Performing the Impossible: "fixed" media, sound diffusion and
acousmatic music
18.03.2019 ABPU_Sonic Lab 14:30
Over the past 50 or so years, the apparent 'fixity' of acousmatic
music has led to some fairly absurd claims: acousmatic music is "for
playback not performance" (Davies 2004), "cast like bronze"
(Godlovitch 1998), "in search of its metaphysics" (Ferguson 1984),
and "more like painting than music" (Levi Strauss 1964). All of
these claims have a largely ontological basis; acousmatic music
seems to exist in a different way than other forms of music, leading
to the claim that it cannot be performed. This talk defends the view
that performance is at the heart of the acousmatic tradition. The
talk starts by surveying various counter-claims, and highlighting a
central error in the notion of 'fixity'. Using a range of examples,
it goes on to show how sound diffusion involves interpretative acts
similar to those found in other musical types. It conclusions by
suggesting that these acts are often preempted during the
compositional process. Thus, performance is not something added on
at the end, but an integral part of the art. Throughout the talk,
examples are drawn from the various pieces later presented in
concert.
Adam Stanović started composing electronic music some twenty years ago. At
that time, early experiments with tape machines and a four-track
mini-disc recorder led him discover the potential of recorded
sounds, and he quickly started using computers as a tool for
music-making. Ever since, Adam has considered the fixed medium as a
canvass for his works which, although mostly acousmatic, are
sometimes accompanied by instruments, electronics, film, and
animation. In all cases, his music explores ways in which both pitch
and noise coexist within recorded sound, with musical form often
delivering one from the other.
Adam’s music has been heard in over 400 festivals and concerts
around the world. His works are available on 12 different CDs, with
his first solo empreintes DIGITALes CD released in late 2018, and
most have featured in composition competitions around the globe,
including: IMEB (France); Metamophoses (Belgium); Destellos
(Argentina); Contemporanea (Italy); SYNC (Russia); Musica Viva
(Portugal); Musica Nova (Czech Republic); KEAR (USA); Musicacoustica
(China). Further to this, Adam has worked in studios at the IMEB
(France); Musiques et Recherches (Belgium); VICC (Sweden); EMS
(Sweden); LCM (UK); CMMAS (Mexico); Holst House (UK), Mise En Place
(USA), Bowling Green (USA); Sydney Conservatorium (Australia).
Adam is regularly invited to talk about electronic music; in the
past year, he has given talks at institutions around the globe,
including Harvard University, New England Conservatory, Swedish
Royal College of Music, Conservatorium van Amsterdam, The Sydney
Conservatorium, Bowling Green Ohio. In 2016, Adam co-founded the
British ElectroAcoustic Network (BEAN), alongside James Andean, with
the intention of representing British electroacoustic music
overseas. Adam is currently directing a number of MA programmes, and
supervising a group of PhD students, at The University of Sheffield,
UK.
Adam Stanović: We are the Voices of the
Wandering Wind
-----
Would be to Seek
by Adam Stanović
Composed in homage to Beatriz Ferreyra on the occasion of her 80th
birthday! Would be to Seek received an honourable mention at Musicacoustica,
Bejing, 2018.
-----
“Tom…
Far… Orion… Blue…” (2016)
by Alejandro Albornoz
Like Dave Bowman, Major Tom embarks on a journey
through the cosmos and at the same time by the metaphysical
space to a distant Orion, leaving behind a multidimensional
Blue, which, however, will accompany him forever...
This stereophonic acousmatic piece was composed
between January and July and revised during November 2016 at the
University of Sheffield Sound Studios.Among the source materials used, some more
recognisable than others, there are radio waves sonifications
from the distant Orion Nebula, which were captured and
transferred to sound by the radio-astronomic
observatory Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
(ALMA) in the Atacama desert, Chile. These sounds are
available to any musician and sound artist thanks to the “Alma
Sounds” project, accessible at http://almasounds.org
Dedicated
to David Bowie.
