The MUSICA NOVA competition.

Electro-acoustic (EA) music * developed in Czechoslovakia from the end of the 1950s, initially in close association with the poetics of Neosurrealism in fine art and literature (the composers R. Komorous, V. Sramek, L. Simon, L. Novak, P. Kotik). In the years 1964-70 the Union of Czechoslovak Composers and Concert Artists organised specialist seminars on EA music that were attended by a number of Czech composers. Possibilities for studio work appeared, in the television studio in Bratislava and in the Barrandov film studios from the beginning of the 1960s, from 1964 in the radio studio in Brno, from 1965 in the newly founded Radio and Television Research Institute, in the sound laboratory of the Institute of Musical Sciences of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, from 1967 in the new radio studio in Plzen and later in Prague as well. Personal contacts were established with composers abroad: in 1961 L.A. Hiller visited Czechoslovakia, L. Nono came first to Bratislava and then in 1969 to Prague, regular contacts were maintained with Jozef Patkowski who had founded the Experimental Radio Studio in Poland in 1957. In 1966 the Groupe de Recherche Musicale visited Prague, in 1968 K. Stockhausen came to Smolenice, and in the following year the Union of Composers invited staff from the Sonological Institute in Utrecht to their seminar. Composers attended the festival in Warsaw and the Darmstadt courses. Thanks to seminars for composers this type of music was linked primarily with composition and art music, and the situation was similar in film music.

EA music was also known as "technical music" and in the atmosphere of the 1960s, dominated as it was by faith in the connection between culture and technological progress, it seemed a very progressive phenomenon. It brought new material, inspirations and themes into music. The largest number of pieces were created precisely in the years 1969-1973, and later at the beginning of the 1990s.

The foundation of the competition at the end of the 1960s therefore seemed a natural step forward. The first year with the title MUSICA NOVA took place directly in the Plzen Radio Studio in 1969. At this point it was mainly Czech composers who were involved. Prize-winners included the founders of the field in this country--Rudolf Ruzicka with the composition and spatial projection Gurges, Karel Odstrcil with the composition Ghandi from the cycle Cabinet of Wax Figures, Miroslav Hlavac with the composition Biochronos and Arnost Parsch with Transposizioni II. Milos Haase obtained an Honourable Mention for his piece Per aspera ad astra.

In the 1970s with the "normalisation" of politics and culture the contest was discontinued, probably because it was associated with risk contact with the avant-garde abroad. Nonetheless EA music continued to be created especially at the radio studios and at the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. And as it happened, the secretary of the then Union of Czechoslovak Composers Vaclav Kucera was an active and acknowledged composer in the field.

After 1990, when the Society for EA Music was formed under the presidency of Karel Odstrcil, the competition was revived. The first public playback of EA music took place in the Theatre of Music in March 1990. The second year of the competition took place in 1993. The competition was inspired by NEWCOMP contest in Boston, with which Rudolf Ruzicka had kept in contact. MUSICA NOVA did not, however, wish to focus on what is known as computer music only, because the local traditions and conditions in the studios were closer to the older phenomenon of French musique concrete and German electronic music. The idea was to cover all variants of EA that were actual and of good quality. A category was also created for young composers. Well-known composers and musicologists were nominated for the jury. The honorary chairman in 1993 was Eduard Herzog, the only living member of the original jury of 1969.

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From the outset the competition has been orientated to art music, because this represented the organic symbiosis of the latest innovative technology with imagination and fully thought out form. Of course, the boundary between art and "non" art is not a sharp one. Each piece was and is judged from several points of view: acoustic inventiveness, skill in craftsmanship, the correspondence between the material and treatment, formal consistence and logic, non-musical intentions and their realisation, overall impression. Clumsy or kitschy pieces are excluded from the first stage. In 1993 the first prize went to Jacques Lejeune, and also Radek Rejsek and Fabio Ciardi, with special prizes for Helmut Decker and the emigrant Bohdan Mikolasek. From the outset the competition has also involved a presentation in the form of a public concert by the winners and a radio programme, and more recently (since 1997) a CD and CD-R has also been produced to accompany it. From 1993 the competition has had an international dimension that it lacked in its earlier phase.

