From Traces of the Imaginary to the Construction of Memory: Rethinking the Composer’s Workshop within Its Ecosystem
This keynote proposes to explore how the memory of contemporary music – particularly that of the avant-garde of the last eighty years – is constructed not solely through discourse or historiography, but through what I term “traces of the imaginary.” These traces, preserved in musical archives, function as indices in the Ginzburgian sense, revealing both the internal logic of the composer’s workshop and the broader cultural memory in which it is inscribed.
Building on the notion of the composer’s workshop as developed by Nicolas Donin and Jacques Theureau, I examine how archival materials – through their inscriptions, revisions, formats, and very materiality – allow us not only to reconstruct the genesis of works, but also to grasp the trajectory and dynamics of the composer’s creative thinking. These traces reveal not only the “how” of creation, but also the layers of hesitation and experimentation that often remain hidden behind the finalized score. They shed light on a dimension of memory that is situated within specific contexts of production.
Indeed, the composer’s workshop is never isolated. It belongs to a larger ecosystem – intellectual, artistic, technological, and economic – in which ideas circulate and tools evolve. By broadening the analytical lens to other documentary sources, I propose to situate the workshop within a wider network of interactions thereby highlighting the conditions of possibility for musical creation and the memory that emerges from it.
In this regard, I argue for a critical historiographical approach. When the traces uncovered in the archive diverge from the official or public narratives produced by composers, institutions, or their mediators, they invite us to question the very mechanisms through which the memory of the avant-garde has been shaped, canonized and transmitted. The archive, in this sense, appears not merely as a place of conservation but as a site of inquiry, where the construction of musical memory becomes both an object of study and a terrain of methodological renewal.
Biography
Full Professor of Musicology at the University of Strasbourg, Anne-Sylvie Barthel-Calvet is an alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris) and professeur agrégée in Music. She was teaching assistant at Stanford University (1991-92). Her doctoral thesis (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) focused on the Rhythm in the work and thought of Iannis Xenakis.
A specialist of the musical avant-gardes of the second half of the 20th and 21st centuries, she recently co-edited with Christopher B. Murray Revisiting the Historiography of Postwar Avant-Garde Music (Routledge, 2023), and will soon publish a biography of Iannis Xenakis. Starting from the analysis, musical theory and aesthetics of contemporary music, her writings over the past fifteen years are developing two converging perspectives: genetic criticism and musicology of creative processes for the study of works, critical historiography for approaching the history of avant-garde players (composers, journalists, concerts organizers), institutions and networks of intellectual and artistic sociability. Both fields involve the study of musical archives (from composers, musical and political institutions, etc.). Barthel-Calvet is also interested in musical gesture theories, musical diplomacy, contemporary opera and its staging studied through an interdisciplinary approach.
Anne-Sylvie Barthel-Calvet is a current member of CESEM’s External Advisory Board. She has been guest researcher at IRCAM in the team “Analyse des Pratiques Musicales”, and is a current collaborator of the team ” Musique en France aux XIXe et XXe siècle ” at the Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique du Québec (OICRM).