Performing Gérard Grisey's Les Espaces acoustiques

While Appia's name is dutifully linked in our theatre histories with the full realization of the revolution in stage lighting wrought by electricity, the nature of his broader scenographic philosophy has remained little understood, and his own writings are not readily accessible in English. Still less have English-speaking theatre people given due attention to the work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, creator of the system of eurhythmies -and virtually nothing has previously been written about the unique collaboration between these two innovators, which began in 1906, and eventually flourished in the unlikely setting of a German 'garden city', dedicated to the humanization of modern industrial practices-Hellerau, or 'the bright meadow'. Here, Richard Beacham, who has published a study of Appia's earlier work in Opera Quarterly (Autumn 1 983), describes how the two men came to meet and to plan for the possibilities offered by the projected Hellerau festivals: in a subsequent article, he will assess the extent and nature of the work they achieved there.

1996

The unity of music and words at the heart of a great song is one of the most basic and universal forms of artistic expression. Whether we speak of the music of ancient cultures, opera throughout its four-hundred-year history, the monuments of sacred music, or any popular musica form--including American popular music--the musical expression of a text is central. Songs ma of texts that deal with timeless human concerns expressed musically in the most direct fashion have the potential to reach large and diverse audiences, and that is precisely the potential of the songs of the Munich School. While virtually unknown today, these songs are the flowering of the richest period of German song--a "Lyrical Culture," as the French-German poet Rene Schikele christened it. The popularity of poetry continued to grow in German-speaking lands throughout the nineteenth century, until, by the turn of the twentieth century, it was immense. By one report, there were 20,000 German-speaking poets in the nineteenth century. If this number seems difficult to believe, consider that a present-day collection in Berlin of some seven hundred nineteenth-century anthologies of poetry contains the work of 10,000 authors. Not surprisingly, musicians were prolific in their settings of this poetry, though most of this music is now long out of print and difficult to come by. In an time before electronic media, this was "mass media"--the "entertainment" of a well-educated and well-to-do middle class. Munich was the setting of a thriving and vital musical culture at the turn of the twentieth century. 1;/lis catholic capitol of Bavaria, a seat of power in the nineteenth century, was hardly the hotbed of progress that Berlin was, but neither was it ultraconservative. It was in Munich that th progressive movement in the visual arts known as J11gendstil got underway, receiving its name from the Munich periodical Jug end [youth], that first appeared in 1896. Though scholars debate whether it is permissible to speak of a "Jugendstil-Musik," there are certainly themes in common: all of the arts of the period remain closely connected to their nineteenth-century, romantic heritage, while they show at the same time traits of modernism. "Jugendstil," the artistic youth of the twentieth century, is the link between the nineteenth century and our own era. Appropriately, that first issue of J11gend included a song by Richard Strauss, the most prominent composer centered in Munich at the time. But almost as prominent a composer was his life-long friend, Ludwig Thuille, whose teaching position at the Munich M11sikhochsch11/e put him in charge of the education of a generation of composers. Narrowly, the term "Munich School" is sometimes reserved for Thuille's students, but more broadly it refers to a musical style shared by Strauss (its most progressive proponent), Thuille and his students. The style is a synthesis of a "classical" concern with harmonic and formal clarity that may be heard by us today as a "Brahmsian influence" (but more likely stems from the neo-classicism purveyed in Munich in the mid to late nineteenth century by Gabriel Joseph Rheinberger), and a "Wagnerian" expressiveness and inventiveness of harmonic language. Lieder aus der Mii11che11er Schule introduces the listener to some very beautiful an heretofore unknown music, providing, at the same time, a context to deepen our understanding of the music of Richard Strauss. Subsequent concerts of this repertoire ( currently in rehearsal and planning stages) will be devoted to Thuille's music in particular, and comparative settings of the same texts by Brahms, Strauss and Munich School composers. Lieder aus der Miinchener Sclmle takes the listener chronologically through a representative sample of this repertoire; the remainder of this brochure provides notes on the program, together with the text of each song.

