Roberto Gerhard’s Sound Compositions: A Historical-Philological Perspective. Archive, Process, Intent and reenactment

This research advances the current state of knowledge in the field of early tape music both empirically and methodologically. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact that the electronic medium exerted in the musical thinking of Roberto Gerhard, one of the most outspoken, prolific and influential composers in the Spanish diaspora whose musical legacy, for the most part unknown, is a major landmark in the early history of electroacoustic music. Gerhard’s personal tape collection, one of the largest historical archives of its kind reported in the literature, is exceptional for both its antiquity (50+-year-old tapes) and its abundance of production materials. Through the digitisation and analysis of the composer’s tape collection this research argues that the empirical study of audio documents sets out a basis for a broader understanding of textual processes. More specifically, the research demonstrates that the reconstruction of works based on magnetic tape sketches is a powerful method to advance the understanding of early tape music. This research also examines Gerhard’s sound compositions in relation to the post-war context in which they were composed. Finally, this research presents performance documentation that proposes an approach to the electroacoustic music repertoire in which creativity is not at odds with rigor and critical discernment demonstrating that archival study can be closely aligned to the concept of re-enactment

Un voyage du son par les fils électroacoustiques : l'art et les nouvelles technologies en Amérique Latine

L'histoire de la musique électroacoustique latino-américaine est longue, intéressante et prolifique, mais peu connue, même régionalement. De nombreux compositeurs nés ou vivants en Amérique latine ont été très actifs à ce titre, dans certains pays depuis plus de 50 ans, mais la disponibilité de l'information et des enregistrements de musique électroacoustique à cet égard et dans cette région a posé de sérieux problèmes aux éducateurs, compositeurs, interprètes, chercheurs, étudiants et au public en général.\ud Compte tenu de cette situation, la question suivante s'est imposée comme point de départ de ma thèse: comment s'est développée la tradition de la création musicale avec les médias électroacoustiques en Amérique Latine. Pour y répondre, j'ai adopté une approche historique en utilisant une méthodologie ethnographique (caractérisée par une immersion à long terme dans le domaine, par des contacts personnels avec des compositeurs et par ma participation et mon souci en ce qui concerne l'évolution des arts faisant appel aux nouvelles technologies en Amérique Latine) dans toute ma recherche. Ayant commencé à travailler dans le domaine de la musique électroacoustique au milieu des années 1970 dans mon Argentine natale, il m'a été très difficile d'obtenir de l'information sur les activités reliées à ce domaine dans des pays voisins et même dans ma propre ville. Bien que difficile, il était néanmoins possible de trouver les enregistrements de compositeurs vivant en Europe ou en Amérique du Nord, mais plus ardu de trouver ceux réalisés par des compositeurs locaux ou régionaux. Dans divers pays d'Amérique latine, les universités, les organismes d'état et de grandes fondations privées avaient de temps en temps pris l'initiative de soutenir la recherche en art et le recours aux nouveaux médias, mais la plupart avaient cessé leurs activités avant même de développer les ressources pour documenter les processus et préserver les résuItats. J'ai obtenu chaque enregistrement et information que j'ai rassemblés, depuis le milieu des années 1970, en contactant directement chacun des compositeurs. Avec le temps, j'ai constitué des archives personnelles, modestes mais croissantes, comprenant des notes de programme de concerts, livres, bulletins, magazines et revues, partitions, lettres, courriels et des enregistrements sur bobines, cassettes analogiques et quelques vinyles 33 tours. J'ai décidé de partager mes trésors avec des collègues et étudiants et d'explorer des solutions pour les rendre accessibles au plus grand nombre possible. Il y a quelques années, l'UNESCO m'a demandé de rédiger des rapports sur la musique électroacoustique latino-américaine et les arts médiatiques. Les textes de cette recherche ont contribué à diffuser de l'information sur le travail de beaucoup d'artistes latino-américains. Afin de rendre également accessible au public les oeuvres musicales, et sauvegarder le matériel, j'ai cherché un endroit où la préservation des enregistrements était non seulement importante mais aussi possible. J'estimais que la fondation Daniel Langlois pour l'art, la science et la technologie à Montréal était le lieu idéal pour mon projet. Mes activités continues durant près de 28 mois comme chercheur en résidence à la fondation Daniel Langlois m'ont permis de numériser et convertir des enregistrements à partir de différents formats, faire du montage au besoin et verser dans la base de données de la Fondation tous les renseignements sur les pièces (titre, compositeur, année de composition, instrumentation, notes de programme, studio de production, version, durée, bio du compositeur, etc.). À ce jour, janvier 2006, il y a 2152 fichiers audio numériques qui sont archivés au Centre de recherche et de documentation (CR+D) de la fondation. En complément à cette thèse de doctorat, j'ai développé une collection d'enregistrements musicaux maintenant disponibles au public. Cette collection est constituée du résultat de mes recherches (textes, oeuvres musicales, quelques partitions et photographies historiques, entrevues) et diffusée sur le site Web de la fondation Daniel Langlois. Les archives comptent des pièces pour médias fixes ainsi que des oeuvres mixtes pour instruments acoustiques ou voix et médias fixes ou systèmes électroniques interactifs en direct (1722 compositions). Les archives comprennent aussi des enregistrements audio et audiovisuels d'entrevues avec des compositeurs et des novateurs techniques ainsi que des\ud photographies, des vidéos, et quelques très rares partitions.\ud Une grande partie de l'information textuelle contenue dans la base de données des fichiers de musique est accessible par le site Web de la fondation Daniel Langlois. L'information complète (ex. notes de programme) et tous les enregistrements sont accessibles au CR+D. Une courte sélection de pièces est aussi accessible pour écoute sur le site Web. La plupart des compositeurs représentés dans ces archives et dans cette dissertation sont nés dans des pays d'Amérique latine. Il y a aussi quelques compositeurs qui, bien que n'étant pas originaires de la région, ont poursuivi au moins une partie de leur carrière musicale en Amérique latine.\ud Cette thèse renferme de l'information sur des compositeurs liés à 18 pays d'Amérique latine: Argentine, Bolivie, Brésil, Chili, Colombie, Costa Rica, Cuba, République dominicaine, Équateur, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Pérou, Porto Rico, Uruguay et Venezuela. Les archives contiennent des enregistrements de compositeurs de tous les pays mentionnés. J'espère que ce texte incitera à explorer ce merveilleux univers musical plutôt inconnu, créé par des centaines de compositeurs latino-américains au cours des dernières décennies. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : musique électroacoustique, Amérique latine, art et nouvelles technologies, éthique, mémoire, culture, contexte, pionniers, interdisciplinarité

