Putting performers in the driving seat
The core performance team in a rehearsal of Marco Stroppa’s …of Silence for alto saxophone and chamber electronics. From left to right: Dominykas Gircius, Germán Toro Pérez, Joan Jordi Oliver, Carlos Hidalgo and Leandro Gianini.
While the performance of the classical music repertoire has been extensively explored over decades or even centuries, it is often less clear how more recent electroacoustic pieces should be played. Professor Germán Toro Pérez is looking at pieces composed over the last three decades, developing a performance practice database that provides valuable insights into performance practice today. The electroacoustic music
of today has its roots in the period after the end of the Second World War, as the idea of musique concrète emerged and new studios were established, giving composers access to interesting new instruments and practices. The Groupe de recherches musicales was established in Paris in 1951, the world’s first centre for electronic music, and electronic music has since spread further around the world. “A number of other centres appeared later, mostly in Europe and the US. Over recent decades it has become more widespread, in Asia, Latin America, and other parts of the world,” says Professor Germán Toro Pérez, head of the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) at the Zurich University of the Arts. Electronic instruments were used both in composition and performance, as composers explored new possibilities. “Edgard Varèse is a very good example. Equipment from the electronics company Phillips was used for the performance of his Poème électronique at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair,” outlines Professor Toro Pérez. “For the time it was very advanced. It was a multi-loudspeaker system.”
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Electroacoustic music As the head of an ongoing research project based at ICST, Professor Toro Pérez is now investigating questions around how electroacoustic music is performed, looking mainly at pieces composed in the last three decades or so. Over this time the concept of live electronic music has grown in prominence and computers have become more commonly
“We defined six non-exclusive compositional approaches,” he explains. “One of them we called ‘composing the instrument’. This involves building specific instruments, interfaces or objects that become a substantial, intrinsic part of the composition process. Another approach to composition is perhaps more classical – what we called ‘Composing the sound, the time, the space’,
The music of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn has such a strong tradition that a performer today can gain a very clear idea of what the performance challenges are. Music today is however not so clearly linked to a
certain aesthetic tradition. used in both composition and performance practice. “It is the digital age that defines the border of this project, and the pieces that we are selecting,” says Professor Toro Pérez. The aim in the project is to look at the performance of a wide variety of pieces, with Professor Toro Pérez investigating pieces composed according to different approaches.
these being the fundamental dimensions in modern music.” A third compositional approach involves not only sound but also visual information, in which bodily representations and gestures play an important role. Some pieces combine certain aspects of these different approaches. “We are addressing each of these
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