ResearchWorks: DPfM: Innovative approaches to studying music using interactive software

Interactive aural analysis is an innovative approach to the study of music. Traditionally analysis of music has been largely paper based and notation centred. Software now enables students to interact with music aurally and dynamically, using audio and video recordings, facilitating a broader range of approaches including, for example, issues important to performance studies, and expanding the repertoire of music studied beyond those notated in standard Western notation (e.g. aural traditions, improvisation).This presentation will describe the development of this approach in a recent ERC-funded project ‘Interactive Research in Music as Sound’ (IRiMaS) led by Michael Clarke at the University of Huddersfield and the dissemination of its outcomes in the current ‘Digital Playgrounds for Music’ (DPfM) project (with Frédéric Dufeu and Maria Sappho). It will demonstrate the use of this approach in the context of a study of Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression by Paul Archbold and the cellist Lucas Fels in collaboration with the composer. Using the software, video recordings of the composer working with Fels on the piece and discussing and demonstrating the extended techniques used in this work are combined with other analytical techniques such as sonograms to present a multi-faceted approach to this seminal work.

Speakers:

Paul Archbold is a professor in the Electronic & Produced Music department at Guildhall School and Associate Fellow at ILCS in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. He has held lectureships at the universities of Huddersfield, Durham and Kingston and was Director of the Institute of Musical Research, University of London from 2011 to 2015. His compositions have been performed and broadcast internationally, published by Composers Edition and recorded on Wind-Up: chamber music by Paul Archbold and Fabrice Fitch (Metier). In collaboration with the film-makers Colin Still and David Lefeber, he has made several films exploring the collaborative process between composers and performers featuring the Arditti Quartet, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Wolfgang Rihm and Helmut Lachenmann.

Michael Clarke is professor of music at the University of Huddersfield. He is a composer who has worked extensively with developing and using software as an integral part of his compositional process. He has also been involved over many years in the development of software for music analysis and pedagogy. He won European Academic Software Awards on a record three occasions and was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant (€2.5m) for the IRiMaS project (2017-2023). Michael currently leads its successor DPfM. He is co-author with Frédéric Dufeu and Peter Manning of Inside Computer Music (OUP, 2020).

Guildhall School’s ResearchWorks is a programme of events centred around the School’s research activity, bringing together staff, students and guests of international standing. We run regular events throughout the term intended to share the innovative research findings of the School and its guests with students, staff and the public.