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Reflections on the most recent year of the Musica nova competition.

Article Excerpt
Electro-acoustic (EA) music, defined as music composed and realised using electronic media (alone or in combination with acoustic instruments), is at the roots of what today is known also as "technical music", multifarious in genre but in most cases sharing a need for computer support. The charm and the weakness of this music lies in complete freedom in the choice of initial material, and the chance to model the acoustic microstructure, create connections at will from hard montage to smooth transitions from one sound to another, and model different depths of virtual space. Not everyone can cope with this degree of freedom, and there is a consequent major risk of dependence on already existing software, tried and tested stereotypes of sound and composition either in groups (associated with particular electronic studios) or individuals, even though such stereotypes may sometimes be chosen deliberately and symbolically, for example in the techno music with its depersonalised mechanised sound.

EA music was conceived in the womb of radio plays, sound movies, and the new possibilities of gramophone and tape recording at the end of the 1940s, but its expansion was conditioned not just the advances in technology that are usually put forward as the crucial factor behind the style, but also by changes in values, taste and our powers of acoustic discrimination. Looking back, the most influential technological changes were obviously the transition to commercial analogue synthesiser in the 1960s, then from the...

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