Jóhann Jóhannsson, "IBM 1401: A User's Manual"

The first part of an expected trilogy devoted to iconic advances in technology, this marked the beginning of new stage in Jóhann Jóhannsson's career.  While already established as an acclaimed composer at the time of its release in 2006, IBM 1401 was a bold leap forward in both concept and scale from all that preceded it.  Although it was later eclipsed by the stone-cold instant classic that followed (2008's Fordlândia), it nevertheless remains a haunting, visionary, and unexpectedly personal work in its own right.

 

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Great ideas rarely spring from nowhere and the genesis of IBM 1401: A User's Manual is no exception.  The lengthy evolution of this piece began in 2001 when Jóhannsson's father told him about the "funeral" that he and his IBM coworkers arranged for the 1401 when it was discontinued in 1971.  While he was obviously deeply attached to the computer because he was the primary maintenance engineer for the project (the 1401 was first mass-produced, reasonably priced business computer), the connection between Jóhann's father and his work actually extended into much deeper territory.  Like his son, Jóhann Gunnarsson was an ingenious and musically savvy fellow, and he managed to figure out a convoluted way to make his computer "sing."  In fact, the 1401 sang its own elegy at the ceremony, a brief theme from an old Icelandic hymn.  It is a 30 year old reel-to-reel recording of this improbably sad ceremony that provides the central melody of the album's opening piece as well as the cornerstone of the entire endeavor.

Shortly after beginning work the piece, Jóhannsson shared his father's story with a new acquaintance (choreographer Erna Ómarsdottir) whose father had also been an IBM employee.  Together, they embarked upon a lengthy and enthusiastic exchange of literary and cinematic inspirations and philosophical and creative ideas that gradually cohered into a touring dance piece built around his father's tape.  At the time, the modest accompanying music was written for a string quartet.  However, when Jóhann began editing the score for release as an album, he realized that something new needed to be added to compensate for the now missing human/visual element provided by the dancers.  Realizing that the heart of the work lay in the juxtaposition of human warmth and cold machinery, he expanded to a 60-piece orchestra to intensify the sweeping melancholy of the music.  More importantly, he also added another section: the heartbreaking coda of "The Sun's Gone Dim and The Sky's Turned Black."  It is this final section that completes IBM 1401: A User's Manual and elevates it toward the realm of great art (incidentally, the title is intentionally borrowed from another work of great art, Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual).

Jóhannsson is somewhat unusual in the field of modern composition, as he incorporates avant-garde influences and embraces unconventional sounds, yet remains unwaveringly focused on the distinctly un-edgy idea of crafting simple and beautiful melodies.  As such, he has much more in common with populist film score composers than the more cerebral, theory-based works of the current serious classical music scene.  While that aesthetic certainly gives Jóhannsson’s work more immediate appeal than that of his peers, it is not without its perils.  IBM 1401 is packed full of heavenly, swelling strings that would not at all be out of place in a cinematic adaptation of a Jane Austen novel but for the omnipresent old computer recordings that buzz, hum, and swoop in the background.  Sometimes he hits the perfect balance; sometimes he becomes a bit too saccharine for my taste.  This tendency may just have stemmed from being relatively new to working on such a scale, as it seems to have vanished completely by Fordlândia.

While it is quite pleasant on a purely musical level, IBM 1401 actually requires some thought and reflection from the listener to be fully appreciated.  Taken solely on its musical content, for example, "Part Two: IBM 1403 Printer" can seem kind of boring, as it is largely built around a recording of Jóhannsson's dad dryly describing the proper maintenance of his machine.  Obviously, a 30-year-old recording of his father holds more emotional power for Jóhann than it does for me, but when it is contextualized as a man describing the care of a beloved friend that is now long dead, it becomes imbued with a strong sense of loss and nostalgia. 

Despite the strength and beauty of the album's arrangements, it is the non-orchestral elements of album's bookends that I find most striking.  The four simple repeating notes of the computer's death song in the opening piece are sublime and bittersweetly evocative, while the digitized voice endlessly intoning a gender-switched variation of Dorothy Parker's "Two-Volume Novel" in the album's closer is absolutely devastating.  The depth of heartbreak and longing that can be conveyed by a mournful robot voice lamenting "the sun's gone dim and the sky's turned black, cause I loved her and she didn't love back" is both wholly unexpected and wrenching (though Jóhannsson ultimately derails the piece into a somewhat cloyingly triumphant finale).  IBM 1401 may sometimes tread a bit too close to mainstream film scores and might be too overly sentimental in places to herald as an unqualified triumph, but it certainly hits some very stunning highs and is the most moving tribute that a computer (or a father) could ever hope for.

Samples:

• Part One: IBM 1401 Processing Unit
• Part Three: IBM 1402 Card Read-Punch
• Part Five: The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Turned Black