Live Electronic Music

Composition, Performance, Study

Friedemann Sallis, Valentina Bertolani, Jan Burle, Laura Zattra, Friedemann Sallis, Valentina Bertolani, Jan Burle, Laura Zattra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367869267
• eBook ISBN: 9781317692102
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

During the twentieth century, electronic technology enabled the explosive development of new tools for the production, performance, dissemination and conservation of music. The era of the mechanical reproduction of music has, rather ironically, opened up new perspectives, which have contributed to the revitalisation of the performer's role and the concept of music as performance. This book examines questions related to music that cannot be set in conventional notation, reporting and reflecting on current research and creative practice primarily in live electronic music. It studies compositions for which the musical text is problematic, that is, non-existent, incomplete, insufficiently precise or transmitted in a nontraditional format. Thus, at the core of this project is an absence. The objects of study lack a reliably precise graphical representation of the work as the composer or the composer/performer conceived or imagined it. How do we compose, perform and study music that cannot be set in conventional notation? The authors of this book examine this problem from the complementary perspectives of the composer, the performer, the musical assistant, the audio engineer, the computer scientist and the musicologist.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Composition
• 1 Dwelling in a field of sonic relationships: ‘instrument’ and ‘listening’ in an ecosystemic view of live electronics performance
• 2 (The) speaking of characters, musically speaking
• 3 Collaborating on composition: the role of the musical assistant at IRCAM, CCRMA and CSC
• PART II Performance
• 4 Alvise Vidolin interviewed by Laura Zattra: the role of the computer music designers in composition and performance
• 5 Instrumentalists on solo works with live electronics: towards a contemporary form of chamber music?
• 6 Approaches to notation in music for piano and live electronics: the performer’s perspective
• 7 Encounterpoint: the ungainly instrument as co-performer
• 8 Robotic musicianship in live improvisation involving humans and machines
• PART III Study
• 9 Authorship and performance tradition in the age of technology: (with examples from the performance history of works by Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen)
• 10 (Absent) authors, texts and technologies: ethnographic pathways and compositional practices
• 11 Computer-supported analysis of religious chant
• 12 Fixing the fugitive: a case study in spectral transcription of Luigi Nono’s A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum. A più cori for contrabass flute in G, contrabass clarinet in B flat and live electronics (1985)
• 13 A spectral examination of Luigi Nono’s A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum (1985)
• 14 Experiencing music as strong works or as games: the examination of learning processes in the production and reception of live electronic music
• Bibliography
• Index