Workshop on Luc Ferrari with Eleonora M. Ravasi / INTONAL 2024

Luc Ferrari was born in Paris on 5th February 1929. He studied piano with Alfred Cortot, musical analysis with Olivier Messiaen and composition with Arthur Honegger. His early works are freely atonal.

In 1954 Ferrari went to the United States to meet Edgard Varèse, who influenced him through the piece Déserts. In 1958 he founded the Groupe de recherches musicales with Pierre Schaeffer and François-Bernard Mâche.

In the early 1960s Ferrari started working on his Hétérozygote, a piece for magnetic tape. The use of ambient sounds is intended to suggest a narrative dramatisation. The use of environmental recordings is a distinctive feature of Ferrari’s musical language. One of Ferrari’s compositions, Presque rien No. 1 – Le Lever du jour au bord de la mer (1970) is considered a classic of its genre. For this work, Ferrari recorded sound ambient sounds in the early morning during July 1967 in Vela Luka in Croatia, from which he drew a twenty-minute piece. It has been seen an affirmation of John Cage’s thought that music is always around us, and if just stop and listen to it, we can understand it.

Ferrari has always written instrumental music as well as music for magnetic tape, often based on improvisation. Luc Ferrari’s work and aesthetics have still nowadays a strong impact.

Eleonora M. Ravasi
Alongside her classical musical degree, Ravasi focused on contemporary and electronic music and specialized in electronic keyboards. Having performed with several ensembles with acoustic and electrified instruments and orchestras in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lithuania for international events, Ravasi is currently working on the interpretation of sound spatialization of acousmatic works in concert and collaborates with Audior. She focuses on compositional analysis applied to the electroacoustic repertoire and soundscapes.

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