Publications
CD | Beethoven (Re)Created: 32 Variations in C minor WoO 80
Since November 2024, the digital album Beethoven (Re)Created: 32 Variations in C minor WoO 80 has been available, a work associated with the project TransVariations - Music Beyond the Limits of Time and Technology, published by Percos Music and funded by EEA Grants/Portugal. Coordinated by INET-md researcher Alfonso Benetti, the album is one of the project's main results. It includes a performance that won the Best Music Sonic Art award at the Immersive Sound and Music Computing 2024 event.
The Album includes a contemporary reinterpretation of Beethoven’s renowned solo piano work. Based on the question: If Beethoven were here today, about to compose the 32 Variations in C minor, what might he have done with the technological resources we have at our disposal? The project primarily focused on the union of performance and real-time sound manipulation.
Through the exploration of modern timbral modeling possibilities, using feedback and adaptive processing methods as modes of experimentation, combined with the analysis of sonic characteristics derived from real-time performance and the use of expressive control signals to adjust electronic processing, the piece was – therefore – (Re)Created by the project’s researchers.
The TransVariations project took place between 2022 and 2024, which main objective was to problematize the relationship between interpretation and artistic creation in the context of Western-Art Music through the development and use of innovative technological resources. The project was carried out in partnership with the University of Aveiro, the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim).
The album Beethoven (Re)Created: 32 Variations in C minor WoO 80 features INET-md researchers Alfonso Benetti (piano) and Francisco Monteiro (collaboration), as well as Øyvind Brandtsegg and Trond Engum (sound manipulation). The Album supports a new concept of authenticity based on a perception of the past through innovative contemporary means: a new reality is reconstructed according to current mechanisms of understanding, where, in practice, the original exists within a specific context and temporal space as part of the present.
For more information about the project (including other outputs) and access to the Digital Album, visit the project's Landing Page.
