Osvaldo Budón

McGill University Composing with Objects,

555 Sherbrooke Street West
Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 1E3 Networks, and Time
[email protected]
Scales: An Interview
with Horacio Vaggione

In the context of electroacoustic and computer Career Path

music, Horacio Vaggione (see Figure 1) has
emerged as one of the most original composers Budón: Since the beginning of your activity, you
working today. Characterized by an unrelenting have worked in several countries, namely Argen-
flow of energy, the textures of his music often dis- tina, the United States, Spain, and France, where
play dense streams of very small sound particles you presently live. Throughout this journey, what
evolving at different densities and rates of speed. are the experiences and encounters that you recall
He has developed a unique approach to sound as being particularly influential or meaningful?
composition on multiple time scales. Vaggione: I was born in Argentina, where I lived
Born in Córdoba, Argentina in 1943, Mr. until 1968. I studied music composition at the Na-
Vaggione has been involved in the field of elec- tional University of Córdoba. My principal teachers
tronic music from an early age. He was co-founder were César Franchisena and Nicolás Alessio.
of the Experimental Music Center of the Univer- Franchisena was an experimentalist: he wrote
sity of Córdoba, Argentina. In Spain, he was a pieces in which the instruments had to be system-
member of the ALEA live electronic music group atically disassembled, producing a kind of concrète
and worked at the Computer Music Project at the instrumental music (Franchisena 1994). Alessio,
University of Madrid. Later he produced music at closer to tradition, had a very large technical
the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges knowledge and a broad view of music history. By
(GMEB), Institut National de l’Audiovisuel/Groupe the same time (early 1960s) I was in contact with
de Recherches Musicales (INA-GRM), the Institut Juan Carlos Paz, who introduced serial music in
de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique Argentina (Paz 1998). He composed his first serial
(IRCAM), the Institute of Sonology in The Hague, pieces in 1934, and wrote books about new music,
and the Technical University of Berlin. including an important essay on Schoenberg’s work
Currently Horacio Vaggione carries on multiple (Paz 1956, 1959). Many Argentinean composers did
activities as a composer, teacher, and researcher. benefit from his teachings and musical activities
Since 1978 he has been living in France, where he over four decades; so did I. I remain deeply grateful
is currently a professor of music at the Université to him. Juan Carlos Paz encouraged me to experi-
de Paris VIII and director of the Centre de Recher- ment in electronic music. I started my experiences
che Informatique et Création Musicale (CICM) at- in 1961 (I was 18 by then), working at the Center
tached to the École Doctorale Esthétique, Sciences for Research in Acoustics (CIAL) of the University
et Technologies des Arts of the University. of Córdoba, and since 1965 at the Arts School of the
In 1997–1998, I visited the Université de Paris same university. There some other musicians
VIII where I attended Mr. Vaggione’s graduate (Graciela Castillo, Oscar Bazán, Héctor Rubio,
seminar in computer music. The following inter- Virgilio Tosco) and myself created the Experimental
view was started then and later continued via elec- Music Center (EMC), having obtained, with the
tronic mail. help of Juan Carlos Paz, a grant from the National
Fund for the Arts (Davies 1967). In 1964 (I was then
Computer Music Journal, 24:3, pp. 9–22, Fall 2000 21) I went to Paris for the first time, met Pierre
© 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Schaeffer, visited the French Radio Studio and

Budón 9
Figure 1. Horacio
Vaggione. (Photo by Alex
Derben, Bremen.)

