Marco Stroppa

Early days: exploring sound

Scientific thinking has played a decisive role in shaping Marco Stroppa’s musical imagination. From the beginning of his career, his work as a composer has developed in close contact with research institutions such as the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale at the University of Padua in Italy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, and IRCAM in Paris, with which he has developed an especially close relationship. These connections and their many implications help explain the aesthetic and theoretical nuances of Stroppa’s music.

An intertwining of scientific research and artistic creation was already present in Stroppa’s first composition, Traiettoria for piano and computer-generated sounds (1982-1988), a work that made a notable impact on contemporary music. Stroppa produced its synthesized component from the harmonies and instrumental gestures in the piece’s acoustic component, treating the computer as a tool to amplify musical ideas and even to expand on his instrumental writing. This approach runs throughout his work. The computer never comes first in aesthetic design; instead, it serves the musicians, making it possible for them to “explore the musical phenomenon as a whole, with unprecedented rigor and clarity.”¹

The relationship between instrument and computer became a central focus in a series of works that Stroppa conceived of as “chamber electronics” (électronique de chambre).² In these pieces, he adapts the electronic writing to the gestural and sound properties of each solo instrument. In little i (1996), for example, he leads the listener into the interior of the flute’s sound in its extreme registers (particularly the low register), while also amplifying and multiplying certain instrumental effects, such as the motion of the keys. In I will not kiss your f.ing flag (2005), he explores the rich harmonic fields of the trombone’s sound, which take on the unexpected aura of a “subtle body.”

Composition and spatialization: a different view of sound material

Stroppa’s work with sound soon expanded to include questions of spatialization. His first significant piece in this area was Spirali for string quartet (1987-1988). He treats spatialization as a way of projecting the quartet’s sound into a fixed space around the audience. Movement is already inherent in the instrumental gestures themselves and in the way the sounds circulate among the four instruments. The subtitle, “quartet projected into space,” makes this idea explicit.³

For Stroppa, spatialization can be a way of showcasing the highly subtle and refined work of composition. It acts as a kind of “magnifying glass” for the ear, drawing the listener into the private world of the sound and revealing trajectories that would otherwise remain imperceptible. He puts the same principle to work in Zwielicht (1994-1999) for double bass, two percussionists, electronics, and thirteen loudspeakers. Starting from the metaphor of the light that appears between deep night and sunrise, Stroppa explores faint, unstable, and unpredictable instrumental sounds that would normally be inaudible in concert.

Stroppa’s study of music centers on composition, which should not be understood as the affirmation of a system governed by harmonic and contrapuntal laws, but rather as a speculative process: the composer studies sound material acoustically, then treats it as matter to be radiated. This approach helps explain Stroppa’s preference for sounds prepared in the studio rather than generated in real time, since studio preparation allows for all the analysis and expertise that truly “writing” a sound demands. He sometimes produces several versions of the same work, revealing a related approach to creation that requires time for reflection. The work élet... fogytiglan, for ensemble “scattered across the space” (1989-1998), explores amplification: the possibility of composing the way the instrumental sounds radiate through space. The first version was spatialized with loudspeakers, while a second was purely instrumental and expands the ensemble from eleven to fifteen instruments.

Seeing sound material differently, making it possible to hear it from new angles: this is what drives Stroppa to draw so extensively on scientific concepts and on the possibilities of computing. Together, they give him the tools to think about sound in a conceptual way. Stroppa expressed this idea in the concert program for the French premiere of Hiranyaloka for orchestra, performed at the Maison de Radio France on 17 October 1994:

Computing changes our relationship to musical material and allows us to put acoustics back in its proper place. I think, in fact, that we have assigned too much importance to acoustics, notably to the spectrum, which has often been treated as the signature or main component of sound. But the spectrum is only one aspect of sound. Other components are just as important, in particular the way amplitude evolves over time and parameters of duration — not to mention relationships among multiple parameters. Digital technologies teach us to manage all these different data points, which in turn teaches us to see, to understand the phenomenon of sound in a different way.

