1,721,241 research outputs found
Escuchando lugares : el field recording como práctica artística y activismo ecológico
No full textComo nunca antes, nuestra vida cotidiana se ha llenado de sonidos gracias a las tecnologías de reproducción: todo sucede como si hubiéramos procedido a una «sonorización gigante» de los espacios que habitamos, causando una hipertrofia de nuestro entorno sonoro. ¿Debemos limitarnos a condenar esta situación? De esta forma, también condenaríamos el placer proporcionado por los sonidos... El problema, entonces, no es tanto la proliferación del sonido sino la falta de conciencia acerca de dicha proliferación.
Consideramos que existe la necesidad de una reflexión profunda, orientada al desarrollo de una conciencia y una ética del sonido, y que la situación exige nuevas prácticas artísticas en la música y en las artes sonoras. En ese sentido, entre los usos más interesantes del sonido para cuestionar en la actualidad, tanto desde el punto de vista ético como estético, se encuentra el field recording. Consustancial con la aparición del micrófono y del desarrollo de las tecnologías de sonido, la práctica abarca un vasto campo que va desde la esfera de la vida cotidiana hasta las obras artísticas, pasando también por un conjunto de inquietudes científicas. Nuestra publicación, por lo tanto, busca incluir reflexiones donde convergen temas relacionados a la ciencia, al arte y al documental, aunque principalmente nos hayamos centrado en prácticas artísticas
De la musique au son. L'émergence du son dans la musique des XXe-XXIe siècles. Makis Solomos [reseña de libro]
No full textEs una reseña de: Solomos, Makis. De la musique au son. L'émergence du son dans la musique des XXe-XXe siècles. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013
Orient-Occident. From the film version to the concert version
No full textInternational audienceOne of the first electroacoustic music histories, published in 1972, presented Xenakis' Orient-Occident (the concert version) as a masterpiece of electroacoustic music . Why did the author choose Orient-Occident among Xenakis' other early electroacoustic compositions? Probably because it is the least like Xenakis: compared to the granular works (Concret PH, Analogique B) and to the continuum ones (Diamorphoses, Bohor), Orient-Occident sounds very much like musique concrète. And this is perhaps due to the fact that, in the beginning, the piece was not intended for the concert hall, but was conceived as a "functional" project: film music
À propos de Bohor (1962) de Iannis Xenakis
No full textBohor is the last of the five electronic works composed by Iannis Xenakis at the studio of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the French Radio in Paris. It is also presented as the first piece conceived for eight channels. Relying on Xenakis's writings and interviews, and on documents and sketches located in the Xenakis Archives, this paper contextualises Bohor and provides elements of analysis on the relationship between music and the composer's graphic plan of the work. It also shows the many possibilities imagined by Xenakis over the years for the sound diffusion of Bohor
<i>Persepolis Polytope</i>: Resolving Fictitious Attributions from a Persianate Perspective
Full text linkIannis Xenakis’s relations with Iran’s royal family resulted in some political troubles in the artist’s already troubled political life. Criticism and reports on the Shah’s human rights violations increased in 1970s Europe while Xenakis, a leftist revolutionary, had a seemingly prosperous association with that aggressively hardline monarchy. What made the association more troublesome was Persepolis Polytope (1971). This paper concerns the polytope, Xenakis’s most celebrated Iran related work. It contributes to two understudied aspects of the polytope, i.e. how Iranians received and understood the polytope, and a historiographical conflation that exists in the field. The latter demonstrates that almost all the literature around Iran’s Imperial Celebrations and a considerable share of the scholarship about Xenakis have conflated Persepolis Polytope with Persepolis Son et Lumière. This completely different audiovisual program was premiered during the Imperial Celebrations and had no connection with Xenakis whatsoever. Some scholars claim that Xenakis created Persepolis son et Lumière while some argue that Xenakis’s Persepolis Polytope was premiered during the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. However, Xenakis Persepolis Polytope was premiered during the August 1971 Shiraz Art Festival, not the October 1971 Imperial Celebrations that offered Persepolis Son et Lumière.Undoubtedly, the location, similarity in names, and closeness in dates between the two events are innocent contributors to this conflation. However, scrutinising the conflation leads to more fundamental problems. For example, Empress Farah Pahlavi, the former queen of Iran and the primary patron of Xenakis’s Iran-related activities, was still asserting on her official website that Xenakis was the composer of the October 1971 event. Such scandalous mistruths like Xenakis performing for royalties during the ultimate propaganda of the Shah, the