The Visualization and Representation of Electroacoustic Music

In Chapters 1 and 2 there are definitions and a review of electroacoustic music, and then visualization generally and as applied to music. Chapter 3 is a review of specific and relevant literature as regards to the visualization of electroacoustic music. Chapter 4 introduces the concepts of imagining as opposed to discovering new sound, and what is important to this research about these terms; in addition what is meant and indicated by them. Chapter 5 deals with the responses that composers currently working have made to the enquiry concerning visualization. In this chapter these responses are dealt with as case studies. In a similar way, Chapter 6 looks at some examples of historical work in electroacoustic music, again as case studies. In Chapter 7 a taxonomical structure for the use of visualization in electroacoustic composition is established and derived from the case study results. Chapter 8 looks at relevant examples of software and how they offer visualization case studies. Chapter 9 looks at the place of the archive in various stages of the compositional process. Chapter 10 investigates the problems of visualizing musical timbre as possible evidence for future strategies. Chapter 11 offers some conclusions and implications as to the main research questions, as well as more specific outlines of potential strategies for the visualization of electroacoustic music

Traditional New Zealand Māori instruments, composition and digital technology: some recent collaborations and processes

This paper examines the integration of traditional New Zealand Māori instruments with digital music technology, and the use of these instruments in making new works. The focus is on the work of performer/composers Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns, as well as recent collaborations that Richard Nunns has undertaken with some composers and musicians in genres other than Māori music. Aesthetic, practical and cultural considerations in the composition process are explored

The Development of Resources for Electronic Music in the UK, with Particular Reference to the bids to establish a National Studio

This thesis traces the history and development of the facilities for electronic music in the UK. It covers the early attempts to experiment with electronic music and create studios in less than ideal circumstances and the subsequent bids to create a national centre. It also covers some elements of worldwide development of electronic music and sound recording, in particular those which occurred before 1965. The thesis calls upon non-traditional sources and the author was able to access many documents in the personal archives of electronic music pioneers. There is substantial reference to committees and societies for electronic music and their effects on the development of facilities for electronic music in the UK. Some of the early pioneers are studied in detail; these include Daphne Oram, Tristram Cary and Hugh Davies. Unprecedented access to information on Hugh Davies and Daphne Oram was provided by the family estates of these recently deceased composers. This allowed the author to gain valuable insight into the working patterns and methodology of these composers. Many references to later pioneers such as Trevor Wishart are also made but the focus remains on the facilities available to composers rather than the composers and their works