the thought-provoking seminar on philosophy of

music given by Daniel Charles, my thesis director.
Specially important for me, among the work of fac-
ulty members at Paris VIII, were the computer mu-
sic experiences of Giuseppe Englert (Englert 1981),
the theoretical work in artificial intelligence and
music analysis of Patrick Greussay (Greussay
1973), and the formalized music modeling tech-
niques of André Riotte (Riotte 1980).
Later, in 1981, I went to IRCAM, thanks to an in-
vitation from David Wessel, where in the following
years I composed several pieces using the Music 10
and Cmusic languages. Thanks to a grant from the
German Academic Exchange Agency (DAAD)—and
the willingness of Folkmar Hein—I was able to
work in 1987–1988 at the electronic studio of the
Berlin Technical University, continuing my experi-
heard works from composers such as Iannis ences with the CARL system. I should also men-
Xenakis, Pierre Henry, and Luc Ferrari, which inter- tion the SYTER system of the INA-GRM, which
ested me deeply. Then in 1966 I spent some time in has been for me a source of discoveries, through its
the United States with a grant for young composers, powerful real-time sound-processing capacity. All
visiting several universities and electronic music of these computer music systems are not opera-
studios (Columbia-Princeton, Yale, Illinois). I met tional anymore: they belong to history—that’s why
John Cage and David Tudor, who were at that time I recall them, as they were for me the locus of
concerned with live electronics. Thanks to Mario many meaningful musical experiences. Talking
Davidovsky, I could see in action the legendary about meaningful experiences and encounters, I
RCA synthesizer. Lejaren Hiller was very influen- should include the many years of attendance at two
tial, because he introduced me to the charm of digi- major international gatherings related to our field:
tal computers, gave me the source code to his the International Computer Music Conference
programs, and made me aware of the work of Max (ICMC), and the Bourges Festival of Electroacoustic
Mathews on sound synthesis. Unfortunately I had Music, both of which continue today.
to come back to Argentina before visiting the Bell Musically, I would say that the work of Jean-
Laboratories, as it had been planned. Claude Risset has been for me one of the most in-
But in the meantime, Argentina suffered a hard fluential, as it opened a huge continent to explore;
military putsch, and the University of Córdoba was it was actually through Risset’s work that I be-
closed. So I decided to move away. I went to Spain came aware of the importance of clearly defining
in 1968, at the age of 25. The Spanish composer microtime scales in composition.
Luis de Pablo invited me to join the ALEA group (a
private foundation) and to develop its electronic
music studio. With this group, we gave many live Electroacoustic Composition
electronics concerts in Europe and created the
Computer Music Project at the University of Budón: In more than three decades of composition
Madrid. There I produced in 1971 my first digital work you have produced pieces in very different tech-
sounds, working with an IBM 7090 mainframe and nological environments (tape-editing studios, modu-
still using punch cards. In the mid-1970s, I came to lar analog synthesizers, various computer-based
Paris where I got my doctorate at the Université de facilities, etc.). How have the different technologies
Paris VIII. My main interest at the university was available interacted with your creative work?

10 Computer Music Journal

Vaggione: Pen, paper, and mechanical instruments you start with an acoustic sound, the first thing
were my first doors to music, but the electronic you will do is digitize it; the transformation and
means became available to me very soon afterwards. resynthesis processes that follow will make this
Retrospectively, I would say that I found a medium sound “ontologically” electronic, while retaining
that was challenging our notions of causality, divis- some of its original energetic or morphological
ibility, simultaneity, interaction, energy, and so on. features. Analysis and synthesis allow us to deal
It offered to us the possibility to make a completely with really complex sounds and to choose the fea-
new music and to work in a new compositional tures to which we want to give priority in the de-
situation. Yet I had the impression that it was velopment. Of course, causality has been enlarged,
emerging from the core of Western music practice, and people with an ear that has been trained in
bringing a new light to all its manifestations. electroacoustic music start to hear sounds without
The tape editing studio made me understand the identifying the cause. Sometimes what is identified
energetic substratum of sound, and therefore the im- is the type of synthesis or transformation em-
portance of morpho-dynamical manipulations as ployed. I would even say that as composers, we
well as the action/perception feedback loop inherent have developed a kind of new “inner hearing,” as
to the studio’s working situation. It was also point- we can sometimes imagine what will be the result
ing to multiplicity, as an alternative to a simple of our digital manipulations.
combinatorial approach. (Perhaps we will have the Budón: How do musical structure and sound mate-
opportunity to further elaborate on this point.) rials interact during the composition of a piece?
Of course, after a while I became quite critical Vaggione: I consider sound itself not as something
about the analog studio. Even if many great com- already given, but as something to be composed. So
positions were realized within this environment, the tiniest sound already has a structure on which
analog manipulations remained heavily manual we can operate, that is, articulate, projecting onto
and imprecise and, most importantly, impossible it our own musical desires. Consequently, I assume
to store as codes in order to reproduce and refine that there is no difference of nature between struc-
them. What we got was only the result of an op- ture and sound materials; we are just confronting
eration, but not the definition of the operation it- different operating levels, corresponding to differ-
self as a symbolic entity. I have often insisted that ent time scales to compose.
this opacity is inherent to the analog medium (see,
for example, Vaggione 1991). The computer has
been for me the ideal tool, because it brought the Instrumental Music and Computers
capacity to deal with discrete symbols at the level
of the sound matter, hence to literally write Budón: Throughout your career, electroacoustic
sounds, yet it allows the connection of this level and purely instrumental compositions have been
with any other in the time scale. The digital me- fairly equally represented in your output. What is
dium has produced a qualitative leap, allowing any common and what is different in your approach to
compositional manipulation to become transpar- composing in these two fields?
ent and reproducible. Vaggione: The former common paradigm of instru-
Budón: How does the classic opposition between mental music (of which the “total chromatic” se-
concrète and synthetic sound material resonate in rial approach was one of the last manifestations)
your present work? Do you feel that this opposi- required a kind of “neutrality of the material” (see
tion is still relevant? for example Boulez 1964, 1990), an imperative for a
Vaggione: I suppose that this opposition is not re- compositional practice that was based on the au-
ally relevant, at least not as a strict opposition as it tonomy of symbolic manipulations. To realize a
used to be considered. In the digital domain, we pure permutational combinatorics, it was necessary
have refined the cycle of analysis-transformation - to play with notes as “atoms,” or primitive building
synthesis, which applies to any kind of sound. If blocks. Here, electroacoustic music has caused a

