Experimental Music Since 1970 9781501396328, 9781628922479

Citation preview

Acknowledgments I’m deeply grateful to the people who have helped to make this book happen, generously answering questions and sharing materials, ideas, and encouragement. Amy Clark stopped me from giving up on writing the book, Laird Nolan made sure I fully threw myself into it, and Mary Gottschalk’s rock-solid support made it possible. My father, Stephen Gottschalk, has not been here to see this project fall into place, but his passion for finding the connections between and consequences of ideas has had a lasting impact that I hope is evidenced here. Elizabeth Latta was an inspiring collaborator on several images, and I want to thank Chiyoko Szlavnics for letting me use her wonderful drawing on the cover, along with everyone who allowed me to use images in the text. Huge thanks go to each person who read the manuscript. It wouldn’t be what it is without your perspective, advice, and sharp eyes. The richness of the field of experimental music is evidence of—and evidenced by—the qualities of the people who participate in it in every capacity. Thank you to all future readers as well for your willingness to think through these radical approaches in sound. If you take some time with the work itself (and not just these words about the work), I hope you’ll find any initial bewilderment to be just one step along the way to a series of meaningful experiences.

x

1

Defining Features of Experimental Music 1.1 Introduction Experimental music is challenging to pin down because it is not a school or a trend or even an aesthetic. It is, instead, a position—of openness, of inquiry, of uncertainty, of discovery. Facts or circumstances or materials are explored for their potential sonic outcomes through activities including composition, performance, improvisation, installation, recording, and listening. These explorations are oriented toward that which is unknown, whether it is remote, complex, opaque, or falsely familiar. The term “experimental music” has itself been subject to false familiarity, in that there are many definitions but few correlations between them. It may be helpful to establish a few points of reference at the outset, one of which is a key example from the repertoire. John Cage’s 4’33” (1952) is generally known as “the silent piece.” The performer—normally the center of attention—is tacet (producing no intentional sound) throughout. Since the performance usually takes place in a concert situation, the attention of the audience is on sound. As no voluntary sounds are being produced, involuntary sounds become the focus of attention. This piece is sometimes viewed as a gimmick, as more of an idea of a piece or a philosophical statement than an actual “musical” work. What makes it truly innovative is the fact that performance is transformed into acts of being and listening. Not only despite, but because of its negation of performative sound, it becomes a compelling listening experience.1 4’33” anticipates and traces five conceptual arcs that cross each other pervasively in experimental music. These arcs do not mark boundaries—those are always going to be pressed and crossed—but they wind through various regions of work as recurring features: indeterminacy, change, experience, research, and non-subjectivity.

Indeterminacy The application of the term “indeterminacy” has covered more ground in recent decades than Cage’s “act the outcome of which is unknown.” Brian Eno writes: An experimental composition aims to set in motion a system or organism that will generate unique (that is, not necessarily repeatable) outputs, but that, at the same time, seeks to limit the range of these outputs. This is a tendency towards a “class of goals” rather than a particular goal, and it is distinct from the “goalless behaviour” (indeterminacy) idea that gained currency in the 1960s.2

Experimental Music Since 1970

2

Some other terms associated with this definition are chance operations, aleatory, circumstance, contingency, risk, openness, and uncertainty. The outcome may be unknown to any agent in the piece—performer, composer, audience—if those roles are in place, or to anyone in a position to compare the act to the outcome. In Cage’s formulation, the act is known and the outcome is unknown; but the act and the outcome could be almost anything, and the distance between the known and the unknown is as likely to expand as it is to contract. Either an expansion or a contraction is a change, which alters the experience of the participants. One way to interrogate this distance is through research, which must be as non-subjective as possible to yield clear results. Indeterminacy is perhaps the most overt and central trait of experimental music, and will be further explored in its own section within this chapter. Ironically, it is uncertainty that provides the most effective orientation when searching for the experimental qualities of a work. The key consideration is: “Where are the questions?”

Change In the early decades of experimental music, change often meant doing things in ways they had not been done before, both in terms of musical creation and performance. In this way it echoed some of the goals associated with avant-gardism and led to a frequent conflation of the two terms. At one point, Cage even defined experimentalism as “the introduction of novel elements into one’s music.”3 Aspects of indeterminacy were adopted by such central figures of the musical avant-garde as Boulez and Stockhausen, among many others.4 But, although experimentalism offers useful tools and insights that speak to musical traditions and developments, it operates primarily in relation to basic aspects of human experience. Avant-garde music (if the term is still relevant) is in a dynamic relationship with musical tradition. As Joaquim Benitez writes, “Historical directionality gives meaning to the term avant-garde. . . . The ever continuing search for the new is the second distinguishing feature of the avant-garde.”5 Many innovative things have been done in music already, and will continue to be done. But doing something first is not the type of change that is meant in the context of this study. In experimental music, real change occurs in the realm of human thought and experience. The experimentalist is not trying to change the musical world, but to change the thinking of one or more listeners during—and possibly after—the performance. As Greg Stuart explains, it “attempts to radically rethink the relationship between composition, performance and listening.”6 There are limitless possibilities for how that rethinking can occur, one of which is a shift in the listener’s perception.7 Christian Wolff has underlined the difficulty of an approach that favors novelty and takes nothing for granted, and offers a more currently applicable definition: Experimental in music seems to me, it should be something that through the music, through the way it’s performed, possibly though the way it’s presented . . . socially and in concert situations . . . suggests the possibility of change. . . . The music becomes a kind of metaphor, if you will, for a social situation, that it suggests a way of organizing your thinking, your attitude towards the world, which suggests that

Defining Features of Experimental Music

3

the world could be different. . . . So that would seem to me now what experimental is about, providing a kind of model, an incentive for the notion of change.8

For Wolff, an experimental work can expand the listener’s perception of possibilities. It can function as an analogy to suggest that other things, too—our lives as they are lived and the politics that shape them—could be different. But if music can, as Michael Pisaro suggests, “change thought,”9 then the analogy takes on the full dimensions of reality. Thought affects experience, and thought is experience. If a sound work has a transformative impact on the perception or cognition of one person, it has truly affected change.

Non-subjectivity The Dutch visual and sound artist Paul Panhuysen writes: I never express my individuality per se, nor that environment as such, it’s the relationships between these two and the proportions that are pivotal.10

One of the points that initially seems most contradictory is that in order for a listener to have a rich, subjective, differentiated experience, a composer of experimental music often feels a necessity to remove her own subjectivity—tastes, associations, discernment, emotions—as much as possible from the process of making the work. David Dunn writes of experimental music as a paradigm that “bifurcated away from the predominantly European 19th-century belief that music must express ‘self ’ and ‘emotion,’” and instead employs “active creative strategies that emphasize the materiality of sound, listening, environment, perception, and socio-political engagement.”11 Robert Ashley, who rejected the term experimental music despite his association with its broader meaning, spoke of this music as “sound-as-more-important-(for the moment)-than-what-the-composer-does-with-the-sound.”12 The listener’s focus is directed toward the behavior of sound itself under the given circumstances, rather than the decisions or expressivity of the composer.

Research A composer of experimental work will often design a process or an interaction through which a particular question can be, if not answered, at least more directly considered. There is no need for this process to be thrown away each time a new piece or series is begun. Larry Austin writes, “I still have the attitude of experiment. In the piece I’m doing, I am excited to be discovering new possibilities, even with techniques I’ve used extensively.”13 James Tenney took a related approach. In the useful “Five Maps of the Experimental World” essay, Bob Gilmore summarized this point of view: Tenney believed that “experimental” in music should mean more or less what it does in the sciences. The composer would write a piece of music, try certain things

Experimental Music Since 1970

4

out, and judge if they worked, didn’t work, or only partly worked. Then in the next piece, that experiment could be followed up: like a scientist, one could go further down the same line. “I guess all of my music can really be called experimental,” he told an interviewer, “but in a sense different from how John Cage uses the word, and a bit different from how it’s been used to describe the experimental tradition . . . It’s more literally an experiment, like a scientific experiment. And in science, in scientific work, one experiment always does lead to another one. . . . There is no such thing as post-experimental. . . . My sense of ‘experimental’ is just ongoing research”14

Experience I’ll set up the usage of this term with a few moments out of my own experience. The sound works that first drew me to experimental music are more grounded in actual lived experience than in musical tradition. The composer (and by natural extension the performer and listener) is drawing from the well of what they know and live outside of music. The things that happen in the cracks, in the transitions we barely notice as we go about our business, are elevated to a position of attention. I had very little exposure to experimental music through my undergraduate years as a composer. When I arrived at graduate school, like many young composers, I was facing some fundamental questions about the kind of music I wanted to write. At the intermission of a concert that fall I wrote a note to myself, saying that the piece was beautiful and well crafted, but it was about a world that didn’t exist. Something became clear to me at that point in time: I wanted to write nonfictional music. But what did that mean? It wasn’t until I engaged with two particular pieces several years later that I started to glimpse an answer. The first of these was Alvin Lucier’s In Memoriam Jon Higgins (1985). Not knowing what the instrumentation was (in fact it was a single clarinet and a sine tone), I heard an unbelievably complex interaction looping around the classroom. The second piece was a live performance of Michael Pisaro’s rapport abstrait (2003–04). The neighborhood, a persistently barking dog, and the traffic going by were every bit as much of a presence as the soft, occasional notes and chords played by the two guitarists. An idea gradually but powerfully took hold of me that here I had finally found my nonfictional music. This is music that is about the time and place in which it occurs. It is transparent to it, responsive to it, and frames it in a way that makes the familiar seem very special. When experimental music is effectively made and presented, it speaks to our interaction with the world. It goes from the center—what we already know—to the margin—what we don’t know—and back again, so that new realities are present along with, or sometimes even in place of, our previous perceptions of our own lives. This work does not suggest “other” worlds, but instead strengthens relations with this world. For me, the experiential nature of this music gives structural integrity to all of the other arcs. A music that is open to experience is contingent, or indeterminate.

Defining Features of Experimental Music

5

Ongoing research is carried out within the realm of realities external to the subjectivity of the composer. If the maker of the work resists expressing her own subjectivity, the piece has greater potential to resonate with the unique experience of each listener. By touching on the life of the listener as it extends beyond the scope of the concert hall or living room, such a work brings about lasting change. This approach to sound has the potential to speak, both directly and by analogy, to life as it is lived. Here are some examples of how the test case of 4’33” traces these arcs: Indeterminacy: The piece is overtly indeterminate, in that only unintentional sounds are heard. Cage has not determined what actual sounds will occur. Change: The inversion of the performance experience, placing attention on the entire body of the concert hall rather than simply on the stage or the performer, is transformative. Experience: The focus is ontological, on being in that collective space and what transpires in the place and time of the performance, and in the minds of those who attend. Non-Subjectivity: Cage does not instruct the performer or the audience on how to approach this event. In the absence of such direction, one’s own thoughts and perceptions become primary. Research: No one knows what will happen. There is a simple question: What sounds will occur? That question is answered uniquely in each performance. Various equations could be proposed out of these component arcs to emulate my image of experimental music’s nature and potential:

research + indeterminacy + change = experience research + indeterminacy + experience = change experience + change = indeterminacy research + non-subjectivity = indeterminacy non-subjectivity + change = research

None of these formulations seems more or less true than the others, but taken together, they begin to reveal a field in a way that is neither reductive nor unspecific. I believe there have been negative consequences to the vagueness of this field that are worth briefly outlining.

Difficulties of definition The ambiguity of the words “experimental” and “music” tend to complicate attempts to define the broader term. “Experimental” implies a specific type of scientific procedure, and while this is relevant in some aspects of this work, it doesn’t fully fit. Robert Ashley wrote, “Composition is anything but experimental. It is the epitome of expertise. It may be aleatoric or purposefully unpredictable in its specific sounds, or purposefully exploratory of the sounds. But experimental is the wrong word.”15 Harry Partch applauded a statement by “some famous painter” who attempted to distance himself from the term by saying, “You never see my experiments.”16

6

Experimental Music Since 1970

Hundreds of bands are tagged as experimental, implying that they are edgy, alternative, or pushing boundaries. While these attributes are often shared with the work under consideration, they don’t constitute a meaningful definition. As a result this term seems to apply to a sprawling galaxy of unrelated activities. There is no rule against the direct equation of alternative, electronic, or just plain weird music with the term experimental, but there is a genuine risk that by having so many different applications, the term will lose any meaning at all. In a similarly misleading way, “music” usually references a rich set of historical traditions that only partially relate to this subject. As a unified phrase, the term stands for a constellation of practices that deal in sound and fact and contingency. But because such concerns are insufficiently articulated to “outsider” audiences, experimental music is sometimes viewed as a tiny field limited to specialists. People’s relationship to experimental music seems to fall into one of several categories: ●● ●● ●●

●●

●●

Total lack of information. This must be, by far, the largest category. Dismissiveness. Experimental work is valued or devalued according to its novelty. A general cultural awareness of movements, such as New York School, Fluxus, Wandelweiser. Some interest. This usually comes from musicians or other listeners who find certain ideas to be useful and some of the work to be inviting. There are many musicians who are glad to learn about it and perhaps incorporate some aspects of it into their practices. Engagement. Those who have found a home in this area of work and have explored it to a significant degree.

Even for this last group, it is difficult to piece information together in a meaningful way, let alone explain it to those with a friendly interest. There is rich documentation of work by many composers and sound artists, but they tend to be associated more through networks of people (who knows who) than through the concerns explored in their work. Often the former leads to the latter, but not always, and because of the informal way that information travels in this field, the associations based on networks have been far more prevalent. My own view of experimental music has grown through what seems like a series of chance encounters, casual mentions, and a gradual connecting of the dots. For over ten years, I have been trying to figure out what it is, if it is, and who is engaged in it. It still feels like an underground activity, and often people with directly related concerns have never heard of each other.

Inclusion and structure This book is a sequel of sorts to Michael Nyman’s Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, in that it covers the same subject matter and a time period that overlaps with its original 1974 publication. Generally, the work that I have written about is experimental both in quality and by association. If the work itself does not play out some key characteristic of

Defining Features of Experimental Music

7

experimentalism, there is no context for it to be covered here. Similarly, if there is not a meaningful intersection with some of the people and ideas associated with the experimental tradition, there is a risk of losing focus—applying the term where it may not be welcome, and covering work that I lack the knowledge base to write about effectively.17 This work is not presented chronologically. I have also generally avoided groupings according to tools, notation, technology, or musical techniques, since I have found these categories to be red herrings when it comes to identifying experimental qualities. The fundamental issue is not what tools are used, but how they are directed. The categories of sound art, improvisation, and composition are also not differentiated in a structural way in this text. Seth Cluett has pointed out that the “indexing of works into categories” within sound art has “ghettoized practitioners,” and he warns against a “counter-productive medium-specific myopia.”18 These concerns apply equally well across the field of experimental music. This book is also not a “who’s who” of experimental music or an attempt to establish a canon. A person’s presence or absence has nearly as much to do with my ability to talk about their work within the structure that has developed as it does with their standing in the field. Many other musicians deserve a place here, and I hope this text will be understood as a series of starting points rather than as anything like a final statement. It’s impossible to fully delineate a field that is still active and thriving. The chapters and sections are grouped according to these questions: What is the crux of the experiment? What is the subject matter that is open, contingent, subject to change or chance? Where are the questions in the work? The various answers to these lines of inquiry have been organized into five very broad themes. Science, physicality, perception, communication, and circumstance are unavoidable aspects of experience. The sections and subsections of each chapter are far more specific, but still reveal a broad array of approaches to answering the same or similar questions. These groupings are not meant as categorizations. Some individual pieces could be discussed in four or more sections, and some sections naturally connect across chapters.19 This book is organized in a way that presents substantive connections between works. I would never claim that it fully represents the field, or that a reader of it would develop a thorough knowledge of it. But I do know that the vastness, richness, and potential of experimental music are exponentially greater than I understood them to be before I started this project. There are without a doubt many ways of extending this map and adding more detail to it. Another of my hopes for the book is that it will serve as a creative prompt, a way of thinking about many different ways of dealing with sound. I came into the field of experimental music as a composer, and came away from graduate school with a feeling of urgency to discover what experimental music is now. I did not find easy answers—and I don’t think this book provides them, though it draws a lot of lines between previously unconnected works. Thinking about experimental music through these connections has been a source of many fresh ideas, and I hope it will serve a similar purpose for others. That leads to another point that I feel I should make. I am not a critical theorist, a musicologist, or a performer. My training is in composition, and this book is written

8

Experimental Music Since 1970

from a maker’s perspective. The most frequently quoted people are composers writing about their own work, or sometimes about other people’s work. A survey from a performative, historical, or theoretical standpoint could be a useful contribution. Finally, I’ll offer two possible views of what this term, experimental music, represents below. The first is a narrow field of activity that is only available to specialists. As a tiny subset of musical activity, this field could represent a closing off, a type of cultural enclave. But that is not how I have seen it in operation. The second view is an opening between music and the broader field of sound.    

Figure 1.1  A reductive view © Jennie Gottschalk, illustration: Elizabeth Latta

Figure 1.2  Experimental music as an opening between the categories of music and sound © Jennie Gottschalk, illustration: Elizabeth Latta

1.2 Indeterminacy Indeterminacy is not a word that is typically thrown around in other contexts. Some of the more relevant dictionary definitions include “not precisely fixed,” “not settled,” “not fixed beforehand: not known in advance,” “not leading to a definite end or result.” In horticulture, indeterminate growth is “not limited by development of a terminal flower bud or other reproductive structure and so continues to elongate indefinitely.”20 Oddly enough, the horticultural definition may provide the most useful analogy. A plant is affected by soil, water, temperature, and light, and can live or die, wither or prosper according to these specific conditions. A piece of music is subject to the technique of the performer(s), their work with the piece, the properties of the instrument, the

Defining Features of Experimental Music

9

performance space, the attentiveness of the audience, and more. All of these factors influence the outcome, regardless of the style of the music. All that is still true of indeterminate works, but what sets them apart is the openness of the end result. To continue the horticultural analogy, a given determinate variety of a tomato plant can be planted in a pot and will grow to a certain dimension if it thrives. There may be more or fewer tomatoes depending on the growing conditions, but the approximate height, width, and yield can be gaged over a few growth cycles. An indeterminate variety needs the space of the outdoors, a big plot of soil, and lots of staking for its continual spreading. It will land on any post, fence, or plant in sight, and its growth habit will be shaped by whatever it rubs against until it is killed off by the frost. In discussing indeterminate music, John Cage says, “A recording of such a work has no more value than a postcard; it provides a knowledge of something that happened, whereas the action was a non-knowledge of something that had not yet happened.”21 Just as a gardener can’t really know what that tomato plant will do in outdoor conditions, an indeterminate piece has factors that cannot be known before a performance. Cage lists examples of the use of indeterminacy in past and then-current repertoire, including Bach, Stockhausen, Brown, and Wolff, in his essay, “Indeterminacy.”22 The Swiss composer Manfred Werder writes about indeterminacy as “intrinsic unavailability . . . of world.” At the time of the creation of a score, the condition of the world—or the condition of the exact segment of the world at the exact time at which the score will be actualized—is not yet present. Werder continues: But Indeterminacy has become an artistic strategy, and the resultant practice of producing musical situations (encounters referring rather to sound) reflects these efforts of the potentiality of the score, though in a rather chaotic and unpredictable way.

What is this artistic strategy? It could be simply said that some composers prefer to know little about the possible outcomes of their work (relative to those who develop a more complete description in the score). They may also be interested in embedding their work with the potential of multiple outcomes. Werder closes his statement on indeterminacy with a poem of sorts that captures something essential about this type of exploration. Scores as such occurring as incident. Unavailability. Regarding their possible realisations, perplexity. Trace elements of a world.23

Release of control Cage uses indeterminate timespans in the latitude given to musicians in the flexible time brackets of the Number Pieces series. In a number of examples from Two (1987),

Experimental Music Since 1970

10

the flutist can begin at any point within a span of forty-five seconds, and end the note within a different forty-five-second span that overlaps with the first. It is therefore possible either to play nothing or to play for well over a minute.24 The structure is parallel to that in the dozens of other pieces in the series, ranging from solo works to orchestral versions. Music For (1984–87) also uses flexible time brackets, and the quiet, sustained tones in the pieces can be repeated any number of times.25 Christian Wolff has developed an approach to indeterminacy that he describes as primarily taking two forms: (1) allowing performers space and freedom in the use of notated material and, at the same time, (2) interdependence among performers, requiring them to play in some specific way specifically because someone else has, unpredictably, played in some specific way.26

The second of these ways is discussed specifically in Chapter 5, and is closely linked to the first. Wolff ’s work has much to do with sharing agency with the people enacting the work. As they operate in a non-hierarchical, responsive way, this spreading of agency becomes interaction. A loss of composer control becomes collective decision-making. The cellist and composer Stefan Thut’s scores tend to give such agency to the performers without setting up a framework for deliberate interaction. In many, 1-4 (2009), each player reads from the same page and chooses one of four available combinations of a noise and a note and plays it “within quite some time.”27 The performers’ decisions are all made separately but emerge in sound as a collective result, an “outcome of multiple readings.”28 Thut’s scores deal with the interplay of freedom and structure in ways that seem so simple as to barely contain any content, and yet they are carefully tuned to the performative situation. The performances offer glimpses not only of the actual choices that were made but also of numerous other choices that could have been made.