Northern Industrial Scratch: The History and Contexts of a Visual Music Practice

The critical commentary presents and contextualizes a film and video making practice spanning three decades. It locates a contemporary visual music practice within current and emerging critical and theoretical contexts and tracks back the history of this practice to the artist’s initial screenings of work as part of the 1980’s British Scratch video art movement. At the heart of the body of work presented here is an exploration and examination of methods and working practices in the encounter of music, sound and moving image. Central to this is an examination of the affective levels that sound and image can operate on, in a transsensorial fusion, and political and cultural applications of such encounters, whilst examining the epistemological regimes such work operates in. A combination of factors has meant that work such as this, arising in the UK provinces, can fall below the historicizing and critical radar – these include the ephemeral and transitory nature of live performance work; the difficulties of documenting such work; the fragility and degeneration of emerging and quickly obsolescent formats; and a predominance of a London–centric focus on curating, screening and historicizing of experimental film and video art practices. My film and video practice has been screened nationally and internationally over three decades, and has been recognized as exemplary practice both in the early 1980s at the inception of the Scratch movement and in more recent retrospectives. The critical commentary argues that this work contributes new knowledge of the history, contexts and practices of film and video art and audiovisual and visual music practices

Music and Digital Media: A planetary anthropology

Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of an extra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory

Music and Digital Media

Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of anextra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory. Praise for Music and Digital Media ‘Music and Digital Media is a groundbreaking update to our understandings of sound, media, digitization, and music. Truly transdisciplinary and transnational in scope, it innovates methodologically through new models for collaboration, multi-sited ethnography, and comparative work. It also offers an important defense of—and advancement of—theories of mediation.’ Jonathan Sterne, Communication Studies and Art History, McGill University 'Music and Digital Media is a nuanced exploration of the burgeoning digital music scene across both the global North and the global South. Ethnographically rich and theoretically sophisticated, this collection will become the new standard for this field.' Anna Tsing, Anthropology, University of California at Santa Cruz 'The global drama of music's digitisation elicits extreme responses – from catastrophe to piratical opportunism – but between them lie more nuanced perspectives. This timely, absolutely necessary collection applies anthropological understanding to a deliriously immersive field, bringing welcome clarity to complex processes whose impact is felt far beyond what we call music.' David Toop, London College of Communication, musician and writer ‘Spanning continents and academic disciplines, the rich ethnographies contained in Music and Digital Media makes it obligatory reading for anyone wishing to understand the complex, contradictory, and momentous effects that digitization is having on musical cultures.’ Eric Drott, Music, University of Texas, Austin ‘This superb collection, with an authoritative overview as its introduction, represents the state of the art in studies of the digitalisation of music. It is also a testament to what anthropology at its reflexive best can offer the rest of the social sciences and humanities.’ David Hesmondhalgh, Media and Communication, University of Leeds ‘This exciting volume forges new ground in the study of local conditions, institutions, and sounds of digital music in the Global South and North. The book’s planetary scope and its commitment to the “messiness” of ethnographic sites and concepts amplifies emergent configurations and meanings of music, the digital, and the aesthetic.’ Marina Peterson, Anthropology, University of Texas, Austi

Concerto for Laptop Ensemble and Orchestra: The Ship of Theseus and Problems of Performance for Electronics With Orchestra: Taxonomy and Nomenclature

This dissertation is an examination of the problems faced when staging a work for electronics and orchestra. Part I is an original composition and model for the exploration of those problems. Part II is a monograph reviewing those problems and concentrating on issues of taxonomy and nomenclature. Part I is a concerto for laptop ensemble and orchestra titled The Ship of Theseus. It is named after a philosophical paradox. If every component of an object (i.e. the boards of a ship) is replaced with newer parts, at what point does the original cease to exist? Likewise, if the music performed by an instrument or ensemble is sampled and played back on stage, is it still an orchestra, or is it a recording? The role of the soloists is also explored throughout the work. Similarly to the dialogue of a Classical concerto, at times the soloist enhances the orchestra; at other times it clashes. Part II is an exploration of the etymology and nomenclature of electroacoustic music. In chapter 1, I explore broad problems and concerns specific to electronics and orchestra. In chapter 2, I break down the etymologies of both the orchestra and electroacoustic music, focusing on general issues surrounding the latter specifically. A new taxonomy for electroacoustic music is presented. In chapter 3, I investigate the nomenclature of three well-known terms: live electronic, real time, and interactive. Each of these terms is problematic and often misused; as a result the new term transformational is introduced and defined. This term should not be associated with the general idea of a musical transformation (although such an idea is not unwarranted), but with the flow of musical information in and out of a system. It is my hope that with the introduction of a new classification based on musical information, I will not merely pad the decades-long discourse on nomenclature of electroacoustic music, but rather provide a starting point for composers and technicians to reconcile technology with the music itself. The terms presented in this dissertation should not be considered definitive, but rather the inception of a new dialogue