Abstracts
Abstract
Musical practices derived from post-1960s experimental music created heterogeneous musical materials and traces—including scores, preparations and instrument modifications, electronic instruments, custom-made devices, and recordings. The Romantic work concept on which most traditional musical archives are based is unsuitable to preserve this expanded apparatus of objects and concepts, and rethinking the musical archive is becoming urgent.
This colloquy collected the experiences of three researchers, engaging with five institutions, three creators, and four countries. Yet the archival issues presented are eerily similar. These experiences involve David Tudor (paper-based archive at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, and the David Tudor Instrument Collection at Wesleyan University, Midtown, CT); Mario Bertoncini (paper-based archive at the archive of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and his object collection at the moment stored at the Fondazione Isabella Scelsi, Rome); Gayle Young (who still owns all her production).
Keywords:
- archiving objects,
- music archive,
- experimental musics,
- musical instruments
Résumé
Les pratiques musicales dérivées de la musique expérimentale depuis les années 1960 ont produit des matériaux et des traces musicales hétérogènes, comprenant des partitions, des préparations et modifications d’instruments, des dispositifs personnalisées, des enregistrements. Le concept d’oeuvre sur lequel la plupart des archives musicales traditionnelles se fondent, remontant au romantisme, n’est pas adapté pour préserver ce complexe élargi d’objets et de concepts, et il est de plus en plus urgent de repenser les archives musicales.
Cette discussion rapproche les expériences de trois chercheur·e·s, qui s’intéressent à cinq institutions et trois créateur·rice·s dans quatre pays différents. Pourtant, les problèmes relatifs aux archives qu’on rencontre présentent des ressemblances troublantes. Ces expériences regardent : David Tudor (archives papier au Getty Research Institute à Los Angeles, Californie, et David Tudor Instrument Collection à la Wesleyan University à Midtown, Connecticut); Mario Bertoncini (archives papier aux archives de l’Akademie der Künste à Berlin et collection d’objets hébergée actuellement à la Fondazione Isabella Scelsi à Rome); Gayle Young (qui est toujours en possession de toute sa production).
Mots-clés :
- objets d’archives,
- archive musicale,
- musiques expérimentales,
- instruments musicaux
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Appendices
Biographical notes
Valentina Bertolani is a musicologist researching experimental and electronic music, and collective improvisation. She is working on a project titled “ARPOEXMUS: Archiving Post-1960s Experimental Music: Exploring the Ontology of Music beyond the Score-Performance Dichotomy,” funded by the European Commission through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral global fellowship and carried out at the University of Birmingham, United Kingom, and Carleton University, Canada. ARPOEXMUS addresses the theoretical, ontological, methodological, and ethical issues that arise from archiving the heterogeneous instruments, objects, electronic devices, software, and custom-built materials that have been at the heart of sonic arts for the past sixty years. http://www.valentinabertolani.info/
You Nakai makes music(ians), dance(rs), haunted musical houses, nursery rhymes, and other forms of performance as a member of No Collective (nocollective.com), and publishes experimental children’s books and other literary oddities as a member of Already Not Yet (alreadynotyet.org). His extensive research on David Tudor’s music has been published as Reminded by the Instruments: David Tudor’s Music (Oxford University Press, 2021). Other recent Tudor-related output includes the double LP+booklet, Monobirds: From Ahmedabad to Xenon (Topos, 2021). You is affiliated with the University of Tokyo, where he teaches curiosities such as “Archi-Choreographies,” “Zoomusic,” or “Fake Western Music History,” and hosts the Side Effects Laboratory of the University of Tokyo.
Luisa Santacesaria is a musician, musicologist, and curator. She graduated in piano at Scuola di Musica di Fiesole and musicology at the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage of Cremona (University of Pavia) with a master’s thesis on the relationship between sound and space in electro-acoustic music. She was music curator of the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato (2016–17). She works as a musicologist and curator with the Amici della Musica di Firenze concert season, the Centro Studi Luciano Berio, and with the research centre Tempo Reale, where she curates the experimental music concert season TRK Sound Club and the website musicaelettronica.it. Since 2019, she has been adjunct professor at the University of Florence. Together with Valentina Bertolani she collaborated for ten years with composer Mario Bertoncini as pianist and musicologist, and created the project Curating Diversity (curatingdiversity.org), focused on analyzing the cultural and inclusion policies within the Italian music system. She is a member of the collective of experimental music Blutwurst.
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