Imperial Celebrations, made him seem more politically biased than in reality. Besides, Iranians’ reaction to the polytope was very adverse. Not many works performed in the Shiraz Art Festival, if any at all, received such critical feedback. Soon, the negative reactions extended to Iranians living in Paris, where the opponents of the Shah criticised Xenakis for collaborating with a human rights abuser. Reacting to critical remarks, Xenakis first wrote an open letter explaining he was solely interested in art and culture. A few years later, though, he wrote another letter and refused to take any further commission from the royal family or participate in the Shiraz Art Festival.The paper begins by describing Persepolis Son et Lumière. Afterwards, it categorises the conflated arguments around Persepolis Polytope and Persepolis son et Lumière by reviewing the literature from 1998 to 2021. Then, the paper builds on an interview to show how the conflation started. This section also proposes three scenarios about why the piece was attributed to Xenakis, among all artists. This research is an archival work and pivots around Archives Famille Xenakis, print media published in 1971, and an interview with Loris Tjeknavorian, the composer of Persepolis son et Lumière
Self-borrowings in the Instrumental Music of Iannis Xenakis
Full text linkAs one of the most important composers of the twentieth century, Iannis Xenakis is also known for having used mathematical models in his compositions and for developing a formalization of music. But Xenakis’s compositional processes did not rely only on mathematics. Like many other composers, he borrowed extensively from his own works. These borrowings, which cannot be properly regarded as self-quotations, did not always relate to theoretical problems. Most of the time, they were selected for their particular sonic qualities or transformed in order to create new ones. This presentation examines the extent of self-borrowing in the music of Iannis Xenakis and shows how the composer made use of montage techniques as a means of producing different kinds of objects or textures
<i>Persepolis Polytope</i>: Resolving Fictitious Attributions from a Persianate Perspective
No full textIannis Xenakis’s relations with Iran’s royal family resulted in some political troubles in the artist’s already troubled political life. Criticism and reports on the Shah’s human rights violations increased in 1970s Europe while Xenakis, a leftist revolutionary, had a seemingly prosperous association with that aggressively hardline monarchy. What made the association more troublesome was Persepolis Polytope (1971). This paper concerns the polytope, Xenakis’s most celebrated Iran related work. It contributes to two understudied aspects of the polytope, i.e. how Iranians received and understood the polytope, and a historiographical conflation that exists in the field. The latter demonstrates that almost all the literature around Iran’s Imperial Celebrations and a considerable share of the scholarship about Xenakis have conflated Persepolis Polytope with Persepolis Son et Lumière. This completely different audiovisual program was premiered during the Imperial Celebrations and had no connection with Xenakis whatsoever. Some scholars claim that Xenakis created Persepolis son et Lumière while some argue that Xenakis’s Persepolis Polytope was premiered during the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. However, Xenakis Persepolis Polytope was premiered during the August 1971 Shiraz Art Festival, not the October 1971 Imperial Celebrations that offered Persepolis Son et Lumière.Undoubtedly, the location, similarity in names, and closeness in dates between the two events are innocent contributors to this conflation. However, scrutinising the conflation leads to more fundamental problems. For example, Empress Farah Pahlavi, the former queen of Iran and the primary patron of Xenakis’s Iran-related activities, was still asserting on her official website that Xenakis was the composer of the October 1971 event. Such scandalous mistruths like Xenakis performing for royalties during the ultimate propaganda of the Shah, the Imperial Celebrations, made him seem more politically biased than in reality. Besides, Iranians’ reaction to the polytope was very adverse. Not many works performed in the Shiraz Art Festival, if any at all, received such critical feedback. Soon, the negative reactions extended to Iranians living in Paris, where the opponents of the Shah criticised Xenakis for collaborating with a human rights abuser. Reacting to critical remarks, Xenakis first wrote an open letter explaining he was solely interested in art and culture. A few years later, though, he wrote another letter and refused to take any further commission from the royal family or participate in the Shiraz Art Festival.The paper begins by describing Persepolis Son et Lumière. Afterwards, it categorises the conflated arguments around Persepolis Polytope and Persepolis son et Lumière by reviewing the literature from 1998 to 2021. Then, the paper builds on an interview to show how the conflation started. This section also proposes three scenarios about why the piece was attributed to Xenakis, among all artists. This research is an archival work and pivots around Archives Famille Xenakis, print media published in 1971, and an interview with Loris Tjeknavorian, the composer of Persepolis son et Lumière