Machine behaviors As Cage and Wolff have ceded aspects of control to performers, others have searched for aspects of machine behavior that will yield unexpected results. Maria Chavez— a turntablist, DJ, and sound artist from Peru—writes that she sees herself as “an instigator of chance” in her turntable practice, making a “collapsible structure” in sound and rebuilding it after its collapse. The turntables yield unstable sounds, and their components—especially the needle—offer fragility and sensitivity that are integral to her practice.29 As she explains, she relies on these fragilities and accidents: Objects deteriorate and as a result, new sound opportunities exist. And the rest writes itself. . . . By experiencing chance situations during performance, this created the basis of developing my vocabulary with the turntable. The more that “went wrong” the more I learned about new sound possibilities, i.e. when a needle broke a certain

Defining Features of Experimental Music

11

way it began making interesting sounds on different records. The more they broke, the more sounds began to emerge that wouldn’t have without accidents and damage. And now since I understand where all of those sounds came from and how, I can make them on my own whenever I sense that it is the right moment for that specific sound. Accidents, chance, coincidences, to me, are the root of new beginnings in anything, in this case it was with the turntable.30

After integrating these techniques into her practice, she created a book illustrating them called Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable.31 The Hovercraft Technique involves skimming the vinyl with the needle. In one application, the needle responds to random points of the record. In another, the sounds of the record are barely caught.32 The Dragging Dagger involves scraping the needle across the record from outside to inside and back, going against the grain (or the grooves) of the record. The deliberate sounds imprinted on the vinyl are subverted into a different order, and the friction is not gently responsive but abrasive.33 Chavez’s techniques play with and against the material on the records. Sometimes she allows the original sounds of the record to sound, but she is every bit as likely to disrupt it beyond recognition. It is a sounding body, articulated as percussion.34 Chavez exploits the geographies of the record to purposes unintended by the manufacturer. Christian Marclay also uses records toward indeterminate results, but perhaps in part because of his background as a visual artist, much of his work occurs as physical manipulation of the records in advance of performance. He affixes tape in various shapes, scratches and buffs the records, and, in Recycled Records (1980–86), slices them into pie slices or other geometric patterns, making a new record out of pieces of separate LPs.35 There is a crack apparent in the sound as it transitions from part of one record to the next. In Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, Caleb Kelly defines the crack as “a point of rupture or a place of chance occurrence, where unique events take place that are ripe for exploitation toward new creative possibilities.”36 Yasunao Tone, an original member of the Fluxus group, began damaging CDs in 1984 to the point that the CD player emitted sounds of errors in playback, where “the level of the error is so great that the error-correction software built in to the digital system is not able to cope.”37 He describes his earliest experiments: I called my audiophile friend who owned a Swiss-made CD player and asked about it. It was a simpler method than I suspected. I bought a copy of Debussy’s Preludes and brought it to my friend’s place. By his engineer friend’s suggestion, we simply made many pinholes on bits of Scotch tape and stick it on the bottom of a CD. I had many trials and errors. I was pleased with the result because the CD player behaved frantically and out of control. That was a perfect device for performance.38

Tone found that the CD would yield different results every time. The CD player and its sound emission becomes the site of indeterminacy, faced with such a damaged piece

Experimental Music Since 1970

12

of media. The stutterings and haltings of the player are unpredictable from one playing to the next.39 Where Chavez, Marclay, and Tone have worked on the media devices themselves, Nicolas Collins goes deeper into the mechanism, into the control chip of the CD player, and removes the mute pin. His description of the results makes this normally reliable machine seem like a lively character in a comedy. With this pin removed, the CD player never shuts up, and one can hear the sound as the laser “scratches” (a magnificent, cartoonish ripping noise) or “pauses” (fast looping rhythms, possessed of a peculiar stutter and swing).

In working with an engineer he was pleased to find even worse “aberrations of digital misbehavior.”40

Imitating nature The indeterminacies of nature are inexhaustible in their potential for inspiration, study, and emulation. David Tudor and David Dunn have both used technology to replicate the complexity of nature, setting up situations that quickly spiral out of control. The  ­differentiation from the machine experiments just discussed might at first seem subtle, but it is fundamental. In the earlier examples, the machine itself or its associated media is the site of investigation. For Tudor and Dunn, technologies are built as simulations of chaotic systems. These technologies in turn develop their own uncontrollable systems. One of David Tudor’s key interests was transferring agency from himself as creator to the sounding materials. He clarifies this point of view in a quote about Alvin Lucier’s work: My experience with Alvin is that he approaches things more like a romantic, so that he’s an appreciator of these phenomena, and he appreciates their specific beauty. Then, when he goes to compose the work, he wants to display those characteristics, which seem beautiful to him. Whereas, in my case, I want to show it as something in nature. You know, I don’t want to display it, I want it to display itself, you see.41

When he was asked why he wanted to work in nature, he responded, “It’s a part of my being. It’s a question I can’t answer because I can’t get away from it.”42 Untitled (1972) uses “sixty components with their associated possibilities,” and requires multiple phases of realization. The recording reveals a sort of hyperdimensional counterpoint and interplay of behaviors and has an astonishing variety of forces and energies. Tudor continues to use the language of nature to describe it, saying it was “one of the high points in my electronic music career. . . . Even for me it was unimaginably wild.”43 Matt Rogalsky differentiates Tudor’s conception of chance from Cage’s. “The composer is not standing back to appreciate the mountain; he is the mountain, or at least is on the mountain, ready to explore all its aspects.”44 What is the mountain? Abstractly,

Defining Features of Experimental Music

13

it is nature. Specifically, in Tudor’s practice, it is a multiplicity of circuits, wirings, and components so vast that Tudor “could only hope to influence” its behavior.45 An interest in ecology and environment pervades David Dunn’s activities as a composer, both directly and metaphorically. He defines his role in Pleroma 1 (1999) as analogous to the exploration of a physical terrain. While I can influence the complex sonic behaviors, I cannot control them beyond a certain level of mere perturbation, the amount of which is constantly changing. The experience is often tantamount to surfing the edge of a tide of sound that has its own intrinsic momentum.46

This language echoes Rogalsky’s image of Tudor’s mountain and Tudor’s own characterization of his precarious relationship to the output of the machinery he sets in motion. Neither Dunn nor Tudor has willed their circuits or systems to do any particular thing. They have created Frankensteins that will work according to their own agency. The systems contain incomprehensible possibilities of operation, especially in the combinations that have been set up for them. Pleroma 1 sets up “cross-coupled chaotic states” along the nonlinear feedback path of three oscillators. “These sounds excite me,” writes Dunn, “because they are so physically reminiscent of the global sound behaviors that emerge from natural habitats such as swamps, forests and oceans.”47 Nature is not captured here, as it could be through a field recording, but modeled. The behaviors are explored through the modelings of these circuits and trajectories. Dunn also describes Wildflowers (1994) as being inspired by “non-simulated sources of ‘chaos.’”48 Dunn refers to several of his pieces as sonifications of the “global behavior of hyper-chaotic analog circuits modeled in the digital domain.”49 The Theater of Pattern Formation (2002–05) is a live electronic performance that extends his studies of the sound patterns formed in nature.50 This piece was made in collaboration with James P. Crutchfield, a physicist who deals with themes of chaos and pattern formation.51 Together, they have worked to understand and model these patterns and to convey them as sonic behaviors. The attractors in Lorenz (2005) are counterbalanced, and behave autonomously.52 Three Dynamical Systems (1999) is also set up to behave without intervention. “All other events were emergent properties of the system.”53 These emergent properties— the patterns and behaviors that arise from a given setup—are of central interest to Dunn. Where Tudor sets up systems remarkable for their complexity, Dunn generates interactions based, in various degrees of rigidity, on scientific principles of chaos. Both have demonstrated their interest in setting something in motion and letting it loose, rather than in controlling it. Feedback loops, where output becomes input becomes output, etc., are pervasive natural phenomena, and are common in both Tudor’s and Dunn’s explorations. They have also become increasingly popular among younger composers. Entire trajectories are determined by the specific behaviors of sounds in the moment. The Chinese improviser Yan Jun uses feedback in improvisation, subtly altering the sound

14

Experimental Music Since 1970

through body movement, and also incorporating the sounds of the audience. His Noise Hypnotizing (Micro Feedback) project is transmitted to listeners through headphones, again incorporating the sounds of the audience, the space, and his own breath.54 Scott Cazan’s Network Injection (2011) begins with a network of “machines.” Each “machine” is composed of a software or hardware unit with pre-programmed logic to determine its automatic reaction when given any sort of stimulus/input.55

The machines listen to both themselves and the others, and “the source of any one interaction cannot be determined.” Adam Basanta’s A Room Listening to Itself (2015) is a sound installation that includes software controlling a feedback network involving microphones, speakers, and gallery visitors. Similar to Cazan’s piece, “The system reaches an equilibrium in which notions of cause and effect are rendered meaningless.”56 Despite the common reference point of feedback loops, the sounds produced by these artists could hardly be more different.

Prescribed actions, varied consequences Christian Wolff points out that while the sounds themselves need not be new in an experimental work, it “will create a setting within which its surprises take place.”57 Surprises can be associated with spontaneity, fallibility, contingency, or variability. In the work under consideration in this section, a few elements are fixed: There is a score, or at least a set of clear instructions. The performers are faithful to that score, and do not deviate from it. Their actions are completely prescribed. The element of surprise and the substantial differences from one performance to another are not results of the performers’ choices, but of their timing, tuning, playing technique, the instrument, and the acoustic qualities of the performance space. These pieces require faithful execution, but the result is especially dependent on one or more of these factors. Matt Sargent and Bill Solomon’s a river is many single things going to almost the same place at almost the same time (2010) is a collaboration between a composer and a percussionist, respectively, and is inspired by Bruno Hermann Repp’s research on rhythmic perception and synchronization. The percussionist performs a solo thirty times, and a click track is playing for fewer and fewer measures of it each time. The click track was present for the first four measures in every performance, and these measures are pristine. After that, the pulse very gradually disintegrates into “blurred heterophony.”58 In Minoru Sato (m/s/) and Ami Yoshida’s COMPOSITION for voice performer (1997 and 2007), the singer (Yoshida) replicates an improvisational configuration several times, aiming for consistency. “However, this can not be entirely possible as the voice changes in accordance with physical and mental conditions and structural vagueness in the music and so on. The more abstract the music, the larger the difference will be.”59 The threads of the multiple performances pull apart quickly, revealing something that is similar but not the same, and becomes less and less similar.60 Kenneth Gaburo’s The Flow of (u) (1974) is based on a single u (“oo”) syllable sustained over twenty-three minutes by three singers. Though the instruction seems

Defining Features of Experimental Music

15

straightforward, it creates a number of questions in practice, one of which is how to imperceptibly stagger their breathing. The beating between notes and the harmonics vary according to subtle shifts in each singer’s delivery and how those tones mix. As Warren Burt remembers, The singers worked with Gaburo refining the performance, discovering new areas of microscopic concern, until they felt that they’d explored as much as they could, resulting in this most “electronic”-sounding piece, which is in fact simply a recording of three people singing!61

As straightforward as this piece seems, the variables of human performance created a richly variegated surface. Kenn Kumpf is interested in “aspects of sound (and interactions of sound) that occur in other music but normally dwell on the listener’s focal periphery.”62 In Transformations (2007), a piece for four trombones, four violins, and four sopranos, he finds such interactions in three different ways. The four musicians of each type are spread to the four corners of the room to interfere with cueing or listening as much as possible. Each trombonist slowly plays a glissando up a tritone over the course of five unmeasured minutes. Both the slow motion and the extended duration are difficult to judge. In each corner, the trombonist cues the violinist. The violinists’ transformations are not linear but proportional, as each slowly draws the bow to the middle of the string to filter different harmonics. With the challenge of the technique and the dissimilar responses of the instruments, there is no likelihood of a true unison between them. Even if their G fundamentals are perfectly tuned, their cue times are different, and the harmonics will be somewhat different. Each soprano is cued by the violinist in her corner to sustain an A over three minutes “with as little dynamic variation or vibrato as possible,” taking breaths only as needed. Wearing earplugs, she cannot hear the singers in the other corners. In the recorded performance, each breath has a destabilizing effect. The challenges of implementing the straightforward instruction over three minutes under the given conditions create a whole set of contingencies that form a richly complex sound.63 The Irish composer Scott McLaughlin’s A Metastable Harmony (2012) has factors of instability that are based on both performer and instrument behavior. Writing for the Bozzini Quartet and workshopping the piece with them closely, McLaughlin was dealing with musicians who have a great deal of control over their instruments, and was challenged to find a way to work with them that brought out the unstable sounds that are most compelling to him. He found that by “subtly varying the bow pressure and position, it seemed that the string spectrum would sometimes collapse into a single partial.” Based on the instabilities of these partials in relation to bow pressure, he was able to abandon a notation system descriptive of pitch in favor of what he calls an effort staff. On the lower end of the effort staff is the most immediate partial, and on the upper end are the more distant or resistant partials. (McLaughlin clarifies that it is not a linear scale of effort, but efforts in one particular direction or another in relation to the

Experimental Music Since 1970

16

Figure 1.3  Scott McLaughlin: A Metastable Harmony score, p. 3 © Scott McLaughlin harmonics, as “lower partials can often require great subtlety of bowing to reveal.”) The pitches are not defined on this staff, but it is a suggestion of direction. The accumulation of all of these instabilities across the instruments compounds the variation in results from one performance to another.64

Non-selectiveness Parameters or processes that are determined will inevitably offset the indeterminate aspects of a composed work. But if a composer has committed to indeterminacy in any particular aspect, within those coordinates it should be immune to subsequent adjustment or decisions. Non-selectiveness is a trait that can be located at the intersection of indeterminacy and non-subjectivity. Michael Pisaro is an American composer who is a member of the international collective of composers known as Wandelweiser. He has an active and wide-ranging interest in the various forms experimental music can assume. His harmony series (2004–06) has that name precisely because the harmonies are open. The typical pitch instruction in the thirty-four-piece set is some variant of “any pitch, any tuning of that pitch.” Durations of tones are long and are determined not by counting beats or seconds, but by the task of fitting a certain number of tones into a duration. The indeterminacy of the harmony is established in nearly every piece as two or more players each choose their own pitches. “The rain of alphabets” calls for fourteen players, and an increasing number play in each section, producing unique yet still undefined tones. The character of the harmony is not prescribed, but the density is clear. The only piece which has only one player is “Only.” The score reads: Outdoors, or in a large, resonant space. For a long time. Sitting quietly. Listening. Once in a while, playing a long, very quiet tone.

The nature of the space and the listening attitude ensures that there will be other tones present to form a harmony. In an outdoor space sound is not isolated, and a resonant space will pick up the other tones that are present, as well as the “long, quiet tone.” This piece, which was realized by twenty-one musicians in a 2009 project curated by

Defining Features of Experimental Music

17

Jason Brogan, extends the work from a performative act to one that can be solitary and contemplative. Along with his own realization, Pisaro contributed this note to the project: Each of the other pieces in the series tries to understand harmony as the sum of potential relationships between (human) performers. Consequently in these works, the actual harmonic relations are not prescribed, just the structure for these relationships. “Only” attempts to reframe this question in a different context. Here one is asked . . . to listen to an environment for a long time, occasionally responding (by making a long tone). In performing the piece, I encounter the following questions: “What, in the sum of things occurring now, do I hear, and how do these things harmonize themselves? How can I express my relation to this harmony as a tone? What effect does this have on my continued listening? How will I spend my time? Do I experience the void or just imagine it?”65

The realizations take place in both indoor and outdoor environments. The documentation includes videos, recordings, photos, locations, drawings, temperature readings, descriptions, stories, and reflections. The decisions and results of execution vary widely, and they are all faithful to the score.66 The rehearsal process tests this value of faithfulness to a score. Pisaro says this of Christian Wolff: Over the years of watching him interact with people, I’ve really come [to] appreciate how Christian usually steps back from offering his idea of how something should be done or how it should sound. It’s not that he doesn’t have preferences, but even those are overruled by his commitment to the score itself as a process of discovery—for the person and for the collective. I think he knows that as soon as he starts discussing how he thinks something should be done, people will defer, sooner or later, to his judgement. But that runs the risk of negating the whole reason he wrote this score and so many others. I have tremendous admiration for his discipline.67

Alvin Lucier has stronger words on this subject, making it clear that the discipline of a composer with these interests is not limited to restraint in the rehearsal situation but extends to the treatment of a score. Once the score is fixed you don’t alter it. Cage would never throw out something he didn’t like on the basis of taste. Other composers have worked this way. They’ve used chance procedures to make material that they would otherwise not make; then they choose what they like and make the piece the way they would make it anyway. That’s a half-baked way of working, don’t you think? Cage doesn’t use chance procedures to get interesting material that he may or may not choose to like or dislike; he simply accepts it all. Once he sets up his chance procedures, he follows them to the nth degree.

Experimental Music Since 1970

18

Indeterminacy gets personal preference out of the compositional process. Isn’t that a shocking idea?68

The easy interactions between composers and performers in this field can challenge this discipline. When there are fewer social barriers, it is easy to make informal changes to a score. This happens often with any new work, but the curiosity to see what the musicians have made within a piece’s original parameters is equally motivating. Composers who work in this way often enjoy the unexpected outcomes of their pieces.

Letting the outside in Indeterminacy in music is by no means limited to the realization of a score. It’s an essential component of many improvisation practices, informing not only playing methods and how interactions occur between musicians, but also the act of welcoming intrusions into the performance situation. For the improviser Keith Rowe, the radio provides these creative interruptions to instrumental improvisations. His list, “Why I use the radio,” includes the following points: . . . Unpredictable content Fixed to a time and a place . . . Allows vulgar materials to be incorporated into the performance Difficult to determine whether it elevates, degenerates or celebrates the sources of the materials Additional multiplicity Creativity at the point of juxtaposition Integration of another media . . . Reproduces certain aspects of daily life . . . Has its own unique texture A question of reality and a question of art: the artistic fact . . . Replaces the exterior contribution of the composer in some aspects. Environment and noise69

Christian Wolff describes Rowe’s use of the radio as part of “an invented instrument . . . working as one entity, organic as well as agglomerated . . . an intricate relay of feedbacks.” Rowe’s simultaneous control of the radio, guitar, and various objects is drastically and deliberately limited. Wolff continues that the radio “flickers between sound as sound and sound as representation of meaning, with a general effect, at once disturbing and energizing, of chunks of current (England, 1989) history caught up in a musical process.”70 For Rowe, letting this other, real-time media in creates a dynamic situation, a means of engagement that ensures that there will be significant unknowns in the performance. Like that infiltration of the radio into the concert environment, the British composer Tim Parkinson’s music mirrors the juxtapositions of everyday life. People and objects, sounds and images are thrown together without having any existing relationship to

Defining Features of Experimental Music

19

one another. Musical objects, found objects, snippets of speech, beeps—whatever is around—are given a place and presented as part of the work. There is a quality of playfulness to Parkinson’s presentations, and nothing is embellished. He writes: I like clear and direct thoughts or images, presented individually, one after another, each one a self-contained centre. I like the music to move and change by itself, like the weather. I like the poetry of the limitless everyday, and the quality of “anything,” contained within a frame of time.71

Parkinson’s music makes no attempt to justify itself, and is open to all sorts of unrefined elements. In writing about some of his musical interests, he says, “Life is exploration and discovery. I’m alive now and the world is huge.”72 This statement applies equally well to his compositional process. Some days more than others it excites me very much how the world is a collage or composite. When I see very clearly the separateness of each and every thing. Just glancing at things in my room now I can see a piano, five rocks from a beach, a carpet, a box, a teaspoon, a calculator. . . . What actually have they all got to do with each other?73

For Parkinson, juxtaposition is perhaps the most compelling and pervasive type of realism. Everything is thrown together to transpire as it will. His double quartet (2004–05) sets a quartet for strings alongside a quartet for trombones, to be played simultaneously. There are eleven movements in each piece, but the breaks between them do not coincide, so there are frequent moments where one or the other quartet will play alone. When the two parts do sound as if they belong together, there is satisfaction in knowing that this cohesion is found or imagined, rather than constructed. The trombones are instructed in some movements, “At all times make a conscious attempt not to coordinate with any other player.”74 It feels very true to life, where “the separateness of each thing is forgotten because one’s brain orders it all into degrees of importance, into categories, seeks patterns, reasons and so forth.”75 The collage is the form that rings truest to Parkinson’s musical values. In no piece to date is this form realized so fully as in his opera, Time With People (2013). The stage is filled with objects of all kinds: A wide variety of materials, e.g. wood, metal, plastic. Variety of sizes, e.g. from pencils to dustbins. Variety of textures, e.g. solid, hollow, plastic bags, polystyrene, etc (e.g. any food or product packaging, plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, plastic/ paper bags, newspapers, toys (balls, old plastic dolls, light things, etc), twigs, leaves, branches, kitchenware, plastic household or other domestic items, glass bottles, shoes, and similar.)76

“Opus 1” (the first section of the opera) is a rude interview format. Two people are onstage, each with a shuffled deck of question cards. Each person responds

20

Experimental Music Since 1970

autobiographically until a beep interrupts his or her answer and Rossini plays in its place. At the sound of another beep, the respondent starts to answer a new question until another interrupting beep, and then stays silent until a third beep signals them to answer a third question. They go on in this way as the “chorus” starts in on “Opus 2.” Parkinson has created a multidimensional counterpoint that is basically nonmusical. Each of the interviewees at the opening is speaking without reference to the other, much like a scene Parkinson has recalled in relation to his musical practice: “I remember being captivated by watching two people in back-to-back adjoining phone boxes standing next to each other having separate conversations.”77 These snippets of dialogue are also juxtaposed in time with the silences and the Rossini clips. That whole assemblage is lumped into a new ensemble with the roughly percussive sounds of people walking slowly back and forth across the object-filled stage at individually calculated paces through masses of objects. Walking, speech, clapping, humming, and musical recordings all become parts of the sound assemblage. “Opus 4” consists of three layers, the first of which involves “Multiple Individual Activities to be performed simultaneously.” These activities generally involve either futile acts (“Try to suspend a piece of newspaper in the air with an electric fan. (It will continually fall, but believe that it is possible . . .)”) or making more of a mess than is already onstage: (“Empty bag of leaves/rice/beans/pasta on the floor/over other objects/people slowly/quickly.”) These individual actions are interrupted by alarms that signal group actions. In “Opus 5,” the materials of the collage are completely different, with one performer playing a drum set (“Medium tempo groove. (c.80bpm) Background. Nothing too interesting”) and others listening to separate tracks on headphones and saying or singing back some of what they hear. Some of the chorus breaks off and begins to dance in time with the drums. In the Huddersfield premiere performance, the Edges Ensemble developed a dance that has an 80s flair, complete with aerobic moves and jazz hands. The drummer is still playing his set, other chorus members are singing at the back of the stage, and two guitarists are picking out tunes. The lack of coordination between most of these activities, the simplicity of the musical material, and the eerie forward stares of the dancers, combined with the masses of crumpled objects on the stage, suggest a postapocalyptic wasteland. By setting such commonplace activity in the foreground and basking in its cacophony, Parkinson seems to have achieved one of his goals as a composer: I suppose ultimately I’m thinking of a situation which, rather than being “a piece of music” or “work of art,” is more like some kind of natural experience, which for me is my preferred experience above all, which is full of this actuality, but which mostly is elusive because one is often too preoccupied and distracted with one’s thoughts all the time.78

The score of Time With People suggests normal activities, brings them to the foreground, and collapses them on top of each other, until normalcy becomes subsumed in strangeness. By letting everything in—all the mess and chaos and individual agency

Defining Features of Experimental Music

21

of real life—the door is opened in the other direction too, and a startling new image of ordinary life experience comes into view.79

1.3 Silence As influential as John Cage has been, 4’33” and his famous visit to the anechoic chamber only provide the barest hints of the vast range of approaches to silence that have unfolded in recent decades.