Budón 11
real paradigm shift, introducing the sound-object symbolic system that describes well a given mor-
and the idea of morphological multiplicity. This phology at a particular level can become
shift has contaminated not only electronically pro- nonpertinent when applied to another level. I will
duced music but also the music played with acous- refer to this situation in a moment. For now, I
tic instruments as well as the music combining would like to stress the availability of these clus-
acoustic instruments and electroacoustic exten- ters of representations only accessible with the
sions. The new situation includes explicitly a criti- help of the computer.
cism of the dualistic distinction between Budón: Can you summarize your algorithmic ap-
macroscopic symbols and sonic materials, as I have proach in relation to composing instrumental music?
already stated. In other words, I have the feeling Vaggione: My approach to computer-assisted com-
that the radicalization of the dichotomy between position is based on the idea of integrating direct
notes and sounds cannot open any new perspective local choices (as in procedural common music no-
for us. We are instead going beyond this old duality tation) with algorithmic processes, and amplifying
by articulating the functionalities particular to each these local choices by applying transformational
category and making them interact. manipulations. A transformational system works
This leads us to work in the frame of a not only on the basis of generative formulae but
multiscale approach to composition. Detailed de- also on that of operations dealing directly with the
velopment of musical figures at the macro level of formal properties of the data to be processed; the
notes should take into account the sonic struc- idea behind it is of connective (contextual) nature
tures that are called upon below this level, in the rather than purely combinatory or generative. In
microtime domain. Conversely, any work on the such a system, every local choice (or procedure or
microstructure of sound cannot have a musical determination) can be considered as a declaratio n
meaning if it is not realized with the care needed of a particular attribute of a given morphology; this
to project it over more global time domains. attribute can afterwards be applied to all or to some
Budón: What is the role of the computer in the successive instances of this morphology instead of
composition of your purely instrumental works? being used in one instance only. Thus, a local ac-
Vaggione: Once you are sensitive to a multiscale tion, purely procedural, has here the possibility of
approach to composition, you don’t see the note as being integrated to one or several algorithmic pro-
an atomic entity—a primitive building-block— cesses; symmetrically, the product of any algorith-
anymore, but rather as a layered object containing mic process can be transformed or redirected by a
many interacting time scales. A note as an object is new local action. This symmetry means that the
not only a C-sharp, for example, but a pitch/time system is conceived as an interplay between the
cluster showing its spectral substratum as well as two categories of action, integrating choices and
its multiple dynamic shapes and processes present constraints, changes and heritages, focalization,
at different time scales, all of them contributing to and vectorization. I can start a composition writing
the emerging sonic morphology. So what is to be (by hand) in musical or alphanumeric notation a
composed is not only an array of atomic surface collection of pattern objects to which I will later
entities, but also the multilayered context in apply some kind of constraints in order to create a
which the notes are placed. controlled (algorithmic) variation. I can also pro-
The computer is an ideal tool that allows us to ceed in the opposite way, that is, generate some
deal with this situation. With this tool we can materials by constraint propagation and then
reach any level of operation and explore all the de- “overqualify” some of the resulting patterns by
sired and possible links between different levels. It direct local procedures.
is true that we are forced to use different systems By the way, the production and transformation
of representation, choosing the ones more ad- of musical patterns is, in my compositional work,
equate to each particular level. This is why we are based on operations of fragmentation and aggluti-
confronted with disjunctions and nonlinearities; a nation of objects of all sizes; several time scales

