Thursday, October 2, 2025: Roundtable discussion / Metaclassical – Writing. With Elsa Biston, Matthias Gault, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Philippe Manoury
IRCAM and the STMS Laboratory (IRCAM - CNRS - Sorbonne University - Ministry of Culture) are hosting this new season of “Why Write Music?”
Organized jointly by David Christoffel, Julien Labia, Philippe Manoury, Yan Maresz, Véronique Verdier, and Charles-David Wajnberg, this seminar will give a voice to composers, performers, and philosophers who believe that musical composition has a critical, philosophical, and aesthetic capacity that goes beyond its purely functional use.
By offering a wide range of contemporary compositional practices, it is aimed at both the general public and artists and researchers who, from other disciplines, have developed a special relationship with music. This seminar explores the irreducible nature of writing in musical creation, particularly through the following issues, both within and beyond the sole question of notation:
A special relationship with time: Without being confined solely to the spontaneity of the present, the writing of a musical score, which unfolds over a long period of time, combines different registers of temporality. The mediation of the score allows for a complex structuring of time that draws on memory as much as on anticipation and perception of the present.
A special relationship with technology: Rather than leading to a loss of control through total control of all musical variables and parameters, the use of computer music redeploys the responsibility of the composer and his writing. Computer languages, through their formal innovations, invite the creation of new musical paradigms.
A special relationship with sound space: Through the search for specific formalizations, the concept of acoustic space, which itself gains in subtlety as it is written down, becomes an aesthetic category of prime importance.
Programming 2025–2026
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Stravinsky Room, Ircam
Thursday, October 2, 2025: Roundtable discussion / Metaclassical – Writing
Elsa Biston, Matthias Gault, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Philippe Manoury
Thursday, November 27, 2025: Writing beside the engraving plate
Susanne Fürniss, Nicolas Mondon
Tuesday, December 9, 2025: Writing transmediality
David Christoffel, Frédéric Mathevet
Wednesday, January 7, 2026: Writing like the living
Jean-Luc Hervé, Bernard de Vienne
Thursday, February 12, 2026: Writing complexity
Carmine-Emanuele Cella, Mathieu Langer
Tuesday, March 24, 2026: Writing space
Pierre Couprie, Isabelle Viaud-Delmon
Thursday, April 2, 2026: Writing gesture
Clara Iannotta, Martin Kaltenecker
Wednesday, May 6, 2026: Writing the device
Pascal Decroupet, Philippe Leroux
Presentations will be in French
Official website
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