Sound that has to be found There is an anecdote I’ve been told about a professor who was teaching a class on authority structures. The students showed up for the final exam and were given blue books by the teaching assistant. There was no exam question. The teaching assistant did not offer any assistance or information. Some of the students got up and left the exam, thinking there had been a mistake. Others stayed to write about the circumstances in which they found themselves. Those who engaged with the implicit question of the situation were given an A, and those who didn’t, failed the exam. The situation parallels the two different types of reactions that a listener might have to a purported piece of music that is lacking in deliberate sound markers. This work does not necessarily

Figure 1.4  Akio Suzuki: Pyramid: Humanity Excavates Sound © The Mattress Factory

22

Experimental Music Since 1970

encourage listener engagement, but it depends on it. It cannot—does not—exist without it. The Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki is described as a “quester after sound and space.”80 He has made a series of installations called Pyramid. Nothing in any of these installations is designed to make sound without the intervention of the listener. Pyramid: Humanity Excavates Sound (2001) was installed in the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. The materials used were 676 sheets of glassine paper, geometrically stacked in a pyramid form. At the center was an ear-shaped stone.81 What makes sound here? As relayed by David Toop, Suzuki’s explanation of the 2005 installation at the Playing John Cage exhibit in Bristol applies equally well to the Mattress Factory version. Suzuki explained: if somebody felt the desire to walk over Pyramid, they should be allowed to do so. Some people, he said, would take off their shoes and step carefully, and these people would hear the faint, sighing, friction sound of paper on paper. Others, particularly small children, would be more uninhibited, or less sensitive, and so the piece would be destroyed during the course of the exhibition, in the way that pyramids gradually erode and empty over centuries, either from weathering, plunder by robbers, or excavation by scholars. To discover the meaning of Pyramid, its sound and process, required the courage or insensitivity to walk through, to go beyond ways of seeing in order to be a part of the process of making and unmaking, to hear sound within the apparent silence of the piece.82

To hear this sound piece is to help to bring about its destruction. The type of motion and the care of the listener are directly reflected in the sounds produced. At the center of the pyramid, the ear sits as a simple suggestion to listen.83

Thresholds of perception A threshold is primarily defined as “the sill of a doorway,” and secondarily as “the entrance to a house or building.” Further abstracted, it is “any place or point of entering or beginning.” Finally, it is associated with the limen, a term from psychology and physiology for “the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect.”84 A number of experimental works operate at the threshold between audibility and inaudibility, which has as much to do with perception and cognition as it does with volume. In Listening for Bats (2002), Sam Ashley works with what he calls an “experimental trance-mysticism”85 by creating “an extremely soft synthetic sonic environment.” Ashley writes, “In my experience an extremely soft real sound and an imaginary version of that sound can occasionally be so identical that it is not possible to tell them apart.” Listeners can imagine that they are hearing the installation when in fact nothing is playing. “It is a musical experiment,” he writes, “in the experience of trance.”86 This work invites the listener to question the relationship between hearing and listening. If we listen hard enough, can we hear things that are not there? If a sound is heard without having been produced, was the intended silence an actual silence? These

Defining Features of Experimental Music

23

questions dance around the edge of audibility, playing on either side of it and teasing apart the sensory activity of hearing and the cognitive activity of listening. Burkhard Schlothauer writes of his work for piano, ab tasten (1995) that a precise moment of decay cannot be determined: “I noticed, that at some point it is not longer possible to assess whether the strings are still vibrating audibly, or whether it is only the image of the sound which is still in the mind.”87 There are countless ways of playing with audibility, and countless reactions brought about by these methods. The harpist and improviser Rhodri Davies recalls a 1998 tour with the Phil Durrant Quartet when they made the conscious, collective choice to play most quietly in the noisiest venues. “In fact we found that playing quieter has the potential to draw the listener in.” Davies continues: Instead of the musician projecting the sound towards the audience, the audience would move towards the player. The possibility for a wider range of quieter dynamics opened up, from silence to the barely perceptible and onwards. We took this a step further at the Fundbureau in Hamburg, where the trains passing over the venue were so loud that we decided to play only when we heard a train approach and stop playing when the train disappeared.88

It is not always a literal question of whether a performed sound can be heard. In the French composer and improviser Bruno Duplant’s a field, next to nothing (2014), there is a clearly audible floor of sound, but the subtlety lies in the minimal variations within each part. Tones are minutely inflected on the instruments over a vast twenty-five minutes, inviting the listener to register slight changes. “My idea,” he writes, “was to try to express what could exist, or what can be found ‘next to nothing.’”89 Duplant is not dealing with silence, per se, but with instabilities and changes at the threshold of audibility. Alvin Lucier, who is preoccupied with such small shifts in his own compositional work, describes his experience of James Tenney’s KOAN for String Quartet (1984): “I could hear the small things that were happening in the music. Once you accepted the fact that it wasn’t going to change, and there was no story, no climax, you began to hear the acoustical phenomena.”90 Tenney based this piece on another Koan, written in 1971 for solo violin “to explore the perceptual effects of an absolutely linear and predictable formal process.” The entire piece progresses upward through small intervals. The string quartet version gives this progression a context, revealing the harmonic consequences of these small shifts.91 People who discuss a liminal quality in music often refer to a refocusing of attention. Many such examples are to be found in the comments on this subject compiled by Catherine Lamb and Bryan Eubanks.92 In both her electroacoustic and instrumental work, Éliane Radigue uses sustained tones over significant durations to help bring out these shifts. Her thought is consonant with Lucier’s when she says: I would say that the common ear would say “but it’s nothing,” these sustained tones, but it’s not true at all, through these sustained tones, so many things are so rich, the vocabulary is so rich.

24

Experimental Music Since 1970

She gives an example of how these sounds need to be approached and registered, and how they might otherwise be obscured. If something just pump! into your ear, it takes time after, just to listen. The best example is when (les cloches) bells, are, say, in the mountains—after they stop, you can hear all the shimmering aspects of all the partials, overtones, harmonics, and all that . . . but as long as you have the bong! in the ear, you can’t hear all of that.93

In both her electronic works of previous decades and the recent acoustic projects, Radigue gives the listener the necessary durations—temporal space—to engage with these subtly developing sounds.94 Jakob Ullmann’s music is known for its extreme quietude. He has articulated what the two sides of the threshold are in his compositional concerns, “between listening to what we want to hear and what we must hear,” and further explains that in order to spend time at this threshold, “we have to first push what we must hear to the outside of our perception.”95 On listening to A catalogue of sounds (1995–), one hears shadings, gradations, instabilities. Event and form take place at the most microscopic of levels. Shapes are perpetually being drawn in sound. No moment is static, and yet everything happens well under a decibel level that is considered commercially acceptable. The liner notes contain the instruction: “To achieve the original sound quality of this live recording it is suggested to listen to this CD at the lowest possible volume.” Another recording asks that the volume be adjusted “so as to just barely mask the ambient sounds in the room.”96 This is music of gradations, of “small irritations” and of tiny but significant formations—the most beautiful anthills you have ever heard. “That the music of the ‘catalogue’ is nearly always played very softly,” Albert Breier writes, “leads to the ear noticing the smallest differentiations.”97 In writing about a composition seminar with the theme of quiet music, Ullmann’s fellow jury member Christian Wolff wrote: To be with this music is to find a kind of refuge from the violence of the times. But then the real strength of quiet music would be to make that refuge a waystation (there are no refuges): to begin to undo and unmask that violence.98

Bernhard Günter has made extremely quiet electronic music that operates as just such a waystation. He outlines his project as being one of creating a space of resistance toward aggressive sound. I try to offer something to the listener, instead of imposing it on them, something they can, or not, accept—generally speaking, you do not have to listen to my music even if you’re exposed to it, it’s easy to ignore. For me, however, and for many other people I have talked to, this invitation to listening is something that makes me lean forward, sharpen my attention and try to really enter the sound universe proposed to me. It makes me feel calm and attentive without being strained and I find pleasure in the perception of sound, in listening itself.99

Defining Features of Experimental Music

25

“Whiteout,” one of the four tracks on un peu de neige salie (1993), causes an attentive listener to perpetually question whether sound is present or absent, when it entered, when it exits: the location of those thresholds. It is often unclear whether the sounds heard take place in one’s own environment or on the recording. This is another threshold, between the listener’s environment and the recording. Some sounds are more natural or ambient sounding than others. Of the hums, pops, clicks, and rumbles, one texture just barely cuts in on another. Small sounds seem to resonate tremendously. They are minimal in terms of volume but once they grab attention, they hold it in a way far more reminiscent of natural processes than of musical forms. The lack of any divisions by pulse or beat increases this sense of naturalness and aligns with Günter’s larger purpose: I think music should be like a tree . . . standing there without wanting to tell you something, it has developed out of its own laws to a complex structure influenced by complex causality. It exists. Yet, when one looks at it and gets involved in its manifold forms, the sound that it makes with the wind, etc., one may experience a lot of feelings, thoughts, etc., finally getting to an intuitive perception of its existence. . . .100

In my own listening, surprising parallels emerge between the sounds in my environment and the recording: the crackling on the track with the warming of an iron, the distant rumbling with the passing traffic. The smallest sounds nearby can cause a listener to lose the thread. This is music that teaches you to question what is present, as well as the exact length of an absence of recorded sound. Günter writes: The fact of the matter is that there are actually long passages of silence, which I try to make active parts of the piece, not just some sort of absence of sound. . . . very often they are intended to function as a kind of projection surface for the listener’s recollections of what he has heard so far, and his extrapolations as to what he will hear as the piece goes on, or a quiet time for him to calm and focus his concentration. I believe that silence is an integral part of music, just as shadow is necessary to perceive the quality of light.101

Joe Panzner poetically describes the work on this release as “an intuitive, organic web of sound held together by long strands of silence.”102 The entrances and exits are always surprising, always testing one’s grip on the work and demanding that it be tight. In focusing in this way, as Panzner writes, “One gains not only an awareness of the music, but a privileged awareness of the act of listening itself.”103 When I first listened through this piece, there were several moments when I thought my computer had lost its charge and I had lost the track entirely. The final time this occurred I was surprised to learn that the piece had reached its end far more quickly than I could have anticipated. It is quietly subversive work, teaching the listener how to turn every corner and look just far enough ahead and behind in what feels like an entirely new aural and mental space.

Experimental Music Since 1970

26

Little to no input A key question when considering silence in music is, who or what is it that is silent? If sound is not produced in a direct way, what is the material of the piece? There are a number of ways to consider the sound that is already present in a given situation. When people are interviewed for an audio or video recording, it is common to ask for thirty seconds or more of room tone. This uninterrupted sound of the space is essential to capture for any overdubbing that might need to occur; any cut from one environment to another would be obvious because of the sound of the room itself. Among Steve Peters’ site-specific sound installations is a series of pieces called Chamber Music, each of which is derived from a single recording of an empty space. He filters the recording heavily to find the drones of the room’s resonant frequencies as they develop in response to sound that leaks into the space. Each piece is then presented in that same space. One of these pieces, significantly called Two Ways of Listening to Nothing (2009), is an installation of two separate interactions (by Peters and René Barge) with a single field recording of a large elevator at the Bass Museum in Miami, played back simultaneously in the elevator.104 In Filtered Light (2008), Peters extracted fourteen frequencies from an hour-long recording of an unoccupied room at the UNM Art Museum. The recording was divided into segments that were overlaid in a four-channel continuous installation.105 Peters writes of this series that it has “as much to do with light as with sound—the way natural light changes and moves through a space, the hue of the room shifting subtly throughout the day.” Each piece in the series takes a slightly different approach, but consistently derives all the material from the room tone itself.106 In contrast with Peters’ use of recordings of room tone, Agostino Di Scipio explores his ongoing interest in the interaction with environment by live processing a single, barely audible background. hörbare ökosysteme nr. 3a: studie über hintergrundgeräusche (2002–05) amplifies and processes this noise live, “and attempts to make ‘something’ with it.” Because of the behavior of the process, the texture of the sound gets progressively thicker, until it “builds up to a point of saturation . . . and is then restarted.” Each process leaves “sonic waste” behind that affects the next iterations. This piece is just one of many examples of Di Scipio’s work with background noise and room response.107 Toshimaru Nakamura’s processing also takes place live, and the site of the sounding activity is tightly contained in his mixing board. The no-input mixing board he has adopted as his primary instrument is essentially a feedback loop. The output of the board itself is fed back into the board as input. The sound develops as an accumulation of that input over time, filtered by Nakamura through the mixer. The unpredictability of the instrument requires an attitude of obedience and resignation to the system and the sounds it produces, bringing a high level of indeterminacy and surprise to the music.108

This piece of sound technology hears itself; tones generated inside the mixer are sustained and eventually generate new tones in the prolonged loop. Just as they

Defining Features of Experimental Music

27

accumulate, they are gradually removed, either through filtering or as they cease to be an active presence to be fed back into the mixer. 2nd Rhythm Guitar (2003) reveals a smooth accumulation and gradual reduction of these sounds. Discrete events are audible in 3rd Rhythm Guitar (2003)—infinitesimal grains of sound juxtaposed with larger cycles of activity that seem to rise and fall and eventually flatten, making room for new textures and cycles and pulses. Crucially, none of these sounds are made by him. They are filtered on the mixing board, and he selectively allows them to propagate themselves further, but nothing is “played.” He describes his instrument simply as “an audio mixer with some effect pedals to obtain feedback sounds.”109 In listening to Nakamura’s work, it becomes interesting to focus on the entrance and emergence of sound. When a sound appears, does it take root? How does it take shape? How does it relate to the other sounds? The subtleties of such a listening experience become intensified in the longer tracks, such as the single-track release maruto (2011). These issues of the development of sound take on additional weight and interest because of Nakamura’s fully shared agency with his instrument. The relationship between my instrument and myself is pretty much equal. I have to resign a great deal of determinacy in the music to the system of the instrument, be obedient to the result and accept it.110

He does not create the sounds, and by design he has limited means with which to control them. Whatever sounds are produced are a result of the ongoing collaboration between Nakamura and his technology. When asked about his as yet unrealizable musical ambitions, Nakamura’s response seems to encapsulate his attitude toward making sound. No, I do not have such things. I don’t jump from one place to anywhere too high. I have been gradually changing, I keep going with tiny steps. Or perhaps I am moving around but staying in a very small area while doing so.111

Another way of focusing on sound that has not been propagated but already exists is through a pure and focused act of attention. In the case of David Dunn’s Purposeful Listening in Complex States of Time (1997–98), there is no sound that is purposely emitted from the person executing this score. The piece is an “organization of perception rather than the manipulation of the material basis of sound” that asks for active listening to the immediate outdoor surroundings. For Dunn, it is a personal response to the dilemma posed by 4’33”. We have merely regarded it as an intellectual gesture of final aesthetic conditions rather than a generative opening up to new attitudes. For many musicians the Cagean promise of freedom and revolution in aesthetic attitudes meant permission to be as reactionary as possible.112

Rather than following such a retreat, Dunn uses this model, as well as what he recognizes as the demand of Feldman’s music to listen to oneself listening, as a basis

28

Experimental Music Since 1970

of his project. As Nakamura’s no-input mixing board listens to itself through the looped circuitry, the soloist in Purposeful Listening focuses on her own perceptions of real-time, imagined, and remembered sound events within the given situation. The listening positions are sky, body, and ground level, and the proximity of sound to the listener is at adjacent, moderate, or far distance. Additionally, every sound is placed forward, back, left, right, or omni-directionally. But to say it is placed is simply to say that attention is directed in those ways. Neither Dunn nor the listener is making the sound. Every sound is related to the listener in position. She herself is the focal point of the listening experience, but only as the point to which (not from which) all the sounds are directed. G. Douglas Barrett is pursuing a critical sound practice, both as a writer and as a composer.113 A Few Silence (2007) is, like the previous examples, focused on unintended environmental sounds. It takes place over ten minutes. For the first five minutes, “the performers listen to the ‘silence’ of the performance space while creating written scores based on their observations of sounds that occur within this time span.” In the next five minutes each performer executes these sounds. The collective aspect of the work makes the subjectivity of both hearing and listening apparent. What each performer hears depends on position, focus, and hearing. How he or she performs depends on instrument, facility, and imagination. The audience is also present, engaging in the direct listening experience first, and then the filtered, transcribed mirror to it. They can compare their own listening experience of “silence” with that of the performers. Some sounds are heard by everyone, and others are heard by only one listener—such as the scratching of a neighboring performer’s pen. The silence of the performance situation becomes the not-silence of everything that has infiltrated that space and been heard.114

Performative tensions of silence While silences are often performed in a relaxed manner, they can also be full of tension. Sometimes the silence operates in tension with the cultural situation (venue, audience) of the performance. George Lewis recalls: I remember Leo [Smith] telling me that at the beginning they did these pieces in all kinds of space, including traditional jazz clubs. They would do these silent pieces, and at some point somebody just said, “Play something or get off the stage!” Now that’s a voluntary silence that’s deafening, if you want to look at it that way. The person just couldn’t take it.115

When there is an expectation of “performance,” a transgression of that expectation is sometimes understood as a provocation. Similar experiences have been recounted by Taku Sugimoto as well as by musicians associated with Echtzeitmusik,116 suggesting that the tension of silence in performance is an international phenomenon. Vadim Karassikov evokes a different type of tension, both in the performer and the listener. He speaks of his silence as “frozen catastrophe,” an extremity of

Defining Features of Experimental Music

29

“emotional strain” and “spiritual concentration” that most tangibly finds its form in “motionlessness . . . the silence of gesture.” For him, gesture is on an equal level with sound, and an audible silence is also a visual silence.117 Sound, image, and the sense of time are frozen. In November Morphology II (1999) he describes the extreme tension to be maintained by the cellist, as if the bow is stuck to the instrument, which she must overcome “with extreme tension.”118 As Eugenie Brinkema writes, “It is the performer’s body under the strain of this suspension that constitutes the expressive possibilities of the piece.”119 The performer’s expression in the work is “utter inward concentration and emotional stamina.”120 What is it that requires such concentration and endurance? Total stillness is not associated with either a restful or a performative state, but with the absence or loss of life. A rock expends no effort in being still, but a person does. It is an interruption of the breathing mechanism, of any quest for comfort, and of muscular tendencies. Both total stillness and total silence are antithetical to the human condition, and when viewed closely, actually impossible; yet both are demanded in Karassikov’s work. The tension of the performer becomes the tension of the observer in their shared experience. To breathe normally is to risk competing with the loudest sounds of the work. One of the dynamic markings in November Morphology II is “ppppppppp (practically/ almost inaudible).”121 The tension of this silence also rests on its liminal qualities. As motionlessness and soundlessness cannot be absolute in human performance, so too the sounds are never clearly made on one side or the other of audibility. He writes of The vectors of the echo Slipping Away (2001) that “most of the piece’s ‘events’ are being deployed on the verge of silence,” and that is true of most of his work.122 What matters here is not the mere fact of the absence of what commonly used to function as material for music (4’33”), but precisely the rare graspability of the verge where music is given its birth and leaves the domain of the present.123

For Karassikov, silence is full of content. “This silence, as I perceive it, has the power of a continuum: in its apparent absence of sound, it emphasizes every sound possible.”124 Brinkema clarifies this difference: “What is absolute is the imperceptible but positive difference between silence and the inaudible.” For Karassikov, silence is absolute and inclusive: the limit to which his music aspires.

Countless qualities of silence The music . . . revealed the complexity of “silence” itself. Silence in music was not the cessation of sound, or even a gesture: it was a different sound, one with more density than those sounds made by instruments.125 —Michael Pisaro Taku Sugimoto’s essay, “A Philosophical Approach to Silence,” raises crucial questions about the difference between a silence and a rest. The score of 4’33” contains neither

30

Experimental Music Since 1970

notes nor rests, but is filled with the potential of contingency. “But in this situation,” writes Sugimoto, “the ‘unintentional sounds’ are actually intended by incorporating the silent space into the music intentionally.”126 Unintentional sound is the intention, so the unwritten page is actually written by the circumstance, by the environmental sounds in the event. Silence is both contextual and relative. In the situation of a musical performance, it is controlled by the presence and choices of the musicians. It also depends on the perception of the listeners. In Sugimoto’s STAY IV (2003), the unvoiced durations between the statements of the four guitarists are so substantial and so variable that they each take on a new character. The silence is anticipated, seems to grow bigger as it is prolonged, and is released with each new articulation. Each silence carries a distinct quality. This expansion and contraction of the silences is essential to the work, and to a larger project of Sugimoto’s. A silence can be musical: It can be filled with intention, it can be measured, and it can have character. It does not need to be brief to be endowed with musical properties. Logically, the length of a quarter note can be one second or even one hour, so we could claim and understand the music has a certain pattern, even in an extreme situation where a one-hour rest follows a one-hour continuous note. However, is the silence during the one-hour rest always the same? Of course, nothing is different in an audio point of view. But when a certain context is predominant, if we replace it with some other context, there will be some change in our recognition.

This recognition, whether it is an overall way of thinking or the specific act of listening to a musical performance, is fundamental to the conception of silence. Passivity is the ultimate negation, far more than a performance without articulations could be. Sugimoto continues: I think it is now about time to bring a reinvention to our ways of recognition. This reinvention will come from the issue of how to face the silence in this contemporary time. It is a result from Cage’s idea of silence, which has developed more intricately than his original contemplation—which should be a blessing to us.127

After hearing a performance by Sugimoto’s guitar quartet at the AMPLIFY 2002 festival in Tokyo, Yuko Zama wrote: The set began with a long, perfect silence, followed by a single note from an acoustic guitar. After the lingering sound of that first note disappeared, another note was cast out, followed by another perfect silence. The silence held a powerful attraction, and listeners found that they heard each silence slightly differently, just as one hears changes in the flow of music. Despite the fact the silences are often much longer than the stretches containing sound, the music created by the four artists is overwhelmingly substantial. Most of the music is inaudible in a physical

Defining Features of Experimental Music

31

sense, but in it one can undeniably “hear” the musicians’ inner worlds. This superquiet quartet opened listeners’ ears wide, and prepared their minds to hear the ensuing music better.

