Estrategias para el análisis de la música visualel caso de Llorenç Barber

Abstract

The analysis of Llorenç Barber’s work reveals different approaches to the possibilities of graphic notation in the field of experimental music and sound art. In his initial compositions with the Actum art collective (1973-1982), Barber developed, from the influence of American fads such as minimalism and participatory art, simple and intuitive musical graphics, whose mission was to provide a rich and spontaneous expression of sound. Upon the conception of musical notation from a democratic perspective and not like a symbolic barrier between professional and non-professional musician, it broke away from the avant-garde trends in central Europe. In his second stage, we find music for large, open-air urban spaces. Here, the composer combines enormous schematic scores with other topographic scores. The ‘plurifocal’ sound masses in movement are organized in a purely visual manner. The graphic trace (and its deliberate visual dimension) is the creative engine behind these extraordinary sound proposals. In his final stage, however, gestures are minimally used. These are the scores that have been referred as ‘visual music’: a quiet music whose functionality has been disappearing to give way to the score as autonomous artistic work. Ultimately, through the graphical work of Llorenç Barber, this studio wants to open spaces for reflection related to the relationship between sound and graphic gestures.