Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta Partituras gráficas. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta Partituras gráficas. Mostrar todas las entradas

09 julio 2023

The algorithmic elephant

When following the graphic score of Pithoprakta by Xenakis along with the recording, we see the piece is based on mathematical structures that look organic, as if drawn by hand. This organic appearance is valuable in composition. If the strings entered in square orderly fashion, the score would show straight lines, leading to predictable music. Breaking these lines creates more organic shapes and a more organic listening experience. The score remains schematic but features structures as natural as a tree, not a refrigerator. Pithoprakta avoids ideal squared forms, making it more interesting to the ears...

The original analog score by Xenakis has both musical and visual value

 
Pithoprakta: graphical score by Pierre Carré

The music of Xenakisis both organized and visceral. Xenakis breaks the commonplace conception of Apollo as the opposite of Dionysus. The guts of Dionysus and the arrow of Apollo converse. The warmth of wine, the dance, the beast come together with the intellectual distance, the direction, and the predetermination of the archer. Gabriel Valverde, my composition teacher, used to say when talking about Xenakis: "An elephant has passed." An algorithmic elephant, I would say!
 
 
Pithoprakta, score excerpt

I am interested in the mathematical construction of organic forms. Nowadays there are many contemporary composers who work with mathematical forms derived from nature, with sonic results that are generally highly schematic: the translation of data into music seems to be done by pushing a button. Xenakis was overall a musician, deciding what the algorithm means in the realm of music, and filtering them with musical sense: an old school drawing the functions in graph paper. The mathematical sketches are also scores.
In Pithoprakta, the different scenes succeed each other in blocks, conforming the musical structure. These blocks are in dialogue with each other, like "blocks of concrete" or "blocks of gas" or "blocks of fluids".  In the manner of Stravinsky, Gubaidulina, Ustvolskaya, Nono in his string quartet, among others, the discourse in blocks attempts to disrupt centuries of a Western linear narrative discourse. An urgent matter in the mid-20th century. I listen to Pithoprakta with nostalgia, like someone watching a Tarkovsky film. A classic, that blurry dot back then in the 20th century. Good old times.
In my Música invisible for trombone, Water, played by Dalton Harris, I am using the rhythmical structure of water drops to create musical forms to shape musical forms that create a dialogue between determination and indeterminacy. I use the water itself within the pipe mechanism of the trombone: half brass instrumen, half kitchen sink, the trombone becomes a vessel for sounds, air, and water (listen with headphones please! The beginning is very soft).

16 diciembre 2008

Pausa

foto por Marilyn Mouradian

09 abril 2008

Sobre la notación - (musicalizando a Foucault)


“Y el espacio de las semejanzas inmediatas se convierte en un gran libro abierto; está plagado de grafismos; todo a lo largo de la página se ven figuras extrañas que se entrecruzan y, a veces, se repiten. Lo único que hay que hacer es descifrarlas"
Michel Foucault

Pienso en este libro del mundo plagado de grafismos como una partitura a ser descifrada. El mundo es entonces un mundo sonoro, de un lenguaje rumoroso pero no de palabras sino de sonidos musicales. Un lenguaje donde lo descifrado es tan elíptico como la grafía que los representa.
El espejo opaco del sonido y su representación escrita abre la perspectiva de las múltiples versiones posibles.
La música no se puede escribir más que imprecisamente Y es esa brecha entre el mundo del sonido y la representación inacabada de la partitura lo que mejor representa la condición abstracta de la música.
Su debilidad es su fortaleza.

“Pero, dado que hay una ranura entre las similitudes que forman grafismos y las que forman discursos, el saber y su labor infinita reciben allí el espacio que les es propio: tienen que surcar esta distancia yendo, por un zigzagueo indefinido, de lo semejante a lo que le es semejante.”
Michel Foucault

07 marzo 2008

30 septiembre 2007

Ida Lohman


Ida Lohman died last Tuesday, at 46. She was (is) a visual artist devoted to magic lanterns. Her special sensibility could transform simple quotidian materials into very magic images. She used to collect little papers, transparencies, little plastic toys: all these little things were transformed into incredible images in a super example of low tech multimedia.
It was nice to go for a walk with her; she was constantly searching and founding lot of things in the street for her magic lanterns. You could see how packages of cookies, eggs, straws, crystals, were becoming something extremely abstract and beautiful through the machines.
For the last projects she loved to work with live musicians- that is the way I met her. I will miss her.