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DIFFERENT TRAILS: ON THE MULTIPLE GENETIC ROOTS DETERMINING A DISTRIBUTED COMPOSITIONAL PROJECT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

José L. Besada
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Abstract

Although it is a mistake to believe that the material traces left by a composer's practice can help us to properly reconstruct the creative process, compositional sketches may throw light on it. Nevertheless many such accounts take their respective case studies as isolated objects that are, unfortunately, sometimes decontextualised from the whole record of their authors. Ethnography potentially offers a better methodology and auto-ethnographic accounts, third party observations, and mixtures of these approaches have already been applied to contemporary music. This article aims to combine both these approaches in a discussion of a recent compositional project at IRCAM, carried out by a team of three people. I consider how the previous artistic experiences and achievements of these people, jointly and separately, have had a substantial impact on their shared project. In addition, as the case study had a scientific underpinning, I comment on the cognitive bridge that the composer had to build between scientific and musical conceptions.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 73 , Issue 290 , October 2019 , pp. 56 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

I warmly thank Hèctor Parra, Jean-Pierre Luminet and Thomas Goepfer for allowing me to follow their meetings during the Inscape project and for access to the various documents they produced. I also thank Gerard Pape for his valuable help.

This paper has been published within the framework of the IdEx Unistra and benefits from state funding administered by the French National Research Agency as part of the ‘Investments for the future’ programme.

References

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2 Jean-Pierre Luminet, ‘Gravitational Music. On my Collaboration with Hèctor Parra’, Contemporary Music Review 38/1–2 (2019), pp. 193–205.

3 Concerning the study of distributed compositional projects, from first-hand accounts to external tracking, see for instance Fitch, Fabrice and Heyde, Neil, ‘Ricercar: the Collaborative Process as Invention’, Twentieth-Century Music 4/1 (2007), pp. 71–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donin, Nicolas, ‘Domesticating Gesture: The Collaborative Process of Florence’s Baschet StreicherKreis for “Augmented” String Quartet (2006–2008)’, in Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music, ed. Clarke, Eric and Doffman, Mark (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 70–87Google Scholar; and Clarke, Eric, Doffman, Mark and Lim, Liza, ‘Distributed Creativity and Ecological Dynamics: A Case Study of Liza Lim’s Tongue of the Invisible’, Music and Letters 94/4 (2013), pp. 628–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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23 The aural sources for these estimations are the third performance of Avant la fin … vers où? during its weekend premiere – recorded by Radio Nacional de España (22 April 2018) – and the French premiere of Inscape – recorded by France Musique (14 June 2018).

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25 Personal communication (7 November 2018).

26 Its English translation is reproduced in Luminet, ‘Gravitational Music’, pp. 200–201.

27 For a more extended commentary see Jérémie Szpirglas’ programme note for the première of Voces Nómadas, at http://brahms.ircam.fr/works/work/40594/.