Metamodels in compositional practices

The case of alberto posadas's liturgia fractal

Many composers seem to find inspiration in science, although this fact is not standardized.

Indeed, composers' musical practices are far from being homogeneous nowadays, and science

has achieved an extreme degree of diversification, leading to a complex junction where both

situations converge. This picture shows an impossible normalization spanning a wide range of

factual compositional practices. Nevertheless, the common denominator to their scientific

inspiration deserves musicological attention. We shall state, as a research hypothesis, that in spite of

their obvious diversity a minimum of situations or stages stand out among creative processes

shared by musicians who borrow scientific models when they compose. This hypothesis

directly entails two research questions :

- What minimal cognitive dispositions and formal implications might take part in any transferring

from a scientific model to a musical one during composers' creative practices ?

- What methodological and analytical stands should musicologists take in order to efficiently

address the study of musical works originating from those practices ?

This book is aimed at providing some clues as to both questions. Its first part combines arguments

from logics and cognitive linguistics, leading to the definition of a 'compositional metamodel'.

It also provides a possible framework for analyzing science-inspired compositions. The second

part of the book delimits Alberto Posadas's creative practices, focusing on his fractal metamodels

- based on fractional Brownian motions, the Mandelbrot set, Lindenmayer systems and histologic

fractals- for composing Liturgia Fractal (2003-2007).