Teresa and the NPS on WDR 3’s “Open Sounds: Studio Elektronische Musik” programme

Frank Hilberg, producer of the channel WDR 3 of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Cologne, and Reinhold Friedl, are the auhors of a two-hour-feature about the Electronic Music of “Nuove Proposte Sonore” (NPS) and Teresa Rampazzi.

Laura Zattra was interviewed by Reinhold Friedl on February 3rd for this purpose, alongside Francesca Rampazzi (Teresa Rampazzi’s daughter).

The documentary will air next Saturday night, at 22:04 on WDR 3, and it will be possible to listen to it on the WDR 3 Podcast in the forthcoming months.

Open Sounds | 27. Mai 2017, 22.04 – 23.00 Uhr | WDR 3

Open Sounds: Studio Elektronische Musik
Live-stream of the program: http://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr3 –> click “Live hören” or go directly to: http://www1.wdr.de/radio/player/radioplayer106~_layout-popupVersion.html
Gruppo NPS: hier noch in der Gründungsphase (1965-1968) Memo Alfonsi, Ennio Chiggio, Teresa Rampazzi (mit Sonnenbrille), Serenella Marega, Gianni Meiners
N.P.S. during the first period 1965-1968: left to right, Memo Alfonsi, Ennio Chiggio, Rampazzi (with sun glasses), Serenella Marega, Gianni Meiners – Courtesy: Ennio Chiggio.

ACOUSMA FORUM // HEROINES OF SOUND: WOMEN PIONEERS OF ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC

The music of Teresa Rampazzi and Laurie Spiegel will be played at the Musica Electronica Nova Festival:

ACOUSMA FORUM // HEROINES OF SOUND: WOMEN PIONEERS OF ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC

(Artistic Director: Bettina Wackernagel)

Saturday, 27.05.2017

National Forum of Music, Red Hall Plac Wolności 1, 50-071 Wrocław.

Programme:

Laurie Spiegel Patchwork (1976)
Laurie Spiegel Pentachrome (1974)
Laurie Spiegel Appalachian Grove I (1974)
Teresa Rampazzi Environ (1970)
Teresa Rampazzi Atmen noch (1980)

http://www.nfm.wroclaw.pl/en/musica-electronica-nova-2017/calendar/event/5763

Teresa Rampazzi biography: a new entry in the Italian Enciclopedia Treccani

The Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani of the Italian Enciclopedia Treccani (originally published: 1929), is dedicated to notable Italian people (composers, artists, politicians, historians, etc.) past and present. It has been an honour for me to contribute with an entry on Teresa Rampazzi.

http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/teresa-rampazzi_(Dizionario-Biografico)/

The article contains a biography of Teresa Rampazzi, updated with the latest developments of my research; a list of works and writings by Rampazzi; a brief description of the Rampazzi archives’; the lists of references.

...
Cover Image Source: http://www.treccani.it/biografico/ (2017)
teresa-studio

Teresa Rampazzi on women and music (Happy International Women’s Day 2017!)

Teresa Rampazzi on Women and Music.
She was not a feminist and she did not recriminate sexual differences in the artistic world. She once said: “just as there are many women who have a demanding profession, the same is true in music […]. Unwittingly I risked compromising my musical interests when I got married. But they were much too important for me” [Teresa Rampazzi in interview with Luisa Galanti: L. Galanti, L’altra metà del rigo. La donna e la composizione femminile oggi in ItaliaImola,Grafiche Galeati, 1983, p.66].
If someone asked her if there is a feminine way to make music, she answered: “absolutely not. There is neither male nor female music. There are pieces composed by men which seem to be composed by a woman and viceversa, if by ‘feminine’ you think of something sweet, elegant, delicate. But a woman can be as vigorous as a man, or even more!” (Ivi, p. 72).
Download Teresa’s bio here: L. Zattra, “Teresa Rampazzi, Pioneer of Italian Electronic Music” (2003).
teresa-studio
Teresa Rampazzi in her studio in Bassano del Grappa, early ’90s (photo by Gianni Di Capua).
16466659_10208138004028683_41428862_o

Me and Francesca Rampazzi, in interview for the Radio WDR

In was wonderful last Friday Ferbuary 3rd, to be interviewd by Reinhold Friedl. With me, the lovable Francesca Rampazzi, daughter of Teresa. Reinhold Friedl is doing a radio show dedicated to Teresa Rampazzi for the Radio WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) in Cologne, that will be broadcast in the next months.

It is such an honor to be invited to speak about Rampazzi’s role for this important radio, which was one of the first institutions to host an electronic music center (the Studio für elektronische Musik des Westdeutschen Rundfunks).

Francesca told us an astonishing series of anecdotes about her mother, and her connections with Maderna, Cage, Stockhausen, Metzger, Bussotti, Chiggio, and many others.

