Music 680: Electronics in Performance
Fall 2004
Lecture 10: November 22, 2004

Luigi Nono / Omaggio a Gyorgy Kurtag for contralto, flute, clarinet, tuba, and electronics (1983 r. 1986)
extremely spare and fragile instrumental world: how much discontinuity can the music sustain?
	extended techniques in every part
		close collaboration with the original performers; writing tuned to their specific abilities
		typically envoice the difficulty of their production; obviously demanding techniques
	extreme uses of register (especially in the tuba and contralto parts)
		tuba is frequently used as a middle or upper voice in a sonority!
	extreme uses of dynamics (pppppp)
	lengthy silences
composing out Kurtag's name
	contralto's text is entirely made of phonemes from "Gyorgy Kurtag"
	association of "k" stop-plosive with (unusual) loud dynamics
	association of "t" stop-plosive with "noise": fluttertongue, tremoli, trills
harmonic language
	typical procedure involves a cluster of microtones (distributed across a few octaves)
	often there is one "outlying" pitch, more likely to help establish a fused sonority
	this is much a timbral procedure as a pitch procedure!
	the piece progresses from closely-spaced clusters to more "open" sonorities
		"intervallic wedge" although the registral distribution obscures the process
electronics as discoloration and discontinuity
	basic techniques: pitch-shifting, filtering, delay, reverberation, spatialization
	delay and reverberation as decay, faded recollection
		consider the ways in which reverberation reduces high frequency content over time
	dissociating recollections from sources
		through spatialization; through delay as "capture and hold"; through spectral alteration
	performers typically respond to electronics with silence
	[conductor's ability to grade these responses via tempo changes]
	as with harmonic language, process governs use of electronics
		gradual move towards the more "obtrusive" and substantial treatments
political contexts & collaboration
understanding processes retrospectively as opposed to tracing them through the work
	fluidity of environment rather than a goal-directed experience

pd: reverb, harmonization
	delay: as a review
	filters: as a review
		[testing the sharpness of bp~ using env~]
	rev3~ and friends
		techniques involved: early reflections as comb filters, generalized reverb as allpass filters
	miller's harmonizer patch as an application of vd~
		[demonstrate using simpler techniques]
	halaphon: reasonable simulation using constant-power panning