Franco-Italian composer Jacopo Baboni Schilingi is publishing La Signature, a book listing the dead ends in which contemporary music finds itself today. This disciple of Luciano Berio proposes twelve plus one solutions to the crisis, drawn from his remarkable professional achievements. Drawing: Jade Bourgery.
You are very critical of the figure of the contemporary-music composer. You compare them to an Amish person…
Jacopo Baboni Schilingi: When a composer writes only instrumental music, for the instruments of the classical orchestra, yes, that composer is obsolete. To me, it is like living in a wig! I understand wanting to become passionate about yesterday’s techniques, but that means forgetting a century of inventions in instrument-making. It means forgetting the relationship artists have always had with technology. From fire to electronic music, artists resonate with technology. In my book I also criticise their empathetic relationship with our society: after jazz, electronic music and techno, after the Beatles and Björk, how can anyone still write bel canto? Of course one can, because one is free, like the Amish.
You say two taboos hover over contemporary music: risk and beauty. Why?
Fascism and Nazism promoted a particular idea of “beautiful” music, meaning music that is immediately accessible. In reaction, composers of the 1950s such as Berio and Boulez said: “We cannot speak of beauty.” It was not until the 1980s that their decision was questioned. I am among those who want to reintroduce the notion of beauty, drawing on cognitive science.
Risk? An artist is someone who takes a risk. A craftsperson takes no risk because they reproduce what works. What risks does one take in an enclosed hall, with nineteenth-century acoustic instruments, facing an audience that will not dare say anything? Contemporary music is stereotyped. Yet it comes from our grandfathers’ generation—Berio, Boulez, Xenakis—who took risks while maintaining attentive, motionless listening. The next generation completely betrayed those ideas and merely used the tools: they are Charles IIIs, kings without power. All they know how to do is complain and write petitions. When people ask, “So Jacopo, what is new in music?”, nothing in contemporary music, at any rate.
What about funding contemporary music?
Thirty years ago, contemporary music had money. In 2000 the Ministry of Culture said—I was there and remember it very clearly—“Careful, we are turning off the tap.” We had twenty years to change. That time has come. We can no longer write petitions asking for money during the climate crisis, the deterioration of public services and so on. We need other avenues.
Take my Argo project. It is a sensor I wear permanently on my torso, detecting my breathing and the position of my rib cage, communicating through a smartphone in real time so that music is created, changing like my breathing. The device was designed for hospitals by a company called MyAir. The artistic component is sponsored by Camille Fournet, a luxury leather-goods brand. For three years, the company covered costs not covered by festivals such as the Venice Biennale or the Grand Palais, where Argo was presented. In return, I created a musical object for their shop, gave private concerts and so on. They gained visibility at the Grand Palais, and I needed to invest in computer specialists. In short, Argo brought together two sponsors.
Contemporary music cannot imagine that these brands need it. My music does not attract crowds, yet I carry out projects because I communicate with people. We compose for the real world, for otherness, not for the archives.
Should composers be trained differently?
I am convinced of it. As I show in my book, I realised that many colleagues lack skills, even musical ones, as well as curiosity and resourcefulness. They do not know how to sell their music or their projects. I live from my creative work and teaching. The contemporary-music world holds young people who want to compose hostage… and takes them straight to France Travail [formerly Pôle emploi, the employment service—editor’s note]. They often confuse a project, a creative idea and their desire. They say, “I want to write an orchestral piece,” believing that is enough to fulfil their desire.
I am currently training five young people to move from an idea to a concept and from a concept to a project. Art schools ask for a portfolio. Composers are asked for… a CV stating “where and with whom did you study?”, rather than “what are your ideas?”
How can one resonate with the world when handing paper scores or PDFs to publishers overtaken by technology? I write my music on bodies for a moment of performance, meaning before witnesses, even if there is only one. The composer must become a performer again. Just because everything was written down at a particular moment, in Liszt’s time, does not mean composers must cling to that idea. Digital technology has given performance fresh impetus because the technical means are more accessible.
