Collaborative Creation in Electroacoustic Music. Comparative Analysis of Three Case Studies

I will present my research at the EUROMAC conference, the 9th European Music Analysis Conference (Strasbourg, 28 June – 1 July 2017).

TITLE: Collaborative Creation in Electroacoustic Music. Comparative Analysis of Three Case Studies

ABSTRACT

The revolution of sound recording, analogue synthesis and the birth of computer music, caused the emergence of a new professional profile: the musical assistant (someone who collaborates with composers in the phase of researching, writing, creating new sounds, recording and/or performing live during concerts) whose presence remains hidden most of the time.
How can we find traces of this collaboration in analysing electroacoutic music? I propose a unified methodology that assembles different disciplines. It focuses on three Musical Assistants: Marino Zuccheri (1950s), Alvise Vidolin (1980s), Carl Faia (2000s). The choice is motivated by the significance of their work with composers such as Luciano Berio and John Cage (Zuccheri), Luigi Nono and Salvatore Sciarrino (Vidolin), Philippe Leroux and Jonathan Harvey (Faia). The collaboration I discuss here does have many facets and is rarely the same from author to author, from project to project. There are however several aspects that emerge and I will discuss such as Diachronic and Synchronic collaboration, the ‘Presence’ in the score and in other sources, the mode of thougths emerging from material and oral sources, intentions, actions, and constraints. I propose a unified methodology at the intersection of (1) Music Analysis based on electronic and informatic sources and instruments ; (2) the ethnographic research, being collaboration based on oral traditions and activities ; (3) the philology of music and source criticism.