Marco Stroppa

Born in 1959 in Vienna, he belongs to the first generation of Italian composers that learned to handle computers while still a music student, and thus regards both them and acoustical instruments as perfectly natural compositional tools. He has diplomas in piano, choral music and choir conducting, composition and computer music from the Conservatories of Verona, Milan and Venice (1980­83), where he studied with Laura Palmieri (piano), Guido Begal, Renato Dionisi and Azio Corghi (choral conducting and composition) and Alvise Vidolin (computer music).
In 1984­86 he was a Fulbright student at the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied computer music, computer science, and cognitive psychology (with Barry Vercoe). In 1982 Pierre Boulez invited him to join the research staff of the ircam. He has lived in Paris since then. The uninterrupted contacts with ircam greatly shaped his musical experience and his approach to computer music, where he particularly delved into synthesis of new sound materials and into computer-assisted composition.
As a composer he works with both acoustic instruments and new media. He often groups several works (that he calls Omodules1) around large cycles exploring specific compositional projects, such as a series of concertos for one instrument and a spatialized orchestra or ensemble inspired by poems of W.B. Yeats, a cycle of works for solo instrument and chamber electronic music, inspired by poems of e.e. cummings, a cycle of pieces for solo piano lasting totally almost two hours, and others.
His keen interest in sound and space has often led him to rethinking the placement of the instruments on stage so as to achieve a spatial dramaturgy.
Stroppa was awarded numerous prizes such as the Kompositionpreis der 1996 Salzburger Osterfestspiele, a Prix Italia in 1992 (special mention) and ascap Prize in the United States.
His music is regularly performed in all the major festivals around Europe, America, Australia and Japan, such as the Salzburger Festspiele, Donaueschingen, Festival d1Automne a Paris, Cité de la Musique, South Bank Festival, Budapest Spring Festival and Blossom Festival in Cleveland.
He has published more than twenty essays, dealing with his musical and scientific research, and has lectured widely throughout Europe, America and Japan. In 1987 he founded the course of composition at the International Bartók Festival in Szombathély (Hungary), where he lectured until 1999.
In 1999 Marco Stroppa was the first Italian composer appointed a full professor of composition at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart (succeeding Helmut Lachenmann in this post) and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, where he took a post after the late Gérard Grisey.
Selected works: Traiettoria for piano and computer (1982­84), Spirali for string quartet spatially placed (1988­89), Hiranyaloka for large orchestra (1993­94), Proemio, radio opera (1990), Miniature Estrose, 1st Book for piano (1991­95), in cielo in terra in mare, radio opera (1992), Un Segno nello Spazio for string quartet (1992), Upon of Blade of Grass for piano and large orchestra (1995­96), Zwielicht for double-bass, two percussionists, electronics and space projection 13-D (1995­98), little i for flutes and Ochamber electronic1 (1996), From Needle1s Eye for trombone, double quintet and percussion (1996­99), And one by one we drop away for cello solo and three instrumental groups (1999­2001), Cantilena for three choir groups (2001), Ay, there1s the rub for cello solo (2001); works in progress: Concerto for Three Accordions and Three Orchestral Groups, Trumpet Concerto.

little i for flutes and Ochamber electronics1, commissioned by the festival OOctobre en Normandie1 (Rouen, France), is inspired by the poem 52 from 73 poems of e.e. cummings:

who are you, little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window; at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling: that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way).

This work belongs to a cycle of pieces which explore the concept of Ochamber electronics1. The aim is to create a sort of intimate, poetic relationship between a solo instrument and another invisible presence, the instrument1s imaginary partner. The flautist and two electronic sound sources thus generate a sort of virtual trio.
The architecture of little i is a sort of free arch form (slow melo-dic­presto­moderato percussive­lively­slow harmonic) in five movements: slow, magic / Ohaunted1 presto / very sticky / nostalgic, hurries / as a finale. Each movement uses a different sound articulation for the flute, from usual sounds to multiphonics, from microtonal inflexions and glissandos to percussive sounds.
I have given a particular care to the placement of the flautist and of the electronic sounds in space: five loudspeakers and four positions for the interpreter allow the acoustic flute (that is the flute without amplification), the amplified flute and the electronic sounds to generate different sorts of spatial patterns: echoes, multiplication, bi-dimensional movements (left-right) combined with three-dimensional figures evolving in several plans of depth, separation of the physical source, the flute, from the Osound1 source, that is where the sound of flute comes out from.
This particular spatial relationship is composed so that each movement has its own specific colour. For instance, at the beginning the flautist stands in the centre behind the stage and is playing a melodic phrase very softly. The acoustic sound of the instrument is thus not quite perceivable, but its amplification is quite strong and comes out from the two loudspeakers in the centre of the stage in front. The electronics is also situated in the same speakers, but it constantly moves back and forth between them, thus getting closer to or farther from the instrument itself and creating a sort of Otunnel1 effect.
In another movement, the third, the flautist plays on the right of the stage with a percussive, soft articulation. Its amplification comes out on the left side. The dissociation of the visual and acoustic cues is then here horizontal, with respect to the audience, while in the first movement it was vertical. The electronics here consists of material very similar to what is being played by the instrumentalist. Structurally this movement is a sort of canon at different speeds. However, the first Ovoice1 of the electronics comes out from the loudspeaker near the player, while the other voices come out from somewhere in between. Given the similarity of the materials, at a certain moment, it is no longer possible to discriminate who is playing which line. The instrument and its virtual partners are here inextricably intertwined with each other.
The electronic material is very simple and consists of recorded and processed flute sounds, sometimes mixed with synthetic sounds. The electronics was produced in my own personal studio and was entirely reworked in the summer 2003 when more powerful tools for composing imaginary spaces became available.
Duration: ca. 22'
Marco Stroppa