Research · Preprint · October 2026

Towards a Morphological Composition

Sound morphology, holophony and the mediation of live electronics in a lecture-concert at Tokai University
カタルーニャ現代音楽の現在 — The Present of Catalan Contemporary Music

Joan Bagés i Rubí Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), Barcelona Artistic director, MORPHOSIS Ensemble · Co-director, Festival Contemporaneus, Reus PhD, Esthétique, sciences et technologies des arts — Université Paris 8 (CICM)
Article (PDF, 12 pp.) Open the presentation

Abstract

This article documents and theorises a lecture-concert given at Tokai University (Kanagawa, Japan) on 5 October 2026, within the fifth edition of the FLEXUS PROJECT. The session articulated three moments — guided listening to four Catalan electroacoustic works, a collective improvisation with Japanese students and faculty, and a lecture-concert with three works for voice and electronics — around a single compositional hypothesis: that musical writing may begin from the morphology of sound rather than from pitch, and that electronics in mixed music operates through three distinct functions, namely generating material, articulating form and fusing heterogeneous layers into what the author calls a holophonic global sound.

After situating the hypothesis within the lineage that runs from Schaeffer's objet sonore to Smalley's spectromorphology, the article describes the pedagogical design of the session, presents the morphological vocabulary — point, line, iteration, texture — used as a protocol for cross-cultural improvisation, and analyses IB: GOTA (2022–2026) for voice, electronics and video as a case study in which material, dramaturgy and metaphor converge on a single morphological object: the water drop.

The conclusions argue that a reduced morphological vocabulary functions as an effective lingua franca for collective creation across languages and notational traditions, and that the lecture-concert format itself constitutes a legitimate — and under-used — site of artistic research.

Keywords

sound morphology · spectromorphology · holophony · mixed music · live electronics · free improvisation · music pedagogy · artistic research · Catalan contemporary music · Japan

The session

Tokai University, Shonan Campus, Building 13, Room 13-201. Monday 5 October 2026, 15:20–17:00. Host: Composition & Music Production Lab, Department of Arts, School of Humanities and Culture — programme by Prof. Tomonari Higaki (檜垣智也).

MORPHOSIS Ensemble: Joan Martí-Frasquier (baritone and alto saxophone) · Joan Bagés i Rubí (electronics, artistic direction) · Anna Tobella (mezzo-soprano) · Xavier Gelabert (electronics and voice).

The presentation opens in the browser and each slide has its own address, for example presentation/#12.

Companion article

The theoretical frame summarised here is developed at length in Composing Relations, the written counterpart of the Nagoya lecture of the same tour.

Citation

Bagés i Rubí, Joan. 2026. “Towards a Morphological Composition: Sound morphology, holophony and the mediation of live electronics in a lecture-concert at Tokai University.” Preprint, version 1.0, October 2026. https://www.joanbages.com/research/towards-a-morphological-composition/