Workshop: The “Polymorphic Instrument” in Georgia Spiropoulos’s Roll… n’ Roll… n’ Roll for Harp and Live Electronics

Abstract

Georgia Spiropoulos composed Roll…n’Roll…’Roll for solo harp and electronics in 2015 as a commission by IRCAM and Radio France for the harpist Hélène Breschand. “In this cycle of pieces,” Spiropoulos writes, “the classical harp is a polymorphic instrument, at once acoustic and ‘prepared’ by the computer. The harp becomes both a spatial instrument (space of listening, space of composition, an intimate sonic space projected outward) and a micro-orchestra, an archaic instrument and a sonic mobile.” This workshop will explore aspects of compositional process, performance interactions, and instrumental transformations across the five movements of the piece: Tourbillon, Shig, Mobile, Texture, and Paris qui crie.

The piece began with a “studio experimentation phase,” allowing the composer, harpist, and computer music designer to explore various sounds, musical ideas, and electronic transformations. Many of the work’s unusual playing techniques were developed at this stage, and sound samples were collected for later use in the piece. Computer-aided composition with the software application OpenMusic is an essential part of the next stage of composition, resulting in a written score plus an interactive electronic “patch” using Max/MSP and Antescofo. Through interactions with the electronics, the harp’s sounds are transformed and spatialized in complex and overlapping ways. As the composer states, “In working with the harp, I was very interested in the opposition between this ancient instrument and a music technology which can augment, respect, or hide the identity of the instrument. The harp is transformed: it becomes a classical harp, a harp orchestra, a toy, or a strange unknown instrument.”

Biographies

Music theorist and composer Robert Hasegawa joined the faculty of the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in 2012. His research interests include contemporary music, spectralism, psychoacoustics, timbre, and orchestration. Recent projects include studies of music by Georgia Spiropoulos, Rebecca Saunders and Pascale Criton, writings on extended just intonation and other microtonal techniques, a chapter on the role of creative constraints in contemporary compositional practice, and applications of transformational theory to the analysis of music by George Benjamin and Georg Friedrich Haas. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Orchestration Studies.

California-born, Montréal-Based Alex Tibbitts is The Bionic Harpist , quite literally. Classically trained, Tibbitts has since been dedicated to new forms of gestural and digital augmentation of the harp. Through real-time processing during her performances, she joins her instrument in a symbiotic dance, a metaphorical image made even more relevant by the fact that half of her body contains metal.

Tibbitts holds a Masters in Interpretation as well as a Diploma in Orchestral Repertoire from l’Université de Montréal, and is a member of McGill University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) since 2016. She is a founding member of Ensemble ILÉA, an electroacoustic improvisation ensemble, and has participated in writing academic articles dedicated to her area of research, such as Gestural Control of Augmented Instrumental Performance: A Case Study of the Concert Harp (2018).

Frédéric Le Bel graduated in 2011 at the University of Montreal where he studied composition with Philippe Leroux. In 2013, he completed a master’s degree from the Conservatory of Music in Montreal under the supervision of Serge Provost. From 2014 to 2019, he attended both Ircam’s cursus and obtained a PhD degree from the same institution for working on the development and the integration of ‘smart’ algorithms by and for sound design and music composition. Frédéric has also participated in several international academies such as the Impuls Academy in Austria and the ManiFeste Academy in France. His music has been awarded several times in Canada and has been performed in various international festivals such as the New Music Darmstadt in Germany, the Matera Intermedia in Italy and the Cluster New Music + Integrated Arts in Canada to name a few. His repertoire explores instrumental, acousmatic and mixed music. From soloist to symphonic orchestra, he has worked with numerous recognised artists such as Ricardo Descalzo, the TANA String Quartet, the Divertimento Ensemble, the Klangforum Wien and the CMM Orchestra. For him, composing is a mix of research, creation and confusion. Finally, the expression by the sound phenomenon through an architecture bearer of knowledge and meaning remains his greatest artistic preoccupation.