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The Spaces of the Electronic Music in Louis Andriessen's Writing to Vermeer and Luca Francesconi's Quartett

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The Spaces of the Electronic Music in Louis Andriessen's Writing to Vermeer and Luca Francesconi's Quartett THE SPACES OF THE ELECTRONIC MUSIC IN LOUIS ANDRIESSEN'S WRITING TO VERMEER AND LUCA FRANCESCONI'S QUARTETT Fabio Monni Freelance composer based in Malmö, Sweden Abstract: This paper aims to look inside the operatic works of two living composers, discovers the strategies behind the use of electroacoustic music into a drama and answer a few questions related to the space that electroacoustic music occupies in a codified instrumental/vocal music language. Keywords: Opera, Electronics, Space, Louis Andriessen, Luca Francesconi. Introduction The present paper is not intended to be a systematic study over different uses of the electroacoustic music in lyric operas, rather it consists in a series of considerations, reflexions from a composer's perspective. These considerations will eventually be personal and subjective. Nevertheless, I will bring music examples to clarify and support the following statements. The paper will start from a generic description of the phenomenon space, it will continue with an overview of the two chosen operas, comment the observed peculiarities and arrive to final conclusions. A prologue about space Any kind of activity takes place in a specific space. A physical space is where we interact with other people and where we emotionally connect with each other. For musicians space is where we perform and listen to music. It is an inanimate element. Yet it can actively influence us, our mood, the way we think and the way we create. It is able to influence the way we compose music and play it. As Georges Perec listed in his book Espèces d'espaces (1974) space is something that we tend to take for granted, we don't often stop to reflect on its importance. There are many spaces, one for every single activity of our lives. Whatever we decide to use the space for (a room, a field or any other space) this will be devoted to some sort of activity, it will contain some object, it will have some function: I have several times tried to think of an apartment in which there would be a useless room, absolutely and intentionally useless. […] it would serve for nothing, relate to nothing. For all my efforts, I found it impossible to follow this idea through to the end. Language itself, seemingly, proved unsuited to describing this nothing, this void, as if we could only speak what is full, useful and functional.1 Any activity occurring in a specific place transforms that space into a place dedicated for that particular activity. Space and music Space is an important matter in music. It has been a main preoccupation for many composers which experimented with different placement of the instruments, as well as explored the sonic characteristics, the acoustic potential of both spaces specifically built for music and pre-existing ones designed for other activities. The technique of cori spezzati refined in Venice during Adrian Willaert's time (XVI century) is a good example of how an already existing building was used in a fine and creative musical way. This stereophonic treatment of the space had as a result the establishment of a composition/performance practice that arrived, after different transformations, to today. From the refinement of this practice and passing through Richard Wagner's reinvention of the orchestra setting and the Opera performance in Bayreuth, the space has been treated as something alive, modified, adapted, reinvented following the changes of the aesthetics, the size of the ensembles and the different publics. This interest in space led composers to explore it horizontally – Gruppen (1957) by K. Stockhausen, vertically – Cronaca del luogo (1999) by L. Berio, in depth Voci (1984) L. Berio, surrounding the audience – Persephassa (1969) by I. Xenakis, moving through the space – Fresco (2007) by L. Francesconi, only to mention a few works close to our present time. In addition to physical spaces composers have also related their works to virtual spaces. In Stanze composed by Luciano Berio in 2003, the imaginary space lies inside the concept of the composition itself. Another space often visited by composers is the one of memory. If we define memory as an act of recollection of something previously experienced, and therefore known, the use of past music 1 PEREC, Georges – Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Penguin Classics 1998, Pg.33 inside a newly written composition can be described as an act of memory. This concept can be extended also to the use of sounds that are not produced by a musical instrument or described as music, but are nevertheless part of our listening experience (ex. an ambulance siren). Among these are also sounds from movies, city soundscapes, home noises etc. that are highly characteristics and easily recognizable, even when isolated from their context. Both Quartett and Writing to Vermeer contain many quotes from other compositions