The Orchestra as a Resource for Electroacoustic Music: On some works by Iannis Xenakis and Paul Dolden

Di Scipio, Agostino

2004

Interface - Journal of New Music Research 33(2): 161-171.

Language: English

In this article, the author analyses two tape pieces that contain orchestral elements and that reflect contrasting views concerning the use of music technology in the creative process: Iannis Xenakis' Hibiki-Hana-Ma (1970) and Paul Dolden's Below the Walls of Jericho (1988-89). The author looks to his observations concerning perceptual/cognitive phenomena, and the ways in which technological devices have been adopted into the compositional process when addressing questions such as: what defines these types of works as electroacoustic music rather than orchestra music that for some reasons was recorded on tape?; and how was it that Xenakis, the author of some of the most utterly synthetic and abstract works that ever appeared in the history of electroacoustic music, turned for some years to musical works predominantly made of (largely recognisable) recorded orchestra sounds?