Retreat from Quiescence

for fixed media

by Reginald Bain

Retreat from Quiescence (1986, rev. 2014) is a musical realization of the Schrödinger equation from quantum mechanics. Using values for the probabilities at discrete energy levels, the Schrödinger wave equation was calculated and then transformed from the given interval for the "particle in a box" problem to the complex plane. The piece was created in "chunks," each chunk corresponding to one set of energy levels and probabilities that were used in the summation of the wave function. Thus, each musical gesture corresponds to one "picture" of the state equation graphed in the complex plane. Each chunk was reviewed by the composer, and if useful, the probability of the duration selection was scaled to control articulation. The pitch space and timbre space are representations of the angular displacement and absolute value, respectively, of the mapping with respect to a predetermined central origin. Struck and plucked timbres represent the wave's discrete nature, whereas bowed and evolving timbres represent the wave's continuous nature.

The piece was composed in 1986 at the Northwestern Computer Music Studio. The electronic music was generated by a custom computer program written by the composer using the C-programming language. Running on a Pyramid 90x minicomputer, MIDI events from the equation. The MIDI events were then interpreted by the Unix program eled, an early MIDI event-list editor (Decker and Kendall 1985), and realized on a Yamaha TX816 synthesizer – a rack-mounted set of eight Yamaha DX-7s. Originally composed for 4-track magnetic tape, this work was digitally remastered in 2013-14 as part of my Music, Physics and Sonification project, a seed grant from the University of South Carolina's Creative and Performing Arts Grant Program. The composition was a continuation of my undergraduate research at the University of Notre Dame which combined studies in physics, mathematics, computer science, and music. The composition is dedicated to my undergraduate research advisor Dr. Kenneth Grant, who wrote originally wrote the graphing program in Fortran to run on the Calcomp Plotter at the University of Notre Dame's IBM 370 computer facility.

Figure 1. Graph of the Schrödinger equation in the complex plane

D U R A T I O N:

5:27

The world premiere of Retreat from Quiescence took place at Northwestern University's Pick-Staiger Concert Hall (Evanston, IL) on Sunday, October 5, 1986. The world premiere of the digitally remastered version took place at the USC Computer Music Concert, University of South Carolina, School of Music, Recital Hall (Columbia, SC) on April 14, 2014.

Links

Feynman, The Schrödinger Equation in a Classical Context: A Seminar on Superconductivity – https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_21.html

Wikipedia, Schrodinger Equation – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation

References

Bain, Reginald. 1990. "Algorithmic Composition: Quantum Mechanics and the Musical Domain." Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference. (ICMC 1990), International Computer Music Association, Glasgow, Scotland: 276-279. {ICMC 1990}

Decker, Shawn L. and Gary S. Kendall. 1985. "A Unified Approach to the Editing of Time-Ordered Events." Proceedings of the 1985 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 1985), Burnaby, BC, Canada: 69-77. {ICMC 1985}

Schrodinger, Erwin. 1982. Collected Papers on Wave Mechanics, Third Augmented Edition. Providence, RI: AMS Chelsea Publishing Company. {GB}

Updated: December 31, 2025