All of the WPs have been extensively tackled by now, except for WP4, which will be tackled in the last year of the grant.
WP1: This work package benefitted from a secondment at the Fondazione Isabella Scelsi (FIS), Rome, IT, that happened between April and May 2022. The foundation had just acquired the part of the Mario Bertoncini collection consisting of his objects. However, the collection had not yet been processed by the archivists, and thus represented a blank slate on which to collaborate to be able to devise the most appropriate structure of series and subseries that will determine the organisation and ordering of the collection content. Following the work done on Mario Bertoncini’s collection, I started to work with the McGill Music Library, because they hold the Charles de Mestral collection, which comprises the Sonde subcollection. The improvisation group Sonde was created in Montreal in 1974 out of a course taught by Mario Bertoncini at McGill. While the two collections feature similar problems, in that Sonde created sound sources that are similarly shaped as those created by Bertoncini, the fact that Sonde was a collective endeavour creates a critical difference when compared to Bertoncini’s collection, and I explored what it meant for the Sonde collection to be a sub-collection within a single-author collection.
WP2: This package focused on Gayle Young’s bespoke instruments and her performance practices. After several online and in-person meetings with the composer, in April 2023 I facilitated a 10-day research residency focusing on the following questions:
• What knowledge do you need to perform Young’s music?
• When do you need that knowledge (is there knowledge you need to have BEFORE approaching this music? Is knowledge created only AFTER you learned this music?)
• Whose knowledge is it, once learned? What if it ripples into other authors’ musics?
• What is the role of performer’s intuition and performer’s agency?
• How can you use this knowledge and why? On what occasions?
The research residency was very successful as it generated a lot of material and possibilities. Some of them are being explored in a proposal for a special issue of the journal ‘Echo. A Journal of music, thought and technology, to be submitted soon.
WP3: This work package and the work on AUMI consortium, dedicated to use and promotion of the Adaptive User Musical Instrument (AUMI), has proven to offer many possibilities for future work. This is because the AUMI consortium exemplifies our contemporary way of working, which happens among complex relationships between individuals and institutions, between the private and the public sector. It also creates fluid social formations with no strong institutional powers, increased co-creation of materials, as well as complex platform ecosystems. All this requires us to rethink ownership and custody in the music archive.
WP4: This topic is the object of the final year reflection.
