Curiosity in Organizing Sound - Four Electroacoustic Works around Erhu - Archive ouverte HAL
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Curiosity in Organizing Sound - Four Electroacoustic Works around Erhu

Lin-ni Liao
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Résumé

EMS18 [ Curiosity in Organizing Sound - Four Electroacoustic Works around Erhu ] Abstract The Larousse Music Dictionary (2005) gives the following definition of musique expérimentale: "An expression used in the 1950s and 1960s to designate musique concrète, electronic, and electroacoustic music, and more generally, all so-called « avant-garde » music that sought innovations in the use of traditional instruments or sound sources, such as in the manufacturing of new sound sources and in the design of previously unheard compositions process, etc. Thus, « experimental » was applied to very divergent musical approaches, from someone such as Pierre Schaeffer or Pierre Henry, to John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen or Mauricio Kagel, yet the meaning of this label was never precisely codified. More specifically, in France in the 1950s, musique expérimentale was used to designate a broader conception of musique concrète, that is to say, a new way of hearing and making music, not based on systems developed in the score or in the abstract, but from the concrete fact of listening, « by ear ». Composers such as Ivo Malec, François Bayle, François-Bernard Mâche, and Luc Ferrari, in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, composed both for the tape and traditional instruments, with a spirit of curiosity for the entire universe of sound, with no exclusivities based on preconceived systems. Pierre Schaeffer initiated the use of the term musique expérimentale, attempting to replace musique concrète, which was the source of many misunderstandings. The appellation has sometimes been held as more or less synonymous with « electroacoustic music », as in the published work of Abraham Moles and Henri Pousseur, in his essay Fragments théoriques 1, as wells as on discs released with the designation musique expérimentale” (-> Electroacoustic [Music].) [...]" The term musique expérimentale is defined by its imprecise definition and surrounded by historical misunderstandings. We must also reflect on the further complication that arises from the very essence of art - the flux resulting from the curiosity research and invention of artists from diverse cultural, educational, and philosophical backgrounds. After the Second World War, scientific research in compositional approaches never stopped expanding or diversifying; from the experiments of the aleatory music of André Boucourechliev and Witold Lutoslawski, to the algorithmic music of Pierre Barbaud, the American minimalism of La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley, the conceptualism of Dieter Schnebel and George Brecht, to the music theater of Mauricio Kagel and Georges Aperghis. The latter is still composing at IRCAM, his next creation is for musicians and robots. For the creator-composer, the meaning of musical evolution encompasses risk and the uncertainty of new experiences, but often also includes new choices in modes of organizing sound and other compositional materials. These risks may be followed by unexpected success, and then quickly become the new norm before a new problem arises and replaces it. In search of the space and respiration necessary to remain liberated, this mise en abyme, or autosimilarity in the sound organization of timbre, spatialization, morphology and structure is elusive in the face of a personal compositional approach formed “by ear”. To exert an original language hitherto unknown in a specific way, composers communicate with their audience by risking going beyond the limits of complex boundaries; for example, addressing issues such institutionalization, political manifestos, or a commitment to a progressive attitude or agenda. On the other hand, today's essayists, perhaps more than in the past, willingly address other societal concerns such as identity, transculturality, multiculturalism, and multidisciplinarity, etc. —- All of these issues were catalysts for a new contemporary repertoire project for erhu, the traditional Chinese two-stringed fiddle, which has been six years in the making by TPMC, and which includes a total of twenty commissions - fifteen instrumental pieces and five electroacoustic works. During this project, we have benefited from a variety of experiences to be had throughout the music world: meetings with the general public and specialists at conferences, master classes, workshops, concerts, the production of a disc, criticism, and radio transmission on France Musique. Therefore, for today’s presentation, I chose three electroacoustic works representative of three very different musical dimensions and aesthetics, in which the composer has been led by her own curiosity to take risks: Fold-in for (2017) acousmatic music by Christian Eloy Snapshot (2017) for erhu, piano and electronics in real time by Wang Ying Etude@E (2017) for erhu, saxophone and electronic by Cheng Huihui In this analysis, I will focus on the respective compositional approaches of each composer. How do they hear and produce sound organization? How do they make us hear their music? How did each approach their own method of working with the introduction of the erhu as a common point? With composers spanning three generations and two nationalities trained in French, German and Chinese schools, I will cross analyze the forms resulting from their trained ear, their thought, and the importance of timbre and spatialization in these works. We will also consider in what new forms these composers weave this creative thread through listening, technological tools, and a personal language. Musical analysis offers different ways to approach a work. The role of a musicologist is to be an editor who sources, collects, gathers, reconstitutes, and digests various information to write a script that will be characteristically close to a technical, aesthetic, cultural, political, and sociological interpretation to facilitate and ease an audience's understanding of the work. One could say that a musicologist has a function and a responsibility similar to that of an audio museum guide: each explanation, with its limited duration, can be likened to the standard format of a conference. With a carefully planned timing, she quickly draws a profile with the global vision of the work (the macro level) and its characteristics (the micro level) without forgetting its temporality (past - present - future). Today, we will take a visual and audio journey through the consciousness and unconsciousness of the sound organization over space, narrativity, dramaturgy, and texture and their emphasis on the reflection, the rejection, the ignorance, or the intersection of the observation of the regard and cultural identity. The theme of our tour today is the erhu with an acousmatic work by Christian Eloy, a mixed piece by Wang Ying, and an improvisation for erhu, saxophone, and electronic in real time by Cheng Huihui which are all the result of the same project, each proposing its own cultural regard. This is a personal itinerary, you have all registered in EMS18 for a short walk of 20 minutes. I am your audio guide for this visit. I wish you a pleasant visit, here we go!

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Dates et versions

hal-04070143 , version 1 (15-04-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04070143 , version 1

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Lin-ni Liao. Curiosity in Organizing Sound - Four Electroacoustic Works around Erhu. WOCMAT 2018, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, Dec 2018, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. ⟨hal-04070143⟩
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