Lectures, Paper Presentations, Lecture/Recitals

Messiaen's Gagaku
Royal Musical Association Study Day "Nostalgia & Innovation in Twentieth-Century French Music
The Jack Hilton Music Rooms - Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University, U.K.
8-9 May 2009.
The tension between nostalgia and innovation is uniquely manifested in Olivier Messiaen's Gagaku, the fourth movement of his 1962 composition Sept Haikai. Messiaen's religiosity represented a form of nostalgia to the intellectual French Avant-Garde. Furthermore religion itself can be regarded as nostalgic, as the term means "to tie back to God." Messiaen considers the sense of ritual and stasis as musical expressions of sacredness. By comparing the structure of Messiaen's Gagaku (analyzed in the light of his writings about his compositional methods) and that of ancient Japanese gagaku court music, Irlandini shows in this paper how this sense of ritual and stasis constitutes the aesthetic common ground existing independently in both forms. The existence of common elements between a non-western "source" and the western composition inspired by that source provides the necessary condition for the transformation of nostalgia into innovation. The concept of écriture plays an important role in the past/future dialectic of this transformation, causing structure and style to differ based on the principle of non-imitation and asserting itself as the shaping element that makes Gagaku a piece of distinctly French music.

Spiral Music
Lecture/Recital at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A. February 8, 2007:
in this event, Irlandini's presentation on spirals and their role as a compositional process includes his performances of Pralaya, for piano solo, and Pythagoras, for tenor recorder solo.

This lecture/recital was part of Irlandini's visit as Guest Composer to Indiana University, Bloomington, in the week of February 6-11, 2007, which included also teaching composition graduate students, and attending to two concerts:
-- monographic concert "Spirals and Movements: Chamber Music of Luigi Antonio Irlandini, Guest Composer", at the Ford Hall, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, on February 6, 2007. Program: Pralaya - performed by Luigi Antonio Irlandini, Agnistoma I - performed by Sarah Fox (soprano), Luigi Antonio Irlandini (didjeridu), Emma Bonanno, Lucia Alves Melo (recorders),
Agnistoma II, for four recorder players - conducted by Charles Latshaw, Sol das Almas, for guitar solo - performed by Espen Jensen, Pythagoras, for tenor recorder solo - performed by Eva Legêne, and Partita,
for six recorder players - conducted by Iara Fricke-Matte
--concert "Contemporary Music of the 20th Century: Modern and Experimental Composers" first concert in the Brazilian Music Festival "A Musical Encounter with Brazil", Auer Hall, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, on February 11, 2007. Irlandini's compositions in the program were Luna, for mixed choir a cappella had its world premiere, with the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble conducted by Carmen Helena Téllez, and Agnistoma I, for soprano, didjeridu, and two soprano recorders.

Spiral Forms & Music
Lecture/Recital: in this event, Irlandini talks about spirals and their role as a compositional process in his music.
-- Old Little Theater, College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A.
April 11, 2006 from 4 to 6 p.m.Irlandini performed Pralaya, for piano solo, and Pythagoras, for tenor recorder solo.

-- Contemporary Music Program, College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A. April 29, 2006, at 7:30 p.m. With special guests Eva Legene performing Pythagoras on the tenor recorder, and Elena Sopoci and Gail Robertson on the violins performing Trail of Tears with the author at the piano, Irlandini also performs Pralaya, for piano solo.

György Ligeti's Lontano: a Formal Analysis
Contemporary Music Program, College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A., October 17, 2005.
A lecture about how sound masses are created by means of canons, and how sound masses articulate form in Ligeti's Lontano, for large orchestra.

Cosmicizing Sound
Institute of World Culture, Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A., August 21, 2004.
The creative act of making music within either the Western or classical Indian music traditions is explored as a re-enactment of cosmic creation. Musical patterns within each tradition are seen as reflections of a world view or cosmology. This link between musical composition and cosmology will be explained from the perspective that a piece of music is a universe of sounds, i.e., a cosmos, an organized, ordered universe. To cosmicize sound means both to organize the musical structure of components and to consecrate the piece at a higher artistic and spiritual level, and thereby express a world view. This lecture includes a brief analysis of Irlandini's composition Sacrificio, for mixed choir a cappella.

Non-Western Influx in New Music
Lecture. Room 1145, Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara, 23 April 2001. Irlandini presents a brief introduction and overview of the influence of non-Western musical traditions in the work of contemporary composers such as John Cage, Steve Reich, Lou Harrison, La Monte Young, Giacinto Scelsi, and others.

Stockhausen's lecture Moment-forming and integration
Lecture: Room 1145, Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara, 3 February 1998. Irlandini guides the discussion among composition students and iintroduces the video of Karlheinz Stockhausen's London lecture about Moment-forming and integration.

Influence of non-Western musical traditions in contemporary composition
International Composers Workshop, Gaudeamus Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 1988.
Irlandini promotes the listening of excerpts from his compositions Numen and Four Scenes from "The Gaze of Orpheus" and talks about how the study of non-Western and ancient music has influenced them.