12 Computer Music Journal

are worked out simultaneously, including those proach of composing with networks of objects is
belonging to the microtime domain (which I try to explicitly present in my work since the mid-1980s,
link to the level of the note by means of several and it has been described in several papers
strategies using sonograms, synchronizing wave- (Vaggione 1984, 1985, 1987, 1991, 1994, 1995,
forms, pitch-to-MIDI conversion, and so on). One 1996, 1998a, 1998c). I should mention Fractal C
important feature of this approach is that the pat- (1983–1984), Thema (1985), and Ash (1989–1990)
terns are not only considered as an ensemble of pa- among my first attempts to build large networks of
rameters but also as entities that can be objects (within the CARL/Cmusic software envi-
manipulated in the sense of their parts. To under- ronment, and, in the case of Ash, coupled with the
stand this point, we can recall Cantor’s math- SYTER system).
ematical formulations after which the set of the Another electroacoustic piece, Schall (1994), has
portions of a given set is always bigger than the set been often cited as an example of this approach,
of its elements. The electroacoustic music experi- perhaps because it shows an interplay of objects of
ence confirmed this insight. We can call this ap- different sizes (time scales) which is clearly per-
proach “morphological, ” as opposed to the one ceived (Roads and Alexander 1997; Vaggione 1997;
based on elements, which in turn we can call Gómez 1996). The switching from one time scale
“parametric.” These two operating modes, mor- to another can also be perceived in other pieces,
phological and parametric, are of course comple- such as Nodal (1997) and Agon (1998). I intend to
mentary; we can isolate “saliences” pursue the development of this approach. How-
(morphological details) contained in a given pat- ever, it should be clear that the concept of com-
tern to create other derived patterns, using the posing with networks of objects is above all
first ones as modulators. For my own use, I have operative, its main purpose being to allow working
implemented (in Max as well as in SuperCollider) at several simultaneous time scales, hence linking
modulation techniques (such as waveshaping) and microtime features, which are not always directly
impulse-response algorithms (such as convolution) perceived, with “surface” activity, where these
that are normally used for digital signal processing features can clearly show their incidence on larger
but reformulated to be applied as well to macro- time scales.
scopic symbolic manipulations in the case of pure Let’s try to see why, in the context of electroa-
instrumental music (Vaggione 1996). coustic composition, it can be interesting to define
object networks. First of all, we must say that an
object—in the computer software sense of the
Objects and Time Scales term—is a complex unit that may simultaneously
contain different representations, or codes, related
Budón: The electroacoustic tape for Tar, for bass to as many procedures (specific actions) as there
clarinet and tape (1987), consists mainly of ma- are data elements (sounds and time structures)
nipulations of sampled instrumental sounds that covering many scales or operating levels. It should
are also used in the instrumental part. These mate- be mentioned that this concept of the object has
rials grow and proliferate mostly by means of ag- nothing to do with the notion of an “object of cog-
glomeration of patterns (objects) of different sizes. nition,” nor with the subject-object duality that
I’d like you to comment on the composition pro- the latter implies. Neither does it have anything to
cess of this piece with respect to your interest— do with the “object as a representational model”
developed in your writings—in working with of a reality, which may be “out there.”
networks of objects. Kandinsky’s question, “What replaces the object?”
Vaggione: By mentioning Tar you are probably has no meaning in an auto-referential art such as
referring to an article written in 1987, but pub- music. Indeed, these two meanings have sub-
lished in 1991, in which I deal with these ideas in tended the definition of the sound-object proposed
the context of this composition. In fact, the ap- by Pierre Schaeffer (1966): the first expresses a de-

Budón 13
sire for objectification (this is the taxonomic as- Here there is no external criterion at work—be
pect, the solfège of the object as conceived by it a universal law or a law of permutations, rates,
Schaeffer). The second, a descendant of the first, or percentages, and so on—but rather a morpho-
gives rise to the vast subject of the semantics of logical process which targets details, parts, and
concrète sounds (and which Schaeffer himself at- singularities contained within the object, which
tempted to short-circuit by means of the notion of are capable of generating other singularities. Such
“reduced listening” derived from phenomenology). a morphological process thus constitutes a gener-
But more importantly, the concept of object that ating strategy starting with multiples, in contrast
I am discussing here must also be clearly distin- to a strategy based on the permutation of atomic
guished from Schaeffer’s sound-object, because the building blocks (as is the case with serial combina-
present concept not only designates a purely mac- torics). It is from morphological characteristics
roscopic entity (a building block that supplants the contained in objects of all sizes that we may define
“note”) but above all a multiscale ensemble that classes and contexts that carry and propagate their
includes events of different order of magnitude. specificities.
Thus our object is an operational category, that is, Considering the creation of objects in this way
a technical concept developed to realize a given allows us, among other things, to define them by
musical action, capable of incorporating (encapsu- strata or in steps, in descending order, starting
lating) different time levels into a complex entity from a global stratum and moving toward smaller
which nevertheless has defined boundaries, and and smaller details, starting from a root object and
thus can be manipulated within a network. proceeding to its most distant descendants. An in-
Seen from such a viewpoint, composing objects teresting type of heritage arises when several de-
means creating active entities, each of which is scending strategies work in parallel to create a
endowed with specific behavior modes (methods), heritage network—of enhanced attributes, details
determined in digital fashion (codes), and whose generating other details—that defines a field very
functions depend on their own methods as much rich in connections between objects.
as on the context in which they are being used. We must also consider those instances of dy-
The objects may be functions (algorithms), lists of namic heritage in which the strategy consists of
parameters (scores), scripts (successions of actions going from the local to the global, that is, going
to be accomplished), or they may be sounds (prod- back toward the root of the class. Here, it is a case
ucts as well as sources). of taking one of the descendants and summing up
Budón: Can you elaborate further on the idea of its salient points while moving in the direction of
networks of objects? the root—all the while following singular paths
Vaggione: In a general way, the concept of the net- that include turnoffs and byways. Just as interest-
work applies to all types of relationships possible ing are cases in which one composes a network al-
between object ensembles and subensembles lowing movement of instance variables in both
(classes and subclasses). These objects (codes, directions. Last, and in addition to what has been
scores, sounds, all articulated in a multiple entity said regarding the possibilities of “negative” inher-
containing various time scales as well as various itance (that which creates new classes), we must
representation modes corresponding to each time also take into account that an object may belong
scale) possess attributes that are carried over from to several classes at once and thus carry a mixture
one “version” to another. In this way, an object may of attributes.
be derived from another object by inheriting certain Budón: What would be the main difference be-
attributes that demonstrate its belonging to a class tween this object-based composition process and
of objects. However, the classes themselves may other algorithmic approaches?
vary from quite small to extremely big, and they Vaggione: Besides what I have said about working
may possess many branches. Objects may be created with different time scales, another advantage of
that are farther and farther away from their roots. considering composition environments as net-