This fundamental point establishes a striking difference between Stroppa’s work and “spectral music,” and shows how deeply his music connects instrumental sound production with electroacoustics. His approach to sound reveals his debt to science and technology whether in large-ensemble pieces, such as the concerto for piano and orchestra, Upon a Blade of Grass (1995-1996), and the work for trombone, double quintet, and percussion, From Needle’s Eye (1996-1999), or in his chamber music and solo works. In Miniature estrose for “piano d’amore” (Premier livre, 1991-2001), for example, he invents a technique in which the performer allows the piano strings to vibrate so that they begin to resonate with each other, producing an effect that recalls the sounds of the viola d’amore.

Stroppa continued exploring instrumental sound in Gla-dya (2006-2007), a duet for two horns based on “studies on twin sound radiations.” He approaches the idea of radiation from several angles, treating it as a process through which a vibrating sound source communicates its energy to a central point.

This idea offers a revealing way to understand Hommage à Gy. K. (1997-2003), a trio for clarinet, viola, and piano. The three instruments are conceived as a single, ideal instrument with a rich, spatialized timbre. Across the work’s seven fragments, the instruments layer over one another, producing rich and unexpected timbres. The material itself remains simple as it develops within each fragment, leaving the audience with glimpses of its depth and complexity. He shapes the way the sound occupies the space: the performers change places between movements, hiding behind the piano or playing inside of it, moving away from each other and then coming back together again. Each displacement within the space serves the composition and amplifies a structuring concept. For example, in the third movement, the viola is in front of the piano and the clarinet behind it, causing the clarinet to work “in the shadows” of the viola’s gestures, with the piano linking the two. At other points, the performers’ movements underline a simple link between the visual aspect and the composition. In the final movement, as the work comes to a close and the sounds begin to disappear, the clarinetist and violist move away from the piano. In the second movement, in contrast, Stroppa creates a visual mismatch: the clarinetist hides behind the piano and plays fortissimo in a “struggle” against the piano’s chords. In each of these miniatures, Stroppa creates tiny dramatic interludes within the sound itself.

Taking the listener to another place

This last observation points to another fundamental aspect of Stroppa’s music: its dynamic motion, even tension, especially when the music grows from simple ideas. In a 1989 theoretical article, Stroppa describes the basic material of his compositions (at least those written at that time) as a “Body of Musical Information.”⁴ The metaphor of the body implies motion, continual transformation, and memory.

Stroppa often places this musical “body” in tension with an external reference: a poem, an abstract idea, or a set of contrasting ideas. The title of Hiranyaloka, for example, refers to the Sanskrit word for the astral plane. As Stroppa wrote in the program note for the premiere, he chose the title to “try and guide the listener toward this other place.”

Another illustration can be found in the first volume of Miniature estrose. Its miniatures draw on a wide range of references: a Beethoven motif that forms the basis of “Innige Cavatina”; a pivotal moment in Greek tragedy in “Prologos: Anagnorisis”; a sensory perception in “Ninna-nanna”; a musical form in “Passacaglia canonica”; and a far-off culture with magical rituals in “Tangata Manu.” Each reference acts as a context, or a foreign body, that the musical material confronts without imitating. Stroppa does not use these references to signify or explain something to the listener; rather, he leaves the listener with an unexpected image that has caught at his imagination as a composer.

Voice, stage performance, dramaturgy

Stroppa’s dramatic works can be understood through the same lens. He first explored musical drama in a project for a RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana) broadcast, producing a series of musical sequences from synthesized sounds for a commented radio reading of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. He then began working with writer Adolfo Moriconi on the radio opera Proemio (1990). The new work reused the synthesized sounds he had produced for the Decameron. Its two central characters are Giovanni and Boccaccio, or the poet and his double, who recount and comment on the fates of six women, three historical and three literary. Proemio does not use singing but only the actors’ spoken voices. Music and recitation remain separate: the only link between them is the drama, which throws the distinct expressive character of each into relief. The “abstract” universe of synthesized sound is articulated musically through its reaction to the drama. This dynamic recalls the relationship, discussed above, between Stroppa’s instrumental pieces and the poetic “images” that surround them.

