During my research process, I have looked for frameworks, theories, and examples, to understand and bring focus to my evolving compositional practice. In this third chapter, and partly in the second one, I have tried to explain some relevant concepts that have emerged from my practice and have become operational within the development of my research. Most of them come from different disciplines such as compositional theory, electroacoustic theory, media theory, sociology, and media history.
Working with piezo brought me to focus on the quality of sonic intimacy, bringing to the foreground a different perception of the proximity of sounds. Since I often invite the performer to use the piezo like a stethoscope on the instrument's body in order to let the sound matter emerge from a different proxemic perspective, Jonathan Sterne's observations about the importance of the adoption of the stethoscope in medicine and his consequent formulation of the development of a mediate and technical form of listening (Sterne, 2003), resonated particularly to me. I realized that I could read the use of the piezo on acoustic instruments as a “stethoscopic form of listening”. The latter implies the mediation of a technical device - the piezo - and the idea of framing sound, rendering some sounds as interior and others as exterior, marking different spatial dimensions. The same different spatial - and temporal - dimensions that Sciarrino points out in his definition of the window form (Sciarrino, 1998). The similarity between the idea of "frame" and the one of "window" brought me to consider how important could be within the context of any compositional process, the possibility to frame the sound, in order to better understand its properties and its intrinsic potentialities. The awareness of this possibility led me to take into consideration different listening modes, which helped me to get a better understanding of the heterogeneous qualities of the sound matter produced with piezo. All aspects that allowed me for a musical shaping of such sound material, as I will better explain in the next chapter (especially in section 4.3).
I have once more focused on the experience of listening while considering the issue of memory. During my research path, I have started to methodically collect recordings from experimentation with piezo-sounds, and to constantly go back to these recordings during the compositional process. In questioning how memory works in grasping and storing information about sound I have experienced myself the three-strata model proposed by Snyder (Snyder, 2000), in which I saw a direct link to three of the time scales proposed by Roads (Roads, 2004). This theoretical framework allowed me for considering how my compositional process tends to evolve working with different sonic ideas, that respond to different time dimensions. Moreover, it brought me to consider the need to build the compositional work around specific sound materials, which the listener can recognize as repeated occurrences of particular sound within the piece, or as its variations, its evolutions, or simply through the opposition with other kinds of materials – as I have partly explained in section 3.5 while referring to the ribattuto sound within Sistema di Prossimità, and as I will better explain in the next chapter.
Finally, the discourse about the role that memory has within the compositional work, led me to consider the concept of archive, borrowed from media theory. I recognized this concept as emerging both from my practice and from other experiences, such as that of Systema Naturae by Mauro Lanza and Andrea Valle. I have progressively realized how the notion of archiving and cataloguing has become a tool in the organization of my compositional practice. Consequently I have understood the concept of archive also as a dynamic process, which provides me with a deeper awareness of my own work.
All the ideas that I have here summarized, have become conceptual tools within my compositional practice, and, at the same time through these theoretical aspects, I have been able to develop my critical faculties. So, now, I would conclude by asking how these aspects that emerged from my research might usefully contribute to the analysis and the understanding of electroacoustic music. And what kind of implications might they have not only concerning listening, but for practitioners as well, in the hope that these concepts might be useful in the future development of different creative practices within the contemporary context of music-making and of thinking with sound.
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