14 Computer Music Journal

works of objects springs from the fact that the de- a sheet of paper—was the frame for all linear trans-
clarative, purely functional aspect of algorithms formations, as, for example, term-to-term transpo-
(all algorithms consist of a series of function-carry- sitions. But it should be relativized if we want to
ing, conditional instructions) is counterbalanced by integrate different time dimensions belonging ei-
a procedural relationship that favors that which is ther to micro- or macrotime (or any fractional di-
prospective—in other words, sidelines and byways mension in between) into a multilevel
surrounding possibilities that have been opened up compositional process. In this way, we can pick up
by a microworld that was defined by the composer. the challenge of electroacoustic music, letting ev-
I believe that here is the very heart of the process ery singularity manifested at every time scale
that allows one to rise above the primitive notion emerge as a product of the interactions between
of “automatic composition,” since the musician’s multiple dimensions.
action is no longer limited to formulating linear We can resume this situation in terms of a
processes, the implications of which must all be double articulation. On the one hand, since the dif-
thought out in advance. ferent time levels present in a musical process in-
Budón: In several of your writings, you have ex- teract, the morphological characteristics can
pressed your concern with the relationship be- circulate from one level to another. On the other
tween different temporal dimensions of a piece of hand, the establishment of such circulation cannot
music and how these are articulated. Discussing take place unless it is assumed that in any case it
the nature of different levels of temporal organiza- can never be strictly linear; some types of represen-
tion, you wrote “there is no linear continuity be- tation that are valid on one level cannot always re-
tween different time scales, from the micro-local to tain their pertinence when transposed to another
the macro-global” (Vaggione 1994). This statement level. Thus, the relations—if we want them to be
contradicts the idea of the temporal continuum set composed—are to be defined through their content
forth by Stockhausen in his article “...how time of interaction, which, by opposition to a linear one-
passes....” (1957) and anticipated to some extent, to-one relationship, does not exclude fractures, dis-
decades earlier, in Henry Cowell’s book New Musi- tortions, and mismatches between time levels. To
cal Resources (1930). Could you amplify your recognize the reality of these mismatches does not
thoughts on this matter? drive us to paralysis; on the contrary, it gives us
Vaggione: As a matter of fact, all compositional the possibility to explore the passages between dif-
manipulations articulating relations between dif- ferent dimensions, allowing us to articulate them
ferent temporal levels depend essentially on the inside a syntactic network covering the whole
paradigm adopted by the composer. Evidently, a spectrum of composable relationships.
decision has to be made concerning the status and Budón: Very often your mixed pieces present an
the nature of these interactions: to consider them electroacoustic part built of manipulated samples
as taking place in a continuum organized as a fixed of the instrument that is played live. That is, for
hierarchy (this is Stockhausen’s attitude) or to as- example, the case in Till, for piano and tape (1991),
sume the existence of discontinuities, of and Myr-S, for violoncello and tape (1996). How do
nonlinearities, considering (in the last case) you organize the relationship between the electroa-
microtime, macrotime, and all intermediate di- coustic and the instrumental materials?
mensions as disjoint (or relative) realms. Of course, Vaggione: I have written pieces for many solo in-
if we adopt the second option, there will be as a struments (woodwinds, strings, piano, percussion)
corollary the necessity of building musical syn- and computer-generated tape, as well as some for
taxes that might confront (and articulate) all kinds ensembles of variable size and audio sequences
of nonlinearities, covering different time levels, generated and controlled in real time by one or
without deriving them from a homogeneous struc- more computers. For the electroacoustic part (tape
tural field. The purely Euclidean space—as the one or audio sequences), I generally use sampled sounds
underlying the kind of operations only possible on of the instruments played live as material to be

