Event

Doctoral Colloquium (Music): Imri Talgam

Friday, November 11, 2022 16:30to18:30

Strathcona Music Building C-201, 555 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 1E3, CA

Price:

Free Admission

The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.

Doctoral Colloquium: Imri Talgam

Performing Xenakis’ Polyrhythms: A Perception-Informed Approach to Renotation

Abstract:

Iannis Xenakis is known for pioneering algorithmic composition and the use of controlled randomness in music. These techniques often produce excessive rhythmic complexity and present performers with qualitatively new challenges that border on the impossible. Mists (1980) for solo piano serves as a particularly rich case study, with passages that prefigure the rhythmic intricacies of New Complexity. In several passages, Mists requires a single pianist to play four simultaneous polyrhythms in extremely dense settings, with the different layers often out of phase with each other.

Faced with such extreme rhythmic complexity, performers must compromise and find approximations that preserve as much of musical structure as possible. Since most performers do not articulate their criteria for approximation, considerable rhythmic detail is lost. As an alternative, I propose a methodological approach to performance of rhythmic complexity using re-notation informed by theories of metric perception.

The renotation methodology replaces the overwhelming amount of polyrhythmic detail with a quantization strategy, in which different interonset intervals (IOIs) are rounded off according to context-sensitive perceptual categories that preserve the macro characteristics of the textures. I examine several possible renotations, depending on the grouping cues or pulse layers that are taken as the tactus in the passage, while relegating other layers to an a-metrical status. Since multiple versions may be beneficial in representing different aspect of the music, I consider their advantages from the perspectives of both performers and listeners.

Finally, Louis-Michel Tougas will present a first attempt to automate this renotation process using software (OpenMusic), which provides the user with an interface for determining the level of quantization, choice of metric layer, and different symbolic representations in notation.

Biography:

Imri Talgam is a pianist and researcher specializing in performance of 20^th century and contemporary music. Since winning first prize in the Concours de piano d’Orléans (France) in 2014, Talgam appeared as soloist around the world, including with Ensemble Modern, the Radio Orchestra of Saarbrücken, and the Israeli Contemporary Players, and worked with composers including Boulez, Lachenmann, Poppe, Unsuk Chin, and Eötvös. He is a recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff prize together with Yair Klartag (2017). His recordings include a CD centered on the music of Nancarrow, including transcriptions of Player-piano studies.

Talgam’s research is focused on the use of cognitive research to inform performance practice of rhythmically complex works. His doctoral thesis (advised by Prof. Joseph Straus at the CUNY Graduate Center) developed a re-notation of the Ligeti Etudes informed by rhythmic perception. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, where he also teaches.

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Colloquium - Ph.D.