Sound as Score

What are sound scores? Which composers around the world work with audio scores? What methods do these composers develop? How does the interpretation of audio scores differ from written notation? What new skills do composers have to acquire and what new questions do they have to deal with in order to compose with audio scores? What can psychoacoustics contribute to clarifying these questions and how does the concept of mimesis (imitation) relate to the aesthetic analysis and evaluation of audio scores?

Composers, musicians, psychoacousticians and musicologists will explore these questions in close collaboration. To get answers to these questions we will launch an international open call to composers, inviting them to submit compositions based on an audio score on the one hand and set up a lab for compositional experimentation with audio scores and its interpretation on the other. In this lab, we create space for analysis and debate regarding the different methods and concepts underlying these audio scores and examine the theoretical concept of mimesis in terms of its applicability to the aesthetic analysis and evaluation of audio scores. In order to better understand the perception of rhythm, pitch and timbre in the interpretation of audio scores, specific audio scores are developed together with psychoacousticians and their interpretation is analyzed using psychoacoustic methods.

The research project aims to create awareness for and new insights in this compositional approach through an intensive exchange between composers, musicologists and psychoacousticians, and an interdisciplinary technique of analysis will be developed.