Rita Torres, integrated researcher at INET-md, and Helvio Mendes, researcher at INET-md and PhD candidate at the Department of Communication and Art, are the authors of the article “Unconventional sound production on the xylophone: outcomes of an artistic research collaboration ”, published in open access in Revista Per Musi, v.26 (2025).
Abstract
The xylophone’s timbral resources have been little explored. Despite recent efforts to promote the solo xylophone, conventional sound production prevails in most of the compositions reviewed by the authors. The first author contributed to an investigation led by the second author, exploring sound production on the xylophone through practice-based research oriented toward art music creation. Entering each other’s domains, the authors ended up arriving at instrumental and compositional gestures almost certainly unheard of in the instrument until then. In the musical work, these are juxtaposed with conventional gestures in a varied and predominantly discontinuous compositional flow, counteracting the tendency in many of the compositions reviewed by the authors.