-----
Steel & Ivory
by Chris Bevan
Steel & Ivory is a work that explores the boundaries between
abstractness and order, pitch and noise, and genre classifications.
By utilising techniques and ideas from a traditional electroacoustic
approach to sound development, as well as less restricted, more
harmonic-and-rhythmically-minded approaches stemming from ambient,
minimalist and IDM-influenced ideas, I have strived to produce a
work that straddles these boundaries and brings together what I hope
to be the more musical and aesthetically powerful traits of each.
Source sounds originate from recordings of a traditional upright
piano and a West-African mbira - a thumb piano made from a wooden
sounding board, steel tines and resonating bottle caps. The sonic
qualities of both instruments are combined and contrasted throughout
the piece, with particular attention paid to the differing
overtones, scalar tuning and rhythmic qualities. By using otherwise
abstract sound materials in an ordered fashion, and vice-versa,
'ordered' materials (i.e. those intrinsically rhythmic or pitched)
in an abstract manner, the piece aims to probe this meeting point of
'popular' and 'academic' electronic music and ask whether such
divisions are really beneficial to the musical pursuit as a whole?
-----
The
Wolf’s Glen
by Adrian Moore
This piece is a study using vocal sounds. Sound transformations
began as part of a project with Juxtavoices, a free
improvisation vocal group directed by Martin Archer. Sounds were
organised as call/response (around 200 small variants) and a
number of solos (ten 30-second passages). This concert work
de-constructs the solos and reconstructs the calls to create
something that, from the outset suggests an eerie, nocturnal
atmosphere. The Wolf’s Glen scene in Carl Maria von Weber’s
opera Der Freischütz (1817-20) conjures something devilish and
has always had a physical effect on me. In part, my experiment
attempts something similar, hence the title taken from the
scene.
-----
Turing Test
by John Mercer
The inspiration for this piece arose from a visit
to Bletchley Park, the home of Code Breaking where the sounds of
the machines seem to contain clues as to the routes to a
cryptanalytic solution. It was noticeable the sounds of the
mechanisms transformed as they got closer to an
electromechanical solution and that tension and relaxation seems
to manifest from the hubbub. I was struck by the percussive
electromechanical contrasted with the ethereal formless sounds
(or abstract representations of the formless) or ‘outer world’
compared with the claustrophobic “prisons” of sound in the
huts – the ‘inner world’.
The structure of the piece contains an underlying
narrative - that of extracting order from disorder. The
twist is that the disorder appears to be the most ordered part -
coherent and familiar musical sounds. The narrative form drives
the gradual addition of mechanical processes. The decrypting
took messages from the ether (radio waves) and transformed them
into sense and order. The composition reflects and juxtaposes
these sound objects in a variety of ways.
0.00 - 1.15: the ethereal nature of “voices”
1.15 the range of materials that will be used are
presented. Machines (various teletypes, printers, and including
recordings of decrypting hardware at Bletchley) coupled with
abstract sounds created from synthesis and transformation of
source recordings.
2.05: a return to the outer world of sounds.
5.40: a relatively still moment reflecting a “Crack” when clarity
arises, only to be plunged back into the chaotic world once
again.
At the close we return to a world of extreme
order: a solo typewriter communicating a clear message.
-----
We are the Voices of the Wandering Wind
by Adam Stanović
…which moan for rest
and rest can never find…
I was inspired to write this piece whilst on a
composition residency in Ohio; each day, the endless wind
blowing across the plain found its way through a tiny gap in the
studio window, producing a high whistling that I managed to
record. A few months later, in Lisbon, I heard the wandering
wind again. This time it was soft and low, and as listened,
half-awake half in sleep, it turned to song...
We are the Voices of the Wandering Wind was composed at the Sydney Conservatorium of
Music, Australia, with support from the Worldwide Universities
Network (WUN). I am very grateful to the Conservatorium for
hosting me, and to Damien Ricketson and Daniel Blinkhorn for
making my visit possible. All materials were recorded on
location in Ohio, Lisbon and Sydney, with additional sounds
kindly donated by Adrian Moore and Dale Jonathan Perkins.
