Listening and musical aesthetics

Passing on analysis and communication tools for working with musicians in artistic direction:

-Knowing how to define objective criteria (tempo, precision and positioning, phrasing, historical coherence, respect for the text, etc.),

-Knowing how to assert and argue the choice of an aesthetic direction, communicate and share personal taste.

-Have a precise vocabulary for communicating on questions of musical aesthetics in the context of a recording.

The fundamental question is: what does an interpretation mean and to what extent does it respect the score?

This course will look at musical aesthetics from two angles:

-Through the analysis and study of sound representation (aesthetic quality of sound recordings made by the students, or of current recordings and audiovisual material)

-By analysing and comparing different versions of the same work.

Year²:

-Listening to recordings made by the students, with the emphasis on the correlation between the sound recording and its musical aesthetic. Concrete sound recording criteria will be taken into account.

-Comparison of chamber music recordings (up to small orchestra) to first analyse the correlation between score and performance, and then learn to envisage the different avenues of performance.

Year³:

-Comparison of interpretations with, on the programme, a major work (symphony, opera, oratorio) and works covering the different periods of classical music.

FSMS 2-3

Attendance