Expression in Music : between Meaning and Immanence
No full textNous nous proposons, au cours de cette thèse, de réunir les éléments d’une réflexion autour de la notion d’expression en musique. Le terme « expression » fait partie du vocabulaire courant de l’esthétique musicale. Pourtant son sens reste parfois ambigu. Le même mot peut être l’objet d’élaborations très différentes selon les contextes et les approches esthétiques. Les questions d’expression ont souvent été abordées à la lumière de conceptions sémantiques et langagières. Les liens historiques que la musique a entretenus avec le modèle verbal ont, en effet, largement favorisé ce type d’approche. Mais la notion peut aussi s’aborder en dehors des références linguistiques. Certaines approches ont, à cet égard, cherché à traiter ces questions à partir des propriétés immanentes de la musique. Dans une perspective sociocritique, des auteurs comme Adorno ont notamment envisagé cette catégorie à travers la confrontation du sujet au matériau musical. En tenant compte de la diversité des emplois, cette thèse entend éclairer les enjeux esthétiques des différentes positions. Au regard de l’importance accordée encore aujourd’hui aux conceptions sémantiques, nous examinons dans un premier temps dans quelle mesure la musique a pu s’apparenter à un langage communicationnel, mais aussi ce en quoi elle s’en éloigne. Y sont également interrogées les spécificités de la signification musicale (si tant est qu’on puisse parler de « signification »), mais aussi certaines de ses implications au regard de la médiation historique, sociale et idéologique sous-jacentes au discours musical. Nous proposons ensuite d’étudier la façon dont les approches modernistes ont cherché à renouveler et repenser la question de l’expression, et ce souvent en dehors des modèles de la communication, voire de la signification. Nous cherchons également à éclairer ces démarches au regard de certaines implications psychanalytiques, sociales et politiques.The elements of a reflection about the notion of expression in music will be presented in this thesis. The term "expression" belongs to the current vocabulary of musical aesthetics. Yet the meaning of this term is frequently ambiguous. According to the context and the aesthetics approach, the notion of expression can be the object of different concepts. Issues concerning expressions have frequently been approached in the light of semantic and linguistic conceptions. Historical established bounds between music and language have favored this type of approach. But the notion has also been treated apart from linguistic references. In this respect, some approaches have attempted to focus on immanent proprieties of music. In the sociocritical perspective, authors like Adorno considered this category with respect to the social content of musical techniques and means. Taking into account the diversity of the uses of expression, it is the aim of this thesis to throw light on the aesthetic issues at stake behind the different stances. With respect to the importance still granted today to semantics conceptions, we first examine to what extent music can resemble a communicational language. We also will explore what is different. Specificities of musical significations (if one can speak of “signification”) also are questioned, as well as certain implications with respect to historic, social and ideological mediation underlying the musical discourse. Secondly, we will review the way modernist approaches attempted to renew and rethink expression, sometimes outside the communication models. We also seek to highlight these approaches with respect to certain psychoanalytic, social and political implications
Николай Рославец : музыкант -кузнец Октябрьской революции : Произведения для голоса и фортепиано (1909-1931)
No full textL’œuvre de Nikolaj Roslavec apparaît comme un moment éphémère et expérimental dans l’histoire de la musique russe. Cette étude met en lumière l'existence d'un compositeur audacieux, ambitieux, qui a exalté la rhétorique révolutionnaire bolchevique de « l'homme nouveau » et s’est présenté comme un « forgeron de nouvelles formes de vie ». Plus encore, il a proposé un nouveau système de composition élaboré autour de ce qu’il appelle sintetakkord, forme apparemment hybride entre l’accord synthétique scriabinien et la série schœnbergienne, qu’il déploiera à différents moments de son parcours artistique. À travers la mise en place d’un principe compositionnel où le sintetakkord devient l’outil de sa pensée musicale, Roslavec tente de transcender les limites du langage tonal et du matériau compositionnel traditionnel et ainsi, de créer un tout organique et synthétique. Selon l’un des critiques musicaux de l’époque, « c’est un système solide et stable de perception et de contemplation des sons, issu de la conception et de la vision du monde inédites qui sont la marque d’une époque nouvelle ». Les événements révolutionnaires de 1917 chargent les débats artistiques d’une signification