Biographies
Adam Stanović started composing electronic music some
twenty years ago. At that time, early experiments with tape machines
and a four-track mini-disc recorder led him discover the potential
of recorded sounds, and he quickly started using computers as a tool
for music-making. Ever since, Adam has considered the fixed medium
as a canvass for his works which, although mostly acousmatic, are
sometimes accompanied by instruments, electronics, film, and
animation. In all cases, his music explores ways in which both pitch
and noise coexist within recorded sound, with musical form often
delivering one from the other.
Adam’s music has been heard in over 400 festivals and concerts
around the world. His works are available on 12 different CDs, with
his first solo empreintes DIGITALes CD released in late 2018, and
most have featured in composition competitions around the globe,
including: IMEB (France); Metamophoses (Belgium); Destellos
(Argentina); Contemporanea (Italy); SYNC (Russia); Musica Viva
(Portugal); Musica Nova (Czech Republic); KEAR (USA); Musicacoustica
(China). Further to this, Adam has worked in studios at the IMEB
(France); Musiques et Recherches (Belgium); VICC (Sweden); EMS
(Sweden); LCM (UK); CMMAS (Mexico); Holst House (UK), Mise En Place
(USA), Bowling Green (USA); Sydney Conservatorium (Australia).
Adam is regularly invited to talk about electronic music; in the
past year, he has given talks at institutions around the globe,
including Harvard University, New England Conservatory, Swedish
Royal College of Music, Conservatorium van Amsterdam, The Sydney
Conservatorium, Bowling Green Ohio. In 2016, Adam co-founded the
British ElectroAcoustic Network (BEAN), alongside James Andean, with
the intention of representing British electroacoustic music
overseas. Adam is currently directing a number of MA programmes, and
supervising a group of PhD students, at The University of Sheffield,
UK.
Alejandro Albornoz
is a Chilean composer and sound artist. He studied electroacoustic
composition with Rodrigo Sigal and Federico Schumacher and works
on acousmatic and live electronics since 2004. His music has been
performed in several international festivals in Europe and
America. Usually he composes for theatre and dance. He currently
is a PhD researcher on Electroacoustic Composition in the
Department of Music at the University of Sheffield under the
supervision of Adam Stanović & Adrian Moore. The central
topics in his research are the human voice, poetry and language.
Adrian Moore is
a composer of electroacoustic music. He directs the University of
Sheffield Sound Studios (USSS) where researchers and composers
collaborate on new musical projects. Adrian Moore’s research
interests are focused towards the development of the acousmatic
tradition in electroacoustic music and the performance of
electroacoustic music. His music has been commissioned by the GRM,
Bourges (IMEB) and the Arts Council of England. A significant
proportion of his music is available on 4 discs, ‘Traces’, ‘Rˆeve de
l’aube’, ‘Contrechamps’ and ‘Sequences et Tropes’ on the Empreintes
DIGITALes label (www.electrocd.com). www.adrianmoore.co.uk Chris Bevan
is a composer of electronic music. His works have won a number of
international awards in competitions including Musica Viva
(Lisbon, Portgal), Festival Exhibitronic (Strasbourg, France), JIM
(Montreal, Canada), and CIME (Krakow, Poland), and have been
presented in concerts and festivals around the world. He is based
at the University of Sheffield, where he is currently working
towards a PhD in electroacoustic composition under the guidance of
Adam Stanović & Adrian Moore.
John Mercer is a PhD student at The University of
Sheffield having recently completed his MA in Sonic Art. He is a
classical guitarist with an extensive history of producing
recordings and CDs with over 70 released titles to his name. As
one who is passionate about music and its promulgation in schools
and education in general, he was recently elected Fellow of the
Royal Society of Arts. His research concerns structure in
Electroacoustic music with a particular focus on speed as a
parameter in composition.
USSS Programm: Adam Stanović
CMS Organisation: Andreas Weixler
[Photo: Bea Borgers] 
[Photo: Caroline
Campeau]
