[NJARC] Interesting obit, related to vintage electronics

[John Ruccolo]

Bebe Barron, 82, Pioneer of Electronic Scores

The New York Times via Dow Jones

  Publication Date: Friday April 25, 2008 
  The Arts/Cultural Desk; Section B; Page 7; Column 
  c. 2008 New York Times Company 
 
  By DENNIS HEVESI 

  Bebe Barron, who with her husband Louis composed the
first electronic score
for a feature film -- the eerie gulps and burbles,
echoes and weeeoooos that
accentuated invisible monsters and robotic creatures
in the 1956 science-fiction
classic "Forbidden Planet" -- died Sunday in Los
Angeles. She was 82. 

  Her son, Adam, said she died of natural causes.
Louis Barron died in 1989. 

  The score for "Forbidden Planet" -- the tale of a
starship crew that travels
17 light years from Earth to investigate why settlers
on the planet Altair-4
have gone silent -- "is truly a landmark in
electro-acoustic music," Barry
Schrader, a professor of electro-acoustic music at the
California Institute of
the Arts, said Thursday. 

  While the Barrons created electronically produced
themes for the film's
characters and events, Professor Schrader said, their
score crossed the
traditional line between music and sound effects. 

  "At some points it's actually impossible to say
whether or not what you're
hearing is music, sound effect or both," he said. "In
doing this, they
foreshadowed by decades the now-common role of the
sound designer in modern film
and video." 

  While later electro-acoustic scoring became more
melodic, the Barrons'
breakthrough fixed the technique's otherworldly
identity in public
consciousness. Perhaps the most memorable character in
"Forbidden Planet" is
Robby the Robot, who brews bourbon and performs
herculean feats; for him, the
Barrons composed a mechanically bubbly theme. For the
invisible monster Id, a
percussive sinking sound with a descending pitch
punctuates every hole his
footsteps leave on the planet's rugged terrain. 

  Contemporary electro-acoustic effects are digitally
synthesized. The Barrons
used vacuum tubes and tape recorders. When it came to
amplifying vibrations from
a stylus on a record, vacuum tubes were a major
advance from the days of the
phonograph horn. Mr. Barron designed vacuum tube
circuits, organizing them in
patterns that controlled the flow of electricity to
produce combinations of
pitch, timbre, volume and other variables. The sounds
were recorded on tape. 

  Mrs. Barron would sort through hours and hours of
tape. Together the Barrons
would cut and splice; play segments at varying speeds
to change the pitch; run
segments in reverse to create new sounds;  or induce
delays to produce echoing
feedback. 

  Charlotte May Wind (her husband nicknamed her Bebe)
was born in Minneapolis on
June 16, 1925, the only child of Frank and Ruth Wind.
She earned a music degree
at the University of Minnesota in 1947, then moved to
New York, where she worked
as a researcher for Time-Life while studying music
composition. Soon after, she
met and married Mr. Barron, who was trained in
electronics. Attracted by the
avant-garde music scene in the early 1950s, the couple
lived in Greenwich
Village. 

  Their fascination with electro-acoustic music began
with a wedding gift: a
tape recorder. Part of their apartment became a
studio. There the composer John
Cage recorded his "Project of Music for Magnetic
Tape." In 1952 the Barrons
recorded the score for "Bells of Atlantis," a short
based on a poem by Anais
Nin, who appears on screen. 

  Then, in 1955, the Barrons crashed an art party in
Manhattan for the wife of
Dore Schary, the president of MGM. They told him about
their unusual recordings.
Ten days later they were driving to Hollywood, where
Mr. Schary signed them for
"Forbidden Planet." 

  The score drew critical praise, but a dispute with
the American Federation of
Musicians prevented the Barrons from receiving credit
for it; their work was
referred to as "electronic tonalities."  That slight
was soothed in 1997, when
Mrs. Barron was given the Seamus Award of the Society
for Electro-Acoustic Music
in the United States. 

  The Barrons divorced in 1970. In 1975 she married
Leonard Neubauer. Besides
her husband and her son, of Los Angeles, she is
survived by a stepdaughter,
Dylan Neubauer of Santa Cruz, Calif. 

  The Barrons never scored another feature film. But
"Forbidden Planet" is
etched in the mind of Professor Schrader, who first
saw it at the Majestic in
Johnstown, Pa. 

  "I was a 10-year-old kid who went to the movies
every Saturday," he said. "I
sat through it three times and was still there for a
fourth. Then I heard my
father's voice from the back of the theater, 'Barry,
where are you?' " 

  
  (END) 




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