ZÜRCHER MUSIKSTUDIEN 10 Germán Toro Pérez & Lucas Bennett (Eds) The Performance Practice of Electroacoustic Music This book is dedicated to the topic of performance of electroacoustic music, focusing mainly on the production of RAI’s Studio di Fonologia in Milan between the 1950s and 1970s. It is the result of an in-depth dialogue between musicology and musical practice, presenting musicological and practice-based contributions, some dealing with specific problems of performance practice, in particular the analysis and interpretation of the aesthetic prerequisites and production conditions of the repertoire from a musicological perspective, others focusing on specific works and on their realisation from a performer’s perspective. Overall, this publication is intended as a contribution to the performance culture of the repertoire. Germán Toro Pérez studied composition and electroacoustic music. His catalogue in- cludes instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed compositions, music theater and works in collaboration with graphic design, painting and experimental video. Since 2007 he is director of the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology and professor for composition at the Zurich University of the Arts. The Performance Practice of Electroacoustic Music Electroacoustic of Practice The Performance Germán Toro Pérez & Lucas Bennett (Eds) The Performance Practice of Electroacoustic Music The Studio di Fonologia years Germán Toro Pérez & Lucas Bennett (Eds) Bennett & Lucas Pérez Germán Toro ZÜRCHER MUSIKSTUDIEN ISBN 978-3-0343-3118-0 ZÜRCHER MUSIKSTUDIEN 10 Germán Toro Pérez & Lucas Bennett (Eds) The Performance Practice of Electroacoustic Music This book is dedicated to the topic of performance of electroacoustic music, focusing mainly on the production of RAI’s Studio di Fonologia in Milan between the 1950s and 1970s. It is the result of an in-depth dialogue between musicology and musical practice, presenting musicological and practice-based contributions, some dealing with specific problems of performance practice, in particular the analysis and interpretation of the aesthetic prerequisites and production conditions of the repertoire from a musicological perspective, others focusing on specific works and on their realisation from a performer’s perspective. Overall, this publication is intended as a contribution to the performance culture of the repertoire. Germán Toro Pérez studied composition and electroacoustic music. His catalogue in- cludes instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed compositions, music theater and works in collaboration with graphic design, painting and experimental video. Since 2007 he is director of the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology and professor for composition at the Zurich University of the Arts. The Performance Practice of Electroacoustic Music Electroacoustic of Practice The Performance Germán Toro Pérez & Lucas Bennett (Eds) The Performance Practice of Electroacoustic Music The Studio di Fonologia years Germán Toro Pérez & Lucas Bennett (Eds) Bennett & Lucas Pérez Germán Toro ZÜRCHER MUSIKSTUDIEN THE PERFORMANCE PRACTICE OF ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC ZÜRCHER MUSIKSTUDIEN INTERDISCIPLINARYBand 10 STUDIES ON CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE Vol.Herausgegeben 17 von Dominik Sackmann Edited by Nicolas Hayoz, Jens Herlth & Julia Richers PETER LANG Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien GERMÁN TORO PÉREZ, LUCAS BENNETT (EDS) VEDRAN DŽIHIĆ, THE PERFORMANCEMAGDALENA PRACTICE SOLSKA OF (eds) ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC CRISISThe Studio GOVERNANCE di Fonologia years IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, CROATIA AND SERBIA The Study of Floods in 2014 PETER LANG Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933133 ISSN 1660-8739 pb. ISSN 2235-5790 eBook ISBN 978-3-0343-3118-0 pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-3119-7 eBook ISBN 978-3-0343-3120-3 EPUB ISBN 978-3-0343-3121-0 MOBI DOI 10.3726/11668 Open Access: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This publication has been peer reviewed. © GERMÁN TORO PÉREZ, LUCAS BENNETT (EDS), 2018 Peter Lang AG International Academic Publishers Bern Contents Germán Toro Pérez Historically informed performance in electroacoustic music? The Studio di Fonologia years as a case study ..................................................... 7 Ulrich Mosch Some problems of the present-day realisation of historical electronic pieces .......19 Angela Ida De Benedictis The beginnings of the Studio di Fonologia Musicale and Bruno Maderna’s Notturno .......................................................................... 25 Veniero Rizzardi «There’s always only the first page». On the ambivalent relation between sound and notation in some early electroacoustic music, and the problems of modern editions ............................................................................................. 43 Pascal Decroupet A question of «versions»!? Three case studies about «performing» tape compositions of the 1950s (taken from the European repertoire)...................... 63 Kilian Schwoon The revision of Henri Pousseur’s Rimes at Tempo Reale ................................... 87 Germán Toro Pérez Auctorial Tradition and Contemporary Practice: Performing Musica su due dimensioni by Bruno Maderna ............................... 93 Alvise Vidolin Sound direction of 1950s and 1960s tape pieces from the Studio di Fonologia .....113 6 Contents Pascal Decroupet (Transcription and text edition) Henri Pousseur. Three source texts concerning Rimes pour différentes sources sonores ............................................................................... 137 About the authors ............................................................................................. 149 Register ............................................................................................................ 153 Germán Toro Pérez Historically informed performance in electroacoustic music? The Studio di Fonologia years as a case study After more than 60 years, the term performance practice in the context of elec- troacoustic music seems to be established in professional circles.1 However, the notion of the interpretation of electroacoustic music, at least of its purely electronic, non-instrumental parts, is not self-evident for experienced audiences and even for professional musicians who are not familiar with the repertoire. It is still not generally understood that this activity requires not only technological, but also musical knowledge, as well as specific performative abilities and artistic sensitivity. The practice, however, must also be further developed and consolidated inwardly. Performers have to become aware of the complexity of their task and create the conditions necessary to realise artistically valid performances. As there is no consolidated performance culture today, it is a common occur- rence for electroacoustic works to be performed without taking into account their musical and structural properties, their historical context or possible performance traditions, or for them to be realised with inadequate or technically faulty material. In some cases, this may be due to the often incomplete documentation or difficult access to unambiguous performance material. In any case, the impermanence of technical setups, and this includes all support types and instruments, adds to the difficulty of establishing favourable conditions for adequate performances. This problem is obviously more acute when dealing with works by composers of past generations. However, even the performance of works by living composers can present great challenges to performers, especially when they require specific setups or when they are inadequately documented. 1 The term electroacoustic is used here as a general term denoting a multitude of historically and aesthetically conditioned cultures of electronic music within which in the course of time, different forms of concert practice have evolved. It includes purely electroacoustic works stored on fixed media, as well as works combined with instruments, interfaces and setups for electronic real-time processing, as well as works involving multimedia and extended performative concepts in different formats. This list clearly demonstrates the range of technological, aesthetical and performative settings that electroacoustic performance practice has to cover today. 8 Germán Toro Pérez Electroacoustic performance practice, just like instrumental performance practice, therefore has to rely on thorough philological, historical and techno- logical knowledge. It, too, has to establish aesthetical criteria based on a critical dialogue between history and present and must rely on craftsmanship and musi- cal sensitivity in its realisations. Nonetheless, the contributions on historically informed performance practice and the critical examination of its discourses2 illustrate the tension between the quest for historical foundation on the one hand and a presentation of the music oriented towards the present on the other hand, as well as