Ircam

Exploration of issues related to music composed for diffusion over loudspeakers, beginning with a historical overview. Subsequent chapters discuss terminology for the classification of such music, theories of listening, approaches to ear-training, the aesthetics of mimesis in music, and methods of analysis.

Motivated by Marshall McLuhan’s suggestion that advances in technology serve to alter sense perceptions, and that it is the role of artists to be aware of such changes, the author explores intersections and contrasts among five different approaches to the subject and practice of ear training in the context of sound recording technology, with attention to how these approaches serve to expand and challenge traditional ear training pedagogy and what these changes to tradition reveal about how sound recording technology has altered our sense perceptions.

This research is an esthetical and historical study of the musical production at CSC in Padova (Centro di Sonologia Computazionale dell’Università di Padova) and at IRCAM in Paris (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) from 1975 to 1985.
The first part introduces cultural aspects, research, technology and musical results of the two centers. The second part focuses on the problem of computer music analysis. The actual methods can be classified in two approaches: esthesic and poietic (as defined by J.J. Nattiez). Considering six works produced at CSC and at IRCAM (M.Graziani, Winter leaves, W. Motz, Sotto pressione, F.Razzi, Progetto secondo, J.Harvey, Mortuos plango, vivos voco, J.C.Risset, Inharmonique), my research combines these methods for understanding the relationship among the composer style, the technology employed by the composer and the actual piece of music. The aim is to determine a methodology which asks to the analyst a deep knowledge of the software used in the pieces, linked with his impersonal, as much as it’s possible, listening. The six pieces use MUSIC software for sound synthesis. This type of programs, common within the musical research in Padova and Paris, has been chosen to permit a comparison of the two Centers’ works and to trace a method to evaluate different approaches to computer music.

Antescofo is a coupling of a real-time listening machine with a reactive synchronous and timed scripting language. The language is used for authoring of music pieces involving live musicians and computer processes, and the real-time system assures its correct performance and synchronization despite listening or performance errors.

See the project Home Page: http://repmus.ircam.fr/antescofo
and the dedicated forum at IRCAM: http://forumnet.ircam.fr/product/antescofo/

Il presente lavoro costituisce un tentativo di sistematizzazione delle varie tecniche compositive che considerano l'aspetto timbrico come parametro musicale fondamentale. Il percorso seguito parte dagli aspetti teorici, per rivolgersi quindi a quelli prettamente tecnologici.
Un inquadramento cronologico dei compositori che hanno utilizzato queste tecniche, e che formano un gruppo per certi versi trasversale, ha imposto la suddivisione del presente lavoro in tre distinti capitoli. Il primo di questi prende in esame i cosiddetti precursori; il secondo si occupa del movimento spettrale mentre il terzo si rivolge ai diversi aspetti dell’evoluzione post- spettrale contemporanea.

The work of Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012) has been influenced by computer technology since 1969 at Princeton University, and later during a short course on MUSYS at the private EMS (Electronic Music Studios) of Peter Zinovieff. However, it was at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris that he could finally fully explore his aesthetic vision, a passion for compute music that lasted for twenty-eight years and resulted in eight pieces realised at the French Institute: among them the renowned tape piece Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) and Ritual Melodies (1990), but also mixed pieces like Bhakti (1982), String Quartet No.4 (2003), or Speakings (2008).
This article focuses on Harvey’s collaborations with IRCAM computer music designers Stanley Haynes, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Denis Lorrain, Jan Vandenheede, Cort Lippe, Carl Faia, Gilbert Nouno, and Arshia Cont. This research, grounded on published and unpublished materials, and oral communications, does not focus on technical aspects, but rather on what Harvey and his collaborators did to create and organize smoothly their work, their modes of collaboration, their everyday workflow. Although relatively weak at the beginning, the evidence of collaboration and above all its recognition through available sources grows over time, since it is highly dependent on the awareness computer music designers have built up of their profession along the years. Moreover, the British composer is one of the few who always recognize, in statements, texts, articles or interviews, the important role of the assistants.

The work of Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012) has been influenced by computer technology since 1969 at Princeton University, and later during a short course on MUSYS at the private EMS (Electronic Music Studios) of Peter Zinovieff. However, it was at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris that he could finally fully explore his aesthetic vision, a passion for electronic music that lasted for twenty-eight years and resulted in eight pieces realised at the French Institute: among them the renowned tape piece Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) and Ritual Melodies (1990) but also mixed pieces like Nouno, and Arshia Cont. This research, grounded on published and unpublished materials, and oral communications, does not focus on technical aspects, but rather on what Harvey and his collaborators did to create and organize smoothly their work, their modes of collaboration, their everyday workflow. Although relatively weak at the beginning, the evidence of collaboration and above all its recognition through available sources grows over time, since it is highly dependent on the awareness computer music designers have built up of their profession along the years. Moreover, the British composer is one of the few who always recognize, in statements, texts, articles or interviews, the important role of the assistants.

This paper is concerned with the paradigm of contemporary music composed with the assistance of a computer. It searches for common features despite the composers’ varied, often contradictory aesthetic positions. The focus is on the manner of communicating the compositional intention in the language of software, and the choice of “model” as a tool for structuring a piece. The results are several specific categories and an overview of basic approaches to composing with the assistance of a computer.

