Philippe Manoury - Jupiter (1987)

Philippe Manoury's Jupiter , for flute and live electronics, was realized at IRCAM and first performed by Pierre-Andre Valade in April 1987.
It was the first work of the cycle Sonus ex Machina for instruments and computer (1987-1991).
"Jupiter is the first part of a forthcoming round, which aims to explore the interaction between various instruments and a system for processing and digital synthesis in real time. How does this happen? Firstly by the fact that the machine looks increasingly to the man (as a musician in this case). That is, it listens, awaiting an event, and reacts when the awaited event occurs. This is obviously simulations, but in my opinion, simulation, as imagination is one of own art. It conducts a portion of what would be a conductor playing with a soloist. In short, the machine is smarter, it recognizes, and following the speech that he proposes (provided to him have learned in advance of course) and adapts based on criteria established between the she and composer. I was anxious that this piece runs on the Game instrumental without external intervention. Thus, all that will come from the synthetic or treated, will be triggered, or resulting from Thursday's flutist. The external operations will function to mitigate a possible error, or control the spread of sound on the four speakers (point to distribution scheme)." - Manoury
The piece was inspired by the flutist Laurence Beauregard, who had developed a flute with fifteen switches on its keys to aid a computer in tracking its pitch quickly. (Beauregard did not live to see his invention used on stage.)
Barry Vercoe invented a score following program to accompany Beauregard's flute.
The combination of a flute pitch detector, with a piece of software allowing live electronic processing and synthesis to be controlled by an event stream from a live instrument, seems to have been Manoury's main inspiration in writing Jupiter .
The directors of IRCAM probably saw Jupiter as an exploratory piece that would open up possibilities for other composers hoping to write interactive pieces, not least Pierre Boulez, who had searched for many years for a way to add an electronic component to his Explosante/Fixe . (He was to wait a few years more, but eventually got his wish.)
The score, written in 1987, revised in 1992, had fourther revisions at least through 1996.
This long process of deisgn and revision, spanning many years and a variety of developing technologies, trasformed the work substantially.
The computer part was the result of an intensive collaboration at the Institut de Recherche ed Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), between Manoury and Miller Puckette, with assistence from Cort Lippe, Marc Battier, Oliver Koechlin and Thierry Lancino.
He worked on the later additions and revisions with Puckette, Tom Mays, Les Stuck and Serge LeMouton.
Video created with the Sonic Visualizer, vokoscreen and Open Shot on an openSUSE 13.2 Linux System.