Institute for Sonic Arts Research (IRZU) presents Theory and Techniques of Contemporary Music, a lecture by Austrian composer Peter Ablinger :: May 17, 2010; 8:00 - 10:00 pm :: Gallery SKUC, Stari trg 21, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Peter Ablinger was born in Schwanenstadt, Austria in 1959. He first studied graphic arts and became enthused by free jazz. He completed his studies in composition with Gösta Neuwirth and Roman Haubenstock-Ramati in Graz and Vienna. Since 1982 he has lived in Berlin, where he has initiated and conducted numerous festivals and concerts. In 1988 he founded the Ensemble Zwischentöne. In 1993 he was a visiting professor at the University of Music, Graz. He has been guest conductor of ‘Klangforum Wien’, ‘United Berlin’ and the ‘Insel Musik Ensemble’. Since 1990 Peter Ablinger has worked as a freelance musician. Peter Ablinger is one of the few artists today who uses noise without any kind of symbolism - not as a signifier for chaos, energy, entropy, disorder, or uproar; not for opposing something, or being disobedient or destructive; not for everything, for eternity, or for what-have-you. As in all these cases of music deliberately involving noise, noise is the case, but for Ablinger: this alone. Peter Ablinger has also come a long way in questioning the nature of sound, time, and space (the components usually thought central to music), and his findings have jeopardized and made dubious conventions usually thought irrefutable. These insights pertain to repetition and monotony, reduction and redundancy, density and entropy.

The main idea behind the project Theory and Techniques of Contemporary Music is creating a platform for discussing different aspects of contemporary sound based practices, as well as complementing the current education standard of the Slovenian national education system, representing the field of Contemporary music. The purpose of the „Techniques“ part of the project an introduction into the basic languages and programing environments for the production of electronic music. The focus will be on examining the standardized software tools and computational methods deployed at international academic research institutes, while the “Theory” part of the project will deal with the presentation of contemporary artistic trends in musical composition. The goal of combining the workshops and lecture-presentations is thus, to provide a complete framework introducing the techniques of electronic music production along with some selected artistic concepts and aesthetics from the field of contemporary musical composition. The invited lecturers – established composers from Austria and Germany – will play some of their recent pieces, discuss their viewpoints on the development of compositional approaches throughout the 20th and 21st century, and position their own work into a broader context of sonic arts.

EVENTS:

12. April - Elisabeth Harnik (A) - lecture
19. April - Christoph Herndler (A) - lecture
5. May - Vasja Progar (SLO) - workshop
12. May - Vasja Progar (SLO) - workshop
17. May - Peter Ablinger (D) - lecture
19. May - Vasja Progar (SLO) - workshop
26. May - Vasja Progar (SLO) - workshop
13. June - Gerriet K. Sharma (D) - lecture
17 June - Alberto de Campo (D) - lecture