This article examines computer-based music (ca. 1982–87) created by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. A detailed account of archival materials for an early étude in voice synthesis, Vers le blanc (1982), demonstrates the music-theoretical import of software to Saariaho’s development of a robust compositional method that resonated with the emergent aesthetics of a post-spectral milieu. Subsequent analyses of two additional works from this period—Jardin secret II (1984–86) for harpsichord and tape, and IO (1987) for large ensemble and electronics—serve to illustrate Saariaho’s extension of this method into instrumental settings. Specific techniques highlighted include the use of interpolation systems to create continuous processes of transformation, the organization of individual musical parameters into multidimensional formal networks, and the exploration of harmonic structures based on the analysis of timbral phenomena. Relating these techniques to the affordances of contemporaneous IRCAM technologies, including CHANT, FORMES, and Saariaho’s own customized program, “transkaija,” this article adopts a transductive approach to archival research that is responsive to the diverse media artifacts associated with computer-based composition.

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This paper presents a detailed analysis of Zosha Di Castri’s String Quartet No. 1 (2016), situating the work in relation to the composer’s still-nascent oeuvre and showing how it contains a diverse mix of stylistic impulses within its relatively compact form. The concept of defamiliarization, borrowed from literary criticism, provides a useful theoretical basis for understanding the work. By presenting familiar musical figures within strange new contexts, Di Castri effectively bypasses habitual modes of reception and encourages the listener to engage more actively with the work’s multi-coded discourse. This revivification of perceptual awareness is accomplished using a number of compositional techniques, including the juxtaposition or superimposition of contrasting materials, the transformation of motives, and the distortion of formal syntax. Taken together, these defamiliarizing devices mount an aesthetic intervention that playfully subverts compositional norms, allowing Di Castri to take a decisive step forward in the development of her own musical style.

This chapter sketches a general history of rhythm quantization as a widespread practice in popular music culture. Quantization—a sound technology that automatically maps microrhythmic fluctuations onto the nearest beat available within a predefined metric grid—challenges traditional notions of musicking as an embodied activity that is grounded in the co-presence of human agents. At the same time, it encapsulates cultural and cognitive processes that are entirely human, fitting into a broader historical shift towards chronometric precision in Western music. Questions arising from this apparent contradiction are taken up in this chapter, which situates rhythm quantization as an emergent technocultural practice, examining its attendant technologies and requisite structures of music-theoretical knowledge, as well as its reception within the context of different musical genres.