compositional approaches, sometimes from different perspectives,” says Professor Toro Pérez. The way in which these pieces are performed is less clearly linked to a specific aesthetic tradition than much older classical pieces, a topic Professor Toro Pérez and his colleagues are exploring in the project. “If we think about the performance of classical music, you have a score that represents what it should sound like, while you also have a very strong tradition that informs performers about how to deal with the notation,” he points out. “The music of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn for example has such a strong tradition that a performer today can gain a very clear idea of what the performance challenges are. More contemporary music is however not so clearly linked to a certain aesthetic tradition, like for instance Viennese classical music.” The electroacoustic music of today is very diverse, with a less established tradition to guide performers on how to deal with a certain piece. While some pieces have been performed multiple times in recent decades, and have taken their place within the canon of electronic music, others are much less widely
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.
played. “Some pieces have been performed just once, like Koma by Gerhard E. Winkler. So we had only the information related to that single performance,” says Professor Toro Pérez. This particular piece is very open, in the sense that what the performers hear and then play is generated in the moment. “The musicians sit in front of a screen and a notation appears that is generated in realtime. So the musicians see something, then they have to react to that and play according to certain rules. The way that they behave and play has an influence on how the system evolves,” explains Professor Toro Pérez. “In certain situations you don’t really know what kind of sound you should expect. Then it becomes more difficult to know whether you are playing the piece correctly.”
Performance practice Researchers are also looking at more traditional pieces, in the sense that there is a score, like Horacio Vaggione’s Shifting Mirrors for alt saxophone and electronics. The wider aim in this research is to build up a culture of performance practice in a field where every piece is a singularity, although Professor
Toro Pérez says there will always be some differences between individual performances. “This is related to the instruments themselves. We know exactly what a piano is for example, but a live electronic system is not frozen in time and may not function in the same way in 20 years’ time. It is more a set of functionalities,” he stresses. Electroacoustic pieces are being performed today using software and hardware that didn’t exist at the time they were composed, while new systems continue to emerge, an issue of great interest to Professor Toro Pérez as he aims to help establish a performance tradition for live electronic music. “This involves very basic things too, such as the conditions necessary for a performer to prepare and rehearse for a concert,” he says. This is partly about having a functioning live electronic system before a performer enters the space, while it’s also important to consider the nature of the acoustic environment. While for some performers it may be enough to simply get a feel for a space for a couple of hours before a concert, electronic musicians typically need more time to get ready and adapt to the environment.
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
EU Research
Singers Hannah Mehler (left) and Kara Leva (right) rehearsing Ashley Fure’s Shiver Lung.
www.euresearcher.com
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