afflicted the
finale of the fourth symphony, but to a lesser degree. The second movement,
a bittersweet lament that could have accompanied the last quarter-hour
of Spielberg's A.  I., wins my admiration the most of the four.  It's
not motifically all that tight, but it carries you along.  The third
movement is unquestionably the most fun.  It's a bit at odds with its
title ("Joy of Cannabis") - with a bounding energy one doesn't associate
with stoners.  The only thing marijuana ever did for me was increase my
tendency to withdraw from people.  And it raked my throat, besides.  Ah,
youth!  My only objection to the movement is that, as I've said, it
doesn't seem to belong to this work, but to another.  We haven't heard
sounds this Rodeo-ish before (or after), and while not unwelcome, it
does come across as an isolated jolt.  Nevertheless, it's the most
coherent, easiest-to-follow movement of symphony.

The liner notes make a big deal of the fact that some of the music of
the finale follows dodecaphonic practice.  To me, this is like praising
a work for being in a major key.  It's simply one element of many.
Gerber's job, however, is to relate it to the rest of the movement, which
he does to a large extent, showing affinities with Middle Eastern melisma.
Rhetorically, the movement unfolds episodically, but Gerber provides
enough thematic glue - as he does not in the opening allegro - to make
the kaleidoscopic shifts convincing.  This is a virtuoso movement, both
in the composing and in the MIDI manipulation.

The Essay for Virtual Orchestra works on a less ambitious, but lovely
plane, nevertheless.  It reminds me a bit of the opening movement to
Dvorak's Serenade for Strings, and that's nothing to sneer at.

In all, this is primarily attractive music that indulges you - music of
the senses.  That's fine with me.

Steve Schwartz