Abstract
This thesis examines the studio craft of four composers, Beatriz Ferreyra, Delia Derbyshire, Éliane Radigue and Teresa Rampazzi during a period of transition from analogue to digital recording techniques from the early 1960s to 1970s. The four composers were innovators in the development of electroacoustic music yet their work remains under-represented. Derbyshire worked at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop; Ferreyra and Radigue at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris and Rampazzi formed an independent studio in Padua, Italy. As such, they exemplify a diversity of electroacoustic theory and practice across a broad geographical range.
The inherently experimental nature of studio techniques in pure electroacoustic music has led to a range of methodologies for analysis. My research is based on new interviews and access to archived technical documents. I have worked closely with this material and these artists having interviewed Derbyshire in 2000, and, more recently for this thesis, Radigue and Ferreyra. I propose my research as a ‘techno-musicology’ which seeks to analyse the rationale through which they integrated electronic equipment and music composition. This shift in focus provides a more nuanced understanding of analogue studio craft in electroacoustic music, bringing new historical knowledge to contemporary studio practice. It is structured in five chapters:
Technology – an exploration of its meaning through the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and contemporary programmers Federica Frabetti and Wendy Chun
Systems – the organisational structures that underpin studio activity
Objects – conceptual sound objects through Pierre Schaeffer’s research and physical items of electronic studio equipment
Space – the diffusion of a work to listeners in a broadcast or concert environment
Analysis – of a piece by each composer using the Systems, Objects and Space model
‘Beyond the instrumental’ reflects my hypothesis that agency and affordance in the sound studio are key concepts in understanding creative technology in electroacoustic music.