The role of behaviour in the analysis of electroacoustic music.
Dante Tanzi · 2007
The analytical discourse is generally based on two assumptions: that to some extent musical traits, forms and meanings can be considered stable, and that the application of a good rulegrid should produce reliable results. But electroacoustic music pieces are often characterised by multiple-writings and a complex plot of changes, to which the analyst has to oppose a plurality of analytical strategies. This means not only reflecting on basic assumptions of a composition, dissecting musical materials and reviewing procedures, but it also means operating choices based on declarative statements, and assessments which give rise to resulting behaviours. In their turn, analytical behaviours can relate either to some paradigmatic proposition or to a personal, subjective conjecture. While creating different expectations, each of these orientations imply choices that are destined to become carriers of particular cogency within the analytical discourse. Premise Since the mid-XX century, the customary use of codified rules for the description of musical events has been upset by two concomitant factors: the practice of concrete music, which introduced the possibility of de-contextualisation of characteristic traits of sonorous objects; the practice of electronic music, which opened the doors to the artificial construction of timbre within a continuum of frequencies. In the same period the increasing importance ascribed by composers to randomness and non-linearity suggested a general re-thinking of musical time. In the Seventies, the advent of computer music emphasised the aesthetics of the micro-phonic, staged by digital technology but oriented by the knowledge of psychoperceptive rules. At the end of the century sampling accelerated the hybridization of musical genres, while digital tools gave composers the freedom to try endless attunements of their works. Besides, both sampling and on-line communication produced a weakening of the author's monopoly over his artwork, created the premises for the irruption of differently intended authorship values and gave rise to a revival of the poetics of erraticity. As a whole, these practices represented a daunting challenge, since they produced musical results capable of by-passing the idea of linear development and introducing strong problems of analysis.