Some reflections about the Manifesto for Electonic Music written by Rafael Toral.

from a certain point of view, there's a sort of tradition about composing music for a specific instrument (in classical music it's common to find "music for piano", "music for flute" and so on) so the concept of "electronic music" is reasonable if applied to the experiments of '50 - '60 made in Darmstadt or Cologne because that kind of music was supposed to be performed using exclusively oscillators or electronically manipulated acoustic instruments. That was mostly classical music at least for the background of the composer involved. Even if other music categories have blurred boundaries, "electronic music" is today probably a non-category as almost all forms of music has some form of electronic device involved.

The real question is the claim, usually from press and critics, that the technological aspect of art making (is not only a music's aesthetical problem) automatically triggers some form of beauty. From an certain perspective, Art is the result of personal choices using the available tool, so it's possible to have innovative music using both a piano or a laptop. The underlying concept, and properly the point of the manifasto, is that the focal point of reasoning should be the compositional or performing practice and not the use of a particular tool as "style" is a not a concern of the tool used. The concept that "electronic music" is a style is just the result of a cultural prejudice.

monday 14.X.2013