UFPr Arts Department
Electronic Musicological Review
Vol. 3/October 1998
Abstracts
Editorial/Home
PIERRE SCHAEFFER, 1953: TOWARDS AN EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC
An analysis of the relationship between Pierre Schaeffer and the musical avant-garde of 1953, with particular reference to Pierre Boulez and to Schaeffer's shift from musique concrète to recherche musicale. The main source is Schaeffer's 'Vers une musique expérimentale' (La revue musicale 236); extensive excerpts are translated here into English. The antagonism between the Paris and Cologne studios is discussed in the light of two different approaches to technology and tradition; for the exponents of elektronische Musik new technology was a means to perfect Western music, while for Schaeffer it was simply a means to make new musical discoveries.
Having graduated in Stage Direction from the Rio Grande do Sul University (UFRGS) and held research scholarships in composition and ethnomusicology from the Brazilian National Arts Foundation (FUNARTE), Carlos Palombini studied sound recording in Brixton (British Council), pursued postgraduate studies in music technology at the City University of London (Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology) and read for a Ph.D. in Music at the University of Durham (Brazilian Ministry of Education). He was a fellow of the National Research Council (CNPq) at the Communication and Semiotics Programme of the São Paulo Catholic University (PUCSP) and at the Contemporary Music Information Centre of Campinas University (CDMC-Brasil/Unicamp); he was a Rockefeller Fellow at the Anthropology Department of Campinas University (Unicamp); he is a Visiting Lecturer in Music at the University of Pernambuco (UFPE). Carlos Palombini has received the honorary title of Visiting Research Fellow in Music from the University of Sussex at Brighton and the Westrup Prize from Oxford University Press for the present essay. He has collaborated with the Computer Music Journal (Cambridge MA: MIT Press), Music & Letters (Oxford: OUP), MikroPolyphonie (Melbourne: La Trobe University), and Organised Sound (Cambridge: CUP). His essays appear in Eduardo Miranda's Informatica musical (Barcelona: L'Angelot) and Larry Sitsky's The Twentieth Century Music Avant-Garde: a Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport CT: Greenwood).
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