EXCESS. FORUM FOR PHILOSOPHY AND ART (4.-7.8.2016) 48th International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt Jörn Peter Hiekel, Dieter Mersch, Michael Rebhahn and Fahim Amir (CURATORS) This forum, consisting of an opening, a closing discussion and three panels, seeks to probe the current state of the relationship between music and philosophy, as well as the mutual consonances and dissonances. With a view to the present, it is of particular interest to ask what questions are stimulating New Music today, what challenges it faces, and what shared themes or »contemporaneities« unite and separate philosophy and New Music today. In this way — and very much following on from earlier discussions in Darmstadt — the forum will attempt to show how compositional strategies and concepts exemplify reflections on changes within the whole of contemporary culture. The forum, which will take place in two languages (German and English, with simultaneous interpretation), defines itself as an open-ended discussion whose topics will be introduced in keynote speeches. In each case, one composer and one philosopher will act as hosts and play the part of structuring and further developing, with their guests, the discussion that already started before the course. PANEL 1: SURPLUS Dieter Mersch ChristianGrüny, Jennifer Walshe, Ashley Fure, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Michael Pisaro, Bernhard Waldenfels The term»surplus, «which is also implied in the over- all title EXCESS, allues to today’s increasing expansion of the compositional through approaches like intermediality, heterogeneity of material, body/performance, theatricality, etc. Thus the term »surplus« relates on the one hand to the »derestriction« of the arts towards different forms of expression, representation and production; but, on the other hand, also to a political aspect between the critique of art as a productive force in modern capitalism and the surplus of the aesthetic as something that does not submit to the cycles of economic exploitation. PANEL 2: THE POLITICAL Michael Rebhahn Douglas Barrett, Dror Feiler, Fahim Amir, Chaya Czernowin, Harry Lehmann, Mathias Spahlinger The political dimension touched on in the first group of themes will be explicitly foregrounded in the second complex. It addresses the ever pressing question of the relationship between art, reality and politics, which constantly arises in new ways for music too. Just as the »worldrelation« of music is being intensely debated at the moment, the concern is at once a far more fundamental analysis of the relationship be- tween the aesthetic and all that characterizes and constitutes the polis, the political and lastly the »community«. What is the role of art in this, especially if the practice of art identifies itself first and foremost as critique, as an element of resistance or subversion against claims to political power? A substantial element of this fundamental problem also encompasses the interplay between music and the historical, as expressed in notions of »contemporaneity« and »witness.« Intervention: Fahim Amir and Tomás Saraceno Every work of art is an uncommitted crime After the critique of Eurocentrism new approaches demand to also »provincialise the human«. If dogs are indeed the new feminists as Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, curator of dOCUMENTA (13), famously stated in relation to the seminal work of Donna Haraway, what is there to be done in the realms of aesthetics, production and politics? Philosopher Fahim Amir and artist Tomás Saraceno engage in a conversation about challenges and promises of multi species constellations in art starting from both Saracenos work with spiders and Haraways Companion Species Manifesto (2003). A Cyrtophora citricola spider will join the conversation as guest speaker. PANEL 3: MUSIC AS PHILOSOPHY Jörn Peter Hiekel, Simone Mahrenholz, ManosTsangaris, Brian Ferneyhough, Patrick Frank, Gunnar Hindrichs, Albrecht Wellmer Music, like art in general, constitutes its own form of thought and insight that is every bit as advanced as philosophy, but uses other means and follows different »logics.« It is not only a matter of initiating a dialogue between music and philosophy in order to evoke mutual tensions or proximities, but rather of showing how music, or the musical and »compositional,« can be viewed as »a form of philosophy« — and of attributing to it an »epistemic« power of its own. On the one hand, this raises such time-honored questions as that of »truth« in art, which after Hegel was taken up most significantly by Heidegger and Adorno; and on the other hand, it needs to be readjusted to the present conditions. One must therefore interrogate the »self-will« of aesthetic thought and ask what music — especially New Music, as the most »abstract« and at once the most emotional art — »knows,« or how it organizes and reveals its knowledge.

This chapter presents Pace's orchestral and concertante works, with special analytical evaluations on Symphonie Dramatique (1931), Symphony No. 2 (1966), Piano Concerto No. 2 (1944) and Clarinet Concerto (1970).

2023

The essays collected in "Performing Space" are intent on moving forward the discussion about the relevance and significance of the interrelation between performance and space. Besides, in virtue of the fact that the contributors to the volume have different disciplinary or artistic backgrounds, this collection is aimed to initiate an interdisciplinary examination of performance and space, and to foster a mutually enlightening dialogue among areas as diverse as philosophy, architecture, performance theory and practice, theatre studies, anthropology, literary theory and pedagogy. "Performing Space" establishes an international forum, where the provenance, the conceptuality and the contemporary potentialities of performance are discussed and brought to bear on the built environment, both past and present. The essays in the first section of Performing Space, “Performance, Theory, Space”, endeavour to reflect on theoretical and epistemological issues that concern the status and conditions of artistic performance, space or both, by having recourse to writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière, among others. The second section, “Performing Space: Applied”, comprises essays focusing on case studies of actual performances and evaluating the outcome of specific performative events. The essays in question acknowledge and analyse the significance of particular spaces and their evident impact on the corresponding performances.

