In His Own Words
I try to communicate with the listener in the most direct way I can, without making any compromises in my artistic goals.
We should assume full responsibility for our musical ideas: if they are interesting, having the right tools will certainly enhance them. But if they are not, even the most sophisticated technology will not be able to produce miracles.
The whole point in using the computer as a compositional tool is to proceed in ways that we would not be able to with traditional methods of composition.
Creating elaborate rhythmic and microtonal structures is an important compositional resource for me, but not an aim in itself. Rather, my main preoccupation is to move beyond the experimental stage and on to artistic expression, so as to obtain musically compelling, dramatically potent results with some of the newest technology.
Unfortunately, as we know all too well, the hard reality in today’s concert life dictates its own rules. Insufficient rehearsal time, even for small-scale orchestral pieces, frustrates composers and conductors alike, with the result that bad performances drive the public and potential sponsors away, which in turn curtails the financial means of symphonic societies everywhere.
This and similar ideas, expressed in my PhD dissertation called Heterophony and Electroacoustic Music: a Synthesis, germinated as a result of a series of inadequate performances of my music, and partly explains why I turned to computers not only as helping hands, but as performers too. Computers as compositional tools had always held a fascination for me. But the early 90’s brought about a change in my outlook to live performance which forced me to analyze and emulate the parameters of ensemble playing. From then on these ‘discrepancies,’ or ‘margins of error,’ as I variously call them, became an integral part of my musical thinking, not just an embellishment of the texture.
Modes, micro-intervals and heterophony are prominent features of my vocabulary, inspired by Armenian ecclesiastical chants and various countries’ folk melodies. My tragico-dramatic style is a synthesis of acoustic and electronic sounds in a polyrhythmic texture, pointillistic in appearance, yet monodic in essence. I use samples, software improvisation and interactive composition to recreate acoustic timbre and live performance parameters with a virtual orchestra.
Unlike the approach taken by most composers, I treat micro-intervals in a diatonic, rather than chromatic, way. This is because I regard them as the overtones of a fundamental.
The theoretical research leading to the pieces I composed in the 90’s is the interaction between certain types of folk music textures, mainly heterophony, and the structural processes of electroacoustic music, within the context of today’s digital sound, whether sampled or synthesized. It sets out to find points of contact, as well as elements of contrast, between the improvisatory approach and raw beauty inherent in folk music, versus the planned directionality and meticulous detail that have come to characterize most synthesized music.
We should assume full responsibility for our musical ideas: if they are interesting, having the right tools will certainly enhance them. But if they are not, even the most sophisticated technology will not be able to produce miracles.
The whole point in using the computer as a compositional tool is to proceed in ways that we would not be able to with traditional methods of composition.
Creating elaborate rhythmic and microtonal structures is an important compositional resource for me, but not an aim in itself. Rather, my main preoccupation is to move beyond the experimental stage and on to artistic expression, so as to obtain musically compelling, dramatically potent results with some of the newest technology.
Unfortunately, as we know all too well, the hard reality in today’s concert life dictates its own rules. Insufficient rehearsal time, even for small-scale orchestral pieces, frustrates composers and conductors alike, with the result that bad performances drive the public and potential sponsors away, which in turn curtails the financial means of symphonic societies everywhere.
This and similar ideas, expressed in my PhD dissertation called Heterophony and Electroacoustic Music: a Synthesis, germinated as a result of a series of inadequate performances of my music, and partly explains why I turned to computers not only as helping hands, but as performers too. Computers as compositional tools had always held a fascination for me. But the early 90’s brought about a change in my outlook to live performance which forced me to analyze and emulate the parameters of ensemble playing. From then on these ‘discrepancies,’ or ‘margins of error,’ as I variously call them, became an integral part of my musical thinking, not just an embellishment of the texture.
Modes, micro-intervals and heterophony are prominent features of my vocabulary, inspired by Armenian ecclesiastical chants and various countries’ folk melodies. My tragico-dramatic style is a synthesis of acoustic and electronic sounds in a polyrhythmic texture, pointillistic in appearance, yet monodic in essence. I use samples, software improvisation and interactive composition to recreate acoustic timbre and live performance parameters with a virtual orchestra.
Unlike the approach taken by most composers, I treat micro-intervals in a diatonic, rather than chromatic, way. This is because I regard them as the overtones of a fundamental.
The theoretical research leading to the pieces I composed in the 90’s is the interaction between certain types of folk music textures, mainly heterophony, and the structural processes of electroacoustic music, within the context of today’s digital sound, whether sampled or synthesized. It sets out to find points of contact, as well as elements of contrast, between the improvisatory approach and raw beauty inherent in folk music, versus the planned directionality and meticulous detail that have come to characterize most synthesized music.