CIRMMT Distinguished Lecture Series: Marco Stropa, The Compositional control of sound synthesis: from Traiettoria to OMChroma
ABOUT MARCO STROPPA:
Composer, researcher and educator, Marco Stroppa (Verona, 12/8/1959) studied piano, choral music, choir conducting, composition and electronic music in Italy. He also studied computer music, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence at MIT on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1984-86.
Between 1980 and 1984 he worked at the computer music centre of the University of Padua, where he produced Traiettoria, for piano and computer. In 1982 Pierre Boulez invited him to IRCAM where he worked as a composer and researcher. His constant contact with this institution has been fundamental to his musical education and work as a composer.
A highly appreciated and active educationalist, Mr. Stroppa founded in 1987 a composition workshop at the International Bartók Festival (Szombathély, Hungary). He taught composition at the CNSM of Paris and Lyon. Since 1999 he has been full professor of composition and computer music at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. Mr. Stroppa composed for both acoustical instruments and new media. His keen interest in sound and space has often led him to rethinking the placement of the instruments on stage so as to achieve a spatial dramaturgy that will be revealed and highlighted by the unfolding of the music.
He often groups several works around large cycles exploring specific compositional projects, such as a series of concertos for instrument and a spatialized orchestra inspired by poems of W.B. Yeats, a book of Miniature Estrose for solo piano, and a cycle of works for solo instrument and "chamber electronics" inspired by poems of e. e. cummings, the last of which are ...of Silence, for saxophone, and hist whist, for violin. In the domain of music drama, he wrote two radio operas for the italian RAI3 (Proemio and in cielo in terra in mare) and is currently preparing a new piece for the music theatre (Re Orso) on a libretto by Arrigo Boito, which will be premiered on June 9th, 2011 at the Opéra Comique in Paris