In response to another performance on the same festival, she continues: “Within a perfect silence, subtle sounds were generated like tiny bubbles from the acoustic instruments and computer, and floated through the air.”128 Silence is not an undifferentiated unit or element. It has different qualities, depending on its duration, the sounds around it, the nature of the physical presence of the performers, the reception of the listeners, the cultural context, and, not least, the actual properties of the silence. It is not a ground zero, a unity, or a self-similar construct. Many people imagine it to be so, but only relative silences can be experienced, and there are at least as many of those as there are shades of white. There is always something that can be heard, so long as we are there to hear it. Silence becomes a floor of sonic activity that in itself can be analyzed and contrasted. “The New Silence” is a project involving Johnny Chang, Koen Nutters, and Morten J. Olsen that examines and manipulates an adjustable floor of background noise. The project aims at “redefining the threshold of silence, thus revealing the new silence.” This is done in the performance situation by controlling the amplification levels of the machinery and surroundings of the venue: Significant sonic architectural features of the venue will be highlighted and extended—as well as incorporating so-called acceptable and unacceptable surrounding noise into the landscape of the planned composition in such a way that they disappear from the audience’s perspective entirely.129

Matt Rogalsky’s S (2002) is a compilation of all the silences in a day of BBC broadcasts. “Radio silence” is explored in its actual, specific qualities. Rogalsky subsequently released a “best of ” album with only the quietest of the silences.130 But that raises a question: Is a quiet silence better than a loud one? If there is no sound intended, does unintended sound constitute a disruption? It might instead be a welcome inevitability. Antoine Beuger is one of the founders of the Wandelweiser collective, an international group of musicians that has been working together closely over two decades. While each member has a unique perspective, the group’s overall contribution to the consideration of silence is especially significant.131 In Beuger’s dialogues (silence) (1993), sound structures appear, played by the clarinet, in the midst of silence. Between the silence after a sound structure and the silence before the next one, one hears the sound of a page being turned: the sound of silence between the silences.132

If silence is not attainable, either with or without purposeful sound, it becomes possible to use sound to represent silence. Silent harmonies in discrete continuity

32

Experimental Music Since 1970

(2002) is dedicated to the artist Marcia Hafif, who Beuger describes as an “american painter of monochrome paintings.” Beuger’s sonic analogue to Hafif ’s monochrome series is found through “stationary, quiet, pure waves.” These sounds are produced electronically, so they are not subject to the instabilities of bodily performance. Each sound lasts for three minutes and suggests broadness and depth, in that it uses one frequency each from eight octave ranges. The second clear parallel to Hafif ’s work is in the setting of containers of equivalent dimensions next to one another. One sound ends and another one begins. The difference between the sounds is clear, but any attempt to describe the difference seems shallow. Beuger writes: still waters are said to run deep, but in reality it is the imperturbability of their surface that impresses us.133

Radu Malfatti has parallel and complementary roles as a member of the Wandelweiser collective and other musical communities as a trombonist, an improviser, and a composer. In northumberland 4 (2008) he offers a structure for performance that reflects this compound of experiences. He describes the piece as a “stringent, yet quite open architecture of silence and sounds.” The silences and sounds lock together in their contraction and expansion. A sound of sixteen seconds is followed by a sound of the same duration, then on with fifteen seconds down to four. After a silence of two minutes, there is a new note of four seconds that reaches sixteen seconds by the same method. He continues: Nobody will hear the difference between a sound lasting 20 seconds and 19 seconds. but a careful and attentive listener will certainly realize: “. . . the sound seems much shorter then [sic] the ones before . . .” and the two minutes pause is just about long enough to keep the memory of the last soundings in mind and realize that this sound is in a way different. if you play the two sounds immediately one after the other, then you and everybody else hears the obvious change.134

These silences operate as durations and demarcations, obscuring the perception of one sound from another. Rhodri Davies describes the use of silence among improvisers as a means of collectively shaping the music and examining the sounds more closely: We looked at what happened when a sound stopped, how it stopped, how long the sound would last before it stopped in the music. A beautiful heavy silence would engulf the space after a sound stopped. And the listener would often only fully become aware of the presence and density of a sound after it had stopped.135

Sounds are heard not only in their presence, but also—and sometimes more powerfully—in memory, in their recent absence. These silences invite a retrospective listening that is distinct from the previous types described.

Defining Features of Experimental Music

33

As a composer and musicologist with an interest in hearing both old and new music with “new ears,”136 Eva-Maria Houben has written about the uses of silence in music of the past. Her book on Berlioz summarizes some of her findings: His scores often show the annotation: “presque rien” (“nearly nothing”). This annotation may be found in combination with extremely reduced dynamics. Sound may become nearly inaudible.

Similar instructions are to be found in Schoenberg’s and Webern’s scores. She continues: I may read the annotation “nearly nothing” in a second way: there nearly is no composition. There are some vibrations, some noises, some fragments in the air— nearly nothing.

Her own work deals with these questions of presence and absence. Sounds “appear while disappearing, they disappear while appearing. . . . Presence that lasts.”137 The organ, Houben’s main instrument, has proven very useful in considering these issues. In Houben’s work, silence often is equated with an act: a disappearance. The first track on the verschwindungen release (2014) overlays two different recordings. One of these is a pair of pieces for organ and one other wind instrument—in this performance a tuba. The other layer is sounds of the environment. She calls these “different processes of disappearance.”138 Another example is still werden (becoming silent) (2002). She writes, Twelve-tone chords—single tones—silence. There is a very long silence at the end of the piece. You listen to the space of the hall. . . .139

In this gradual reduction from twelve-note chords to one to zero, zero proves itself not to be zero, because the space of the hall remains. A silent organ still occurs within a space that has its own sound. This silence feels rich and deep, more so than the organ tones that precede it. It is a silence that embraces all of those possible sounds and more. It fills the space with an actual presence, rather than with an absence. This silence is not a void, but openness to circumstance. The presence of such background noise is more apparent in yosemite (2007), in the ongoing drone of the factory hall that is the site of the performance.140 Here the silences are much more brief—simply short rests between statements—but the presence of the space asserts itself more readily than the space of still werden. aeolina (2013) operates in a liminal space. The aeolian sounds of the organ are hardly more present than the sound of the space. “There is hardly anything you may hear,” writes Houben. “The organ—its windness being rediscovered over and over again— releases as a jewel each single sound; each stream of air; each noise: disappearing into the space of the hall.”141 These sounds seem never to announce their arrival or departure, but appear and evaporate in the most elusive of moments. The range of hues

34

Experimental Music Since 1970

within this muted color palette is surprising and absorbing. It seems that every possible color is presented in its lightest possible shade. Where Houben tends to associate silence with disappearance, Taylan Susam’s for maaike schoorel (2009) gives it quite the opposite function. Schoorel is a painter “whose landscapes radiate a sense of contingency, a feeling that something may emerge at any given moment.”142 Susam’s silence here is a potentiality that includes all sounds. The musicians each choose among clusters of numbers that indicate how loudly and how frequently to play. Dominic Lash, who played the piece, explains that it will “pull the music made into small swells of extremely quiet sounds, some of them repeating slowly within little windows of time.”143 The instruction to cluster these activities leaves other spans of time empty, but all of these durations are filled with the potential for musical activity. The way these clusters of activity emerge enforces that sense of potential throughout the piece, and in the minutes after it is played as well. There is more to silence than meets the ear. To put it more exactly, when silence actually does meet the ear, it can have an infinite variety of qualities.

Notes 1 For a rewarding consideration of Cage’s thought and work, see Joe Panzner, The Process That Is the World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015). 2 Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, eds., Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (New York: Continuum, 2004), 227. 3 John Cage, Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), 13. 4 See Martin Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt: Nono, Stockhausen, Cage, and Boulez (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 5 See, Joaquim M. Benítez, “Avant-Garde or Experimental?: Classifying Contemporary Music,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 9, no. 1 (June, 1978): 53–77. This article is useful in drawing these distinctions. 6 “Experimental Music Concerts Return to Columbia,” http://www.sc.edu/uofsc/ announcements/2015/experimental_music_concerts.php#.VYqrzBNViko. 7 See Chapter 4, The Position of the Listener. 8 Christian Wolff, “Experimental Music,” Lecture, University of London, May 12, 2014. Podcast, 22:00, http://www.sas.ac.uk/videos-and-podcasts/music/profchristian-wolff-lecture-experimental-music. 9 Michael Pisaro, Lecture, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, September 8th, 2014. 10 Paul Panhuysen, Partitas for Long Strings, XI Records, 1998, compact disc. Liner notes, 10. 11 David Dunn, “Acoustic Ecology and the Experimental Music Tradition,” http:// www.newmusicbox.org/articles/Acoustic-Ecology-and-the-Experimental-MusicTradition. 12 Alvin Lucier, Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014), xi. 13 Thomas S. Clark, Larry Austin: Life and Works of an Experimental Composer (Raleigh, NC: Borik Press, 2012), 27.

Defining Features of Experimental Music

35

14 Darla Crispin, ed., Artistic Experimentation in Music: An Anthology (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014), 26. The podcast of this essay is available at http://homepages. inf.ed.ac.uk/stg/Bob_Gilmore/downloads.html. 15 Robert Ashley, Superior Seven/Tract, New World Records 80460, 1995, compact disc. Liner notes. 16 Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music: An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots and Its Fulfillments, 2nd edn (New York: Da Capo Press, 1974), 357. 17 For a contrasting point of view, see Benjamin Piekut, ed., Tomorrow Is the Question: New Directions in Experimental Music Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014). 18 Seth Cluett, Loud Speaker: Towards a Component Theory of Media Sound (dissertation, Princeton University, 2013), 33, http://dataspace.princeton.edu/jspui/ handle/88435/dsp01bc386j27h. 19 These pairings include: Chapter 3, Resonant Spaces→Site Specific Works; Chapter 2, Harmonic Relations→Chapter 6, Histories; Chapter 1, Silence→Chapter 4, The Position of the Listener; Chapter 1, Indeterminacy→Chapter 5, Interaction. 20 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, s.v. “indeterminate.” 21 Cage, Silence, 39. 22 Ibid., 35–40. 23 Manfred Werder, “Statement on Indeterminacy,” in Word Events: Perspectives on Notation, ed. John Lely and James Saunders (New York: Continuum, 2012), 381. 24 see John Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 201. 25 Pritchett, Cage, 186. 26 Christian Wolff, Gisela Gronemeyer, and Reinhard Oelschlägel, eds., Cues: Writing & Conversations (Köln: MusikTexte, 1998), 316. 27 Stefan Thut, many, 1-4 (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 2009). 28 wandelweiser und so weiter, Another Timbre 56, 2012, compact disc box set. Liner notes. 29 Emilio Bassail, “El sonido del accidente por María Chávez,” i-d.vice.com, https://i-d. vice.com/es_mx/article/el-sonido-del-accidente-de-maria-chavez. See also Michael Graeve’s work with turntables, as described in Caleb Kelly, Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 202–04. 30 Daniel Neumann, “Interview with Maria Chavez,” econtact.ca, http://cec.sonus.ca/ econtact/14_3/neumann_chavez.html. 31 See http://www.mariachavez.org/of-technique-chance-procedures-on-turntable-4/ and http://cargocollective.com/thisisourwork/Of-Technique-Chance-Procedureson-Turntable for more information. 32 Maria Chavez, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable (Brooklyn: Rolling Press, 2012), 52. 33 Chavez, Of Technique, 62–63. 34 See http://mariachavez.org/videos. 35 Kelly, Cracked Media, 161. 36 Ibid., 4. 37 Ibid., 221. 38 Ibid., 236. 39 Ibid., 237. 40 Ibid., 249.

36

Experimental Music Since 1970

41 “David Tudor and Larry Austin: A Conversation,” http://davidtudor.org/Articles/ austin.html. 42 David Tudor, The Art of David Tudor 1963–1992, New World Records 80737, 7 compact discs. Liner notes, 8. 43 Tudor, Art of David Tudor, 13. 44 Ibid., 9. 45 Ibid. 46 David Dunn, Pleroma 1 (unpublished score, 1999). 47 Ibid. 48 David Dunn, Wildflowers (unpublished score, 1994). 49 Dunn, Pleroma 1, From the Theater of Pattern Formations (unpublished manuscript, 2003). 50 Dunn, Theater of Pattern Formations. 51 Jim Crutchfield, “Biographical Sketch,” http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/chaos/ bio.htm. 52 David Dunn, Lorenz (unpublished manuscript, 2005). 53 Dunn, Three Dynamical Systems (unpublished score, 1999). 54 Yan Jun, “Feedback Improvisation,” http://www.yanjun.org/project. 55 Scott Cazan, “Network Injection,” http://www.experimentalmusicyearbook.com/ Network-Injection. 56 Adam Basanta, “A Room Listening to Itself.” Vimeo video, 4:46. August 11, 2015, https://vimeo.com/135961039. 57 Wolff, Cues, 222. 58 Matt Sargent, “a river is many single things going to almost the same place at almost the same time,” https://soundcloud.com/mattsargent/a-river-is-many-single-thingsgoing-to-almost-the-same-place-at-almost-the-same-time. 59 Ami Yoshida and Minoru Sato, “COMPOSITION For Voice Performer,” http://www. ms-wrk.com/SASW%2BAMI.htm. 60 “Minoru Sato -m/s, SASW + Ami Yoshida Composition for Voice Performer 1997.” YouTube video, 6:15. February 1, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=pFS7GqVt9fA. The video of this piece offers a valuable window into Yoshida’s improvisational practice. 61 Kenneth Gaburo, Five Works for Voices, Instruments, and Electronics, compact disc, New World Records 80585, 2002, liner notes. 62 “Kenn Kumpf (Bass, Co-Director),” http://www.outervoices.net/content/artists. 63 Kenn Kumpf, Transformations, https://soundcloud.com/kennkumpf/ transformations. 64 Scott McLaughlin, There Are Neither Wholes nor Parts, compact disc, Ergodos Records, ER12, 2013, liner notes, http://ergodos.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ er12_scottmclaughlin_notes.pdf. 65 “Only [Harmony Series #17],” http://harmonyseries.blogspot.com. 66 These realizations are discussed by James Saunders in Word Events, 320–27. Many realizations of pieces in the series are listed at http://www.soundexpanse.com/rs9pisaro/. 67 “SA10: Conversations with Drury . . . Pinkas . . . Pisaro . . . Polansky,” http:// soundamerican.org/stephen-druryinterrogation-of-soundmicro. 68 Lucier, Music 109, 10–11. It is by no means agreed among scholars that Cage succeeded in weeding out personal preference; but any composer’s effort to do so is a hallmark of indeterminacy.

Defining Features of Experimental Music

37

Keith Rowe, “Above and Beyond,” Resonance 5, no. 2 (1997). quoted in Wolff, Cues, 398. “Biography,” http://thecollection.soundandmusic.org/composer/tim-parkinson. Tim Parkinson, “A Clear Apparence,” http://www.wandelweiser.de/_texte/textsparkinson.html. 73 James Saunders, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 340. 74 Tim Parkinson, double quartet (unpublished score, 2004–05). “double quartet,” https://soundcloud.com/tim-parkinson-1. 75 Saunders, Ashgate, 340. 76 Tim Parkinson, Time With People, http://media.experimentalmusicyearbook.com/ emy_media/2015/tim_parkinson/tim_parkinson_time_with_people.pdf. 77 Saunders, Ashgate, 340. 78 Ibid., 341. 79 The full premiere performance is documented at https://vimeo.com/114220946. See also Opus 1 at https://vimeo.com/76150181 and an interview about the piece at http://www.experimentalmusicyearbook.com/TIM-AND-TRAVIS. 80 “Biography,” http://www.akiosuzuki.com/web/profile01-en.html. 81 Akio Suzuki, “Pyramid: Humanity Excavates Sound,” http://www.mattress.org/ archive/index.php/Detail/Collections/151. 82 David Toop, Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener (New York: Continuum, 2010), 230. 83 See also the description of Hana (1997) at http://www.estatic.it/en/content/akiosuzuki-hana-otodate-torino. 84 dictionary.com, s.v. “threshold,” accessed September 16, 2015, http://dictionary. reference.com/browse/threshold. 85 “Sam Ashley,” http://www.lovely.com/bios/ashleys.html. 86 “Sam Ashley,” http://www.ccnoa.org/Sam-Ashley. 87 Burkhard Schlothauer, PianoMusic, Edition Wandelweiser Records, 2001, EWR 0105, compact disc. Liner notes, 6. 88 Burkhard Beins, et al., eds., Echtzeitmusik: Self-Defining a Scene (Hofheim: Wolke, 2011), 71. 89 “An Interview with Bruno Duplant,” http://www.anothertimbre.com/nexttonothing. html. Ryoko Akama, Bruno Duplant, and Dominic Lash, Next to Nothing, Another Timbre 79, 2015, compact disc. 90 Lucier, Music 109, 194. 91 James Tenney, “Program notes,” http://www.quatuorbozzini.ca/en/select/ oeuvre/?id=18252. 92 Catherine Lamb and Bryan Eubanks, Listening in/to the Liminal, http:// lateraladdition.org/listening_into_the_liminal.pdf. 93 Ibid., 21. 94 Naldjorlak and Occam Ocean are discussed in Chapter 5. 95 Lamb and Eubanks, Liminal, 11. 96 Jakob Ullmann, Voice, Books and FIRE 3, Edition RZ 2005, 2008, compact disc. Liner notes. 97 Jakob Ullmann, A Catalogue of Sounds 1995-1997, Edition RZ 1017, 2004, compact disc. Liner notes, 9. 98 Wolff, Cues, 232. 99 “An Interview with HALANA Magazine, USA,” http://trenteoiseaux.net/interviews.

69 70 71 72

38

Experimental Music Since 1970

100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 “On second thought: Bernhard Guenter—un peu de neige salie,” http://www. stylusmagazine.com/articles/on_second_thought/bernhard-guenter-un-peu-deneige-salie.htm. 103 Ibid. 104 “Chamber Music 4: Filtered Light (2008),” http://steve-peters.blogspot.com/2013/03/ chamber-music-2005-2012.html. 105 Steve Peters, Filtered Light, Dragon’s Eye Recordings 5017, 2008, compact disc, liner notes, https://dragonseyerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/filtered-light-chambermusic-4 106 Clips and more information about the series are available at https://stevepeters. bandcamp.com/album/chamber-music. 107 Agostino Di Scipio, hörbare ökosysteme: live-elektronische kompositionen 1993–2005, Edition RZ, ed. RZ 10015, 2005. Liner notes. See Contemporary Music Review 33, no. 1 (2014) for more writing on Di Scipio’s work. 108 “Profile,” http://www.japanimprov.com/tnakamura/profile.html. 109 “Fifteen Questions Interview with Toshimaru Nakamura: Free from any System,” http://15questions.net/interview/fifteen-questions-interview-toshimaru-nakamura/ page-1/. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 David Dunn, Purposeful Listening In Complex States of Time (unpublished score, 1997–98), 2. 113 See G. Douglas Barrett, After Sound: Toward a Critical Music (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). 114 G. Douglas Barrett, A Few Silence, http://gdouglasbarrett.com/music/A_Few_ Silence_score. 115 “George Lewis Interview,” http://www.afropop.org/2752/george-lewis-interview/. 116 Beins, Echtzeitmusik, 72. 117 “Vadim Karassikov,” https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/program/20th21st-centurymusic/contemporary-music/vadim-karassikov. 118 Vadim Karassikov, November Morphology II (Kasssel: Bärenreiter, 2003), 1. 119 Eugenie Brinkema, “Critique of Silence,” Differences 22, no. 2–3 (2011): 226. 120 Karassikov, November Morphology, 1. 121 Ibid. 122 “Questionnaire Vadim Karassikov,” https://www.ensemble-modern.com/en/press/ press_archive/interviews/2002/471. 123 “Vadim Karassikov,” https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/program/20th21st-centurymusic/contemporary-music/vadim-karassikov. 124 Ibid. 125 Michael Pisaro, “Wandelweiser,” http://erstwords.blogspot.com/2009/09/ wandelweiser.html. 126 Taku Sugimoto, “A Philosophical Approach to Silence,” trans. Yuko Zama, http:// erstwords.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-philosophical-approach-to-silence.html. 127 Ibid.

Defining Features of Experimental Music

39

128 Yuko Zama, “Fresh Excitement on the Scene: A Unique Melding of Electronics and Improvisation,” http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/articles/amplify02_ improvised.html. 129 Johnny Chang, “The New Silence,” https://soundcloud.com/johnnychchang/sets/thenew-silence. 130 Ibid., 165. 131 The inclusion of Wandelweiser members Pisaro, Werder, Houben, and Malfatti along with Beuger is no accident in this section on silence. 132 “Beuger.Cage,” http://www.wandelweiser.de/_e-w-records/_ewr-catalogue/ ewr9607.html. 133 Antoine Beuger, “Silent Harmonies in Discrete Continuity (Fifth Music for Marcia Hafif), series I,” http://www.wandelweiser.de/_e-w-records/_ewr-catalogue/ ewr0402.html. 134 “a short email conversation between radu malfatti and rhodri davies,” http://www. rhodridavies.com/words/malfatti.htm. 135 Beins, Echtzeitmusik, 71. 136 “Biographische Notiz,” http://www.evamariahouben.de/inhalt/bio.html. 137 Eva-Maria Houben, “Presence—Silence—Disappearance,” http://www.wandelweiser. de/_eva-maria-houben/texts-e.html#Houben_Presence. The book is Hector Berlioz. Verschwindungen: Anstiftungen zum Hören (2006). 138 Eva-Maria Houben, “Verschwindungen—Disappearances,” http://www.diafani. de/?product=verschwindungen-stilleben-cd. 139 Eva-Maria Houben, “Organ Works,” http://www.diafani.de/?product=organworks-cd. 140 Eva-Maria Houben, “Yosemite (2007)—Duo I/II (2007),” http://www.diafani. de/?product=yosemite-duo-i-duo-ii-cd. 141 Eva-Maria Houben, “Aeolina (2013),” http://www.diafani.de/?product=aeolina-cd. 142 wandelweiser und so weiter, 14. 143 “Interview with Dominic Lash,” http://www.anothertimbre.com/page94.html.