Modern Drama, 2006

2019

2014

My paper will explore the specific contribution that electroacoustic music can make to challenging the accepted concert framework both in terms of a work’s duration and the location in which it is to be presented to the public. My case study will be the specific practices of the Belgian composer Henri Pousseur (1929-2009) and his electroacoustic work Huit Etudes Paraboliques (realized at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studios in 1972). Each of these eight compositions is an autonomous work. However, according to Pousseur they can also be regarded as source material to be ‘plundered’, reconfigured and thus re-mixed to produce new works. Furthermore, new musical material – by Pousseur or other composers – can be added. These Huit Etudes Paraboliques were the first works of a ‘Système des Paraboles’ (Parabola System) where each piece has the potential for extension. Thus, the connection with earlier and indeed later ‘open form’ works is clear and, as a result, the Huit Etudes Paraboliques ...

Dada has marked a radical shift in what our idea of harmony and consonance told us how to make sense of art. No longer functional in a traditional, mimetic dimension, the art of the avant­garde does not seek to gratify and reassure the viewer, but involves him actively as it constantly defamiliarizes its objects. Our paper analyzes Gigi Căciuleanu's performance l'​Om ​DAdA in conjunction to the movements of contemporary art under the continuous influence and guidance of the early Dada principles and strategies. We thus observe how the narrative of the performance builds on the fractures and discontinuities of space, history, movement in a dialogue that arches over a century with the Dada artistic phenomenon and mindset. Căciuleanu's choreographic theatre performs a mapping of our Real revisiting Dada's answer to a world already dislocated by the historical events of the 20th century. Taking Tristan Tzara's text ​ L'homme approximatif, Gigi Căciuleanu takes it apart and puts it back together in a discontinuous montage which reflects on the dislocation of our own world.

2004

Founded in 1948, the GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales has been the first and is still one of the major institutions active in the production and development of electroacoustic music. An overview of past and currently activities is given, with a focus on new directions such as archives preservations and contents distribution.

2011

Due to technical developments in computer-based sound editing, the inclusion of imaginary spaces in electroacoustic music has been possible for quite some time. Imaginary spaces are those that are not perceivable in reality. These spaces arise when one alters the acoustic features or spatial indicators of the space so much that its space impression seems unrealistic or imaginary. In the formation of imaginary spaces, and even in the stimulation of the listener’s imagination, electroacoustic music provides a degree of control that is superior to instrumental music. Electroacoustic music is thus suitable in many contexts — for instance, virtual reality computer games and film. Electroacoustic music also provides composers with flexibility in the formation of abstract ideas and the development of new musical languages based on sound metamorphosis. Such an art enables sounds — with unknown tone colours, unrealistic space impressions, and abstract contexts — to detach listeners from the ...

Swiss Journal of Musicology , 2021

The town of Altdorf in Uri, Switzerland is home to the biennial Alpentöne Festival. The most recent iteration took place, live and on-site, in August 2021. Sharon Specker speaks with four people involved in its realization: Barbara Betschart, one of the artistic directors; Pius Knüsel, the executive director, Roland Dahinden, trombonist and composer; and Roland Schiltknecht, hammered dulcimer player.

Background in music analysis. Jani Christou was a eminent Greek avant-garde composer who expanded the traditional aesthetics of musical conception, as well as of concert and stage performance, to a whole new art-form that involved music, philosophy, psychology, mythical archetypes, and dramatic setting. His ideals and envisagements, constantly evolving from the late 1950s, are profoundly denoted in his late works, created between 1965-1968 (Mysterion, Anaparastasis I -III, Epicycle, Strychnine Lady). These works, originally conceived as 'stage rituals', include instrumental performance, singing, acting, dance, tape and visual effects, and thus combine musical and para-musical events and gestures.

This article points to two main objectives: first to demonstrate the ways in which Gérard Grisey, Luigi Nono and Peter Ablinger approach the representation of space in present-day composition. The second is to provide some keys to the essential elements conditioning the meanings and sensations listeners perceive in these composers’ works. The interaction arising from the possibilities of the inner space of sound and the place where a concert takes place originates new forms of acoustic and temporal processes in Gérard Grisey, different types of symbiosis with architectonic space in Luigi Nono and an active union with the surroundings in Peter Ablinger. These concepts are dealt with through some of their most representative works. A substantial part of the contributions of the three has a single purpose: to renew perception of music on the basis of an on-going interrelation between listening possibilities, the configuration of sound in time and the need to redefine the meaning of the musical space.