<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>On 6 December 2006, students of the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels performed two one-act pasticci arranged by the author of this article: <italic>Ifigenia</italic> and <italic>Ipermestra</italic>. Assembled as experiments in the young discipline of artistic research in music, both ‘cut &amp; paste’ operas offered opportunities to explore issues of music-dramatic syntax in <italic>opera seria</italic>. In this article, I explain how individual arias and recitatives were combined into two meta-compositions that sometimes respected, and sometimes overrode eighteenth-century generic conventions. By revisiting the scores, libretti, archives and first-hand memories pertaining to this venture, I will show that ‘pastiching’ (<italic>pasticciare</italic>) is more than a historical form; it is a transhistorical method, involving a broad network of agencies, operators, and stakeholders whose strategies can be artistic and non-artistic, convergent and divergent. Pastiching does not necessarily result in ‘works’, fixed in time and space, but rather produces meta-compositional assemblages, the transience and formal instability of which provide opportunities to showcase neglected repertoire and tackle outdated musical ontologies.</p>
</abstract>

On 6 December 2006, students of the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels performed two one-act pasticci arranged by the author of this article: Ifigenia and Ipermestra. Assembled as experiments in the young discipline of artistic research in music, both ‘cut & paste’ operas offered opportunities to explore issues of music-dramatic syntax in opera seria. In this article, I explain how individual arias and recitatives were combined into two meta-compositions that sometimes respected, and sometimes overrode eighteenth-century generic conventions. By revisiting the scores, libretti, archives and first-hand memories pertaining to this venture, I will show that ‘pastiching’ (pasticciare) is more than a historical form; it is a transhistorical method, involving a broad network of agencies, operators, and stakeholders whose strategies can be artistic and non-artistic, convergent and divergent. Pastiching does not necessarily result in ‘works’, fixed in time and space, but rather produces meta-compositional assemblages, the transience and formal instability of which provide opportunities to showcase neglected repertoire and tackle outdated musical ontologies.

Pastiching as Artistic Research: <italic>Ifigenia</italic> / <italic>Ipermestra</italic> (Brussels, 2006)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="j_muso-2021-0014_fn_001a">*</xref>

Musicology Today

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Pastiching as Artistic Research:  /  (Brussels, 2006)

On 6 December 2006, students of the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels performed two one-act pasticci arranged by the author of this article: Ifigenia and...

Pastiching as Artistic Research: Ifigenia / Ipermestra (Brussels, 2006)*

Published Online: Dec 31, 2021

Page range: 148 - 159

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/muso-2021-0014

Keywords
pasticcio, artistic research

© 2021 Bruno Forment, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Pastiching as Artistic Research: Ifigenia / Ipermestra (Brussels, 2006)*

Published Online: Dec 31, 2021

Page range: 148 - 159

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/muso-2021-0014

Keywordspasticcio, artistic research

© 2021 Bruno Forment, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
pasticcio, artistic research