Music 680: Special Topics in Music Theory - Electronics in Performance (Fall 2006)
Class 11: November 20, 2006

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
			starting from three-quarters of a tone (mm. 3-5)
			ending with the span of a minor sixth (and this sonority is without microtonal inflection)
	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

electronic resources in Nono's work: reverb, harmonization, filterbank, halaphon
	simulating spatial movement with constant-power panning
		(though it would be even better to do the math for doppler shift)
	testing filter intensity using env~

preview of next week: Kaija Saariaho Noanoa (score on reserve)
	Jonathan Berger The Lead Plates of the ROM Press
	score-following technology as breaking the limitations of tape