The influence of scientific theories on the renewal of forms in contemporary music

Friday 28 November 2014 - 09:30 to Saturday 29 November 2014 - 09:30

Coordination Márta Grabócz

Musicological enquiry into musical form has often been kept within the framework of a ‘mechanistic’ description or else one under the influence of Gestalttheorie (according to André Souris.) From the 1970s, those who truly tried to escape from the rigid, traditional and ‘mechanistic’ framework of formal conceptions, were the composers themselves. It was Xenakis and Ligeti who gave the initial impulse, while members of the following generation studied scientific works (on fractal geometry, catastrophe, chaos theory, the systems of Lindenmayer, astro-physics, semio-narrative structures, mathematical models, etc.).

In the course of these day sessions the attempt will be made to establish dialogues between composers, scientists and musicologists with the aim of learning more about the approach taken by creative artistes and to see the way in which they have been influenced by the study of scientific works. Did the reading of books by René Thom, Jean Petitot, Henri Atlan and other scientists provide merely metaphors for composition, or did the expansion of knowledge enable composers to develop a formal/structural system derived from the scientific models themselves?

With the participation of Jean-Pierre Changeux, Jean-Pierre Luminet, Jean Petitot, Henri Atlan, François Bayle, Alessio Elia, Tom Johnson, Fabien Lévy, Hector Parra, Jean-Claude Risset ; José Luis Besada, Moreno Andreatta, Marie-Cécile Barras, Jean-Marc Chouvel, Olivier Class, Nicolas Darbon, Nathalie Herold, Mihu Iliescu, Florent Jedrzejewski, Mikhail Malt, Pierre Michel, Laurent Pottier, Benny Sluchin, Ting-Ting Yang.

Partnership Cdmc – GREAM– Université de Strasbourg

 

    

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