40

2

Scientific Approaches 2.1  Acts of discovery How can a sound work engage in an act of discovery? This chapter includes a wide range of projects that involve learning more about sounds, processes, systems, and behaviors. These processes of sound-making involve analysis, research, trial and error, and inquiry. Many of the questions that are posed are not fully answerable; but the questions themselves are enriched through their articulation in the medium of sound. For Laurence Crane, each piece is a process of listening, of slow and careful discovery. The objects of this inquiry are the simplest materials of tonality—chords, scales, melodic fragments—and the instruments on which those materials are presented. Dissonance and acoustic phenomena are, if not excluded, at least unsought, and if there are multiple layers of activity, one never obscures another but they are all immediately apparent. Any fragment of Crane’s music could sound like a moment out of a Classical or Romantic era piece of music, but only in the same sense that a middle C could be a part of a number of different scales. While the musical materials themselves are highly traditional, their presentation is not. Crane carefully avoids development and functional tonality, he says, “as part of my desire to compose in an abstract way.”1 As Tim Parkinson writes, Laurence’s music is that of a clear obviousness, most often using extremely familiar and well-used musical building blocks, like tonic triads for example, divorced from any functional harmony, but used again like found objects; triads, the sound of which have been dulled by familiarity, now being placed in simple, clear, reiterating structures, to be heard afresh. . . . Encapsulated within that sound is the elementary world of childhood wonder and clarity.2

To make one limited analogy, Crane knows very well that bricks can be used to build a house or a wall, and that people will generally think of these applications when they look at bricks. But he would prefer to take a few of them, stack them up, spend some time looking at them, and then slightly change their configuration. In their more functional uses, only one side of each of them can be seen, and its position is fixed. He explains: Often in my work, a piece will consist of simply a number of different statements of the same material, sometimes different from each other, sometimes the same

42

Experimental Music Since 1970 but never ever in a state of what would generally be thought of as development. . . . I like to think of the materials that I work with in my music as objects of some sort or other, familiar objects maybe, but extracted from their previously familiar situations and placed into a different context. I want to present them and view them but I don’t want to develop them or force them into areas to which they don’t necessarily belong.3

In what may be Crane’s simplest piece, 20th Century Music (1999) for solo piano, there is absolutely no rhythmic variation. Every chord is a whole note. The ear is directed to the scale of repetition, whether it be of a pair of chords, an eight-chord phrase, or a reprise, and the particular qualities of what is being repeated in its first and second, or sometimes third and fourth statements. The piece is a single page, and just under three minutes long. There is great economy of material that can be considered in detail.4 Speaking of his working process, and of Movement for 10 Musicians (2003) in particular, Crane says, “What I’m trying to achieve is to do as little as possible with the material. I’m concentrating on these things in extreme close up and I’m trying to eliminate multiple possibilities.”5 In this piece, these elements are a set of three ascending chords and a pair of chords in which only one note changes. These simple, even rudimentary, materials become objects of fascination, and are handled over and over again with the greatest care and attention. Sparling is a piece that exists in several different versions spanning over a decade. The melodic material is mainly two pitches a whole tone apart, presented in one register by the clarinet. This material carries over from one version of the piece to another, but differences in acoustics and instrumentation yield different pacing and a very different flavor to each of the three versions on a single release.6 One of the features that figures most differently between them is how the bass register is added in each accompaniment. Crane says, “I like to explore material in different contexts, it sounds different, it’s not an arrangement of the same piece, but I’ll rework it in some way, extend it maybe.”7 In the first part of See Our Lake (1999), the melodic activity takes place among three adjacent notes. In the second part, it is reduced to two notes. Crane takes what seems not to be enough, and then reduces it. Michael Pisaro writes of Crane’s work, This is not minimalism. It does not take justification in “less is more” or “only what is necessary.” It takes us beyond those points: it is less than necessary. It says, basically, nothing is necessary. And perhaps, also, “let’s be happy with this.”8

The word “minimalism” has had two somewhat distinct applications within music. The best-known use applies to composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams, who use clear-cut harmonic materials and enliven their use through processes. The other application is more casual, and relates to the classification of visual artists such as Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko. The composers who receive this label—more in reviews than in scholarly publications—include Alvin Lucier, Howard Skempton, Arvo Pärt, Chiyoko Szlavnics, composers of the Wandelweiser

Scientific Approaches

43

collective, and Crane. The aesthetics of this grouping of composers are diverse, and this usage implies that they tend to use a small number of musical materials, inviting greater attention to the nature of those materials and the subtle differences in their presentation. It is unlikely that any more humble music could be found than Crane’s; yet it is extremely refined. This refining process is a major part of Crane’s compositional work. As he describes his pre-compositional process, “I try and refine everything so that I’m just working with the most basic elements and it’s just a question of working away at those and making sure that they’re definitely going to stand the test of time.”9 This care is evident in an unusual way in Come back to the old specimen cabinet John Vigani, John Vigani, Part 3 (2007), for cello and auxiliary instruments.10 These auxiliaries are the sorts of things anyone might find lying around the house—tin cans, plastic bags, stones, etc. The sounds of these materials are matched with the cello in unlikely and yet entirely convincing pairings. In the opening, each auxiliary player hits two stones together, and the cellist plays a light, sustained harmonic. There is no apparent reason these things should keep good company. The cello gesture, as sustained and pitched as it is, seems to grow out of this basic knocking together of stones. It is the farthest thing from textbook orchestration. This relationship is one that Crane discovered and revealed. Later in the piece, the cello plays a casual melody that travels up and down a scale, and the auxiliary players rub plastic grocery bags together. The melody in the cello seems to evoke a melody in the plastic, in what would normally be simple, familiar noise. There is no mirroring of types of action on the auxiliaries with the actions on the cello. Later, it again doesn’t make sense that chords strummed on the cello are echoed by a simple hand tremolo on the outer surface of a tin can. But Crane has found a relationship between these sounds that it seems was his alone to find. How did Crane arrive at these pairings, which work so strangely well? How does he present such familiar materials as beautiful objects? It is a process of asking, thinking, reducing, testing, listening, considering, and more listening. Crane’s commitment to this way of doing things is of long standing, and it paves the way for a deeply rewarding listening experience. Crane’s acts of discovery have much to do with an intensity of concentration, a willingness to consider and reconsider the most basic elements and their relation to one another. The Canadian composer Martin Arnold’s music has much in common with Crane’s, though the way it plays out over time (and the average duration of his pieces) is quite different. Both composers seem to have gone against the idea that music should go further and further afield, and stay close to their own circumscribed regions. These areas are, by and large, quite tonal, or at least diatonic, in content. It is as if they have stubbornly said, you can go anywhere you like, but I’m going to stay right here and see what I can find by treading over the same ground. The ground may change slightly over decades, but the shifts within pieces are incremental. Many people find it contradictory to think of such work as experimental. It doesn’t go outward or seem to advance, but rather seems to study a territory exhaustively. In doing so, it reveals the great distances to be found within this apparently small space. The apparent simplicity of musical

44

Experimental Music Since 1970

materials only initially obscures the fact that there is discipline and research here, and genuine discovery within these familiar musical confines. There is little material, but there is room for transformation, not of the material in any developmental sense, but in the discovery of it by everyone involved. If Crane’s work can be likened to sculpture, Arnold’s is more like a line or a path. He writes extended melodies that seem to wander around a contained space. He writes: I care about continuation, not progression. I love music that continues; but, as my listening imagination moves through this continuum, it’s the detail that engages me, the specificity of how the melody meanders within the perpetual, continuing present; present because I’m not concerned with where things are going to go, what they’re going to become. And melody here isn’t just a succession of pitches; it’s texture—intentional and indeterminate—folding and unfolding.11

The melodies seem to go on, perhaps stop for a moment, and then pick up again. There is no defining moment. This terrain is flat, and the music seems to simply meander (to use Arnold’s term) around this area. While a specific example might be helpful, it’s hard to isolate just one. It’s true of all of the pieces on the Bozzini Quartet’s Aberrare portrait CD, and of nearly every other piece of Arnold’s that I have heard. The somewhat long stretches of his pieces seem initially to betray a lack of economy, but on finding the right sort of attention, and learning to meander along with these modest lines, they offer a practical suggestion of a way of being that is neither goal-oriented nor magnificent, but settles into something patient and clear. There is very little motion in terms of pitch, rhythm, dynamics, or instrumentation in the music of the German composer Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, but that very limitation, combined with the sustained quality of the work, focuses attention on the variations in performance. Christian Wolff writes, “The quiet of this music requires, or at least invites, you to listen actively.” This is true of Three in One (1992) for bass flute, overlaid with two prerecorded bass flute parts, “selectively and at fluidly varying distances echoing it.” All of the material takes place within a very narrow pitch register over eighteen minutes. The length of time, combined with this limited palette and Eberhard Blum’s calm, measured performance, gives room for the listener to hear the listening process itself. Sequenz II (1984) uses a similar set of devices, this time for three overlaid performances on cello. Each of the performances involves double stops, and the sustained quality of the performance fills the musical space. While bow changes are audible, the ear is drawn to shifting hues in the dynamics and harmonic content. Stiebler has compared his work to the seemingly all-black paintings of Ad Reinhart that reveal other colors when examined closely.12 Klaus Lang’s einfalt.stille (1999) has a different kind of self-similarity, in that it seems never to move. Long notes, repeated notes, and tiny increments of motion nevertheless usher the listener into a new situation every so often. It is as difficult to track these changes as it would be to count small tiles that are out of reach. Lang writes of another piece, “The dome of the mosque of Isfahan does not force us to direct our eyes to a specific point or direction, it stands before us as a whole. One can regard it as a whole,

Scientific Approaches

45

as a unity, one can lose oneself in the shimmering turquoise of the tiles.”13 The near impossibility of focus is a state that his work brings about, and that state is thoroughly intended on his part. He writes: When concentrating on the flow of music we can reach an inner state: The inner silence which is the simultaneity of stasis and flow. This paradoxical situation poses the question: Is the flow of music passing us, is music flowing through us thus evoking this inner stasis or is it not a state at all what we experience: should we not most seriously take into consideration the possibility that it is us who are flowing through the sound?14

In listening to Lang’s work, the discovery is not of material, but of a way of being in relation to this fluid voicing of the flow of time. He views musical material as “time perceived through sound, the object of music is the experience of time through listening.” “Music,” writes Lang, “is seen as a free and selfstanding acoustical object.”15 Linda Catlin Smith sees her work in terms of “ambiguity of harmony and narrative.”16 The subtly varied repetitions in Through the Low Hills (1994) are meditations on an evolving idea. They never wander away from a single purpose, but offer continual reorientation in their manner of travel through these simple musical shapes, finding new properties within them at every turn.17 Crane, Arnold, Stiebler, Lang, and Smith discover the qualities and potential of limited material, and in so doing enable the listener to engage in unfamiliar forms of reflection. Many of their pieces might be likened to a quiet friend who listens carefully and asks a few pointed questions. As you respond, you learn more about yourself and hear your own thoughts within the context of their care and intelligence. The experience of these pieces folds back on itself, so that you—the listener—distinctly hear yourself listening.

2.2  Harmonic relations A scientific or experimental approach rarely, if ever, involves starting from an entirely new basis. Where there is an interest in how things actually are, there are precedents, foundations, or at least glimmers of insight to be found throughout recorded history and musical practices from around the world. Ben Johnston writes: By far the oldest and most widespread application of mathematics to music is the derivation of pitch scales and rhythmic proportions by means of whole-number fractions referring either to frequency or to tempo ratios. The Chinese, the Indian, the Islamic, and the ancient Greek pitch systems were derived in this way. The medieval western European pitch system was similarly based upon modes derived from Pythagorean traditions.18

46

Experimental Music Since 1970

The decision to step back from the familiar and examine a subject afresh is supported by historical and experimental perspectives simultaneously. A discontent with equal temperament has led a number of composers to develop new instruments, notations, and models to support explorations of harmony that are accurate rather than approximate, and reveal a limitless potential of relationships. Larry Polansky is an American composer, guitarist, and theorist, and his publishing work with Frog Peak Music is a reflection and perpetuation of his engagement with current experimental work. He dedicated for jim, ben, and lou (1995) to three composers who made significant explorations of harmonic relationships: James Tenney, Ben Johnston, and Lou Harrison. The first piece, “Preamble,” is an exploration of the harmonic series, a preoccupation of Tenney’s. “The piece,” Polansky writes, “is a continual modulation through the three harmonic series, achieved by ‘replacing’ notes from one series with those of the other.” The specific tunings within one harmonic series are explored and made to interlock with another. These replacements have an effect that is in some ways analogous to a tonal modulation, but the change is based on retuning notes to conform to a new fundamental, rather than recentering within the same tuning. These shifts have a refreshing effect. The entire ground of the harmony has shifted, like a wind that has changed directions. The same musical materials are at play, but they are being moved differently. “The World’s Longest Melody (‘The EverWidening Halfstep’)” relates to Harrison’s work with precise tuning ratios. The two pages of tuning charts, showing the ratios and cents for each note to be played by the guitar and the harp, lay out the project clearly. Within the piece there is no alteration of tuning, but the focus is instead on the melody, which carries on unbroken for six minutes in the recorded version. The second piece in the set is also tuned according to ratios and their corresponding cent measurements, but the focus is on the theme and variations form that is favored by Ben Johnston.19 Johnston’s work reveals a love for melody—seemingly endless, spun-out melodies of his own creation, as well as familiar tunes. His innovations in harmonic language interlock with these tunes with astonishing results. String Quartet No. 4 (The Ascent, “Amazing Grace”) (1973) is a theme and variations form that explores multiple types of tuning, presenting and juxtaposing them based on increasingly complex ratio relationships. In the first variation, using Pythagorean tuning, harmonic resources are determined according to pure octave and 5th relationships—frequency proportions of two and three. The third variation adds in the frequency ratios roughly corresponding to the major third, minor third, major sixth, and minor sixth as consonances. Variation IV introduces eight ratios that depart from the commonly understood intervals in equal temperament, and the sound world is perceptibly expanded. Johnston mirrors the pitch relationships with rhythmic relationships, transparently mapping both based on proportions.20 The theme and variations form lends itself well to this harmonic alternation between familiarity and difference. It flickers between those states, mirroring the well-known line of “Amazing Grace,” “I once was lost but now I’m found,” with its recurrent melodic wayposts, and more significantly, “was blind but now I see,” in its revealing of harmonic relationships that have been obscured through the prevalent use of equal temperament.

Scientific Approaches

47

James Tenney’s Diapason (1996) for chamber orchestra is named in relation to the Webster definition, “a burst of harmonious sound . . . a full deep outburst of sound,” and an earlier definition of a set of pitches that might fill an octave. Tenney’s means of filling the octave is with seventeen partials of a low fundamental. There is a radiance and inevitability in Tenney’s presentation of this material, descending at the climax into lower partials and gradually returning to the opening high register at the end.21 Many of Tenney’s other works use just intonation in various ways, including the less transparent Spectrum Pieces (1995, 2001) that are composed algorithmically through software that he designed.22 Spectral CANON for CONLON Nancarrow (1974), for player piano, equates pitch and rhythmic relationships in a highly systematic and discernible way.23 The voices of the canon each contain a harmonic of A1. The piano has been retuned so that these harmonic relationships will be accurate. As Robert Wannamaker explains, “The music undergoes a gradual progression from stark simplicity to chaotic complexity via concurrent increases in tempo, registral compass, number of sounding voices, polyrhythmic complexity, and harmonic complexity.”24 The perfectly synchronized acceleration of harmonic and rhythmic complexity is compelling. Philip Corner developed a musical vocabulary that derived from his fascination with the gamelan. Gamelan CONCERT!O (1987), like Tenney’s Spectral CANON, equates pitch ratios with rhythmic ratios in exhilarating, layered accelerations. “Well laid out keys, systematically tuned scales, seemed to ask for something comparably structured. Thus rational timings were introduced, leading to an intricate web connecting pitches and durations—and sometimes other parameters.” These principles are further abstracted in Gamelan ANTIPODE (1984), which operates through the juxtaposition of extremes: high and low, short and long, soft and loud. Each player independently juxtaposes these attributes at will in given combinations. Corner writes that this piece “shows the clearest, and most austere, manifestation of its principles.”25 Julius Eastman’s Crazy Nigger (1978) is for any number of similar instruments, and is organized throughout its nearly hour-long duration as a type of “organic music.” Eastman clarifies his use of the term organic: “There’s an attempt to make every section contain all of the information of the previous sections, or else taking out information at a gradual and logical rate.”26 The last section of the piece is a vertical presentation of this organicism using a harmonic series built on a low C#. The C# fundamental includes all of the eighteen overtones which are sequentially presented above it. (Additional musicians arrive onstage to fill out the ensemble for this section.) Furthermore, the rhythmic ratios of the repeated notes are (like the Tenney and Corner examples) analogous to the pitch relationships. These pitch and rhythmic relationships are unlikely to be precise, given the logistics of the performance, but the approximation in this rich context is stunning in its textural effect. Eastman defended his controversial title (and those of two other pieces in the 1980 Northwestern concert) saying: The reason I use that particular word is because for me it has a . . . basicness about it. . . . that thing which is fundamental, that person or thing that attains to a

48

Experimental Music Since 1970 basicness, a fundamentalness, and eschews that thing which is superficial or, can we say, elegant.

In musical terminology, the overtone series is literally built on a fundamental. Through the use of persistent repeated notes, Eastman himself eschews superficiality, or surface detail. The culmination of this substantial piece in a full-bodied harmonic series is a major statement that is inextricably linked to the title.27 André O. Möller works with the more exact frequencies of a harmonic series, exploring both the regularities and the irregularities of its presentation in blue/dense (2003) for flute. There are four sections of the piece, each drawing from the same architecture and content. He writes: The piece is a kind of analysis of the overtone region from the fifth to the seventh partials and the corresponding regions one and two octaves above (10th to 14th, 20th to 28th partials).28

There is one solo flute, and some of its tones are played back at defined intervals. Möller calls for these sounds to be amplified, which makes difference and additive tones clear, putting these “sonic peculiarities . . . under a magnifying glass.” The generative material is simply stated, but a startlingly complex cloud of harmonies develops.29 musik für orgel und eine(n) tonsetzer(in) (2003) also uses sustained tones in wholenumbered ratios, but with the organ it is possible to include lower frequencies as well. The chords are massively sustained, and are drawn from the pitches that are six or fewer cents from a whole-number ratio with a 32Hz C fundamental. The organ’s pitches, even on a single tone, seem to pulsate in degrees of presence, and the complex of pitches that results from the interaction of pitches never loses its richness over the full duration of the CD.30 Brian Olewnick writes: It begins [with] a fantastically churning, hyper-dense and rich chord, something one could simply loll in forever. About five minutes in, however, there’s a bright splash of a chord, brilliant and surprising, which adds a whole other realm of possibilities. It’s just an enormity of sound, filling every nook and cranny of one’s aural space, enveloping.31

The harmonies derived through these natural relationships have a powerful and visceral impact. Catherine Lamb has studied both experimental and Hindustani classical music in relation to “elemental tonal material” and just intonation.32 Singing by Numbers was a collective formed between 2009 and 2011 in Los Angeles to find ways of exploring harmonic ratio relationships between female voices.33 Lamb’s Shapes of 3 and 5 (2010) begins with a unison tuning between two singers, then a movement away from one another within the space. Each of the other singers approaches one of the first two singers and sings in a 5:4 or a 3:2 relationship to the fundamental before moving to a new

Scientific Approaches

49

location. That singer’s pitch then becomes the new fundamental in their new site. The physical and harmonic space is mapped according to these old and new fundamentals.34 John P. Hastings describes The Rocketship in Langley Park (2009) as “a kind of reverse engineering of branching harmony.” The fundamental of A is finally presented alone in its 440Hz register and tuning. A compositional decision to funnel down to the low register of the actual fundamental would have limited the instrumentation to only the lowest instruments, where with this approach, the center of the tree is in a neutral range and can be spun out by almost any of the participating instruments. The opening of this piece is a complex and vibrant chord, and the gradual removal of these harmonic branches seems only to increase that vibrancy over the course of the piece.35 Walter Zimmermann, who published a book of interviews with American composers aligned with the experimental tradition called Desert Plants (1976),36 has an active interest in other musical traditions as well, and combines these pursuits in his work. The 10 Frankische Tänze (1977) are “sublimated” transcriptions of Franconian dances for string quartet using only natural harmonics. Zimmermann set up this brittle yet oddly pleasing sound through the use of scordatura (retuning) on the four strings, by which he was able to use 64 natural harmonics. The discipline and care involved from both composer and performers create a reproduction of sorts that is, depending on the listening perspective, either distorted or purified. It is distorted in the sense that the melodies are now shrill and seem to come from a new and strange location. They would likely be quite difficult to dance to, unlike the original folk music. They are purified in a harmonic sense: the melodies now conform to just intonation. Zimmermann calls the result a “nature-culture friction.”37 In material/highlight (2013/14), Catherine Lamb sets up a separate scordatura for each of the string instruments and then notates their parts solely as natural harmonics. While this approach seems to be parallel to Zimmermann’s approach, it is not done in relation to existing melodies, but instead to establish other harmonic relationships, which are further enhanced by a pedal tone and a “highlighting ensemble.”38 While much has been done (and remains to be done) with the harmonic series, Extended Just Intonation (EJI) is an exploration of the possibilities of harmony when considered as precise but malleable proportional relationships among frequencies. It is essentially affirmative, warm, and inviting in its character, and open to an apparently infinite range of new developments. The one thing that is directly negated in its explanations is equal temperament. To briefly explain, the division of the octave into twelve equal parts is a more or less arbitrary compromise to allow for easy modulation on an instrument such as the piano. Harry Partch was a huge influence on this set of practices. He built his own instruments to include a forty-three-note scale, reflecting a type of just intonation. These instruments were part of his solution to the tuning constraints of keyboard instruments, but they posed many challenges of their own in transport, maintenance, and replication. Lou Harrison followed his lead in building his own gamelans in just intonation, which he would often pair with specially tuned Western instruments. Ben Johnston also worked with Partch, but was attempting to do something very different.

