Fred De Sena
Ferdinando De Sena, Brooklyn-born American composer is currently Director
of the Electronic Music Studio at the University of Miami. He teaches composition,
music technology, and advanced analysis. Other scholarly interests include
musical aesthetics, and the analysis of popular music. Fred De Sena’s
music has been performed at international, national, and regional conferences
of CMS (the College Music Society), SCI (the Society of Composers, Inc.),
ICMC (the International Computer Music Conference), SEAMUS, (the Society for
Electroacoustic Music in the United States), and IDRS (the International Double
Reed Society)
.
He has also had performances at many other concert and theatrical venues including
Recoleta Centro Cultural and Centro de Experimentacion at Teatro Colon in
Buenos Aires, the Puerto Rico Conservatory in San Juan, and the Coconut Grove
Playhouse in Miami.
Fred De Sena has earned degrees from Ithaca College (B.A in Computer Science
and Music) and from the University of Miami (M.M in Electronic Music and D.M.A.
in Composition). His principle teachers were Dennis Kam, (composition), Peter
Rothbart and Don Wilson (electronic music),
Something About My Aesthetic Values
One of my great concerns in music, for electronic or acoustic instruments,
is harmony and harmonic progression. I work very hard to create a harmonic
palette and procedures that sound logical, possibly directional, that support
formal structure, and yet are fresh, flexible, and compelling.
I see melodic material as flowing from and joining with the harmonic, which,
in turn is comprised of combined melodic movement – with constraints
(context and voice leading). For this reason there is a tendency for my electroacoustic
music to be strongly based on notes and sonorities (and spectral content –
which to me is also harmony). This is not, of course, to the total exclusion
of form based on timbral or textural-granularity evolution and juxtaposition,
but it is a strong emphasis.
Rhythm is another matter. I believe that clarity of metric time provides powerful
syncopated and poly-rhythmic possibilities. However, my rhythms are not straight
ahead four, or three, or 6/8, but tend to be modulated, offset, and flexible,
with snatches of this, and a little of that.
The combination of rhythm and harmony, my harmonic rhythm, is flexible, often
offset, sometimes contrapuntal or heterophonic, and, even in homophonic textures,
favors little movements in inner voices. Yet my music is not what you might
call eclectic in style, their is a fair consistency.
This all makes me something of a conservative maverick for mainstream electroacoustic
music, but I believe they can learn some things from Brahms, Beirach, Ornette,
Scriabin, Coltrane, Hendrix, Reznor, Schoenberg, Zappa, Shorter, and Reich,
et al., as well as Babbitt, Stockhausen, Varese, Berio, Eno, Cage. Xenakis,
and Davidovsky.
The instruments, practices, and aesthetics of music, and new media, or combined
media are being born now. Research and explorationin of timbre, spatialization,
analytical recognition, and interactive control are part of it, but not all
of it. There will be coming a congealing or coalescense of practice(s) into
new "styles."
MP3 Files of Recent Works:
