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).

The art of combining things

 para Gabriel Abellán

Today, I began my day by reading a post on Gabriel Abellán's blog (in Spanish), a blog devoted to physics and music from both a very smart and poetic perspective. In his latest post, Gabriel shares how a logic class, taught by an inspiring teacher, changed him forever. Emphatically, I remembered my father teaching me math when I was in kindergarten.

https://labellephysique.wordpress.com/2022/05/06/logica-y-norealidad/

Science and Science Fiction

From my last visit to Argentina (I live in Amsterdam), I brought a suitcase full of books: 23 kg of precious books. I "stole" from the family bookshelf the science fiction collection that belonged to my father. I also brought a very inexpensive (but super heavy!) collection of science books that I bought on Calle Corrientes, a street in Buenos Aires well known for its amazing bookshops.

The two piles of books talk to each other, with the "real science" pile being the crazier one (verdad, Gabriel?).

I am sure that the pioneers of relativity theory, with their wild imagination, deeply pleased Asimov and Bradbury. Wells traveling through time and Philip Dick with his multiple worlds speak the same language as the realities glimpsed by quantum physicists. In the realm of music, Stockhausen comes to mind too… maybe it is true that he comes from Sirius.

The people from these two piles of books have in common the ability to see a world beyond everyday facts. They saw it, they believed in it, and they pursued it. Each pile requires a different tool: some build new realities with a calculator, others with a typewriter. Just nuances.

It is easy to associate the capacity for dreaming about new realities with artists, which is something scientists also do. They have to. It is easy to associate the idea of science changing the world (think about the discovery of electricity or the splitting of the atom), but it is something that artists also do. Art and science have been intertwined since the beginning of time, feeding each other and sharing their imaginary worlds.

The Architecture of Cloth 

I also brought from Argentina in that same suitcase a pile of sewing patterns that belonged to my mum, and previously to my grandmother: a collection of Burda magazines. My grandma, Beba, taught me to sew when I was very young. From an early age, I could make clothes for my dolls and for myself by following the instructions in these patterns. La abuelita Beba let me use her Singer sewing machine, operated with a pedal, which, at that time, was just at the tips of my small feet. I didn't care much about the dolls; I was more interested in crafting these intricate mini designs with sleeves, zippers, and pleats. Believe me, it's still not easy. I was also amazed by the mechanism of the sewing machine. I still am.

I write my scores, with instructions sometimes in several languages, just like in Burda magazine!

Varèse said that music is organized sound.
I say that music is the art of combining… a lot of things.

Gespleten piano (2010) - detail of score @2024 cecilia arditto delsoglio

Resonancias cruzadas

La fascinación por Radigue, Utsvolskaya, Paraskevaídis.
La angustia de las influencias

La fascinación por Radigue, Utsvolskaya, Paraskevaídis.
La resonancia magnética.

El minimalismo a ultranza
El dogmatismo a la vuelta de la esquina

Inmersión en la experiencia del sonido
El wallpaper existencial

El dialogo histórico
La búsqueda de la propia voz

Las preguntas antiguas
La perpetuación del refrito

Las preguntas antiguas
La comodidad dialéctica

La fascinación por un otro significante
La cobardía individual

El viaje cósmico e interestelar
La búsqueda de la luz propia

Las preguntas enormes
Las respuestas pequeñas

La consciencia académica del hecho estético
La nada mism

Las ideas grandes
El gesto corto

La realidad como ficción
Entrar a cine a ver la película equivocada

La obra grande
La vida pequeña

El peso del mundo
La bolsa de las compras

Boxes

 

My recent piece, "Boxes," belongs to a collection of pieces under the name “Acoustics of Everyday,” focused on explicit issues related to classical acoustics: resonance boxes, strings, mutes, filters, microtonality, and other subjects to come.

I had a wonderful adventure with Ensemble Modelo62, which included three concerts, a recording session, and shared rehearsal time. In all those instances, I could deepen my questions about this new chapter in my music.

"Boxes" is mainly focused on the subject of space. Different resonance boxes are in dialogue with each other, and also with the big box around them, which is the room itself.

In a series of concentric layers, my first concern about space starts with the very architecture of the piece.

How?

• Composing different spaces within the piece by grouping instruments by color and/or behavior (orchestration).
• Establishing the role of the instruments (solo, tutti, ensemble).
• Composing their interaction in a combo of music and space (soloist, duplications, hoquetus, etc.).
• "Boxes" asks what is sounding, when, and where at the same time.

• Establishing musical behavior in terms of time and also space: repeated notes "freeze time", while endlessly looping scales "move time in circles"; repeated notes played by one instrument "freeze space," while the hoquetus form "opens it up".

• Posing the question of what sounds inside or outside the boxes.

• The physical handles and metal components of the stage boxes reacted to certain frequencies from the guitar amps which were located inside... so, the boxes themselves sang on stage, becoming more than just resonance containers but producing sound!

 Music, as a holistic unity, brings together different purposes, perspectives, and a multiplicity of diverse energies into one and only one perceptual experience, melting the experience into one single logic.

Space is experienced as an unconscious unity rather than as a collection of recognizably separable processes.
Spaces speak, are you listening? B. Blesser and L.R. Salter

Post-concert questions.

• How concrete is the space of the piece in terms of composition? And how is the dialogue with the architectonic space of the concert hall?
• How aware are the listeners of space? Is it possible to design a space that is moving instead of sound events traveling in it? Therefore: how to differentiate the movement of the events rather than the movement of the space itself?
• How much should be seen? The visual aspect of a concert is always very influential. In previous works, I used the visual aspects of a concert as part of the music (music to see). But in Boxes, on the other hand, I was longing for a concert hall in the shadows.

To be continued.

The cheese grater's five seconds of fame

A cheese grater is being played with a toothbrush. After a while, we completely forget the cheese grater and focus solely on the sound: the continuous fricative noise is colored by mini sparks of high frequencies, short and loud. With the time, the sound progressively becomes a bunch of confused energy not attached to a specific physical body: it seems that by the act of endurance, the sonic outcome is different from the sounds produced by the same object when in the kitchen. The grater-thing with its metallic perimeter, like a lost map, noe embraces new sounds floating in the sea of abstraction. Deep listening is in conflict with what the eyes and/or the ears have to offer: is it really a cheese grater or a camouflaged synthesizer? It is known that synthesizers can efficiently produce a broad variety of sounds, and perhaps, following the same logic, they might also change the way they look.

 “not what it sounds, the car, the instrument, the voice,
but what sounds as sonic materiality and sense”
S. Voegelin

The grater brings an aesthetical conflict on stage
when not performing “spaguetti” but the most beautiful sounds ever.

 

 

La râpe à fromage doit être frottée avec un baguette de Triangle/
The cheese grater should be rubbed with a Triangle mallet
M. Ravel , L'Enfant et les Sortiléges

About notation 3

 

Casi cerca (2004)- score fragment

I like to think of written music as an entity that originates itself every time it is invoked. Unlike other arts, where the physical object is always present, live music exists only when it is played (and in the context of this article, read from a musical score).

Music uses a foreign language to express itself, not through sound waves but through graphical signs. This indirect mechanism gives music an ambiguous condition in both its sound and discourse. Ambiguity brings both fragility and strength simultaneously.

The history of Western music has always danced alongside the development of musical notation, each feeding the other in an indivisible relationship. Musical notation serves not only as a tool to preserve sound waves in the correct order, but as a way of thinking and creating music. Much of the written music we know today would have been impossible to conceive without the practice of recording ideas on paper. Music notation is both a recording and a generative activity at the same time.

Music scores are meticulous, specific, and obsessive with details. The wonderful paradox is that this precision is expressed in a live performance. Written music finds its full expression in the present moment: fresh and fragile. This imperfect-perfect, defined-undefined, precise-imprecise double-sided coin is the fascinating arena that gives music its abstract condition.

Escenario 360

Mi más intensa gimnasia minimalista se pone en marcha cada vez que tengo que presentar mi ciclo Musique Concrète. No es una gimnasia compositiva en término de escritura, ya que la obra tiene su doble barra, sino en términos de puesta: cómo se organizan los objetos en escena en cada circunstancia. Si bien las secciones del ciclo Musique Concrète son austeras en su estética, el conjunto de las partes conforma un entramado saturado. 

El espacio de Musique Concrète no es el espacio escénico teatral sino el espacio de una instalación/concierto. Pensándolo en retrospectiva, veo que este ha sido también el espíritu de mis trabajos de cámara de los últimos diez años.

Link al proyecto Musique Concréte

Hay una diferencia entre lo teatral clásico y el espacio de tipo instalación. La cuarta pared del teatro, propone un espacio partido: los intérpretes están obligados a actuar en dos dimensiones y media. Los músicos, si bien son tridimensionales,  siempre se ubican de coté, como en las comedias de la tele, donde un familión está sentado sumamente apretado en un sólo lado de la mesa para no tapar a la cámara que los filma.

La idea de un espacio conceptual más amplio, más tridimensional, me permite patear el tablero de la caja italiana y volver a ubicar los objetos en un un espacio que es de otra índole.

Mis obras no son instalaciones ni improvisaciones. Son eventos manifiestamente performativos, diseñados para ser producidos en vivo. Su cualidad performativa comparte un concepto de curaduría más cercano a las artes plásticas que a la idea de puesta teatral, que propone el espacio dramático del teatro. La música crea entonces un espacio diferente, en diálogo con estas dos ideas de espacio conocidos.