Listening Beyond
The basic concept that guides the composition of this work is the generation of strong connections between two inharmonic realities: a soccer game and the contemporary concert music. The soccer game is read musically as a dramatic plot. Different connections are established between soccer and music throughout this plot. There are three kinds of connections:
1- Imagetic connections – concrete and referential sounds related with the soccer game are transformed in musical elements: a shooting on the ball is transformed in a percussive attack, a whistle of a referee is transformed in an instrumental tremolo, the horn sounds produced by the soccer fans inside a stadium are transformed in tense sound blocks.
2- Structural connections – team strategies are transformed in musical languages. The two teams establish two polarities. Each team is associated to one specific harmony. These harmonies make reference to different musical domains (baroque versus atonal). These two polarities produce a fight for their prominence into the listening. This is the main plot in this work, and its narrative is stressed by special sound movements among the speakers and by the transposition of the TV visual syntax onto the musical syntax.
3- Symbolic connections – the first half, the interval and the second half in a soccer game are transformed into three musical movements (Allegro, Intermezzo – which comments the Allegro – and Vivo). There are musical fragments, inside each movement, which transform the soccer player gestures into a waltz, into a baroque ornament, and into an electroacoustic sound that moves from on speaker to another.
The final result is an amplified reading of a soccer game as a dramatic plot, now transformed into a musical dramatic plot. The inharmonic connection between soccer and music changes the listening focus. Now, the listener can listen to a music that can be found in a soccer game, and can listen to a game that is possible to find inside a music.
* * *
This work is being composed from recorded sounds. These sounds are being transformed using electroacoustic tools, and are going to be mastered using the 5.1 format. This work is going to take about 11 minutes, and it is being composed at the private composer studio and at LIEM-CDMC, Madrid, Spain.
Edson Zampronha is a composer. He has been awarded twice by the São Paulo Association of Art Criticism, Brazil, and he has won together with SCIArts Group the 6th Sergio Motta Award – 2005, the most outstanding prize on Art and Technology in Brazil, for the installation “Poetic Attractor”. He has worked as a guest composer in different institutions as LIEM-CDMC (Madrid, Spain), Phonos Foundation (Barcelona, Spain), and the University of Birmingham (England). His compositions have been presented in outstanding concerts and contemporary music festivals: BEAST Concerts in Birmingham, Bourges Festival, Sonoimágenes in Buenos Aires, The Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella, JIEM in Madrid, and Brazilian Contemporary Music Biennial in Rio de Janeiro among others. His compositions are included in eight CDs released by different record labels and institutions. He is Professor of Musical Composition at the São Paulo State University, Brazil, where he coordinates the Music, Semiotics and Interactivity Research Group and he is Professor at the Doctorate course of Musicology at the Valladolid University, Spain. He is Ph.D. in Communication and Semiotics - Arts - at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. He has worked as guest researcher at the University of Helsinki (Finland), and as visiting professor at the Valladolid University, and Complutense University of Madrid, both in Spain. He is the author of the book Notation, Representation and Composition (São Paulo: Annablume). Web page: http://www.zampronha.com.
The basic concept that guides the composition of this work is the generation of strong connections between two inharmonic realities: a soccer game and the contemporary concert music. The soccer game is read musically as a dramatic plot. Different connections are established between soccer and music throughout this plot. There are three kinds of connections:
1- Imagetic connections – concrete and referential sounds related with the soccer game are transformed in musical elements: a shooting on the ball is transformed in a percussive attack, a whistle of a referee is transformed in an instrumental tremolo, the horn sounds produced by the soccer fans inside a stadium are transformed in tense sound blocks.
2- Structural connections – team strategies are transformed in musical languages. The two teams establish two polarities. Each team is associated to one specific harmony. These harmonies make reference to different musical domains (baroque versus atonal). These two polarities produce a fight for their prominence into the listening. This is the main plot in this work, and its narrative is stressed by special sound movements among the speakers and by the transposition of the TV visual syntax onto the musical syntax.
3- Symbolic connections – the first half, the interval and the second half in a soccer game are transformed into three musical movements (Allegro, Intermezzo – which comments the Allegro – and Vivo). There are musical fragments, inside each movement, which transform the soccer player gestures into a waltz, into a baroque ornament, and into an electroacoustic sound that moves from on speaker to another.
The final result is an amplified reading of a soccer game as a dramatic plot, now transformed into a musical dramatic plot. The inharmonic connection between soccer and music changes the listening focus. Now, the listener can listen to a music that can be found in a soccer game, and can listen to a game that is possible to find inside a music.
* * *
This work is being composed from recorded sounds. These sounds are being transformed using electroacoustic tools, and are going to be mastered using the 5.1 format. This work is going to take about 11 minutes, and it is being composed at the private composer studio and at LIEM-CDMC, Madrid, Spain.
Edson Zampronha is a composer. He has been awarded twice by the São Paulo Association of Art Criticism, Brazil, and he has won together with SCIArts Group the 6th Sergio Motta Award – 2005, the most outstanding prize on Art and Technology in Brazil, for the installation “Poetic Attractor”. He has worked as a guest composer in different institutions as LIEM-CDMC (Madrid, Spain), Phonos Foundation (Barcelona, Spain), and the University of Birmingham (England). His compositions have been presented in outstanding concerts and contemporary music festivals: BEAST Concerts in Birmingham, Bourges Festival, Sonoimágenes in Buenos Aires, The Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella, JIEM in Madrid, and Brazilian Contemporary Music Biennial in Rio de Janeiro among others. His compositions are included in eight CDs released by different record labels and institutions. He is Professor of Musical Composition at the São Paulo State University, Brazil, where he coordinates the Music, Semiotics and Interactivity Research Group and he is Professor at the Doctorate course of Musicology at the Valladolid University, Spain. He is Ph.D. in Communication and Semiotics - Arts - at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. He has worked as guest researcher at the University of Helsinki (Finland), and as visiting professor at the Valladolid University, and Complutense University of Madrid, both in Spain. He is the author of the book Notation, Representation and Composition (São Paulo: Annablume). Web page: http://www.zampronha.com.
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