50

Experimental Music Since 1970 Harry was out to prove to me that if I tried to adapt the tuning of early music, that is, music composed some centuries ago, but within the European tradition of writing music . . . that I would get bad results. And I said, why? And he said, well, you take this and set it to music, and use your just intonation and try to do it the way you told me, and we’ll see what happens. So I did that. And I discovered that I was going to be dropping by a syntonic comma fairly often. But I figured out a way to get around that, by using oblique connections between one note of one chord and another note of the next chord, and connecting the chords in such a way as to bypass that problem.39

Unlike Spectralism and other related works that start with the analysis of the harmonic components of particular sounds, or the use, as in La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano, of the extended harmonic series based on a very low fundamental, the practitioners of EJI approach harmony as a changing and developing harmonic landscape. The iconic and practical representation of this approach is a lattice. The function of the lattice is succinctly explained by James Tenney: Although the pitch-height axis is effectively continuous, harmonic space itself is not. Instead, it consists of a discontinuous network or lattice of points. A distance measure which I call harmonic distance can be defined between any two points in this space as proportional to the sum of the distances traversed on a shortest path connecting them (i.e. along the line segments shown in the figures).40

While in tempered music the lattice will quickly and inevitably loop back to include the same pitch classes, this is not the case in EJI. The scope of harmonic relationships

Figure 2.1  James Tenney: John Cage and the Theory of Harmony, figure 1 “The 2,3 plane of harmonic space, showing the pitch-height projection axis.” © James Tenney Estate

Scientific Approaches

51

Figure 2.2   James Tenney: John Cage and the Theory of Harmony, figure 2 “The 2,3 plane of harmonic space, showing the pitch-class projection axis.” © James Tenney Estate it is possible to project within this framework is potentially infinite. The lattice is a mapping of harmonic territories based on relationships rather than fixed pitches. Once some initial compositional decisions are made, however, these relationships can be translated directly into frequencies. Marc Sabat is a composer, violinist, and prominent advocate of EJI. He explains that in “Harmonium for Ben Johnston,” the fourth movement of his Euler Lattice Spirals Scenery (2011), he shapes a large section of such a lattice (ninety-nine distinct pitch classes) into a progression of major and minor triads that each occur only once until the middle of the piece, at which point they are presented in retrograde inversion. He adds, “The triads are ordered in such a way that all possible common-tone progressions are explored, and also that the progression of triads which opens the piece recurs in the middle of the movement, transposed upward by two commas.”41 Despite its intensely harmonic conception, this piece operates in no way as a chorale, but is fully and delicately composed out in textures that add further expressive implications to the harmonies.42 Robin Hayward is a tuba player, composer, and improviser who has developed both instrumental resources (the microtonal tuba) and visualization resources to enable refined harmonic explorations. His series of representations of the harmonic lattice in full color and multiple dimensions reflect its attributes and make it more immediately useful to himself and others in theoretical, compositional, and performative settings.

52

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 2.3  Screenshot of the Hayward Tuning Vine. This software is downloadable at http://www.tuningvine.com. © Robin Hayward

Figure 2.4  Robin Hayward: Stop Time score, http://robinhayward.de/eng/comp/ stoptime2013.php. © Robin Hayward

Scientific Approaches

53

One model of this tuning vine is made with a children’s construction toy called Zometool. “Each ball is fixed with an radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, which may be triggered by an RFID ‘sound wand’ receiver.”43 The second major version of the tuning vine is a software interface. Each prime number has a unique angle and color, and pitch-height maps to vertical height of the model onscreen. Chords can be constructed, changed, or transposed within the software.44 Some of the images developed through this system are used as scores in themselves. Stop Time (2013) is a structured improvisation that calls for the musicians to explore the harmonic space of the score. Additionally, through the use of surround-sound, “Harmonic space is projected over time onto physical space, thus ‘stopping time’.”45 Hayward makes the harmonic lattice similarly tangible in performance in two pieces that are precursors of the Tuning Vine. Stained Glass Music (2011) models the harmonic space in three dimensions through the seating of musicians throughout the performance space. The pitches they play mirror their physical placement in the hall. Plateau Square (2011) uses a similar configuration based on the lattice and sends the pitches produced through Hayward’s microtonal tuba to one of four speakers according to the prime number basis of their ratio. He explains that in this spatialized lattice, Intervals based on the prime number 3 are aligned horizontally, those based on the prime number 5 are aligned vertically, and those based on the prime number 7 are aligned diagonally. The space between prime number 3 and 7, lying between the horizontal and diagonal axes, is therefore depicted as a series of ascending plateaus. Plateau Square explores the harmonic space implicit within one of these plateaus, whilst projecting it onto the physical space of the performance area.46

Figure 2.5  Score excerpt of Stained Glass Music © Robin Hayward

54

Experimental Music Since 1970

Where the Hayward Tuning Vine is an aid to performers and composers in microtonal practices, these pieces key into the harmonic structure as a listening experience. One of the premises of equal temperament’s widespread adoption is that it allows for easy modulation between keys. Any note can function in various keys and operate as a pivot between keys. In Plainsound Glissando Modulation (2006–07), Wolfgang von Schweinitz has established another method of changing pitch centers, in which a frequency that operates as a partial of one fundamental pivots to become a different partial of a different fundamental.47 This method is analogous to pivot tones in tonal music, but by employing these pivots as overtones of two different fundamentals, rather than as members of two keys, they set up a change in context that has far more possibilities. While a harmonic pivot tone could lead to about six other major or minor keys, an overtone pivot could become anything from overtone two to twenty-one (the highest harmonic von Schweinitz employs on the double bass) of the new fundamental. Frank Reinecke, who has played and recorded both this piece and Plainsound Counterpoint (2010–11), writes that the requirement of this music is “to become radically sensitized to a new quality of conscious intonational listening,” and that in doing so we are led into “new harmonic dimensions.”48 It is not only the number of possible changes, but also the magnitude of these shifts in context that is so compelling. Throughout the entire piece, the listener is invited into a recurrently liminal state. There are short snippets of material—usually alternating between two notes—that operate at thresholds. We have paused. Where are we going now, and where will we be positioned within that new space? Landscapes and climates open up from one moment to the next. James Tenney’s last work, Arbor Vitae (2006), is not such an open landscape, but draws on the image of a tree. As Michael Winter explains, it “explores the progression of single tonalities expanding into multiple tonalities. The harmonic structure of the piece is similar to the way tree branches emanate from other branches.”49 This structure is presented in reverse: the most distant harmonic areas, or branches, open the piece. The whole tree, with all of its harmonic complexity, is presented by the end of the work. Something is glimpsed, and then presented more fully. The chords at the end of the piece are more sonically complex than the opening, and at the same time they are more coherent. This contradiction is symbolic of the broader trends of thinking behind EJI.50 Consonance and harmonic relationships are often associated with simplicity, conservatism, or even naïveté. What these composers have done is to address harmony from a mathematical standpoint without compromising based on traditional Western notation or resources.51 In 2004, Sabat and von Schweinitz developed a system of accidentals called The Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation that wraps around traditional notation but accommodates the heightened specificity of EJI.52 New approaches are outlined and developed to make this specificity possible. Subject to such rigor, pitch and harmony become fertile grounds for imagination. It’s like the difference between making forms out of red, yellow, and blue building blocks and mixing oil paints. New schemes of colors and relationships become possible.

Scientific Approaches

55

2.3  Playing with numbers Mathematical and numeric patterns and the sets of possibilities yielded by combinatorics have proven to be a rich source of musical inquiry in the hands of the English systems composers and Tom Johnson, among others.53 Iannis Xenakis is important to mention in this respect also for his mapping of mathematical phenomena to music as outlined in Formalized Music (1963, translated 1971). However, the composers discussed here are generally engaged in far more simple and transparent types of translation of numeric objects and behaviors to musical results. As Michael Parsons writes of the work of systems composers, “Rational procedures are seen not as a means of complete control, but as a method of inquiry: within a defined field, further relationships can be discovered.”54 This kind of work can have a didactic quality, particularly in the pieces that Tom Johnson narrates. The listener is told exactly what is going on step by step, and they can follow the process in the music, to the point that they can judge where they are in the piece based on what is being narrated and what is unfolding in the work. Some examples include Failing, A Very Difficult Piece For Solo String Bass (1975) (which is a narration of a performative process, rather than a mathematical problem), Bedtime Stories (1985), Eggs and Baskets (1987), and Squares: didactic music for a solo instrument (2008). In Narayana’s Cows (1989), listeners are even invited to do the calculations along the way. The premise of the piece is transparently mapped to the form of the piece, and includes all its details—in this case, the multiplication of cows over generations, each generation being represented by a lower pitch. The focus turns away from the composer’s decisions to the actual functioning of the pattern itself. It is a unique experience to hear this process unfold in time, rather than as a numeric pattern that can be taken in in a moment. The point is not to learn something, but to consider it, to find the beauty in its operation and in how it plays out. When the process is so transparent, some listeners may question just how much creativity or how much work went into the formation of the work. Intuition, work, and creativity are all significantly at play, but not at the same level that a listener is accustomed to locating them. The composer’s work is not apparent in the momentto-moment unfolding of the piece, since that was clearly determined by the rules of the process. The whole piece has a DNA, a way of functioning that comes straight from the composer, who determines what patterns will be interesting, over what scale of time, and how exactly they are to be translated as musical elements. At a certain point the musical object is set into motion, no longer under the control of its operator but simply playing out its trajectory, as a golf ball or baseball or basketball set in motion. Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons were the founders, along with Cornelius Cardew, of the Scratch Orchestra in 1969. Both Skempton and Parsons, along with fellow member Christopher Hobbs, have since been associated with systems music. In Slow Waltz (1973), a one-page piece for piano three hands, Skempton presents a highly distilled set of materials in every possible combination. The accompaniment

56

Experimental Music Since 1970

alternates between two pairs of notes every four bars. In the upper part, a four-note melodic configuration is presented in four bars and repeated. Two bars from the accompaniment offset those eight bars, so the relationship between the melody and accompaniment changes at every repetition of the melodic phrase. There are three of these two-note descending melodic figures, each picking up exactly where the last one left off. This piece, in its brevity and its harmonic and rhythmic simplicity, gives the impression of being a simple surface. But as Michael Parsons writes, “The simplicity is deceptive: correspondences and distinctions are revealed precisely because the material is so limited.”55 Within each of Parsons’ Six Pieces in Counterrhythm (1974), each section has a fixed number of beats, which is the meter multiplied by the number of bars and the number of repetitions. Each part has the same number of beats per section, but all of the component parts (meter, bars, repetitions) are different. As a result, the alignment between the parts shifts with each repetition, and what appears on the page to be repetition actually includes no repetition in the aggregate. Starting with the initial calculation of the total number of beats, Parsons has used apparently simple means to achieve a complex, constantly evolving set of rhythmic relationships between the parts. Parsons writes that there is “no planned coordination of details,” but the system allows this complexity to reveal itself throughout each section.56 The form of a piece is often determined in such a way by these composers. A  particular process plays out with a defined set of objects, and that is the work. Christopher Hobbs describes his sudoku pieces, including Sudoku 82 (2008), in this way. “I choose the sounds I want and the overall duration, but then let the numbers determine what goes where, how many times, how long, how much silence, and so on.”57 The Sudoku series takes these numbers from hexadecimal (sixteen-number) sudoku puzzles, in combination with random number generators. The sonic result, especially in the case of Sudoku 82, is not tethered to a sense of form or unfolding or moment-to-moment intention, but seems to swim freely within the pool of materials that were initially chosen. Since all of the local decisions are made by the numbers or grids, which in their own internal systems allow for virtually any possibility, attention is directed away from the local to the global. Two other British composers of a younger generation share this interest in process, but have conversely used its clarity of direction to focus attention on unstable details of execution. In discussing his Logical Harmonies release, Richard Glover writes: In terms of the realisation of these processes, I only ever anticipate for them to be performed by human performers (on specific sound sources), such that the individual nature of that performer/ensemble’s approach will be revealed, and become a central focus of the experience.58

John Lely describes The Harmonics of Real Strings (2006/13) as “a very slow glissando along the full length of one bowed string” with light finger pressure. His interest is in “the variety of sounds, correspondences and experiences that can emerge through

Scientific Approaches

57

the use of limited sets of musical building blocks,”59 and that is demonstrated in the multiple realizations of this piece.60 Another application of mathematical practices is in the use of combinatoriality to determine what pitches should be presented, and in some cases, in what order. Combinatoriality is a known practice in 12-tone techniques, and that is mostly distinct from these uses since it is overlaid on an entirely different systemic construction of tone rows. The analyses within musical set theory often look similar to these explanations, but their application is different. Permutations are used in a different way in Tom Johnson’s piece for organ called 55 Chords (2009), which he writes was “based on the combinatorial design (11,4,6). As one can determine from the numbers, it involves 11 elements (11 notes in the scale), four elements (four notes in each chord), and each pair comes together six times.”61 From this starting point, Johnson goes on to make eighteen speculative drawings of the possible relationships between these chords. Each of these drawings has a distinct pattern and methodology, and is carefully described in Playing with Numbers.62 As he later discovered, Each drawing could be somehow pushed and pulled and twisted into one of the other drawings. Mathematically they are all equal, which is to say that they are all morphisms of one another. If this were a mathematics book, I would have to eliminate 10 of these 11 drawings, but since we are just “looking at numbers,” I’ll leave them all in. It’s not only the truth that matters. Variations of the truth are fascinating as well.63

In what appears to be the most transparent and methodical method possible, as is typical of Johnson’s approach, his solution is to transpose each of five basic chords eleven times.64 Through a process of drawing and analysis, he arrived at a series of configurations of connections between chords that he found mathematically and musically satisfying. Johnson credits the Dutch pianist and composer Samuel Vriezen with his discovery of the musical uses of block designs, which come out of the field of combinatorics. For Vriezen, it was a limited project over a few pieces, which he sees as taking a fuller form in Johnson’s work. His arrival at the use of block designs for The Weather Riots (2002) is quite interesting in his own narration. My problem was this: all the motives in The Weather Riots (each with its own contour & metrical feel) have a similar harmonic structure, being all based on five notes. The time structure in The Weather Riots was supposed not to be about hierarchical relations between the harmonies. That being given, how could I find harmonic families that would relate chords to one another in a minimally hierarchical way—i.e. no two chords were supposed to have a “stronger” relation than any other pair, so that any progression would have the same structural meaning—while also allowing for a maximum of variation of harmonic quality— so that the harmonic feel of the piece would have something “chancy” about it?

58

Experimental Music Since 1970 Block designs were the solution to the problem. In The Weather Riots, everything is based on eleven sets of five pitch classes (you could say “chords”), with every two such chords having exactly two notes in common.65

In this piece, then, the block design serves as an equalizer among harmonic relationships. Tom Johnson describes a distinct benefit of this sort of mathematical solution: “The nice thing about this arrangement for a composer is the way the music stays on an even keel. It just keeps flying along at one altitude.”66 The musical flow of The Weather Riots has a trajectory that is determined, not by harmony, but instead by elements like articulation and texture, which are more spontaneously in the hands of the performers and their local-level decisions.67 Johnson relates that after hearing The Weather Riots, he spoke with Vriezen about the resources he had used, and then was directed by a mathematician friend to combinatorial and block designs. The first musical result of his own investigation was a piece called Kirkman’s Ladies (2005), named after a mathematical problem with the same name: Fifteen young ladies in a school walk out three abreast for seven days in succession; it is required to arrange them daily so that no two shall walk twice abreast.68

The problem was subsequently extended to ask if all 455 three-lady combinations (5 per day) could be achieved over thirteen weeks. Johnson took this solution and translated it into musical figures. Each lady became a note of a fifteen-note scale, and the threelady groupings became three-note chords in a five-chord phrase. Each new week, and then day, is announced by the narrator, followed by each of these sets of unique chords.69 An earlier piece of Johnson’s, The Chord Catalogue (1985) explores a more straightforward question: How many chords are there within an octave? The answer is 8,178. These chords are methodically presented in a solo piano piece. For almost twenty years, Johnson was the only pianist to touch the piece, and after much practice got the performance down to an hour. Vriezen, in what proved to be the beginning of their friendship, learned the piece and performed it in under half an hour, in what he refers to as “a spectacular roller-coaster ride.” Johnson relates: I’ve often said, I don’t want to compose the music. I want to find it. And The Chord Catalogue is maybe the very best example of that, because I didn’t find the chromatic scale of 13 notes. I didn’t find that all the combinations add up to 8,178. I just got interested in this phenomenon and wanted to learn how to play it.70

Numbers are both fascinating and useful in their representations of behaviors and possibilities. The approaches that each of these composers take to using numerical patterns for composition are distinct, and the musical games and processes that numbers allow are essentially infinite.

Scientific Approaches

59

2.4  Learning by making “Composing for me is building.”

—Gordon Mumma71

The rapid advance of technology has been both a help and a challenge to musical exploration. Processes can now be easily automated that had not been dreamed of in prior decades. But where does that leave people who are interested in the questions, instabilities, and challenges at the heart of the construction process? They turn away from given solutions, opting to be makers rather than consumers. In doing so, they locate much of the creative process in the construction or repurposing of their instruments. David Behrman was a member of a group that was active from 1966 to 1976 called the Sonic Arts Union, along with Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and Robert Ashley. They each had different projects, but worked collaboratively to see each other’s work through. Behrman is committed to a do-it-yourself model. He writes: One of the earliest lessons I learned—it was back in the Nineteen-Fifties and it came from John Cage and David Tudor—was that the distinction between instrumentbuilders and performing musicians could be erased altogether. Some of the early pieces by John Cage, like Water Walk and Cartridge Music, used instruments that were either newly-invented or “borrowed” from the everyday world. And in the Sixties, from David Tudor and Gordon Mumma I learned that you didn’t have to have an engineering degree to build transistorized music circuits. David Tudor’s amazing music was based partly on circuits he didn’t even understand. He liked the sounds they made, and that was enough.72

There are two key points here: (1) In Behrman’s view, making is making, whether it is making music or making an instrument. The construction of an instrument can be a significant part of the musical process. (2) You don’t have to know what you’re doing. The process and the result are not invalidated by an initial lack of expertise, but can become even more interesting as a result of behaviors that are not fully understood. It’s fine to be an amateur builder, or to make something that will behave in unforeseen ways. Gordon Mumma was a pioneer in building circuitry for musical performance. In addition to his own work, he created these kinds of systems for John Cage and David Tudor, and instructed Behrman on how to make his own. He was well aware that in many of these cases, what he built was not used as designed. I made . . . a circuit for David Tudor once. . . . He didn’t know what that was, but he had used one that I had made for somebody else and he wanted me to make him one. . . . And he had this thing, and he wasn’t using it the way it was designed for use. There were a certain number of inputs and a certain number of outputs,

60

Experimental Music Since 1970 and he had outputs plugged into inputs, and he had inputs going into outputs, and other things that had nothing to do with the original conception of it, of what it was for. But he had a whole thing going. He had a spectacular musical thing going. And it’s not that he misunderstood me. There was no misunderstanding at all.73

Mumma was no more interested than Tudor was in doing something “correctly,” and he dwelled on the drastic misuse of the materials he had handed over as a positive development. The circuits, whether used in a textbook way or not, offer an array of possible combinations and interactions. As Michael Nyman writes of Mumma’s piece called Hornpipe (1967), the role of the console circuitry is to monitor the horn resonances in the performance space and adjust itself to complement these resonances. During this adjustment certain circuits become unbalanced and attempt to rebalance themselves; and in the process various combinations occur which produce purely electronic sound responses. . . . . . . this musical result is not programmed definitively but depends finally on the interaction of the openness of the (gate-controlled) circuits and the unaccountable acoustics of the concert hall, the whole chain being set in motion by the sounds of the horn, which are heard in their turn transformed.74

As Mumma explains it, the construction of this piece began with the sound of the horn. The electronic things that came from that were somewhat coincidental until the piece got underway. Then from one performance to another, I began to understand what I could do elaborately with the electronic circuitry.75

The process is one of trial and error, seeing what works most effectively in a given configuration based on the materials that are already at hand. David Behrman says of his Music with Melody-Driven Instruments (1976) that the custom-built circuitry engages in a cycle of reactions with the pitches that are present. “The form of the music is kind of a slow unfolding of the possibilities in the system, starting with less possibilities and ending up with the most.”76 As it unfolds in the performance documented in Music with Roots in the Aether, the musicians become more and more attuned to the workings of this system, and are carried along with the transformation to a greater complexity. But there is a kind of stillness or stasis in the performance too, as if the performers are more involved in listening to results, to the operation of the system, than they are in actually producing sound. The participants are discovering the behavior of the entirety of the system together. Behrman quickly learned the value of such handmade music in his life as a composer. Rather than “asking favors” of other musicians, he much preferred “the selfreliant feeling of performing oneself, and of using homemade instruments to create sounds that no human ears had ever before experienced!”77 He recalls being told by an engineer that his work with circuits to make music was foolish, because “without an engineering background, I couldn’t possibly work with those things.”78 The crucial

Scientific Approaches

61

difference between Behrman’s work and this viewpoint is that Behrman was not looking for a specific cause and effect or predictable outcome. “Haruna Miyake once spoke of my pieces as ‘unfinished compositions’ and I think that’s an insightful description,” he says.79 Figure in a Clearing (1977) set up a set of interactions between a Kim-1 (a precursor to the Apple II), a homemade synthesizer, and a live musician. He wrote that the musician’s “only ‘score’ was a list of 6 pitches to be used in performance, and a request that he not speed up when the computer-controlled rhythm did.”80 Miyake’s quote is accurate, in the sense that the piece is finished, or at least advanced, through the circumstances of its performance. The choices of the performer, within certain restrictions, can be made spontaneously, and the interactions with the electronics are also spontaneous. The results would likely have been far less interesting—both more restricted and more predictable—with a commercial synthesizer. Runthrough (1967–68) is another piece that exists only in its setup. Tom Johnson referred to the piece as “actually just a complicated set of cheap circuitry,” and described it as follows. Several participants are allowed to improvise by activating photo cells with flashlights and manipulating a few switches. It must be great fun to play this musical game, and judging from the Mainstream recording of the piece, the raucous music which results is remarkably interesting just to listen to at the same time.81

The making of one’s own instruments has gone on for ages at various levels of skill and complexity. Bart Hopkin ran the Experimental Musical Instruments journal from 1985–99, documenting a vast amount of the work that has been done along these lines by professional musicians, and during that time and since has published instructional books including Musical Instrument Design (1999), Making Musical Instruments with Kids (2009), and Slap Tubes and Other Plosive Aerophones (2007). Hopkin has created hundreds of instruments, and has been engaged in the exploration of that entire universe of possibilities. Not as much time can be devoted to refining a technique, but that is not his focus. Conversely, Ellen Fullman’s practice revolves completely around the “long string instrument” which she has developed. Wires are stretched across a space between two resonators, and she plays them with rosined fingers as she slowly walks down the path of the instrument. Its development involved numerous collaborations over more than a decade, all of which are credited in her artist statement. The refinement of her technique, the refinement of the instrument, and her practice as a composer are closely intertwined activities. She writes, “Practicing on my own instrument and with no tradition to follow, I discovered a new sound.”82 A number of people have engaged in creating or modifying instruments as acts of combination. Sometimes the mechanism of an existing instrument is replicated with new sets of materials, as Frédéric Le Junter does with his machines sonores installation pieces, emulating objects such as record players and xylophones with rough, automated mechanisms and a variety of materials. His carillon uses record players to spin suspended pieces of wood, causing them to strike flower pots. “The whole is carried out with a nonadvanced technology,” he writes, “in a rather rough and dubious way.”83 These replications are not meant to be efficient, but to yield unpredictable results out