Are publishers, who once had a role in dissemination, outdated?
It depends. Publishers who rent out separate instrumental parts for orchestral musicians are not outdated. The others, who effectively acted as agents, no longer have that power. A major publisher asks composers to pay to have their music recorded by them. Shameful. And as soon as technology is involved, they are out of their depth. For a Boulez piece for violin and electronics, IRCAM updates the electronic part so today’s software can still read it. Publishers do not have IRCAM’s resources. Books have adapted through audiobooks and e-readers. Music has not. In Beethoven’s day, saving paper was worthwhile. Not any more. The urgent issue is no longer surviving beyond oneself, but ensuring conservatoires survive, classes are filled and composers are invited into them.
Must notation and its whole legacy be rejected?
No, we need both, “at the same time”, although I avoid that expression nowadays [laughs]. I believe in notation. A score lets me read again and therefore deepen interpretation. I address musicians who can read a score—that is, musicians trained for the orchestra—but who want to challenge themselves in unorthodox situations. I am passionate about classical music, from Monteverdi to Bartók, provided concert music is amplified and processed.
Our hearing of the repertoire is shaped by technology which, particularly since the CD, makes it spectacular; that spectacular sound is not reproduced live. Forty years ago, orchestral musicians made mistakes in concert, but the result always sounded better than a cassette. The CD changed that. Ten years ago, listening in concert was still more comfortable than listening to a CD. Conditions have changed: I went to the Philharmonie to hear pianist Krystian Zimerman and had to strain my ears. I expect more.
Today we see social movements in the world’s free countries around two subjects: climate and gender. Can late-nineteenth-century instruments and twentieth-century techniques be representative of those questions?
Electronic music plays a major role in your music. Was that an obvious choice?
Yes, thanks to my teacher Ivan Fedele, born in 1953. At the time there was no teaching method for using electronics, and that made me uncomfortable. Thanks to IRCAM, which offered a greater wealth of knowledge and resources, I found my own way of working with electronic material.
Indeed, when I hear my colleagues’ outraged cries about artificial intelligence, I laugh. In 1997 I created a show with Jean-Pierre Balpe, who had invented a text-generation engine—already an ancestor of ChatGPT—and I created music that reacted to the text and generated itself, already… Nobody was interested! In the 1980s there were already algorithms generating serial writing automatically, and David Cope had created software producing music in the style of Bach or Rachmaninov.
The AI we know today relies on a consumer interface… it is something of a gadget. I wrote music for documentaries, background music, and was happy with that little income stream: with AI, that sort of work is finished. We will have to live with it. But when AI lets me produce sounds using digital gloves, it offers me a means of extending expressivity.
How do your ideas influence your role as head of the composition class at Montbéliard Conservatoire?
I arrived in 1999 at the invitation of the then director, Jacques Clos, who asked me to “create the composition class of the twenty-first century”. I established a first rule: technology is taught on an equal footing with organology. Second rule: creation is not just music, which means working with visual artists, writers and so on. Third rule: music before concerts. A concert will be given only when the piece is mature, both in its writing and its interpretation.
In Montbéliard, teachers and students may spend months working on a piece written by me, my apprentices or composition students. We meet fortnightly, behind closed doors… until the concert, if it takes place. This is where I introduce the curator’s role: someone who, as in visual art, guides the creator in presenting the work to best advantage… sometimes even suggesting that it should not be shown.
What we do does not exist in the music world. Artistic directors can say, “The piece will not work, but it is a premiere” [laughs]. Today there are ways to assess a piece beforehand. At festivals and in orchestras, contemporary-music pieces are barely worked on. I do not understand how my colleagues can accept that. When I make a piece, I sometimes ask performers for two years of rehearsals. We are doing haute cuisine, as Jean-Louis Agobet said in your pages.
You make twelve proposals for the future… plus one. What is it?
To criticise my book! Read it. Tell me I am wrong.
Further reading: La Signature. Douze propositions pour la création musicale, by Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, Éditions Mimésis, published July 2024.