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Copyright

Takehito Shimazu

Published On

2024-10-09

Page Range

pp. 429–438

Language

  • English

Print Length

10 pages

26. Creating and Learning with UPIC

  • Takehito Shimazu (author)
Chapter of: Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies(pp. 429–438)
‘The reason why we need to study pedagogy is because we have forgotten our childhood’.
I remember these words that a professor lecturing on music education spoke in a class while I was studying at university. Throughout my life, they became very important and significant for me. In the 1970’s UPIC was born as an embodiment of Iannis Xenakis’s new compositional techniques, coupled with his comprehensive scientific thinking. This system not only became a convenient tool for creation, but it was also extremely useful as an educational device that allowed children to freely create music using this system. It allowed children to feel close to creation and took into account children's perspectives and their wishes. In this chapter, I mention the possibilities created by the UPIC and new possibilities that are questioned today and in the future, both in the context of music creation and that of music education. Concretely, in the 1990s, through the creation of my own works, considering its version at that time, I will discuss the implementations I made and the possibilities experienced when I was actually in front of UPIC. I will also address future possibilities of music production that Xenakis dreamed of, and at the same time, discuss the meaning and possibilities of using this system for education in the future.

Contributors

Takehito Shimazu

(author)
Professor Emeritus at Fukushima University

Takehito Shimazu studied composition with Sesshu Kai in Tokyo, with Isang Yun at Hochschule der Künste (HdK) Berlin, and others. He studied and produced electronic and computer music at the electronic studio of the Technical University of Berlin (TU-Studio Berlin), and at Ircam, Les Ateliers UPIC, and at Ina-GRM in Paris. His compositions have been selected several times and played at the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM), at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), and at many other festivals in Asia and Europe. Shimazu was the chairman of the music committee for ICMC’93 in Tokyo. He has been invited as lecturer, composer, and as the representative of Japanese composers at Japan-German Institute in Berlin, at Georgia University, Saarbrücken Music-Fest, Dresden Music-Fest, by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus of Fukushima University in Japan. His scores are published by Breitkopf and Härtel and F. Hofmaister in Germany. His CDs include CCMIX Paris (mode 98/99, New York, 2001); 30 jahre inventionen VII (Edition RZ, Berlin, 2012).