62

Experimental Music Since 1970

of basic materials. He adds, “I can not play as a master with but rather with a kind of instability, surprises.”84 Laurie Anderson’s tape-bow violin is a hybrid of the structure of the traditional violin with magnetic cassette tape used in place of bow hair, and the tape head mechanism used as the bridge.85 Akio Suzuki has made instruments out of basic materials. The Anapalos is made out of spiral cords and cylinders, and he uses it as a unique and surprising resonator. De Koolmees is a reconceived xylophone—glass tubes suspended over a frame that he activates through rubbing and spinning.86 Hugh Davies created his own instruments out of everyday objects, and then amplified them in the context of improvisation. Davies is also known for his documentation of early electronic music, but “the only ‘electronics’ involved in the vast majority of his instruments was amplification.”87 Davies taught workshops to children on how to build their own instruments, and encouraged members of the public to play the instruments he had made.88 His interest was not only in building within his own practice, but also in developing that type of agency in others, discovering cause and effect and the surprising features that emerge in the process of making one’s own instruments. Related approaches have been outlined in Nicolas Collins’ book, Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (2006/09), which is filled with instructions and video demonstrations on how to create or repurpose hardware for musical purposes. It assumes no proficiency on the part of the reader, but gives detailed instructions, along with musical examples to illustrate each section. Collins makes the point repeatedly that there is no incorrect implementation of these instructions if the results are interesting. Mistakes, other than those that compromise the maker’s safety, are encouraged. Collins writes this of his own work: I think that a lot of my music has had to do with the implications present in a piece of technology, even very common circuits, consumer electronics: I take a CD player, I modify a radio or a walkman, trying to work at a very low technological level and then customize it a little bit, cannibalize it. But I’ve also built machines up from scratch, and have also done a fair amount of work with computer programs. It’s all part of the same stream flowing from the notion of compositions or implications present in technology.89

Reed Ghazala pioneered circuit-bending techniques as an outcome of his own accidental discovery of them in the 1960s.90 He introduces his how-to book, CircuitBending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments (2005) with this invitation: Because no one can predict the outcome of circuit-bending, you’re taking a journey into unknown territory here. All you can do is approach with the right attitude and tools to get the best shot at good results.91

The ability to play with sound, whether in electronic or acoustic media, no longer requires (and perhaps never required) significant training or financial resources. There is a strong strand of DIY in the field of experimental music. An interest in making one’s

Scientific Approaches

63

own materials tends to lead toward this kind of innovation, and in turn an interest in such innovation often requires making one’s own materials. Sometimes a simple lack of financial resources can push a composer to build materials rather than buy them. If success is found in doing so, it makes very little sense to become more of a consumer when circumstances improve. Handmade instruments tend to be far more malleable to one’s intentions than commercial products, which are designed for more general use cases. Synthesizer innovations at a professional level were in their formative stages before 1970, but in this context an active DIY culture is relevant. Lintang Radittya echoes both Collins’s and Behrman’s findings when he reflects on the reasons he got into building his own synthesizers. “Not only were they too expensive, but there were sounds that I couldn’t make using those synths.”92 He is self-taught, and built up his skills through resources he found online. In addition to a few makers he names, he has found many anonymous designs to be equally useful. “I don’t know their names, because they don’t give them on their websites, but I love the designs they’ve uploaded.”93 Radittya documents these innovations and activities in Indonesia on his blog, Synthesia-id.94 Apart from the financial benefits of a DIY approach, there is often an interest in a more dynamic input/output relationship than can be found in instruments that would be commercially attractive. Founded by Michel Waisvisz in Amsterdam, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) is a major hub of such activity. Waisvisz and many others at the center have developed instruments particularly for the use of children, such as the Crackle Box and the LiSa, as well as various interfaces and software applications. They also host regular residencies for composers, musicians, and inventors to help them realize their particular musical intentions. While other institutions offer a similar array of resources and programs, STEIM is particularly aligned to this way of thinking, in that their events and ideology circle around the notion of Touch, which was articulated for their first events in 1998 in a rousing essay called “Touchstone.” While the IT majors steamroll their digital tool kits to produce perfectly ISOnormalized outputs, a race of stubborn artist-engineers remains bent on designing instruments to elicit decidedly abnormal performances. At STEIM we have come to the conclusion that the resultant streamlined aesthetics, purged of the seamy residues of physical exertion, is totally artless: unfelt execution has given rise to unfelt and unfeeling work. One man’s ergonomics is another man’s boredom. . . . A vital area of creative exploration is being opened up, as we fight to reinject friction, constraints, in short, a sense of effort, into our tools.95

Perfection is devalued in these cases, along with any commercial sense of value. The effort that goes into making something is rewarded by the unreliability, inconsistency, and mysteriousness of the musical activity the product enables.

64

Experimental Music Since 1970

2.5  Finding hidden sounds Before I was mixing a lot of information together, but now the real world is just like that, especially in Japan. People are barely surviving in a sea of too much information. . . . Anyone can sample cheaply and easily now. So now I want to focus, to find a whole world in tiny things96 —Otomo Yoshihide As inescapable as sound seems to be in general, many specific sounds are considered inaudible; but their audibility may simply need to be accessed in an innovative way. The choice or construction of microphones, decisions about what and how to record, and subsequent decisions relating to amplification, playback rate, and visual or textual narrative all have the potential to provide access to sounds that have not been previously imagined, let alone heard. Richard Lerman has made a large-scale project out of attaching piezo electric disks to objects of various scales and significances, including bicycles, support beams of buildings, CT scans, cereal boxes, polaroid photos, and even a rejection letter to make them behave as loudspeakers.97 He has also developed a curriculum to teach children how to build and use their own contact microphones, and to appreciate the sonic results.98 David Dunn writes, “New inexpensive technologies that can facilitate an increase in our collective environmental sensitivity and discovery of unknown natural and human made phenomena, providing novel tools for sound artist[s], and contributing towards practical environmental problem solving.”99 Some of Dunn’s microphones include a hydrophone, an ultrasonic boundary microphone, and two types of insertion microphones, one of which is a repurposed meat thermometer. Dunn conceived of and constructed this microphone for a very specific purpose. He had learned about the massively destructive habits of bark beetles on forests of pinion pines, and he wondered what he could do to help as a sound artist. This microphone was drilled into an infested tree, and the sounds of these beetles were recorded. Not leaving it at that, he read numerous scientific articles and used that information along with his recordings to simulate the presence of these sounds, drawn from recordings made over two years, in a single context. The composition was organized around the idea that it would be possible to hear all of these sounds within one large tree if enough sensors could be simultaneously placed throughout its myriad branching structures.

Dunn uses this one tree to stand for many trees, or, in fact, any tree, and the depth and dimensions of its sound world. My intention in the composing of this collage was to convince the listener of the surprising complexity of sound occurring within one species of tree as emblematic of the interior sound worlds of trees in general.100

Scientific Approaches

65

He explains his reasoning for presenting this material in collage form, rather than in a linear fashion. A direct recording might seem to be more informative, but it would fail to effectively suggest the dynamics of activity. When strung out in a linear fashion, two years of field recordings only allow the listener to focus on their immediate nature and not their interaction over time. By juxtaposing them, while respecting their local sonic integrity, we perceive the richness of how they reside within a more complex and resonant context. We become much more aware of their true interrelationship and diversity within their arboreal environment.101

The resulting release, The Sound of Light in Trees (2006) sounds like a terrifying drama— a whole world of interactions that is strange and magnificent in its accumulation, and astonishing in its complexity. Dunn has also recorded ants, underwater insects, and bats, which share the trait of emitting sounds that are difficult to access.102 But the beetle project has taken on a life of its own in its fulfillment of Dunn’s belief that “it is essential at this point that artists take a role in collaboration with the scientific world— that artists and scientists work together towards real-world problem solving.” His investigations were practical, first of all, in identifying infested trees for landowners, and secondly, in finding a novel solution to this problem. “We altered beetle behavior by playing back their own sound. . . . We managed to turn them into cannibals. We created unprecedented behaviors.”103 In all of these cases, the source of the sound is identified, but when hearing its hidden dimensions it is natural to want to see the specific conditions from which these sounds emerge. John Grzinich, an American mixed media artist based in Estonia, has anticipated that urge beautifully with Sound Aspects of Material Elements (2006–10) included on the visually stunning Two Films release.104 The first of these films is in black and white, and directs focus on the forms and shapes of the materials that are producing sound. These environments seem to be still, even silent, but the sound worlds revealed in them each have a distinct richness. Reflecting on his practice, Grzinich says, There are many levels to the forces that shape our world, yet we tend to focus on the most dramatic elements, the ones that affect us immediately or are useful in some form. I’m generally interested to go beyond the ordinary levels of perception or at least to exercise the abilities we have, be it with or without technological enhancements. This also applies to time and timing, to question the chronological ordering of events or usual breaking of processes into segmented or repetitive structures. There is always a challenge to surprise myself which I often do even with locations I’ve visited many times.105

The exact pairing of the image with the sound draws the listener further into the details of the scene. If the sound is being drawn out through some sort of action, we see it happening. If not, we understand that it is hidden within its normal functioning.

66

Experimental Music Since 1970

Peter Cusack thinks of his work as “Sonic Journalism . . . the aural equivalent to photojournalism,”106 and has made a compendium of sounds and texts called Sounds From Dangerous Places (2012). On a different project, the longest track on Baikal Ice: Spring 2002 is an underwater recording of icicles hitting each other in the enormous Lake Baikal in Siberia, creating astonishingly complex layerings of rhythm, timbre, texture, activity, and resonance. While someone standing at the edge of the lake could hear some of this sound, its complexity is far more effectively captured through the use of the hydrophone. Several later tracks on the album, the icicles are splitting off from each other. The observation and timing required to differentiate the moments when the icicles were breaking up from those when the icicles were hitting each other is crucial, and this difference is apparent through sound. Cusack’s project is not a recording of icicles. Rather, it is a documentation of processes—verbs, rather than nouns. Apart from the internal differentiation within each recording, these two processes (breaking up and bumping together) are documented as having vastly different sonic profiles. Field recording emphasizes that sounds happen in space every bit as much as they happen in time. Geographical locations are often included, particularly for outdoor recordings. The CD tray of Baikal Ice shows a map of the lake. The images conjured up in the first moments of listening are likely to be memories or imaginations of the location of the recording. But a sustained study of a place through field recording again makes time the primary axis. What is present in one moment is absent in another, or a shift in the interaction between elements has a drastic impact on the sound. Jana Winderen writes that “She is concerned with finding and revealing sounds from hidden sources, both inaudible for the human senses and sounds from places and creatures difficult to access.”107 The sounds of the title track of her Evaporation (2009) release were found through the use of hydrophones inside and under the ice on a site in Greenland, and reveal a universe so rich with dimension, so alien to human experience that it could not have been imagined or constructed, but must have been found.108 While Cusack and Winderen traveled to record their sounds, Marc Namblard recorded the sounds of Lac de Pierre Percée close to his own home. His observations over time of the lake and its surroundings helped him to determine the particular day to record it. The sonic activity of the lake on January 16, 2006 is compressed onto the single track of Chants of Frozen Lakes (2008). A frozen lake evokes images of desolation, stillness, and a stark natural condition. Surprisingly, that is not at all what it sounds like. More than one reviewer has compared the characteristic sounds on this recording to lasers. These sounds result from the conditions of the ice: “The tiniest crackles inside the ice of frozen lakes produce mechanical vibrations. Under specific atmospheric conditions, these impulses propagate in the ice, whose tension makes it similar to the skin of a drum. The acoustic result is an unbelievable blend of drumming sounds and etheral [sic] resonances.”109 Lee Patterson has also done most of his recording work close to home, taking a special interest in the ponds that are closest to where he lives in northern England. He has found that they have a foreign quality of sound, even when they are very local. “In contrast to the road, rail, and air traffic sounds of north Manchester, the aquatic sound world sometimes seemed more like that of a tropical rain forest, dense and busy with

Scientific Approaches

67

a variety of sonic activities, albeit on a very small scale with many sounds possessing low amplitudes.”110 The sounds in the foreground of “Pond Weed” (2005) are caused by the release of “thousands of tiny oxygen bubbles” from the hornwort in an old mill lodge near Manchester. Some of the background sounds are familiarly aquatic, or may be coming from the surrounding environment, but the complex rhythms of the interlocking squeaking and clicking sounds have been sourced to the hornwort that is growing in the water. Patterson explains, “Each pulse or click is produced when a plant releases a bubble, and with greater light, the frequency of the bubbles increases resulting in a variety of sounds or sequence of tones.”111 Patterson has been fascinated by the vast difference between the sound of one pond and another, with each body of water being a self-contained sound world dependent upon the resident flora and fauna. Various water bodies, sometimes in close proximity to each other, possessed very different sound environments, some being rather sparse in comparison to others only metres away.112

On the other hand, he has often found similarities between these aquatic environments and the sounds he can pick up with a contact microphone. He has an interest in what he terms “bubble musics,” whether emitted from plants underwater or in the process of an egg frying or a peanut or hazelnut burning. “Often, when I place the hydrophones into an underwater thicket of Hornwort and turn up the pre-amps, I’m presented with a dense field of ticks and clicks, sounding not unlike a fry up, and occasionally I’ll hear drones, alarm-like repeated phrases, even tonal sequences amongst the seething mass of sounds.”113 Patterson has used very small contact microphones to amplify the sounds of objects in states of transition. On the Seven Vignettes (2009) album, Egg Fry #2 includes sounds that are similar in their trajectory to those in Pondweed. The amplification of these small objects in transformation offers a sense of entering into an environment at least as capacious and compelling as a much larger body of water. “Two peanuts burn” sounds like a threatened environment, which in its own way it is. The sounds of this action, taking place within a very small space and captured with specially prepared contact microphones, evoke wind, traffic, wildlife, and falling water. In fact, it evokes all sorts of sounds other than the burning of two peanuts— because who until hearing this recording has in fact heard the burning of two peanuts? Only in the last two minutes does it really start to sound like the typical sounds of a fire that is dying down. The notes on the piece simply read, “Peanuts on specially prepared contact microphones, heated and burned. One left, one right. Unprocessed, save for some shaping of the volume envelope.”114 A similar process is applied in Three Hazelnuts Burn, and the extended squeaks, varied pops, and low-frequency rumbling tell their own story of increased activity, destruction, and finally stasis. When such sounds are made audible, their level of interest strikes a balance between familiarity (yes, those sounds make sense under that circumstance) and a foreign quality (what is that? how can it be?). Something too small or too quiet or too distant to notice has been transformed through technology into an immersive

68

Experimental Music Since 1970

sonic environment, and the listener is asked to reorient herself toward this drastic shift in perspective. The French composer and sound artist Emmanuel Holterbach used induction coils to record the electromagnetic auras of electrical equipment in a gallery office. “Invisible to our eyes, inaudible to our ears, it is a shimmering aura which surrounds all our items that function on electricity.” The recording process of Mouvements dans une Aura Ionique (2010) is a slow motion from one device to another, revealing the transition of sound within and between devices.115 The methodology of the steady motion of the microphone makes the listening process transparent. It is not known what machine or device is being recorded, but the transitions are clear, and the even pacing gives a sense of the relative scale of each item. In Stereo Bugscope 00 (2004), the Japanese sound artist Haco (formerly vocalist for the After Dinner band) also records machinery, including laptops, cell phones, wifi routers, and subway cars. “What interests me,” she writes, “is the psychological mechanism that is triggered in us through the extraction of these sounds.” Some of these devices are almost attached to us for most of the day, operating, as Haco puts it, as “an extension of our brain and body.” The specific sounds they emit, when revealed at such amplification and with such clarity, are somewhat distressing in their familiarity and complexity. A simple hum would be a much simpler thing to process. But to witness so directly the sonic results of the machines in operation for our personal convenience is unsettling. Haco writes: The name “Stereo Bugscope” refers to a performance system that detects oscillating sounds emitted by the circuitry inside electronic devices. . . . All of these signals are ordinarily so faint as to be inaudible. According to one’s position in relation to and distance from the source, changes in the sound can be observed.116

This last observation about changes according to position is not just a side comment. In her performances with the Bugscope in TramVibration (2013), a collaboration with Toshiya Tsunoda, the microphones are rarely stationary. There is a constant exploration of the sound source, as if trying to get to know it by touch. Tsunoda’s approach is very different. Using a piezo-ceramic sensor and a stethoscope, he would sit for long intervals, just listening, occasionally shifting positions to try a new location within the tram.117 Haco wrote of the experience, “Perhaps because we used the latest model of tram, the electromagnetic sounds seemed to fly through the air. I hadn’t imagined that I’d be able to detect so much. It was like being immersed in a colorful sea of electromagnetic sound. I felt like a full-body recorder and experienced a very intense movement through time and place.”118 Christina Kubisch has also been involved in a long-term project of making electromagnetic fields audible. But where Haco listens to personal devices, Kubisch is oriented toward public spaces. Several of the tracks on the Five Electrical Walks (2007) release involve multiple recordings of similar spaces from all over the world. Security (2005) combines recordings of security gates in “Madrid, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, London and Taipei.” The sounds the gates of the fashion shops emit, she writes, are “just as dull as most of the merchandise behind the gates.” Homage with Minimal Disinformation

Scientific Approaches

69

(2006), on the other hand, is made up of recordings made in Times Square, resulting from “flashing neon advertisements, scrolling LED tickers, information screens and illuminated signs, all of them pulsating, flickering and moving constantly.” In her installations, Kubisch will make headphones available to visitors so they can hear the electromagnetic waves as they trace their own path through the space she has mapped.119 Electricity is not necessary for such emissions, as Michael Prime and Miya Masaoka have both made apparent through their projects. Prime gathered recordings of the bioelectrical field emitted by a peyote cactus in his One Hour as a Plant (2003) release. The range of sounds is surprising, and depends on the plant’s being alive. “A dead plant, or a fruit or vegetable that has been picked, produces only a static tone.” This piece recalls John Cage’s work with an amplified cactus, but the sounds are obtained and treated in distinct ways. Prime comments on the responsiveness of plants to external events and natural cycles, as evidenced by the sounds they emit.120 Masaoka has explored this type of responsiveness in her Pieces for Plants (2001–) installations by first attaching sensitive electrodes to the leaves and then monitoring their responses to motion and contact. “The ‘plant player’s’ proximity, touch and interactions with the plant are then expressed in sound via MIDI and synthesizer. During the piece, the plant is brought through a range of physical/psychological states, from calm to agitation.”121 Masaoka has found this configuration useful as an instrument in improvisation settings, as well as in public interactions. Some sounds require advanced scientific equipment to be registered, and may need to be altered to fall within human hearing range. The most frequent of these transformations is the speeding up or slowing down of a recording, which not only affects any rhythmic activity but can also bring the recording into the pitch range of human hearing. John Bullitt writes of his “earth sound” project, “I transpose seismographic recordings of the Earth’s vibrations into the range of human ears, to lift the deepest sounds of Earth into the field of human perception.” This transposition is quite extreme. The first track of Earth Sound is played at 2,450 times the original speed. One second of the track equals forty minutes of real time that was recorded, and twenty minutes cover the span of thirty-three days. The second recording is accelerated more than four times as much as the first—10,000 times. The third track is a reflection on the devastating tsunami that took place on December 26, 2004, in the Indian Ocean. Bullitt offers a specific reason for the rate of acceleration: The surface of the entire planet expands and contracts rhythmically about once every 20 minutes. Seismologists call this the Earth’s “breathing mode.” Speeding up the recording 245-fold brings the Earth’s breathing mode (one “breath” every 1,227 seconds) in sync with the average human respiration rate (one breath every 5 seconds). This affords the listener an immediate, interior frame of reference with which to assimilate and understand these sounds, one in which the most basic rhythms of the human body are tuned to those of the planet itself.122

What seems to be an event at the opening of the recording is dwarfed by the magnitude of what happens forty seconds later, and its repercussions ripple out over twenty

70

Experimental Music Since 1970

minutes. It is some of the most compelling listening one can find, and it is a faithful transposition of actual scientific data.123 Bullitt acknowledges that he could not have made this piece without the material he received from scientists. The International Deployment of Accelerometers (IDA) network continuously operates seismometers in boreholes 100 meters underground. It takes resources of knowledge, equipment, and personnel to obtain this data. He went through a process of deciding what material to present, how much of it, and at what rate, in addition to stitching together the files and cleaning them up.124 The result is a document that anyone can approach, without any prior expertise, to gain a richer understanding of these tectonic processes. Annea Lockwood, a sound artist originally from New Zealand, collaborated with Bob Bielecki, a sound designer,125 on the Wild Energy installation, which also relies on recordings gathered through scientific research. Wild Energy gives access to the inaudible, vibrations in the ultra and infra ranges emanating from sources which affect us fundamentally, but which are beyond our audio perception, many of which are creating our planet’s environment: the sun, the troposphere and ionosphere, the earth’s crust and core, the oxygen-generating trees—everything deeply integrated, forming an inaudible web in which we move, through which we live and on which, therefore, we depend.126

The installation runs on a loop, which begins with solar oscillations recorded by a spacecraft, presented here at 42,000 times the speed of the recording. Other sounds, each at a specifically chosen rate, include volcano gas vents and tremors, earthquakes, ultrasound emissions of trees, and auroral kilometric radiation waves. After an unsuccessful effort with Pauline Oliveros to capture ionospheric sounds, called Whistlers (1968), Alvin Lucier tried a similar project over a decade later in Sferics (1981). For the month of August, 1981, he went through a process of trial and error in order to capture some of these sounds, testing out various locations and configurations, until he got a recording between midnight and dawn of August 27th that he found usable. In his diary entry the next day, he reflected on the recording, saying, “Faintness of whistlers charming.”127 On the recording, these whistlers come through as brief, faint, but clear overtones. These projects have varied degrees of success in terms of documented results, but they operate first and foremost as acts of speculation. “What does X sound like?” is already a prompt for research, whether X is the inner workings of one’s own refrigerator or the sound of a comet traveling through space. (At the time of this writing, the European Space Agency generated a lot of attention by releasing a recording of a comet sped up to a factor of 10,000 times.128) The effort that goes into finding a real, if momentary, answer to such speculation is an experimental act. Whatever the outcome, new questions arise out of that act. Are the technology and methodology adequate to the task? If there are documented results, how could they have been different a moment, a season, a year, or a decade earlier or later, an inch or a mile to the north or the west, if the temperature had been a few degrees colder or warmer? These acts and

Scientific Approaches

71

resulting questions begin to reveal just how little is known of the sonic activity of the world, and invite us to inhabit it on a more perceptive and less habitual basis.

