New idiomatic music for classical

guitar: a symbiotic relationship

between composers and a performer

Proposal for a Research Paper in Creative Branch of doctoral

studies at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (Music
and Dramatic Art)

Matilde Oppizzi

«Idiomatic music reflects what an instrument can and cannot do, what it
does willingly and what it does reluctantly» (DE SOUZA 2017). In fact,
«musical passages can be characterized as more or less idiomatic depending
on the extent to which the music relies on instrument-specific effects».
Moreover, «the mechanics of musical instruments commonly influence how
the music itself is organized» (HURON & BEREC 2009). Indeed idiomatic
music for guitar seems to be implicitly referred to the traditional repertoire of
the instrument, making the two words almost synonymous. (RADOLE 1997,
WADE 2001, WADE 2012) Thus, my research question is the following: are
there any ways of playing classical guitar  that a performer could
feel at the same time idiomatic and new? How could I, as a
performer, foster their discovery in the context of collaborations
with composers? To answer the question I am confronting different
approaches, strategies and methods that involve commissioning new music to
artists ‘far’ from the classical/contemporary conventions and working with
them. The aim is to keep the focus at the uncharted possibilities at the core
of the idiomatic performance habits of the instrument, without interest for
the novelty of the non-conventional extended techniques that are typical, for
instance, of the Avantgarde. The outputs will be obtained from an
intertwined relationship between the composers and me as the performer that
will mix composition and performance practices. Such outputs, strategies and
relationships will be then investigated, confronted and evaluated in order to
offer not only the scores and the performances that will come from my
artistic research, but rather an insight of methods and tools that other
composers and performers could employ to achieve relevant art that is at the
same time idiomatic and new.
 The classical guitar (hereinafter «guitar»), in its actual form, was born in
the second half of the Nineteenth Century in the workshop of Spanish luthier
Antonio de Torres Jurado and at the time, for many decades to come, its
repertoire was composed almost exclusively by guitarists and it was still
considered a vernacular instrument (RADOLE 1997). In the first half of the
Twentieth Century, world-class guitarist Andrés Segovia undertook the
process of elevating the instrument’s status and expanding and improving its
repertoire by commissioning new pieces to well known non-guitarist
composers as well as transcribing works by renowned ones (I. Albéniz, J.S.
Bach, F. Chopin, E. Granados,..). Nevertheless, the guitar original repertoire
is still confined, if compared to the ones of the instruments of the orchestra,
and it is largely consisting of works by guitarists. This impacts the music that
is usually performed, favouring either an idiomatic music looking to the past,
or the very novelty of the extended techniques of the Avantgarde.
Since I am interested in performing music for my instrument that is at the
same time idiomatic and new, I’ve recently been working in close contact
with composers writing for guitar in non-conventional manners: I’m currently
collaborating with artists from the pop/techno culture and others with an
expertise in algorithmic music. In both cases, in order to obtain a playable
result, I was brought to a close cooperation with the composers specifically
regarding the idiomatic aspects of writing and I realised how working in such
proximity their composition practice changed as well as my performance
practice did. Hence, my research question: are there any ways of playing
guitar that a performer could feel at the same time idiomatic and new? How
could I, as a performer, foster their discovery in the context of collaborations
with composers?
To find what strategies work in this regard, I plan to cooperate with
composers with diverse background and considering different approaches to
composition. My research would consist of four different moments, that would
result in the four annual concerts in fulfillment of the requirements for the
course of Doctoral Studies. First of all I would work with composers who
employ computer aided techniques and quantitative methods in composition.
I would continue a project I have started this year - in which I collaborated
with two composers studying at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
- tracing idiomatic patterns, generating new ones and elaborating a collection
of them so to define charts that could (and have recently been) used by
composers to write new idiomatic music for guitar (ALBINI & NASTARI
2019), (ALBINI & OPPIZZI 2019). Then I plan to collaborate with renowned
artists from the non-classical western music world. For instance, I have just
started collaborating with Synthpop artist Pop-X for a new piece and with
JacobTV on a version for guitar and boombox of his famous GRAB IT!. The
aim in this specific type of collaboration is to obtain music the furthest
possible from the classical repertoire, but of course rigorously playable on
guitar. For the third part of this work, I would involve composers who
belong to the classical tradition of cultures from all over the World, excluding
those that gave birth to guitar’s repertoire: my research would investigate the
collaboration with, inter alia, Asian, African, North and East European,
South and Native American traditional composers. The final segment of my
research would cover my cooperation with classically educated composers, but
without any experience with the guitar.
While conducting this collaborative work with composers I plan to keep
track of the creative process and to test the scores obtained proposing them
to other guitarists and checking their reaction to the idiomaticity and novelty
thru questionnaires properly formulated. Inductively I wish to study and
understand how such process could work to achieve my aims.

Bibliography

Albini, G., Oppizzi, M., Composing Idiomatic Music for Guitar Using Distant
Reading Strategies, to appear in Proceedings of 21st century guitar,
University of Ottawa, CA, 22-25 August 2019

Albini, G., Nastari, F., Composing New with the Old: Musical Stylometry as a
Means of Composing New Music for Classical Guitar, Proceedings of the II
Dublin Guitar Symposium, Dublin Institute of Technology, IRL, 22-23
February 2019

De Souza, J., Music at Hand, Oxford University press, 2017

Huron, D., Jonathon Berec, Characterizing Idiomatic Organization in Music:

A Theory and Case Study of Musical Affordances”, Empirical Musicology
Review, 2009

Okazaki, M., Fundamentals of Guitar, Mel Bay, 2015

Radole, G., Liuto, Chitarra e vihuela, Edizioni Suvini e Zerboni, Milano, Italy
1997

Ramelli, M., The Composer and the Performer: An Intertwined Relationship,

Royal Conservatory of Scotland, UK, 2019

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USA, 2001

Wade, G., Traditions of the Classica Guitar, John Clader, London, UK, 2012

Wood, E., The composer-performer relationship, the musical score and

performance, Montreal, 1997