The recent boom in publications in orchestration has led researchers and artists to rethink this centuries-old practice. At the heart of this movement are new studies that problematize the issue of timbre. In this article, I present and discuss the multidisciplinary and inter-institutional “Actor project”, with the aim of examining some assumptions of what we can call “Orchestration Studies”.

In this paper I will deconstruct the collaborative creative process with the computer in Prometeo. Tragedia dell'Ascolto by Luigi Nono (1984-85). Prometeo is particularly illustrative of the way in which the use of technology constructs both what is composed on paper (the score), as well as how the use of technology influences the listening (the public). I will report findings from a two-fold investigation: from one hand, an exhaustive study of source materials pertaining the generative process of sounds and software, including the score of the first performance (Venice, September 1984), and computer sketches from the first and second performance (as mentioned above, real-time synthesis was used only in these two occasions). I am pleased to present here, for the first time, figures taken from Alvise Vidolin diary of his meetings with Nono and his colleagues (from April 1984 to the second performance in Milan). Source analysis, however, is not sufficient to reveal the whole compositional/research project, and oral history is equally important (personal communications collected with interviews, discussions and/or e-mails). Researchers’ memories enable to explain certain technological developments, problems and solutions which have been adopted, and discover details and backgrounds in collaboration management (esp. section: Sound Design Thinking in Prometeo: achievements and bottlenecks).

L’ouverture à d’autres discours et d’autres pratiques féconde le travail de l’architecte, suscitant de nouveaux questionnements et directions de recherche. Il n’est pas facile cependant pour lui de parler des rapports avec les disciplines et les savoirs qui entourent sa propre pratique artistique; il lui est encore plus difficile de discuter de la relation entre architecture et musique si l’on veut sortir des enclos rassurants des partitions historiques, des typologies, des domaines purement techniques (ou technologiques). Si l’on veut, en définitive, abandonner le champ de certaines conventions pour aborder une réflexion visant à comprendre le sens et les raisons du projet et de la construction. C’est cette réflexion que nous voudrions mener ici, sans aucune prétention de systématisation, pour seconder plutôt le flux d’une «pensée du fragment» comme celui qui donne vie au Prometeo de Luigi Nono.

Klama, for mixed choir, live electronics & prerecorded sounds, has its origins in the ritual lament of Southern Peloponnese (Greece); a “polyphony” composed of improvised monodies (moirolóya), epodes, crying, screams and monologues, accompanied by ritual gestures. By its acoustic violence the lament can be considered an alteration of vocality which affects simultaneously tonality, timbre and language. Klama has been developed in three levels, a nexus where vocal writing interacts with electroacoustics and live electronics, the latter seen as a metaphore of the inherent vocal alterations on the lament. In this paper we will show : 1) how the compositional material derived from the voice in oral and byzantine church tradition is explored for the choir and electronic writing; 2) how the three levels of Klama, acoustic, electroacoustic & live electronics interact through the act of composition and by means of the technological tools (Open Music, Max/Msp, Audio Sculpt).

This paper is concerned with the creative process involved in making a "computer assisted composition". It follows the relationship to the technologies used, from the point of view of the communication between composer and electronic machine. It offers a perspective on the relation between the act of "programming" and the act of "composing". From this point of view, it compares the current state of the creative process with the situation at the time of the first computer-assisted realizations.

In this paper, I use the program for a concert of electroacoustic music as a point of departure for discussing issues related to teaching electroacoustic music in the musicology or music theory classroom. Specifically, I examine the implied pedagogical framework of the Masterpieces of 20th Century Multi-channel Tape Music concert (hosted by Columbia University in the summer of 2000 as part of the Lincoln Center 2000 Festival) as it presented six works to a general, non-academic audience. In conclusion I suggest educators resist the urge to establish new canons of electroacoustic works,  and instead employ pedagogical approaches that encourage critical engagement with contemporary musical works from a variety of perspectives.

Фестиваль новой музыки «reMusic». Санкт-Петербург, май 2015 г.
Ансамбли Proton Bern, Linea, Nadar, Batida, при участии музыкального дизайнера Августина Мюллера и звукорежиссера Сильвана Кадарса из Института исследования и координации акустики IRCAM.

Starting from a distinction between music creation and sound or pre-established methods of form and sound manipulation, this paper discusses the use of some typical procedures in computer-aided composition. A critique of common-sense procedures sets out to show that musical creativity may be threatened and put at risk in the name of a community's immediate acceptance of what is considered to be of musical value.

Author:FRANCOIS ROSE.

GERARD GRISEY (b.1946) and Tristan Murail (b. 1947) are the two
best-known French "spectral" composers. Their music promotes a
very specific aesthetic which gives predominance to timbre, a trend
already foreseen in the stance of some institutions such as IRCAM
(Institut de Recherche Coordination Acoustique et Musique) and GRM
(Groupe de Recherche Musicale) and also in the works of composers
like Olivier Messiaen, Gyorgy Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz
Stockhausen (who included consideration of timbre projected into
rhythm and form in his famous article "... wie die Zeit vergeht .. .").