Two years later, Stroppa composed a second radio opera, again in collaboration with Moriconi. Titled in cielo, in terra, in mare (1992), this second work centers on an imagined future society whose omnipresent systems of control leave little room for the protagonist. This central character, “we,” represents diversity in every sense, as it continually changes physical appearance, sex, and age. “We” also possesses extraordinary powers of action: rising into the sky, descending into the depths of the earth, and plunging into the ocean’s abyss. “We” is ultimately tried and found guilty by “them” — the others — for having found in the sky what belongs to the earth, in the earth what belongs to the sky, and so on. Stroppa tells this openly political story in a nonlinear fashion. The text appears in fragments, through brief quotations in different languages as well as “key words” that emerge and guide the listener through the story. Here, the crisp separation of expressive worlds that characterizes Proemio disappears. Alongside synthesized sounds, Stroppa uses elaborate concrete sounds, the actors’ voices, and most notably a choir, which sings and plays the role of “we.” “We” is the only sung presence in the work. Listeners hear it evolving in an often complex musical world made up of noise, synthesized sounds, and voices that shout and weep around it.

It is significant that Stroppa later felt the need to write a listening guide based on his own experience of hearing the finished work. The “image” to be confronted — now transformed into dramatic material — seems to grow from within the music. It lies just beneath the surface, subtly threaded through the work, rather than imposed on it as a formal prescription. The radio format, which leaves the characters’ appearance, the setting, and the action to the listeners’ imagination, certainly encouraged this process.

Stroppa’s later work for the stage developed along similar lines. In ...1995...2995...3695... (1995), the action occurs in a far-off future, in the year 3695, when the audience discovers fragments of the radio opera in cielo, in terra, in mare. By presenting the earlier opera as a “historical fact,” the latter opera sheds light on the present as it is projected into the future. It brings together two scenes, two expressive dimensions — the one acoustic, the other theatrical — two types of music, and two temporalities: the future and the future past. In his music for Race: Piece for Memory, Words, and Piano (1997), written and directed by Pascal Rambert, Stroppa “amplifies” Miniature estrose so that the music enters the speaker’s space and the stage space without becoming subordinate to the text. It does not simply express the text’s contents. Instead, the music becomes a free association of ideas built around dramatic gestures and multiple levels of temporality: text, performance space, and music.

in cielo, in terra, in mare also marks the beginning of Stroppa’s sustained engagement with the voice. In that work, use of the choir opened a path toward a type of vocal writing that Stroppa connects both to pre-Romantic vocality — especially madrigals — and to non-European music. Following this work, Stroppa composed a series of pieces for vocal ensemble. The first was Come Natura di Foglia (1997), for four vocalists and electronics. Inspired by Indian and African vocal traditions, especially overtone singing, the piece uses computers “with the desire to make each sound a magical event.”⁵ In 2002, Stroppa composed a new version of the work for eight voices.

He later turned to voice without electronics. Such works include Lamento (2003-2004), for mixed choir, after the text Table d’Emeraude attributed to Hermès Trismégiste, and Cantilena (2001-2003), for sixteen-part mixed choir, after an eponymous poem by Amelia Rosselli. A further example is Perchè non riusciamo a vederla (2008-2013), in which the choir occupies the stage in different positions and orientations in relation to the audience. Although these pieces draw on Western cultural sources, Stroppa’s experimentation with the voice and its projection in the performance space continues to lead listeners along unexplored paths in the history of sound.