and use sounds from recognizable sound-sources. The space of the electronics The concept of space in the classical music language shows a complexity that is matched, in different ways and bringing new problematics, by the electroacoustic music. The new technologies brought fresh life to the interest over the space of the performance, giving to composers a concrete possibility to explore any kind of not traditional space. The electronics opens windows over different times and places than the one of the performance itself. Its ability to reproduce realistic soundscapes as well as computer generated sounds, to playback instrumental performance and to filter them in real time brings new complexity to the concept of space. The electroacoustic medium is a musical instrument that can easily introduce extramusical elements into the codified language of a classic composition. In Pierre Boulez opinion the coexistence of these two different languages raised new questions: [A] sound which has too evident an affinity with the noises of everyday life […], any sound of this kind, with its anecdotal connotations […] becomes completely isolated from its context; it could never be integrated […] Any allusive element breaks up the dialectic of form and morphology and its unyielding incompatibility makes the relating of partial to global structures a problematic task”.2 In other words when we listen to an instrument we tend to concentrate on the musical elements (ex. pitch, dynamic, phrasing etc.), while a sampled everyday-sound may instead drive our attention to the source. This is what Pierre Schaeffer called causal listening: “listening to a sound in order to gather information about its cause (or source)”.3 When the source is not a musical instrument, it is less easy to bypass the source of the sound and concentrate on its purely sonic characteristics. Somehow, the use of sound sources different than an 2 WISHART, Trevor – On Sonic Art, Harwood Academic Publishers 1985, Pg.129 3 CHION, Michel – L'audio-vision. Son et image au cinéma, Paris, Edition Nathan 1990, Pg.25 classical music instrument, makes the process of abstraction problematic. The absence of the connotations and relationships of the sample with the physical activity that produced it are described as reduced listening: Pierre Schaeffer gave the name reduced listening to the listening mode that focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and of its meaning.4 To finish there is another category of listening mode which is important to mention: the Semantic listening. I call semantic listening that which refers to a code or a language to interpret a message: spoken language, of course, as well as Morse and other such codes.5 About Louis Andriessen and Luca Francesconi Despite the twelve years that separate the two productions, with inevitable differences in sound manipulation techniques and electronic instruments, both Andriessen's Writing to Vermeer (1999) and Francesconi's Quartett (2011) exemplify two possible uses of the electronics into a dramatic work. Despite the qualitative differences of the sound samples and the entirely opposite use of them into the opera, both composers gave a strong dramaturgical function to the tape and framed it into specific moments. Writing to Vermeer (1999) by Louis Andriessen Opera in six scenes for 3 women, 2 children, women's chorus and orchestra. Electronic music inserts by Michel van der Aa. Libretto by Peter Greenaway. The opera has a specific place and time in which the events are set: Johannes Vermeer's household in Delft, May 1672. Synopsis Vermeer has left his household of women and children in Delft to spend fourteen days in The Hague. The women write to him, six letters from his wife, Catherine Bolnes, six letters from his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, and six letters from his model, Saskia de Vries. They write of domestic 4 Idem Pg.29 5 Idem Pg.28 arrangements, the activities of Vermeer’s children, marriage plans, domestic accidents, but most of all they write to Vermeer to tell him to hurry back home. They miss him, they miss his company, they miss his presence and his affection [...].6 Scheme of the electroacoustic parts of Writing to Vermeer according to the CD published by Nonesuch Records (USA) in 2006. Scene/Tracks INSERT Timing SAMPLE TYPE SCENE 1 I 07' 51'' → 08' 20' BELLS SCENE 2 II 05' 58'' → 06' 30'' EXPLOSIONS SCENE 3 --- --- III 03' 40'' → 04' 10'' OBJECTS UNDER WATER IV 06' 52'' → 07' 42'' LIQUID / WITH ORCHESTRAL CHORDS SCENE 4 V 11' 30'' → 12' 35'' GUN SHOTS, PEOPLE SCREMING, RUNNING STEPS VI 13' 50'' → 16' 25'' SOUNDSCAPE / FROM A BOAT WITH CALM YOUNG VOICES AND LAUGHS VII 05' 32'' → 06' 15'' METAL SOUNDS / AS SWORD FIGHT SCENE 5 VIII 10' 25'' → 11' 10'' ADHESIVE TAPE, LIQUID AND ORCHESTRAL SOUNDS IX 05' 45'' → 06' 59'' ORCHESTRA CHORDS, QUOTE J. B. LULLY, WATER SCENE 6 X 17' 20'' → to END ORCHESTRA SOUNDS, WATER FLOOD, CHOIR, FINAL EXPLOSION The listening of the opera reveals that all the various samples are mostly worked, filtered and reassembled, yet the original sound-sources remain well recognizable.
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