Budón 15
processed by digital means, including analysis- level. So these samples are already multilevel
resynthesis techniques. The main reason for this is sound-objects that can be manipulated as such in a
that it allows the source instruments to shift to the network of digital processing objects. Sometimes
electroacoustic world, that is to extend their range these sound-objects have been played by the musi-
and their virtual palette of possibilities, sometimes cians on the basis of my verbal instructions; other
carrying them as far as to be cut from their ori- times I wrote down the patterns in musical notation
gins—in which case they are no more perceived as and asked the musicians to play from the score.
belonging to the source—while at other times man- To give a concrete example: the bass clarinet
aging to retain some of their original energetic, sound-objects used in Kitab were recorded from a
gestural, or morphological features. So the ten- previously written score. Figure 2 shows a list of
dency is to integrate the acoustic instruments to some of these. Note heads indicate the various
the electroacoustic domain rather than to add some playing modes to be used: normal, with abundant
electroacoustic sounds to a “normal” instrumental breath noise (pitched or unpitched), slaps, fluted,
part. You can find this model in Thema (1985) for key clicks, and so on. Every pattern has to be
saxophone, Tar (1987) for bass clarinet, and Scir played separately. (Bars do not indicate measures
(1988) for bass flute. They belong to a series of but simply the boundaries of each pattern.) These
pieces, the last items of which are, for now, Myr-S lists have a double function: on one side they form
(1996) for violoncello and Chants Parallèles (1998) the core of the patterns developed in the instru-
for tenor saxophone. In all these works, the mental score of the work, and on the other side
samples were provided by the musicians to whom they serve as sound material to be used in the elec-
the works were dedicated (Daniel Kientzy, Harry troacoustic part. In the last case, they are stored as
Sparnaay, Beate-Gabriela Schmitt, Jean-Charles separate soundfiles. These files can later be used as
François, and Christophe Roy, among others). source objects and included in software instrument
Till (1991) and Leph (1993), for piano and tape, declarations. Various portions (parts) of these ob-
both dedicated to Philip Mead, are a little different jects, selected by manual or algorithmic procedures
in the sense that the piano samples were not re- (text based or graphic), can in turn be registered as
corded by the pianist but by myself, and also be- different objects belonging to the same class or to
cause the piano part does not incorporate any some derived class, having their own names, so as
extended playing technique. Other different cases to allow new instrument declarations and connec-
include Rechant (1995), commissioned by the tions to various processing algorithms (phase
GRM, and Frayage (1997), commissioned by the vocoding, convolution, granulation, and
Bourges Festival, both for variable sets of instru- waveshaping operations). The products of all of
ments, and existing in both mixed and purely elec- these procedures, as well as the sources, can in this
troacoustic versions. These pieces were built on way circulate through the composition’s network,
samples of several instruments recorded during a following the approach I have described above.
residency at the Institute of Sonology in The
Hague (played by students of the Royal Conserva-
tory). I can also mention Kitab (1992), for clarinet, Music and Space
double-bass, and Disklavier, commissioned by the
International Computer Music Association, for Budón: In the early 1980s you composed some elec-
which the samples were performed by students at troacoustic works in 8–16 channels: Octuor,
the Université de Paris VIII. Fractal A, and Fractal C. What motivated the in-
It has to be stressed that when I talk about cursion into the multichannel format, and what is
“samples,” I don’t refer to recorded single notes but your evaluation of the experience?
to very singular short figures or patterns that al- Vaggione: The multichannel (8 or 16) format of
ready have an implicit syntax at the macrotime these pieces was determined fortuitously while I