In 1994 two basic categories were established and these exist to this day. The first is the category for autonomous EA music and the second the category for live instrument (or voice) with electronics. In this year the competition attracted 66 composers from 17 countries. The prizes went mainly to what is known as the school of acousmatic music following on from the French tradition (Mathew Adkins, Jonty Harrison). Established figures like Charles Bestor from the USA, John Levack Drever from Scotland, and Jean-Claude Risset from France took part. Most of them have remained faithful to MUSICA NOVA, and the content genuinely showcases top EA composers from all over the world (they win prizes in other prestigious competitions as well and are involved in important projects). MUSICA NOVA is also praised abroad for the fact that the finalists include music in different styles from acousmatic music ("cinema for the ear") drawing mainly on the French tradition, to autonomously structural music (the tradition of German electronic music), to intuitive life electronic music and so on.

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For several years now the number of pieces sent into the competition has stabilised at around 120-140 from about 35 countries. The larges number come from the traditional countries for EA music--the USA, Italy, France, Germany, England, Japan, but recently there has been a stronger input from South Korea, China and the South American countries and also entries from Australia, Turkey, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Russia have become sources of entries again. In the last three years or so the average age of the entrants has dropped significantly, and so the category for young composers is losing point. It is usually now given to the youngest successful participant in the competition. The competition has a Czech round that is meant to stimulate the composition of EA music here.

The pace of technological progress is very fast. An increasing number of pieces are created by authors who are sure that they sound "generally good" because current already widely available software can evoke this "impression" by standard procedures described in the manual, sound library and suchlike. In prestigious competitions including MUSICA NOVA what is judged, however, is a level 'in advance of' and 'above' the given standard at a particular time, i.e. the criteria are acoustic inventiveness in details and combination, the structural flexibility of the "montage", virtual spatiality, i.e. the ability to create levels that simulate back-front, surface-shape-point and motion in this virtual space, inventiveness in real multichannel sound projection, and ability to identify the potential of the material chosen in terms of form and content. Nearly all the composers who as winners were asked to express a view on work in EA agreed that the huger possibilities for expression and freedom offered by EA may also be a trap.

In the category for live instrument / voice and EA there has been a great shift in expression and style. Given the technical possibilities, at the beginning it tended to be conceived in terms of instrumental concerto. The EA played the role of "orchestra", whose sound was fixed. Sometimes it can also happen that someone appears who genuinely simulates an ordinary orchestra and instrument using EA as a way of avoiding the financial and organisational demands of using live performers. But this is not what the competition is about. In this category what is crucial is the interaction of the flexibility of live play or singing with technological music. Since the development of life electronic music (above all thanks to Max/MSP) the style possibilities have opened up, from pieces for one instrument enhanced by software techniques to various combinations in which the boundary between live play or song and artificial arrangement is blurred and challenged.

What is the situation at the moment? In 2005 the competition attracted 111 pieces from 32 countries. The first prize went to the husband and wife team Petra Bachrata, originally from Slovakia in the pure EA category, and the Portueguese composer Joao Pedro Oliveira in the EA with live instrument category. The second prize went to Robert Sazdov from Australia. In the Czech round the winner was a student from the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts in Brno, Jana Barinkova, with Michal Rataj in second place. As always the concert took place in the presence of the prizewinners, this time in the Czech Museum of Fine Arts in Prague.

www.musica.cz/musnova

* Electro-acoustic music is a blanket term for music making major use of electronic sources and electronic means in the production or realisation of a composition. Without these means (unlike in the case of merely reproduced or amplified music) the composition could not be played at all. It also includes music that combines an electronic element with acoustic sound sources. The term originated in France. In Germany and the USA the term "electronic music", respectively "music for tape" has a longer tradition.