historique, de préoccupations politiques et idéologiques. Roslavec, qui se réclame de 1917, sera éminemment marqué par les nouvelles perspectives de construction d’une nouvelle société. « La culture musicale russe – encore instable, sans racines solides – a été entièrement balayée par Octobre » écrit-il. Celui que Mjaskovskij surnomme « le moderniste militant de gauche » s’engage dès le début des années 1920 au sein de nombreuses institutions culturelles. Son combat politique prendra différents aspects tout au long de sa vie, au gré des mutations politiques et institutionnelles que connaît la Russie : membre du Parti communiste, militant actif auprès des masses, actif dans la reconstruction culturelle et étatique de la vie musicale, actif dans la communauté artistique d’avant-garde et engagé par ses productions écrites.Nikolaj Roslavec’s works stands as an ephemeral and experimental period in the history of Russian music. This research highlights the life and times of an audacious, ambitious, composer, who enthused the Bolshevik rhetoric of the “New Man” and used to introduced himself as a “blacksmith of new forms of life”. Furthermore, he set forth a new system of composition built upon what he called sinteakkord. That new system seemingly was a mix between the scriabinian synthetic chord and the schœnbergian series, and he would rely upon it at different stages of his artistic career.Through the setting of a compositional principle wherein the sintetakkord becomes the very tool of his musical thought, Roslavec endeavors to bypass the limitations of the tonal language and of the traditional compositional materials and thus attempts to create an organic and synthetic unity. As one of the musical critics of the time puts it: “It is a robust and stable system of perception and contemplation of the sounds, that stems from the new conception and view of the world that are the sign of a new era”
Gérard Grisey and the birth of spectral music : analysis of manuscripts, influences and the question of time
No full textGérard Grisey, l’un des premiers compositeurs français représentants de la musique spectrale, est devenu l’une des figures marquantes de la musique contemporaine. Passionné par la question du temps, il a consacré toute sa vie à étudier la notion temporelle par le biais de la recherche interne du son. Son intérêt naît au moment de la création d’un grand cycle de six œuvres intitulé les Espaces Acoustiques : la première partie dite « de chambre », comprenant Prologue pour alto seul (1976), Périodes pour sept musiciens (1974) et Partiels pour seize ou dix-huit musiciens (1975) ; et une seconde partie dite « orchestrale ou concertante », comprenant Modulations pour trente-trois musiciens (1976-77), Transitoires pour grand orchestre (1980-81) et Épilogue, la dernière, pour grand orchestre et quatre cors (1985). Pendant la composition de ce cycle, en parallèle, Gérard Grisey rédige sept articles théoriques, du « Devenir du son » (1978) à « Vous avez dit spectral ? » (1991), sur les principaux fondements de sa musique. Ces articles suffisent pour comprendre les principes de son langage musical : la dilatation de la structure interne du son, la synthèse instrumentale, la fusion d’un passage à un autre en transformation continue, la relation entre le matériau et la forme, le processus, l’étude des champs énergétiques entre les objets sonores, et surtout, une recherche sur le seuil de la perception humaine et le passage d’un temps contracté à un temps dilaté (ou l’inverse), car c’est la notion de temporalité qui est au cœur de la musique de GriseyGérard Grisey, one of the first French composer representing spectral music, has become one of the most representing figure in contemporary music. Passionate about time, he devoted his entire life studying the notion of time through the research of internal structure of the sound : this interest gave birth to a big cycle of six pieces called Espaces acoustiques : the first part called « chamber » music, including Prologue for viola solo (1976), Périodes for seven musicians (1974) and Partiels for sixteen or eighteen musicians (1975) ; and the second part called « for orchestra or concerto », including Modulations for thirty-three musicians (1976-77), Transitoires for large orchestra (1980-81) and Épilogue, the last piece, for large orchestra and four solo horns (1985).While he was composing this cycle, in parallel, Gérard Grisey wrote seven theoretical articles, from « Devenir du son » (The becoming of sound, 1978) to « Vous avez dit spectral ? » (Did you say spectral ?, 1991), about the principle foundation of his music. These articles are enough to understand the basic of his musical language : the expansion of the internal structure of a sound, the instrumental synthesis, the fusion of a passage to another in continuous transformation, the relation between the material and the form, the processus, the study of energic field between the sound objects, and especially, a research on the limit of human perception and the passage from a contracted time to an expanded sound (or the opposite), because the notion of temporality is the main essence of Grisey’s music
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