Preamble

 

The academic musical analysis leans on a score, a paper covered with graphics which are the signs of a code, the music theory. The music theory enables to identify notes and rhythms and to order an instrumentation.

The system of the western music, said "classical music", offered a wide field of creativity to the composers stemming from this culture. They invested in this field since the Renaissance, and they exploit it even nowadays. Let us retain three fundamental aspects:

The perfection of the instrument-making, an accomplished art which produced instruments with precise, diverse and complementary playings (wood, brass instruments, strings, percussions).

The standardization of the writing, by determination of scales of pitches for sounds and by synchronization on some simple rhythms; what enables the orchestra to play harmoniously and in cadence, thanks to a simple or refined score which plans a sort of scientific division of the interpreters'work.

The status of the music as an autonomous art, being able to exist independently of the religious rites, of the theater, and even of the dance.

The writing of the music on a score enabled to separate the phase of musical creation from the phase of performance by musicians. At first this progress freed the genius of the composer from the material contingencies of permanent provision of an orchestra. Then, before the invention of the recording, it enabled the perpetuation of his work during the next centuries.

Two contemporary phenomena led to us to rethink our listening of the music and our musical language:

The globalization of the culture makes us discover the other musics (which our egocentricity makes us call " extra European "); these musics pass on their strength of evocation by ways indescribable by the music theory and the classical analysis: tonality and tone nuances, rhythmic variety, spontaneous expression.

The technical possibility of electroacoustic sound synthesis, with its new resources: storage (at first, tapes, now, digital media), montage (mixing, cut and paste, editing), dynamic filtering, algorithmic synthesis, automation (software); so the field of experiment covers all the extent of the audible, without other technical constraint than the quality of the place of listening and the availability of the listeners.

Our musical imaginary potential is thus widened. We suggest to update its topography, identifying new landmarks and describing the objects which we discover there. We shall use this knowledge afterward to speak better about the music, and to make the music.