This interview was conducted at the Vicenza Conservatoire of Music, thanks to the hospitality of Lorenzo Pagliei, and the GRAIM Electronic Music Studio at the Conservatorio “Arrigo Pedrollo” in Vicenza.

16466659_10208138004028683_41428862_o
Francesca Rampazzi and Laura Zattra, Febr. 3, 2017
16523868_10208138009268814_191901500_o (2)
L.Zattra and Reinhold Friedl, Febr. 3, 2017
16522491_366971120326544_1082378905_o
Reinhold Friedl and Francesca Rampazzi, Febr. 3, 2017

New content: writings on Rampazzi’s music

And finally you can read here (in this new page: https://www.teresarampazzi.it/writings-on-t-rampazzi/) a list of articles, books, and other material dedicated to Teresa Rampazzi.

I contributed with many writings to this emerging literature, since my Master thesis in 2000, and I’m proud of this.  The first articles dedicated to her dates back to 1979, with an interview Teresa Rampazzi gave to M. Mollia.

Many of these items are available online. Enjoy the reading!

Writings on T.Rampazzi

immagine

“Immagini per Diana Baylon” on Late Junction BBC Radio 3

Last tuesday on Late Junction, BBC Radio 3, Fiona Tarkington played one track from Teresa Rampazzi’ Diana Baylon.
Listen again here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z7cys – BBC Radio 3 – Late Junction, Fiona Talkington with Sam Lee.

The programme stays up on listen again for one week. Enjoy!
Fiona Tarkington gives a beautiful introduction to the piece which starts at 1’18’ and the piece begins at 1’22’20”.

immagine

14045532_10157229758860265_6848344841170342660_n

IMMAGINI PER DIANA BAYLON (1972) in The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music

Louise Gray gave Teresa Rampazzi’s album IMMAGINI PER DIANA BAYLON (1972) a terrific review in the September Issue of The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music.
Teresa Rampazzi – IMMAGINI PER DIANA BAYLON (1972): new Die Schachtel album. Project by: Laura Zattra / Produced by: Fabio Carboni, Bruno Stucchi / Digitization and Digital Archiving: Sergio Canazza / Mastering: Giuseppe Ielasi / Design: dinamomilano.com

14045532_10157229758860265_6848344841170342660_n
http://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/391
10heathgenerator_sine_square

Teresa at the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik

10heathgenerator_sine_square
Heath sine and square wave generator from WDR radio

In 1952, 1954 and 1956 Teresa Rampazzi attends the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. During the 1952 edition she has the chance to hear Herbert Eimert’s speech, where he presents the equipment from the Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne. Teresa is 37 years old, she still is an avant-garde pianist, but it is a small electronic instrument (a frequency generator) that strikes her. She understands that sound synthesis is the only way to go beyond the rigidity of tonal music. In her own words:

…I arrived at electronic music exactly at its birth, listening to its cries in the large Marienhöhe concert hall, in Darmstadt. (Actually the term ‘arrived’ is not correct because we never actually arrive anywhere, we are always on our way). […] So in that [Marienhöhe] Concert Hall, for the first time Eimert showed the public a small frequency generator. Musicians looked at it suspiciously and did not attach too much importance to it. For me, that little, insidious object would certainly grow, multiply and change [1].

1952 Ferienkurse edition is also one of the most famous editions: Boulez declares the “death” of Arnold Schoenberg’s aesthetics, the new generation of composers –Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Karel Goeyvaerts, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bernd Alois Zimmermann – starts to claim the musical world’s attention. (and Teresa is for the occasion a member of the chorus of España en el corazón by Luigi Nono) [2].

The Electronic Music Studio at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne was founded by the composers Werner Meyer-Eppler, Robert Beyer, and Herbert Eimert. EImert was also the studios first director. To read more on Herbert Eimert and the WDR Electronic Music Studio visit 120years.net

  • [1] Teresa Rampazzi, “Piccolo discorso con Michela”, Autobiografia della musica contemporanea (Michela Mollia ed.), Cosenza, Lerici, 1979, pp. 122-126.
  • [2] Antonio Trudu, La “scuola” di Darmstadt. I Ferienkurse dal 1946 a oggi, Milano, Ricordi-Unicopli, 1992, pp. 73-82.
2

Immagini Per Diana Baylon: preview on Soundcloud

2

As with the spellbinding Musica Endoscopica, this issue of Immagini Per Diana Baylon – one of her three known soundtracks for art installations – helps to place Teresa as Italy’s answer to Daphne Oram; that is, a pioneering female experimenter operating in a male dominated field since the ’50s, and an artist/musician/technician who was magnetically drawn to the emerging possibilities of analogue electronics (although she would also expand into computer composition as soon as the opportunity arose).

Here is what bookmat.com says about this new issue I curated in collaboration with Die Schachtel [boomkat.com/products/immagini-per-diana-baylon]. Remastered from the original tapes, foil-blocked metallic print jacket with fold-out insert of liner notes and photographs.

You may listen to some excerpts on Soundcloud.