An Analytic Approach to Horacio Vaggione’s Till 1 Martin Laliberte´ Horacio Vaggione’s music is a true challenge for the musical analyst, both for its technical complexity and its artistic depth. This article aims to suggest some promising analytic approaches to his piano and tape piece Till—arguably a turning point in the composer’s evolution—classifying characteristic material and creating typologies of them. After an initial consideration of the context of composition, the analysis proceeds in three parts. In the first part, the tape is investigated between the meso- (middle) and the microscopic temporal levels and a typology of the sound objects is established. In the second part, the piano’s complementary temporal field is examined and a corresponding typology of the musical figures constructed. Finally, the modalities of interaction between the tape and the piano, their complementary temporal levels and their ‘common vectorisation’ are considered. Keywords: Analysis; Computer Music; Musical Aesthetics; Piano and Tape 1 Introduction Horacio Vaggione’s rich and often complex works present a fascinating challenge to the analyst. The majority of his works are highly ramified with subtly differentiated articulations, and their highly elaborated details and textures evolve at a rapid rate. In order to study his work in detail, it is necessary to draw upon not only on the techniques of computer composition, but also of contemporary esthetics. As the object of this analysis, I have chosen Till (1991) for piano and electroacoustic tape, 2 a work that marks a turning point in Vaggione’s production, arguably the decisive step toward his musical maturity. As methodology for this analysis, I have chosen a perceptual approach that concentrates on the audible and intelligible manifestations of the music, rather than on the intentions and speculations of the composer. I have undertaken a direct analysis of the work based on the published recording (Vaggione, 1995), 3 the score and the tape part. For detailed analyses of the tape part as well as of the piano sonorities, I used sonograms that complement a traditional study of the score. I then situated the sonic Contemporary Music Review Vol. 24, No. 4/5, August/October 2005, pp. 351 – 364 ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) ª 2005 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/07494460500172246