Angela Ida De Benedictis Distinguished Lecture: The reverberations of electronic sound

Name: Angela Ida De Benedictis Distinguished Lecture: The reverberations of electronic sound
Start: 2025-10-06T15:30:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-06T16:30:00-04:00
Location: 527 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H3A1E3

Schedule

Mon Oct 06 2025 at 03:30 pm to 04:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

527 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H3A1E3 | Montreal, QC

This Distinguished Lecture will take place in Tanna Schulich Hall (527 Sherbrooke O) and will be followed by a catered reception in the Elizabeth Wirth Music Building lobby.
No registration is required for this event.
Pour plus d'informations en français, veuillez visiter notre page web à ce lien : https://www.cirmmt.org/fr/events/distinguished-lectures/de-benedictis-6-10-2025
*Veuillez noter que cette conférence se déroulera en anglais.

Abstract
In this lecture, I examine how Luciano Berio’s electronic experiments at the RAI Studio di Fonologia in Milan during the 1950s–60s catalyzed a profound shift in his musical thinking. An analysis of the Studio’s equipment in the late 1950s and a parallel reflection on key compositional techniques typical of work in the studio—editing, mixing, filtering—will elucidate core elements in the emergence of a new approach to both music composition and perception. Tracing Berio’s evolving relationship with electronics, I highlight the compositional and conceptual distinctions between his early electronic works (such as Mutazioni)—which feature “articulatory” structures and gradual transitions between sonic families—and later works like Thema (Omaggio a Joyce), where electronic tools enable unprecedented continuity between words and music, voice and electronics. This compositional approach also emerged in Berio’s non-electronic works of the 1960s, such as Circles. The quartet Sincronie serves as a particularly illustrative case: its parametric organization and structure clearly reflect an electronic compositional mindset, as evidenced by preparatory sketches. Orchestral and vocal works such as Sinfonia and Coro further demonstrate how studio-derived techniques were internalized by Berio in his broader compositional practice, beyond the electronic domain.
I argue that Berio’s engagement with electronic media represented a definitive point of no return: it reshaped his musical thought, material choices, and formal conception, profoundly influencing his creative practice and aesthetic perspective. Attendees will gain historical insight and a deeper understanding of how technological media and musical thought mutually shape one another.

Biography
Angela Ida De Benedictis studied musicology at the University of Pavia where she earned her PhD in 2001 with a dissertation on music for radio and radiophonic art. From 2005 to 2007 she was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation for research on Music and Technology. Since 2014 she has been a member of the Scientific Board of the Paul Sacher Foundation (Basel), where she is currently responsible of more than twenty-five collections, including those of Luciano Berio, Cathy Berberian, Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, Bruno Maderna and Salvatore Sciarrino. She was previously Assistent Professor at the University of Pavia and Research Associate at the Institut for Computer Music and Sound Technology, Zurich University of the Arts. Since 2009 she has served as Scientific Director of the Centro Studi Luciano Berio and, since 2007, as a member of the Scientific Committee of the Luigi Nono Foundation in Venice.
Her main research interests include contemporary art music; electronic music; music and technology; radio studies; authorship and open form; notation and performance in new music; new musical theatre and philological and analytical approaches to twentieth-century composition. Her publications include Utopia, Innovation, Tradition – Maderna’s Cosmos (2023); critical editions of the writings of Luigi Nono (2018 et al.) and Luciano Berio (2013 and 2025); Luciano Berio. New Perspectives (2012); The Prix Italia and the Radiophonic Experimentation (2012); Radiodramma e arte radiofonica (2004); New Music on the Radio (2000); as well as critical musical editions, scholarly editions of composer’s correspondence, and numerous essays of theory and analysis of 20th-century music.

For more information, see our website: https://www.cirmmt.org/en/events/distinguished-lectures/de-benedictis-6-10-2025
Thank you to our partners:
McGill, UdeM, UdeS, ÉTS, FRQ, and CFI