16 Computer Music Journal

Figure 2. Some of the manipulated by com-
bass clarinet sound ob- puter. Noteheads indicate
jects used in Kitab (1992). the various playing modes
These objects were per- used: normal, filtered
formed from a previously breath noise, slaps, fluted,
written score, and and key clicks.
sampled in order to be

worked at IRCAM in different multichannel stu-

dios. I have written a paper for the Computer Mu-
sic Journal (Vaggione 1984) in which I mention,
among other things, the role of multitracking in
Octuor (1982): to record an automated execution of
the piece by the computer (a DEC PDP-10), with-
out using any analog editing. Today this sounds
trivial, but it was not at the time, when computers
had very small storage capacity. Later, working
with the CARL system running on a Vax 780 com-
puter at the University of Berlin, I used four- and
eight-channel strategies allowed by the computer’s
multichannel digital-to-analog converters. The
GRM’s SYTER system had an eight-channel real-
time processing capacity, and I used it in some
works, especially Ash (1990). Even if in other
pieces I have used mainly the stereo soundfield,
enhanced by multiple-loudspeaker “dynamic” (per-
formable) sound-diffusion systems such as the
Acousmonium (GRM) or the Gmebaphone
(Bourges), I did not abandon the multitrack idea,
and some late pieces exist in both formats. By the
way, these multiple-loudspeaker sound-diffusion
systems (as well as others, for example,
Birmingham’s BEAST or the Creatophone at the
University of California, Santa Barbara) support a
variety of formats.
In general, I would say that each format has its
special requirements, which reflects in the build-
ing of the internal space of the work as well as in
the external sound projection. Material supports
are active (Solomos 1998), and call for different
strategies of sonic design—including phase correla-
tions and decorrelations, and so on (Kendall 1995).
Budón: In recent compositions like Nodal (1997)
for solo tape, one perceives an important concern
with layered musical activity arranged in a spatial
perspective. The establishment of a dialogue be-
tween the far and the near, and the sense of spatial
depth of sound-objects and textures, seems essen-
tial to the conception of the piece. Could you tell
us about your present concerns with space in elec-
troacoustic music?
Vaggione: For a long time, I have been considering
the spatial dimension of sound as something to be
composed, as part of each morphology. It is true,

Budón 17
however, that in almost every new piece I have Notation of Electroacoustic Music
found new things to be done in this respect. I rarely
use standard global spatialization devices, not even Budón: Electroacoustic music has so far lacked a
a simple reverberator. I try to give each sound-ob- comprehensive system of notation, in spite of the
ject a particular, unique spatial feature. The tex- many attempts to deal with this issue. Presently
tures created this way are spatially polyphonic or there seems to be a growing interest in the com-
“polyspatial.” This is why you can perceive a dy- puter-assisted transcription of electroacoustic
namic spatial depth. works, and various systems are being developed for
We can talk, in a proper manner, of spatial mor- this purpose. What do you see as possible conse-
phologies that are modulated by other spatial mor- quences of such development?
phologies inside the field of composable attributes. Vaggione: As I said earlier, the digital medium has
If space is thought of as compositional material, brought on a qualitative leap, allowing any compo-
this means that it is essentially a space of relation- sitional manipulation to become transparent and
ships—or, if you want, that the relationships reproducible. Jean-Claude Risset has recently
which form the basis of a compositional work can pointed out the necessity to keep the traces of
be defined in terms of space: size, situation, exten- these manipulations as materials for analysis as
sion, speed, phase correlation, and so on. These at- well as for transferring musical works to other
tributes define the spatial features of each object, computer platforms (Risset 1997). Hence, there is
texture, and musical process. In working with the already an important difference to be stressed be-
values of these attributes, with relationships, we tween the ancient (analog) practice of electroacous-
can postulate as many spaces as we want. tic music and the use of computers. Text codes and
The definition of consistent methods of sound- listings are, as Risset said, recipes for synthesis.
object composition has to take into account a plu- The use of graphic editors can be memorized and
rality of factors. Those that reveal a spatial content replayed, and it can be integrated into composi-
are part of a field of interactions in which they are tional algorithms. Thus, where we used to solely
correlated with several morphological factors (all have an aural feedback, we now have a confluence
time varying) as spectral energy, amplitude pro- of the ear and the eye as well as the possibility to
files, density profiles, phase relationships, and so store our actions as codes. I think this is a very
on. All these contribute to the articulation of the positive aspect of computer music.
space of the musical work. We can even say that in Computer-assisted transcription techniques can
each case of correlation, as in the ensemble of all be interesting if they are based on something more
correlations, we are affirming (or risking) a compo- than pixels, that is, if they are based on true repre-
sitional consistency. As an example of the opposite sentation systems, not only involving subsymbolic
approach, we can recall what happens when we use pictures, but also symbolic representations capable
all-global processing tools (e.g., reverberation) in a of not just reproducing an image but also able to
nondifferentiated manner—imposing them, so to replay—to reproduce—what they represent. (Mu-
speak, from the outside rather than integrating sic, even made with computers, is by nature a
them as methods belonging to the composed ob- “performing art.”) Here there is a tendency toward
jects. This attitude negates the singularity of the a general notation concept, a manipulation of sym-
objects and hence makes fuzzy the definition of the bolic units in the frame of a “legal,” well-defined
work’s internal space (Vaggione 1993, 1998b). pertinence, whatever this frame would be. The
Of course, what I have said is not against rever- Acousmographe program developed at the GRM
beration or any global spatializing tool in itself, (Besson 1991) is a step in the direction of a multi-
but certainly against one specific kind of use. To layered transcription of sonic entities. (See Figure
the extent that we use them as pure mechanisms, 3 for an example.) Several systems are working to-
we forsake the space as a composable dimension. gether: a spectrogram analyzer is linked to disk-

