Música Espiral
Lecture/Recital

Auditorium, Department of Music, UDESC (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina), Florianópolis, Brazil, 25 November 2011

First Brazilian presentation of Irlandini's lecture/recital on spirals and their role as a compositional process, including the performances of
Trail of Tears, Pythagoras, and Porta do Sol...nos Confins do Mundo, with the participation of Alicia Cupani (soprano), Maria Bernardete Castelan Póvoas (piano),
João Titton and Izabela Köenig (violins), Rubens Marques Farias (viola), and Hans Twitchell (cello).

The Phylosophy of Sacred Sound in Contemporary Music
Royal Music Association 2011 Annual Conference - HORIZONS
University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K., 16 July 2011

Abstract:
A confluence of factors in the past century has contributed to the fusion – or the beginning of a fusion - of two very different horizons:
Western musical composition and Hindu sonic theology.
This article starts briefly exposing these factors, such as, but not limited to, for one hand, changes in Western musical language and aesthetics
like the shift from harmony to timbre and texture, and the preference for non-developmental musical forms, and, in the other hand,
socio-cultural changes expanding Western spiritual and cosmological conceptions.
The exposition and study of the relation between these factors will illuminate how could such an intellectual tradition like that of Western musical composition
come together with this aspect of Hindu mysticism. Musical examples are taken from instrumental and vocal works of composers Stockhausen, Scelsi, and La Monte Young, among others.
A study of the stylistic and aesthetic consequences of this fusion will investigate the cultural impact beyond the realm of contemporary composition,
in this case, the connections between music and the practice of meditation.
Also, as a chosen example of the predicament of incorporating non-European musical techniques,
the adoption or recovery of overtone singing will be considered, and evaluated as a dawning horizon in Western music.
Overtone singing has required an emphasis on improvisation, as the work of Michael Vetter and David Hykes show, bringing the issue of practice as research.
The article will consider the feedback between improvisation and the writing tradition of composition imbued by the philosophy of sacred sound.

Irlandini at the lecture Messiaen's Gagaku, Lancaster U.K. 2009

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. 9 May 2009.

Abstract:
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
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 Pralâya, 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, a monographic recital "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, and the 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
University of California, Santa Barbara, and College of Santa Fe, New Mexico

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 Pralâya, for piano solo, and Pythagoras, for tenor recorder solo.

-- O'Shaugnessy Performance Space, Benildus Hall, 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 Pythagorason 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 Pralâya, for piano solo.

György Ligeti's Lontano: a Formal Analysis
Lecture
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 György Ligeti's Lontano, for large orchestra.

Cosmicizing Sound
Lecture
Institute of World Culture, Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A., August 21, 2004.

The creative act of making music within either 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 are explained from the perspective
that a piece of music is a universe of sounds, i.e., a kosmos, an organized, ordered universe.
To cosmicize sound means not only to organize the musical structure of components
but also to consecrate the piece at a higher artistic and spiritual level.
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 introduces 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 Quatro Cenas d'O Olhar de Orfeu
and talks about how the study of non-Western and ancient music has influenced them.