The electroacoustic “totem” and opera

Spatial projection again features in recent productions that use a column of loudspeakers oriented in different directions — an “electroacoustic totem” of his own invention.⁶ This device first appeared on stage on 19 May 2012 in Re Orso, a “musical legend for four singers, four actors, eleven instruments, voices, invisible sounds, [and] spatialization,” premiered at the Opéra-Comique. Based on Arrigo Boito’s fable of the same name, written in heterometric verse, the opera weaves together many strands of Stroppa’s earlier work with the voice, drama, spatialization, and computer-processed sound. Boito’s fable tells the story of an autocratic king, Re Orso, who lives around the year 1000, a date that evokes fears of the end of the world. He has his entire court decapitated, beginning with an earthworm, and ends up dying alone. The earthworm then eats him — having survived because earthworms can live after being cut in two. Stroppa sees this story as an

acerbic and uninhibited critique of the power of a ‘putrefying’ court ‘where nature has died,’ to use Boito’s words. These words feel prophetic today, in an age marked both by global crisis — human as well as ecological, ideological, political, and social — and by the powerlessness of the dominant political classes, most of whom are under the thumb of unbridled and morbid financial globalization.⁷

This political fable takes the form of an opera, with ensemble scenes and arias. Yet the operatic form serves as a backdrop for a frenzied chain of events that drives a despot to self-destruction. Re Orso enters into a dialectical confrontation with the worm, portrayed as a “woman of the people,” and the opera closes with a major aria that signals her victory over the king.

Electronics, spatialization, and the totem play a fundamental role in this adventure. Throughout the first half of the performance, the digitally transformed voice of the woman of the people, sung by an alto, haunts Re Orso, a countertenor, as an “invisible sound.” The other characters express themselves in their natural, unprocessed voices, over instrumental accompaniment. In the second half, when the king dies alone, even the instruments have departed. Only their “sound imprint” remains, like a shadow, in the performance space. Re Orso’s final sigh is transformed into the symbolic death of his voice: his last sung high note passes into the electronics, then descends through deeper registers in a long glissando until it tolls out a death knell. In parallel, the totem gradually appears on stage, symbolizing the tombstone. It accompanies the woman of the people, together with an accordion, as she celebrates her victory in her unprocessed, “living” voice.

Stroppa continued to experiment with the totem as an electroacoustic sound source in works such as Come play with me, for orchestra and electronics (2016-2025), and especially Lance dei crepuscoli, for a nine-loudspeaker totem and ambisonic sound system (2023, IRCAM). The device allows him to shape the sound radiating from a single source while also giving that source a significant and situated presence on stage. In Lance dei crepuscoli, whose title comes from a book on political ecology by Philippe Descola, he pushes this experimentation to an extreme, drawing on sounds inspired by samples of traditional music from around the world.

<sup>1. “Réponses,” Musiques en création, Contrechamps, Geneva, 1997, p. 177.↩
2. Images d’une œuvre n°7: L’«électronique de chambre» de Marco Stroppa, documentary written and directed by Benoît Martin and Nicolas Donin, IRCAM, 2009, https://resources.ircam.fr/fr/media/xcb37e7_images-dune-uvre-n-7-l-electronique. See also Noémie SPRENGER-OHANA and Vincent TIFFON, “Traiettoria, l’atelier dans l’atelier du compositeur Marco Stroppa,” Revue de musicologie, vol. 98 (2012), n°1, pp. 193-220; and Vincent TIFFON and Noémie SPRENGER-OHANA, “Marco Stroppa’s Compositional Process and Scientific Knowledge between 1980-1991,” SMC, July 2011, Padova, Italy.↩
3. On the concept of “spatialized” chamber music, see Marco STROPPA, “Accorder musicalement un espace réel et un espace inventé,” Rue Descartes, 2007/2 n°56, pp. 70-81, Éditions Collège international de Philosophie.↩
4. “Organismes d’information musicale: une approche de la composition,” La musique et les sciences cognitives, Contemporary Music Review, Pierre Mardaga, Brussels, 1989.↩
5. Come Natura di Foglia, concert program, IRCAM, 23 June 1997.↩
6. First use in … of Silence (2007-2009) for saxophone and chamber electronics.↩
7. Marco STROPPA and Giordano FERRARI, “Une dramaturgie musicale,” in Re Orso, Opéra-Comique, Paris, 2012, p. 38.↩</sup>