18 Computer Music Journal

stored digitized soundfiles and, above it, to the Vaggione: What I probably said is that MIDI has a
pixels of a graphic, a personalized rendering layer. function similar to equal temperament as a stan-
This last layer works by superimposing a transpar- dard of communication between musical sources,
ent “paper sheet” over the spectrogram images, al- through the establishment of which, by necessity,
lowing us to draw on top of them (with something is lost. As a matter of fact, MIDI is a
MacPaint-like graphic tools). Once the graphic macrotime protocol in which have been codified
rendering is complete, the spectrogram layer can the basic features of common music notation, in-
be hidden. This way, the graphic score remains cluding equal-tempered pitch class systems and
linked to the stored sounds, and hence these power-of-two durations. However, in practice we
sounds can be played (and even rearranged by can push MIDI a little further than the common
means of cut-and-paste procedures) from the music notation boundaries, not being limited by
“front end” of the graphic score. human physiology, but not too much further, how-
It seems that the ultimate step in this direction ever, because there is a definite limit in the speed
would be a reversible system, that is, one allowing of data transmission, and hence in the time scale.
us to go back analytically from graphic rendering So MIDI data streams can certainly be
to sound. This can only be possible if we find a morphophoric (a carrier of form) within their own
procedure to keep the different levels of represen- time domain. If this status of MIDI is accepted,
tation constantly linked. The difficulty, as I said we can incorporate the protocol into a composi-
before, lies in the way this linkage can deal appro- tion network and benefit from its advantages. For
priately with a multiscale situation. The example, we can establish some useful bridges be-
Phonogramme program developed by Vincent tween sonic morphologies and common music
Lesbros at the Université de Paris VIII (Lesbros notation, or, pushing it to its limits, to produce
1995, 1996) can be viewed in this light, as it allows morphologies standing somewhere at the bound-
us to draw spectra directly by hand and to intro- aries between macrotime and microtime scales. I
duce them into the system via image scanning to realized in 1991 a little Max patch called
convert them into sounds. The UPIC system is “Macrogranulator” to deal with this last possibil-
based on a totally different approach, since its ity. Another Max application related to this is
graphic “pages” emulate a macroscopic pitch-ver- Serge de Laubier’s MIDIFormers (de Laubier
sus-time score to which separate wavetables are 1997).
assigned. Dealing directly with the spectral do-
main, Daniel Arfib has been investigating (at the
CNRS-Marseille) the possibilities of sound synthe- Final Remarks
sis by manipulating images (Arfib and Delprat
1993). We are looking also for something coming Budón: What are you working on now?
in this direction from Open Music, the new envi- Vaggione: After Agon (1998), I finished another
ronment for computer-assisted composition devel- electroacoustic composition, Préludes suspendus
oped by the music representation team at IRCAM (1999). There are some pieces in progress: one for
(Assayag et al. 1997). acoustic ensemble, another for clarinet, piano, and
electronics. I am interested in investigating further
the relationship between meter (as a cyclic-hangin g
About MIDI force) and rhythm (as a nonsymmetrical move-
ment), and this not only at the level of macrotime,
Budón: I remember you saying in your seminars at but at the most microscopic level reachable with
the Université de Paris VIII that MIDI and equal our present tools. Some techniques related to the
temperament were somehow similar turning points wavelet-transform approach seem to be useful in
in music history. Could you comment on this? this regard. In general, I have the feeling that elec-

20 Computer Music Journal

troacous tic m usic is going into a new qualitativ e Lesbros, V. 1995. ª A telier incrèm entiel pour la m usique
leap. W e are, if I can risk the image, in a s ituation expèrim entale.º Doctoral dissertation, Univ ersitè de
s om ew hat analogous to the M annheim com posers Paris VIII.
pav ing the w ay for Hay dn’s sy mphonies; only this Lesbros, V. 1996. ª From Im ages to Sounds: A D ual Rep-
resentat ion.º C o m p ut e r Mus ic Jo urnal 20(3):59± 69.
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Paz, J. C . 1956. Int ro d uc c ió n a la m ús ic a d e nue s t ro
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Bud ó n 21
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22 C o m p ut e r Mus ic Jo urnal