École Nationale des Beaux Arts of Lyons (Amphitheatre)

Ever since the advent of technologies of sound and digital instrument design, the composer has had access to an unprecedented aural panoply for renewing the very bases of his writing. The syntax has become more complex, ‘technologised’, and instead of a harmony treatise there is often an operating manual for these new tools.
The laboratories of musical research have become invaluable to composers in the development of their projects. No longer solitary craftsmen-demiurges, they have become musical entrepreneurs, supervising and co-ordinating a collective dynamic of multidisciplinary talents in the service of the project.
What roles and new qualities must composers adopt today, given the permanent acceleration and mutation of technological and æsthetic evolution? Between the temptation of the absolute control of sound and the abandonment of the creator’s prerogatives in works that are shared, what new relationships do composers have with their work? In what way and in what training venues can this epistemological mutation of creation be transmitted today?

The encounters are grouped into four round tables:

Morning session: Can composition be shared?

. at 9h: Welcome by Yves Robert, director of Enba-Lyon, Benoît Thiebergien, president of Futurs Composés and James Giroudon, artistic director of Grame
Co-ordination and mediation Gilles Grand, composer, teacher of sound technologies at Enba-Lyon

1. Music on a plate

. at 9h15: Introduction by Jean-Baptiste Barrière, composer, multimedia artiste

. from 9h30 to 10h30: Round table
Alone or in a team, on paper (the score) or with a demo (the studio), how does the composer today design the architecture of his musical project together with the conditions of its public representation on stage? What new dialectic must be found in the to-and-fro between individual work on conception and the collaborative phases of production and diffusion with the technical teams? From the auditorium to the public venue, how does the composer become involved in the new platforms for music?
Raphaël Cendo, composer
Pierre Sauvageot, composer and director of Lieux Publics in Marseilles
Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber, composer

2. The specialists behind the scenes

Introduction by Luc Martinez, composer, sound and multimedia conceptor

. from 11h to 12h: Round table
From the instrumentalist behind his stand to the sound engineer behind the mixing table, from the scenographer to the stage manager, a team of specialists - visible and invisible - is busy turning the composer’s score into sound waves. How is this indispensable relationship with these new performers built up? Similarly, does multi-disciplinarity, ever more present in composers’ preoccupations, imply that a common language must be found with the other arts or that other forms of writing and relationships with the public should be envisaged?
Daniel Deshays, co-ordinator of the Department of Sound at Ensatt-Lyon
Jean-Pierre Jourdain, artistic director of the TNP-Villeurbanne
Jean-François Laporte, composer and instrument maker
Tom Mays, composer, musical IT creator

. from 12h to 13h: Debates with the public and expert witnesses: Yuval Pick, choreographer, artistic director of The Guests Company. Conclusion: Thierry De Mey, composer, video artiste, co-director of Charleroi-Danse
 

Afternoon: Can composition be transmitted?

Co-ordination and mediation Henry Fourès, composer

. from 14h30 to 14h45: presentation of the inquiry led by the NACRe (Jean-Claude Lartigot) ‘Guide to training in musical composition’.
Introduction by Daniel Durney, musicology lecturer, University of Bourgogne

1. Becoming a composer

. from 14h45 to 15h45: Round table
From a collective course to the master-pupil relationship, what are the pathways to training open to a new composer today? How can a composer construct an individual language unaffiliated to styles and schools? How can a personal pathway be chosen from the growing multiplicity and interaction of approaches, æsthetics and musical practices?
Vincent Carinola, composer
Keyvan Chemirani, musician, composer
Luis Naon, teacher of new technologies applied to composition at the Paris Conservatory
Robert Pascal, composer, composition teacher at the Lyons Conservatory

2. Transmitting music

. from 16h to 17h: Round table
How does the institution accompany the various transformations of the apprenticeship of the composer’s craft, how can it respond to the diversity of individual choice? How does it accompany today the atypical paths that associate the various cultures of rock, improvised, traditional and electronic music with the fundamentals of ‘art’ music?
Olivier Bernard, Cultural Division of the Sacem
Patrick Millet, teacher at the Lyons Conservatory
Michel Pascal, composer, teacher at the Nice Regional Conservatory
Jean-Marc Weber, composer, teacher/co-ordinator of the sound centre at the Chalon-sur-Saône Regional Conservatory

. from 17h to 18h: Debates with the public and expert witnesses:
Gilles Laval, head of the Department of Rock at the Villeurbanne Conservatory and Bernard Descôtes, musical director of APEJS
Conclusion: Emmanuel Tibloux, director of the École Supérieure d'Art et Design in Saint Étienne

Professional meeting organised by Futurs Composés - national network for musical creation, in partnership with the Cdmc, the NACRe, Grame/Biennale Musiques en Scène and the Enba of Lyons