ABSTRACT
The chapter is based on a series of interviews with Alvise Vidolin, one of Italy’s leading computer music designers, conducted during the period 1998 to 2015 and complemented by research based on sources and archival documents. Vidolin has worked with the most important Italian contemporary composers and is the co-founder, member and researcher of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC – University of Padova). He describes himself as an ‘interpreter of electronic music instruments’, a professional who has the ability to work with the composer in the studio, during the creative process of music composition and as an interpreter and a performer of the composition in concert (the before and after phases of musical creation). He acts as an interface between the composer’s musical idea and its transformation into sound. In light of these considerations, Vidolin talks at length with Zattra about his experience with Luigi Nono in the production of Prometeo. Tragedia dell’Ascolto (1981–84) and with Salvatore Sciarrino in Perseo e Andromeda (1991). Knowledge of these collaborations can provide important information about crucial compositional and performative choices and structural, technical and aesthetical solutions within the completed work that would otherwise be unknown to the analyst (or the listener) who focuses primarily on the composer’s contribution.
