Fluxus: Event Scores and Their Performance

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 2012

Logoi.ph, 2019

Music is an art of time; being also a 'syntax' of time, it transforms our experience of time into a narrative. Yet, it is transmitted through scores, in which the time and sound of music are turned into space and signs. Thus, an accomplished reader will be able to gather, from a musical score, meaningful information about aural events unfolding in time through the instantaneous observation of a graphic notation. The musician's experience of the score will therefore be akin to the simultaneous presence of different moments in time, and thence it will allow an analogical intuition of the 'eternal present', i.e. the divine encompassing of Time in a single, eternal instant. La musica è un'arte del tempo. Essendo anche una 'scrittura del tempo', trasforma la nostra esperienza del tempo in una 'storia'. Tuttavia, la musica si trasmette tramite le partiture, nelle quali il tempo e i suoni della musica sono resi tramite spazio e segni. Perciò, i musicisti esperti sono in grado di ricavare da uno spartito delle informazioni significative su eventi uditivi che si svolgono nel tempo attraverso l'osservazione istantanea di una notazione grafica. L'esperienza che il musicista ha dello spartito sarà perciò simile alla presenza simultanea di diversi momenti del tempo; di conseguenza, essa permette di intuire analogicamente la dimensione dell'eterno presente, ossia la comprensione divina del Tempo in un unico, eterno istante.

2007

In the past few decades, the lack of interest for symbolic calculation tools in the major part of musical compositions led to a critical deadlock. The language has failed us, and the discourse is wearing off. Where can we find then the “true” discourse, if not in the historical approach to language itself and, in this case, to the musical form? We all know that the main issue in music is musical time. Yet studies dedicated to the subject of musical time are filled with mere commentary; the articles that really get to the heart of the matter are rare.1 The reflections worth of mention generally broach the issue from a purely practical side, displaying hesitations between phenomenological temporality and symbolic temporality, i.e., perception and notation, between musica speculative and musica mensurabilis, between experienced time and calculated time. We shall here focus on the latter, which seems appropriate in the present volume. The practice of computer-aided composition (CAC) was...

Performance Philosophy, 2019

In the twentieth century, time became a key-concept for music – maybe the art more dependent on time. Even so, a myriad of definitions did turn this idea not only into a rich element for musical discourse but also into a conceptual battlefield in discourses about music. Unfortunately, there was an issue for this struggle between theoretical ideas and musical composition that always insisted in striking the debate: the performance. Thus, this is the aim of this short reflection: to bring performers as protagonists in the debate, listening to their experience in time and of time in performance. For this, the Augustinian link between Time and Memory is taken as a bottom line for the discussion. In understanding music as a kind of discourse, another important conceptual device will be claimed for this reflection, that is Rhetoric. The first part of this reflection recollects concepts from the Aristotelian and Augustinian approaches on time and discourse, and concludes with a review of the main definitions of time by composers in the twentieth century. The second part reviews three theoretical approaches of musical form as process. A third section comprises the embodiment of those discussions into practice in the Cello Sonata, written by Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

TDR/The Drama Review, 2011

Can time be performed? Departing from the “processualist” view in which time is the expressive activity of any given thing, being, or phenomenon, the processes of pervasive temporalization and musicalization—characteristic of Fluxus intermedia—converge to produce concrete, lived time and perpetuate the dialectical interplay of continuity and discontinuity.

2022

I want to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor and committee chair Dr. Mara Gibson, whose support, supervision, and encouragement was invaluable and limitless during this study and the entire degree program. My accomplishments would not have been possible without her dedication and commitment to expanding my knowledge and educating me as a composer. I would also like to thank my minor advisor and committee member Dr. Jeffrey Perry for his endless guidance and generous support during this study and beyond. I am truly grateful to Dr.

This paper focuses on the chamber concerts led by the violinist Pierre Baillot in 1820s Paris, exploring how performers understood their role and creative agency in bringing the score to life. The archival evidence connected with the activities of Baillot’s ensemble includes an extensive library of sheet music that the players annotated in pencil. I discuss the methodological feasibility and aims of putting these traces of the act of performance under academic scrutiny.

Investigating Musical Performance, 2020

This chapter will present ongoing reflections on the diverse ways contemporary musical works are understood, taking into account the approaches adopted by the musician, the composer, the scholar-analyst and the scholar-musician. The aim is to encourage readers to take a fresh look at the functions of the score within the general context of non-tonal works in post-1945 Europe. Theoretical approaches based on several criteria that should help us understand such music will also be proposed, including the performing process and interpretation of works in terms of listening and music reception, above all during a concert or a rehearsal. From this standpoint, the performer is a key stakeholder in the music 'as act'. An attempt will also be made to define approaches for a pluralistic evaluation of works by affirming the status of a living, sonorous and visual art that lies beyond the score and the composer's indications.