The SalMar Construction is an amazing large music synthesis engine conceived and constructed in the early 1970's by a composer for use by a composer. These unreleased recordings were made at IRCAM in Paris in 1983. It illustrates the power that an electronic composition can achieve when the composer arrives at a true synergy with his synthesizer.
This LP represents a significant performance by Salvatore Martirano (1927-1995) on his unique instrument, the SalMar Construction. Under development from the late 1960s, the SalMar is believed to be the first interactive “composing machine” with digital logic circuits at its heart. The performance took place in the spring of 1983 at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. It illustrates the power that an electronic composition can achieve when the composer arrives at a true synergy with his synthesizer. When you listen to this recorded performance of Sal Martirano playing his “Construction,” you experience such mastery. The instrument under his command does his bidding, and what you hear are compositions, not jams.
In 1963, Salvatore Martirano (born 1927 in New York, died in 1995) joined the Theory and Composition Department at the University of Illinois, where he remained on the faculty until his retirement and death in 1995. Many of Martirano's early works incorporate twelve-tone compositional techniques as well as jazz, vernacular, and multimedia idioms. His best-known composition, “L's GA” (Lincoln's Gettysburg Address), was widely performed in the late 1960s and early 1970s and became associated with the anti-war movement. In 1969, Salvatore Martirano along with a group of engineers and musicians at the University of Illinois began work on the design and construction of a musical electronic instrument: the SalMar Construction.
