14/05/2016

h.17 Auditorium San Fedele

Jonathan Prager
Acousmatic Virtuoso

Performs 

Bernard Parmégiani 
Capture éphémère (1967, 12′)
Métamorphose du vide (La Création du monde, mouvement II, 1984, 23′)
Pour en finir avec le pouvoir d’Orphée (1972, 23’40)

Sound engeneer and technical support: Filippo Berbenni, Giovanni Cospito

In collaboration with Conservatory of Music of Milan and Institut Français de Culture de Milan

A one-hour program entirely dedicated to Bernard Parmégiani, the most important author of acousmatic music, who passed away in 2013, who introduced the symphonic-coloristic dimension in electronic music. Three central works of the French musician’s production. Capture éphémère from 1967, Parmégiani’s first experience with four tracks, a reference point in the production of GRM (Gruope Recherches Musiques) for the complexity and variety of the manipulations carried out. The sounds glide and intertwine like sound anamorphoses. Métamorphose du vide is the central part of the great sound fresco La Création du monde, from 1984, certainly Parmégiani’s most important acousmatic work. In the work Pour en finir avec le pouvoir d’Orphée, from 1972, the continuums and repeated, screwed sounds lead to almost hypnotic spirals. With this work, the author declares that he has tried to overcome certain stylistic and formal choices that are too familiar. Here, the kinetics of sounds are no longer manifested through masses or agglomerations but through sound units each endowed with an internal movement: overlapping trajectories, cycles with the evolution of timbres. These cycles or repetitions are of a cosmic, organic or biological order, but similarly they are musical and organized on vital rhythms. THE ACUSMATIC MUSIC The acousmatic music repertoire constitutes a particular type of electronic music fixed on a support and listened to through loudspeaker systems. Since the 1950s, on the model of Pierre Schaeffer, this musical genre has spread on a global scale, attracting various generations of composers with different styles and creative procedures. The term acousmatic recalls the name given by Pythagoras to his way of teaching philosophy to his disciples, behind a veil and in the dark, to make the disciples more attentive to his speech. The loudspeaker is the metaphor of the veil of Pythagoras. Acousmatic music aims to develop the sense of listening, imagination and mental perception of sounds. A fundamental role in this musical genre is that of the interpreter who reworks and redesigns the composition on a fixed support according to the room and the acusmonium at his disposal.