English

Sustainable Live Electroacoustic Music

by Nicola Bernardini (Conservatorio di Padova) and Alvise Vidolin (Conservatorio di Venezia)

4.3. Boulez, Dialogue de l’Ombre

Pierre Boulez’s Dialogue de l’Ombre Double (1984), for solo clarinet and live electronics, provides another brilliant earlier example. The electroacoustic setting implies in this case some special miking of the clarinet, a natural reverberator built out of the resonances of a piano and the performance of a (recorded) “shadow” clarinet in a spatialized context in transitional passages between (real) clarinet solos.

Figure 5. Boulez, Dialogue de l’Ombre Double
Transition description (example)

Each passage is described in plain words in a separate part of the score (fig. 5). Levels and volumes of each of the elements are expressed in proportional form in tenths (i.e. 1/10, 2/10, ... ), timings are in seconds, and sound location is expressed in terms of speakers going on or off at given cues in the score (again, in orchestra/score functional distribution — cf. fig. 6). No references to specific technologies are made.

Dialogue de l’Ombre Double is a difficult virtuoso piece both for the clarinet part and for the live electronics part. However, it can be easily picked up, studied and re-interpreted from the score alone (9). There are indeed a few problems in the correct interpretation of dynamic balances (the scales are neither scientific [0dB, −12dB, etc.] nor musical [mf, fff, etc.]), but the overall scheme is very well thought out and it enforces sustainability.

Figure 6. Boulez, *Dialogue de l’Ombre Double* — Sound location description.

4.4. Nono, das Atmende Klarsein

Luigi Nono’s scores of his late electroacoustic works have always been seriously endangered: the early scores derived from his manuscript were really too scarce in providing information to reconstruct a work from that repertoire. These works could only be performed by an extremely small group of gifted musicians which were personally trained and instructed by Nono for each work, and the electronics were no exception to this.

However, musicians and technicians along with the Archivio Luigi Nono have collected abundant notes and documentation over the years to reconstruct the late works in every details, and when publisher BMG-Ricordi decided to provide a new edition to each of these works, they were ready to answer the call.

Nono’s das Atmende Klarsein (1987) is one of the first examples of this daunting endeavor, and it is indeed one of the most optimal examples so far.

Figure 7. Nono, das Atmende Klarsein — Processing description (example)

Here too, the score is provided with a detailed description of each processing along with a graphic pattern for performance (fig. 8). In addition, the 2005 edition of score comes with a DVD which contains:

a historical introduction to the genesis of the work;
a commented performance (both for the flute and the live electronics parts);
an audio glossary of flute effects;
an introduction to the performance of the live electronics part;
an overview of the performance practices of the choir;

Most comments and introductions are provided by the performers who actually worked with Nono on the première of the work.

Figure 8. Nono, das Atmende Klarsein — Score excerpt

It should be noted that the DVD does not carry a simple recording of the complete performance. As stated above (cf. §2), a simple recording would probably jeopardize the possibility of other interpretations. das Atmende Klarsein is the closest example so far to an optimum scoring system for live electroacoustic music. A useful addition could be, here too, the presence of impulse responses for each processing element, and the replacement of references to specific hardware (i.e. the Halaphon — which is nonetheless a well-documented instrument though) with the abstract functionalities of that hardware.

4.5. More Difficult Problems: Spatialization

Representation of sound location in space still remains a harder problem to solve. Solutions such as the one adopted in Boulez’s Dialogue de l’Ombre Double (cf. fig. 6) work for relatively simple movements and settings. When things get more complicated, the space-time characteristic of sound location still poses great challenges to concise symbolic notation that can be learned by performers out of the score alone.

Conclusions

We hope to have raised with this paper the attention over a problem whose solution is ever more urgent: that of the sustainability of live electroacoustic music works.

Since the first draft of this paper we have noticed at least one other paper devoted precisely to this issue (cf. Polfreman et al) in a knowledgeable and documented way. The authors provide interesting case studies of work reconstructions of two complex works by Luigi Nono (Quando Stanno Morendo, Diario Polacco No.2 and Omaggio a György Kurtag). However, these studies concentrate on the technology needed today to reconstruct the pieces, and they fail to consider that the real “infinite” reproduction can only be obtained by creating adequate notation and transcription methods. The authors rely on specific current technology and hardware, thus simply postponing the problem to a later stage, maybe ten, twenty or thirty years from now.

Instead, we strongly maintain that live electroacoustic works will stand a better chance of sustainability if their score will rely upon:

low technology or no technology at all (paper, ink, standard measure units, etc.);
redundancy of sources (wider diffusion, perhaps obtained via P2P technologies and open licensing schemes);
isolated audio and impulse response examples recorded following standardized codings on sufficiently diffused media (such as the CD or the DVD media, though we acknowledge the problems which these media may encounter fifty years from now);
last but not least, active communities of co-operating performers which will be conscious enough to share and document their experiences (implying of course the ongoing performances of the works themselves).

In particular, any dependency on any form of computing platform and software should be strongly avoided in the scores.

References

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