EMS Proceedings and Other Publications
"Form und Struktur" Different aspects of analyzing electroacoustic music: Analysis of the compositional process - analysis of the audible result
Rudolf Frisius
In a letter to Erwin Stein Arnold Schoenberg spoke about two different points of view which are (according not only to their difference but also to their relation) important for musical analysis not only of instrumental, but also of electroacoustic musik: a) to analyze how a musical work is made and b) to analyze what this work is.
a) In the first case we try to describe a work as a result of compositional procedures. In this case it can be useful to examine not only the final work but also external informations and other materials (for examples compositional sketches in the case of written/score-based music or, especially in the case of electroacoustic musik, informations about certain details of sound-production and -transformation and -composition and/or recordings of basic sounds incl. their transformations, collages, misings etc.). Here our main interest is to know how the work has been made and to try a (more or less hypothetical) reconstruction of the compositional process.
b) In the second case we try to descriebe what we hear in the work as a (more or less) definitive auditive result (for example segmentations, identications of certain sounds incl. their transformations and constellations and of audible processes of sonic evolution).On the basis of different previous publications (examples can be found e. g. in the encyplopedia "Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart" and on my homepage and in diferent volumes of the "Versffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung", ed. Schott Mainz, e. g. in the volumes "Musik und Technik", "Klang und Wahrnehmung", "Stimme") it ist possible to describe different possibilitieres of analyzing electroacoustic music according to the aspects a) and b) and their interrelations not only in early examples of concrete and electonic and electoacoustic music, but also in later examples wchich illutrate historical developments and consequenes, for example:
MUSIQUE CONCRÈTE: Schaeffer: Etudes de bruit, L’oiseau RAI, Suite 14, Etude aux objets 1er mouvement Schaeffer/Henry: Bidule en ut, Symphonie pour un homme seulBayle: L’oiseau chanteurHenry: Journal de mes sons, La dixième Symphonie de BeethovenMUSIQUE ELECTRONIQUE:Stockhausen: Studie I, Studie IIEvangelisti: Incontri di fasce sonoreKoenig: Essay, Terminus
MUSIQUE ELECTROACOUSTIQUE: Stockhausen:Hymnenexamples of young composers e.g. Hans Tutschku, Ludger Brümmer, Pei-Yu ShihThe analytical studies are based on and linked with graphical computer notations and computer-generates sound-reconstructions (CSound) and with examples for a CD-Rom-project in preparation.