Horacio Vaggione

Saturday, June 9th, ISSUE is thrilled to present a rare U.S. performance from celebrated Paris-based Argentinian artist Horacio Vaggione, composer of electroacoustic and computer-assisted music and pioneer of micromontage, granular synthesis, and microsound.

As early as the 1960s, Vaggione began coupling his compositional work with computation as a means of transposing digital concerns to the instrumental level. His music is characterized by lively, often violent colors, but also by subtle relationships that are set up between acoustic instruments and recorded or computer-generated elements. For Vaggione, composing is a process of generating veritable, unique events and articulating them within a multiplicity of timescales, scalable within ever-expanding digital environments. Vaggione parses through tense and often false dichotomies between multiplicitous and univocal sonic elements, with granular sound positioned and manipulated without the unity of the sound source being lost. His compositions concern morphology (the study of the forms of things) by building sturdy structures from these minute grains, bringing the ear to a sonic world made up of atoms forming and reforming in their cohesion. Here, a snare drum can be defined merely by the sharpness of its timbre -- the rubbing, bouncing, and multiphonic spread of its impact deconstructed and emphasized by software.

Horacio Vaggione (born 1943) is an Argentinian composer of electroacoustic and instrumental music who specializes in micromontage, granular synthesis, and microsound and whose pieces are often scored for performers and computers (mixed music). He studied composition at the National University of Córdoba (1958–1961) and privately in Buenos Aires with Juan Carlos Paz (1960–1963), then at the University of Illinois with Lejaren Hiller and Herbert Brün (1966) where he first gained exposure and access to computers. In 1983 he received a Doctorate in Musicology at the University of Paris VIII. Vaggione was born in Córdoba, Argentina, but has lived in Europe since 1969. While in Argentina he was a co-founder of the Experimental Music Center (CME) of the National University of Cordoba (1965–1968), and co-organizer of the Experimental Music Meetings of the III Bienal Americana de Arte (1966). From 1969 to 1973 he lived in Madrid, Spain, and was part of the ALEA live electronics music group with Luis de Pablo, the ALEA electronic Music Studio and the Project Music and Computer at the University of Madrid. In 1978 he moved to France, where he still resides, and began work at IMEB in Bourges, INA-GRM and IRCAM in Paris. In 1987–1988 was a resident of the DAAD Berliner Kunstler Program, working at the Technische Universität Berlin. Since 1989 he has been Professor of Music (Composition and Research) at the University of Paris VIII. In 1996 founded the CICM (Centre de Recherche Informatique et Création Musicale) Composition Prizes: Newcomp Prize (Cambridge, USA, 1983). Bourges Prizes (1982, 1986, 1988). Euphonie d'Or (Bourges, 1992). ICMA International Computer Music Association Commission Award (USA, 1992). Ton Bruynel Foundation Prize (Amsterdam, 2010). Giga-Hertz Produktion Preis (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2011), among others. Writings and research papers: 54 papers, published in Proceedings, books (MIT Press, Harwoord Academic Publishers, Swett and Zeitlinger, L’Harmattan, Routledge) and specialized journals (Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review, Journal of New Music Research, Musica-Realtà, etc.).