Notes 1 James Saunders, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 244. 2 Tim Parkinson, “A Clear Apparence,” http://www.timescraper.de/_texte/textsparkinson.html. 3 Saunders, Ashgate, 244. 4 Laurence Crane, Piano Music (20th Century Solo Piano Pieces, 1985-1999), Naxos, MSV28506, 2010, compact disc. 5 Saunders, Ashgate, 248. 6 Laurence Crane, Chamber Works 1992–2009, Another Timbre, at74, 2014, 2 compact discs. 7 “Laurence Crane by Tim Parkinson,” http://www.untitledwebsite.com/words/53. 8 “Laurence Crane—Chamber Works 1992-2009,” http://www.anothertimbre.com/ laurencecrane.html. 9 Saunders, Ashgate, 247. 10 Videos of this piece as performed by the Plus Minus ensemble are available at http:// youtu.be/SaNYtatzFbw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btL3oTrMf6s. 11 Martin Arnold, Aberrare, Collection QB, CQB 1112, 2011, compact disc. Liner notes, http://www.quatuorbozzini.ca/en/discographie/cqb_1112. 12 Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, Three in One, hat ART 6169, 1996, compact disc. Liner notes. 13 Klaus Lang, “königin ök,” http://klang.weblog.mur.at/?page_id=33. 14 Lang, einfalt.stille, Edition RZ, ed. RZ 4007, 2007, compact disc. Liner notes. 15 Lang, “Biography,” http://klang.mur.at/?page_id=119. 16 “Linda Catlin Smith—composer,” http://www.catlinsmith.com. 17 Linda Catlin Smith, Memory Forms, Artifact Music 024, 2001, compact disc. 18 Ben Johnston, Maximum Clarity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 57. See, for example, Wolfgang von Schweinitz’s transcription of The Classical Indian Just Intonation Tuning System in Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation in reference to Prof. P. Sambamurthy, “Early Experiments in Music,” in South Indian Music (Chennai: The Indian Music Publishing House, 1999), http://www.plainsound. org/pdfs/srutis.pdf. 19 Larry Polansky, for jim, ben and lou (Lebanon, NH: Frog Peak Music, 1995), http:// aum.dartmouth.edu/~larry/scores/for_jim_ben_and_lou. Larry Polansky, The World’s Longest Melody, New World Records 80700, 2010, compact disc. 20 See Randall Shinn, “Ben Johnston’s Fourth String Quartet,” Perspectives of New Music 15, no. 2 (Spring—Summer 1977): 145–73, for an in-depth analysis of the corresponding pitch and rhythmic relationships of the fourth quartet. Much of the score is also reproduced in this article, which includes Johnston’s careful explanations of the pitch ratios. 21 James Tenney, From Scratch: Writings in Music Theory (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 394. Tenney, “Diapason,” on Donaueschinger Musiktage, 1996, Col Legno 20008, 1997, 3 compact discs.

72

Experimental Music Since 1970

22 Tenney, Spectrum Pieces, New World Records 80,692, 2009, 2 compact discs. Liner notes, 8. 23 A video available on YouTube shows the player piano in action and makes the fundamental structure of the piece clear. See “James Tenney—Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow,” 4:03, posted by “Juergen Hocker,” September 17, 2010, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrfKBnQ9a4. 24 See Robert Wannamaker, “Rhythmicon Relationships, Farey Sequences, and James Tenney’s Spectral CANON for CONLON Nancarrow (1974),” Music Theory Spectrum 34, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 48–70 for a detailed analysis of this piece. 25 Philip Corner, Life Work: A Unity 3. Mind. Umlaut Records, UMFRCD11, compact disc. Liner notes. 26 “Julius Eastman’s spoken introduction to the Northwestern University concert,” Julius Eastman, Unjust Malaise. New World Records 80,628-2, 2005, 3 compact discs. 27 Julius Eastman, “Crazy Nigger,” Ibid. Original and annotated scores and a schemata are available at http://www.mjleach.com/EastmanScores.htm. See also Andrew Hanson-Dvoracek, “A Postminimalist Analysis of Julius Eastman’s Crazy Nigger,” in Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music, ed. Renée Levine Packer and Mary Jane Leach (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2015), 140–50. 28 André O. Möller, blue/dense. Edition Wandelweiser Records, EWR 0411, 2005, compact disc. Liner notes, http://www.wandelweiser.de/_e-w-records/_ewrcatalogue/ewr0411.html. 29 Möller, blue/dense. 30 André O. Möller, musik für orgel und eine(n) tonsetzer(in). Edition Wandelweiser Records, EWR 0702, 2007, compact disc. Liner notes, http://www.wandelweiser. de/_e-w-records/_ewr-catalogue/ewr0702.html. 31 Brian Olewnick, “Friday, April 10, 2015,” http://olewnick.blogspot.com/2015/04/ andre-o.html. 32 http://www.sacredrealism.org/catlamb/index.html. 33 “singing by numbers,” http://sacredrealism.org/catlamb/projects/singingbynumbers. html. 34 Catherine Lamb, “Shapes of 3 and 5,” http://www.experimentalmusicyearbook.com/ Shapes-of-3-and-5. 35 John P. Hastings, “The Rocketship in Langley Park,” http://www. experimentalmusicyearbook.com/The-Rocketship-in-Langley-Park. 36 This book is out of print, but is now available at http://home.snafu.de/walterz/ bibliographie.html. 37 Walter Zimmermann, Songs of Innocence & Experience. Mode 245/6, 2 compact discs. “Songs of Innocence & Experience,” http://www.moderecords.com/ catalog/245_246_zimmermann.html. 38 See http://www.sacredrealism.org/catlamb/works/scores/2014/Lamb_ materialhighlight_aug14.pdfand https://soundcloud.com/catherine-lamb/areas-ofpresence-material. 39 “Ben Johnston: From Helmholtz to Harry Partch.” Vimeo video, 10:58. April 11, 2011, http://vimeo.com/22246762. 40 James Tenney, John Cage and the Theory of Harmony, 1983, 11, http://www. plainsound.org/pdfs/JC&ToH.pdf. 41 Marc Sabat, Euler Lattice Spirals Scenery, score, 2011/12, http://www.marcsabat.com/ pdfs/Euler.pdf.

Scientific Approaches

73

42 A recording is available at http://www.marcsabat.com/audio/EulerEdit.html. 43 Robin Hayward, “The Hayward Tuning Vine: an interface for Just Intonation,” http:// www.robinhayward.de/pdf/NIMEposter.pdf. 44 Robin Hayward, “The Hayward Tuning Vine: an interface for Just Intonation,” https://nime2015.lsu.edu/proceedings/146/0146-paper.pdf. See also http://www. tuningvine.com. 45 Robin Hayward, “Stop Time.” http://robinhayward.de/eng/comp/stoptime2013.php. 46 Robin Hayward, Nouveau Saxhorn, Nouveau Basse. Pogus 21077, 2014, compact disc. Liner notes. 47 Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Plainsound Glissando Modulation, NEOS 10812, 2009, compact disc. 48 Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Plainsound Counterpoint, NEOS 11505, 2015, compact disc. Liner notes, 6–7. 49 Michael Winter, “On James Tenney’s Arbor Vitae for String Quartet,” Contemporary Music Review 27, no. 1 (February 2008): 132. 50 For a list of resources on related tuning information, see Cat Lamb’s “The interaction of tone,” http://sacredrealism.org/catlamb/tuninginformation/main.html. 51 As reflected in Ben Johnston’s quote at the opening of this section, a non-equaltempered approach to harmony has numerous historical precedents. These composers have more or less collectively developed new resources for this recent lattice-based approach, but other composers who have explored them before the timeframe of this book include Alois Hába and Ivan Wyschnegradsky. 52 See Sabat’s An informal introduction to the Helmholtz-Ellis Accidentals (2009) for a legend and introduction to methodology, http://www.marcsabat.com/pdfs/legend. pdf. See Sabat, The Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation (2005) for a more extensive overview, http://www.marcsabat.com/pdfs/notation.pdf. 53 The systems composers include Alec Hill, Christopher Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Hugh Shrapnel, Howard Skempton, and John White. A number of these composers have gone on to very different projects, but are still historically identified with this approach. 54 Michael Parsons, “Systems in Art and Music,” The Musical Times 117, no. 1604 (1976): 816. 55 Ibid., 818. 56 Ibid., 817. 57 Christopher Hobbs, Sudoku 82, Cold Blue Music CB0033, 2009, compact disc. Liner notes, http://www.dramonline.org/albums/christopher-hobbs-sudoku-82/notes. 58 Richard Glover, Logical Harmonies, Another Timbre, at66, 2013, compact disc. “Interview with Richard Glover,” http://www.anothertimbre.com/logicalharmonies. html. 59 http://johnlely.co.uk/. 60 “Interview with John Lely,” http://www.anothertimbre.com/johnlely.html. John Lely, The Harmonics of Real Strings, Another Timbre, at80, 2014, compact disc. See also the multiple realizations at https://soundcloud.com/john-lely. 61 Tom Johnson and Franck Jedrzejewski, Looking at Numbers (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2014), 73. 62 Ibid., 73–83. 63 Ibid., 82–83. 64 Ibid., 73.

74

Experimental Music Since 1970

65 Samuel Vriezen, “A hidden non-hierarchical structure. Block Designs and The Weather Riots,” March 7, 2013, http://samuelvriezen.blogspot.nl/2013/03/a-hiddennon-hierarchical-structure.html. 66 Johnson and Jedrzejewski, Looking at Numbers, 21. 67 The score is available at http://sqv.home.xs4all.nl/TheWeatherRiots.pdf. Several contrasting performances are also available on the composer’s website. 68 “Query VI,” Ladies and Gentleman’s Diary, 48, cited at Tom Johnson, “Kirkman’s Ladies (2005),” http://www.editions75.com/EnglishPortal/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=78:kirkmans-ladiesn2005. 69 Tom Johnson, “Kirkman’s Ladies—Rational Harmonies in Three Voices,” on Manuel Zurria—Repeat! Die Schachtel ZEIT C01, 2008, compact disc. 70 Samuel Vriezen, “Chord Catalogues: conceptual piano music by Tom Johnson and Samuel Vriezen,” last modified November 23, 2012, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ chord-catalogues-conceptual-piano-music-by-tom-johnson-and-samuel-vriezen. 71 John Zorn, Arcana: Musicians on Music, vol. IV (New York: Hips Road, 2009), 227. 72 “David Behrman,” accessed March 3, 2015, http://www.foundationforcontemporary arts.org/grant_recipients/davidbehrman.html (page removed). 73 “Gordon Mumma,” Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television (New York: Lovely Music, 1976), DVD. 74 Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 101–02. 75 “Gordon Mumma,” Music with Roots in the Aether. 76 “David Behrman,” Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television (New York: Lovely Music, 1976), DVD. 77 “David Behrman,” in Perfect Sound Forever, http://www.furious.com/perfect/ behrman.html. 78 “David Behrman,” Music with Roots in the Aether. 79 “David Behrman,” in Perfect Sound Forever. 80 David Behrman, On the Other Ocean, recorded September 18, 1977, The Recording Studio, Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, 1977, compact disc. Liner notes, http://www.lovely.com/albumnotes/notes1041.html. 81 Tom Johnson, The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982, 38, http://www. editions75.com/Books/TheVoiceOfNewMusic.PDF. 82 Ellen Fullman, “A Compositional Approach Derived from Material and Ephemeral Elements,” Leonardo Music Journal 22 (December 2012): 3–10. 83 Frédéric le Junter, “machines sonores,” http://flejunter.free.fr/machines_sonores.html. 84 le Junter, “bio,” http://flejunter.free.fr/bio.html#eng. 85 Nicolas Collins, Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (New York: Routledge, 2009), 61. 86 see “Akio Suzuki: Solo Performance.” Vimeo video, 45:47, posted by AV Festival, March 25, 2015, https://vimeo.com/123190441. 87 “For Hugh Davies,” http://www.anothertimbre.com/hughdaviestext.html. 88 James Mooney, “Hugh Davies’s Electroacoustic Musical Instruments and their Relation to Present-Day Live-Coding Practice,” slide 14, http://www.james-mooney. co.uk/EMS2015. 89 Caleb Kelly, Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 246–47.

Scientific Approaches

75

90 “Reed Ghazala: Interview by Jason Gross,” http://www.furious.com/perfect/emi/ reedghazala.html. 91 Reed Ghazala, Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments (Indianapolis, IN: Wiley, 2005), xv. 92 Zacharias Szumer, “Synth-building culture in Indonesia: An Interview with Lintang Radittya,” http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/2015/06/synth-building-culture-inindonesia-an-interview-with-lintang-radittnya-by-zacharias-szumer. 93 Ibid. 94 See http://synthesia-ind.blogspot.sg. 95 Sally Jane Norman, Michel Waisvisz, and Joel Ryan, “Touchstone,” http://www. crackle.org/touch.htm. 96 Quoted in Kelly, Cracked Media, 192. 97 These projects are all documented at Lerman’s website, http://www.sonicjourneys.com. 98 Richard Lerman, “A Guide for working with Piezo Electric Disks to introduce Children to Issues of Acoustic Ecology and Sonic Creativity,” http://www. sonicjourneys.com/PDF%20Files/Children%20&%20Piezo%20disks.pdf. 99 “Micro-Listening Workshops,” http://subtropics.org/micro-listening-workshops. 100 David Dunn, The Sound of Light in Trees. Earth Ear ee0513, 2006. Liner notes, 1. 101 Dunn, Sound of Light in Trees, 7. 102 See “Bioacoustics and the Environment,” http://artscilab.com/ASL/Bioacoustics.html. 103 Andrew Nikiforuk, Empire of the Beetle (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2011), 146. This book includes a fascinating account of Dunn’s collaborations. 104 John Grzinich, Two Films (Seattle: and/OAR, 2012), DVD, http://and-oar.org/pop_ and_40.html. 105 Miguel Isaza, “Listening to the Processes that Shape the World: An Interview with John Grzinich,” July 27, 2015, http://sonic-terrain.com/2015/07/listening-to-theprocesses-that-shape-the-world-an-interview-with-john-grzinich. 106 Peter Cusack, “What Can We Learn of Dangerous Places by Listening to Their Sounds?,” http://sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/index.html. 107 Jana Winderen, “Biography,” http://www.janawinderen.com/information. 108 Jana Winderen, Evaporation. Bandcamp album, 2009, https://janawinderen. bandcamp.com/album/evaporation. 109 Marc Namblard, “Chants of Frozen Lakes,” July 27, 2013, http://www.kalerne.net/ main/index.php/editions/chants-of-frozen-lakes. 110 “Lee Patterson, Manchester, December 2008 – February 2009,” March 31, 2009. http://www.bagatellen.com/?p=2198. 111 “Hear exclusive Lee Patterson sounds,” April 2009, http://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/ tracks/hear-exclusive-lee-patterson-sounds. 112 “Lee Patterson, Manchester.” 113 Ibid. 114 “Hear exclusive Lee Patterson sounds.” 115 Emmanuel Holterbach, “Mouvements dans une Aura Ionique,” May 11, 2010, https://emmanuelholterbach.bandcamp.com/album/mouvements-dans-une-auraionique [author translation]. Also see https://emmanuelholterbach.bandcamp.com/ album/do-undo-in-g-maze. 116 Haco, Stereo Bugscope 00, Improvised Music from Japan, IMJ-23, 2004, compact disc. Liner notes.

76

Experimental Music Since 1970

117 See https://vimeo.com/48844118 and https://vimeo.com/70418685 for video examples. 118 Brian Olewnick, “Haco/Toshiya Tsunoda—TramVibration (Skiti),” December 22, 2013, http://olewnick.blogspot.com/2013/12/hacotoshiya-tsunoda-tramvibrationskiti.html. 119 Christina Kubisch, Five Electrical Walks, Important Records, IMPREC167, 2007, compact disc. Liner notes. 120 Michael Prime, One Hour as a Plant, and/OAR and/42, 2014, CD. Liner notes. 121 Miya Masaoka, “Brainwaves & Plants,” http://www.miyamasaoka.com/ interdisciplinary/brainwaves_plants/pieces_for_plants.html. 122 John T. Bullitt, Earth Sound, Akaliko Records, AK0701, 2007, compact disc. Liner notes, 8–9. 123 More information on this project is at http://www.jtbullitt.com/earthsound. 124 Bullitt, Earth Sound, Liner notes, 14–15. 125 Bob Bielecki’s name seems to turn whenever technological innovation is required to implement US-based composers’ ideas. Among his other collaborators are Cage, Maryanne Amacher, Laurie Anderson, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Stephen Vitiello, and La Monte Young. 126 “Wild Energy,” http://www.caramoor.org/house-gardens/in-the-garden-of-sonicdelights/wild-energy. 127 Alvin Lucier, Gronemeyer Gisela, and R. Oehlschlägel, Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995), 464. Lucier also credits the book Listen to Radio Energy, Light, and Sound with many of the techniques he found to be effective, along with Ned Sublette for his help on site. 128 Miriam Kramer, “Listen to This: Comet’s Eerie ‘Song’ Captured by Rosetta Spacecraft,” November 11, 2014, http://www.space.com/27737-comet-song-rosettaspacecraft.html.

3

Physicalities This chapter focuses on the physical properties or behaviors of four distinct components of musical work. The first of these is the physical mechanism of the performer and the choreographic aspects of performance. The second section deals with the resonances of the spaces in which sounds are emitted. The instruments themselves are derived from objects in the third section, inviting new modes of consideration of the properties of the things we encounter on a daily basis. In the last section of the chapter, musical behaviors, trajectories, and forms are derived from physical shapes.

3.1  The physicality of performance When a performance is an implementation of a musical score, the usual understanding is that a good performer will transcend the technical challenges of the score to reveal the form, flow, and essence of the piece. The pieces in this section contradict that understanding by focusing attention on those challenges, even for the most able performers. All of these works make the physical actions of the performer a fundamental point of tension or interest in their encounters with thresholds of audibility, capability, and raw physicality. For a performer to transcend these demands would be to miss the point. The drive and substance of the work lies at the point of physical encounter. This performative, bodily encounter is immediately evident in The Young Person’s Guide to Radical Music (2012), a situation Neil Luck created at the Tate Britain. Children “were involved in preparing, restraining and restricting the performers as they performed live.” In a follow-up project, SLAPSNAPSTICKPIZZ (2013), both the performers and their instruments were attached to wires and controlled remotely by the public. The results were comedic, and appealed to the delight many children take in influencing events. One young participant described it as “the most inpisring [sic] thing I’ve experienced ever.”1 Both of these projects recall Hugh Shrapnel’s Houdini Rite (1970), in which performers can only play with limbs that are bound. The performance ends when all of their limbs are untied.2 The content of each of these works is the impediment to its performance. For the Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen, the score is only a starting point, a premise for action and sound. He says, “My music is going in a direction where . . .

78

Experimental Music Since 1970

there’s a lot of things that can’t be predicted, or a lot of things that are dependent on existing, for real. It’s getting less and less abstract, what I do. And so it needs a body.” The scores are prompts to actions that vary by performer, instrument, and circumstance. “It needs a performance before it can exist, and before you can actually see if some things work. It needs a situation. It needs an audience. It needs a time and a place.”3 Only under these circumstances does the piece truly take shape. In Study for string instrument #1 (2007), the right and left arms, normally distant from each other in function and type of motion, are assigned actions that are physically parallel. The left arm moves up or down the string as the right arm travels upbow or downbow. This premise is almost immediately clear while watching a performance, and draws fresh attention to the nature of these two motions, both separately and in relation to one another.4 The Next to Beside Besides series (2003–06), which he calls “Choreographic Translations,” assigns nearly identical motions to different instruments. SteenAndersen asks, “What if the composition was thought of as a choreography for musician and instrument—with sound as a consequence? Then the same piece would sound completely different on instruments with different relations between movement and sound. And would it then be the same piece at all?”5 In a traditional model, faithful performances are recognizable for their derivation from the same source. That is no longer the case when motion is translated from one instrument to another independent of function. It is suggested that multiple versions of the piece be played at the same time, side by side. In a simultaneous performance of #0 and #4 of the set, the choreography is strikingly similar and well-coordinated, leading a viewer to almost conceive of the snare drum as a new form of a cello.6 The rhythms and gestures are absolutely loyal to the original cello version. Sometimes they produce similar sounds, but at other times the motions have completely different impacts on the instruments. It is through performance that these translations reveal both their choreographic equivalence and their essential difference. The performance instructions for each piece often involve muffling some part of the instrument, such as stuffing the saxophone with a piece of cloth, inserting folded paper into the accordion, and fixing the piano’s una corda pedal down, covering the instrument, and damping it further with a cloth. In this way the individual sound characteristics of each instrument are obscured, focusing attention on the choreographies, convergences, and divergences of sound. Steen-Andersen has found another way of focusing attention on choreography in his Study for string instrument #3. A prerecorded video of a performer doing one version of the piece is literally projected onto that same performer doing a slightly different version of the piece. The sound is also projected over the live performance, and the listener is left to disentangle the two or let them both assume equal weight in the moment. As Rasmus Holmboe writes: With the sound so closely shown as a result of the movement producing it, the basic musical material, then, is the movement of the musician, which throughout the piece is treated with consequent compositional methods such as variation, imitation, inversion, mirroring etc., applied to the movement of the musician and

Physicalities

79

his projected double self. As such, it is an example of musical composition applied to the domain of the visual.7

For Steen-Andersen, the visibility of intention is essential. He asks that the musicians keep their music stands low enough that their actions can be seen. In rerendered (2003/04), Run Time Error (2009–) and a number of other pieces, there is an active video component that correlates to the sound performance. He wants his audience to be aware of what is going on, processing it and considering it, so that it is not a selfcontained situation, but has other resonances. I’m actually interested in keeping that special space of experience that we call musical experience, or listening, and then at the same time to establish these arrows pointing out of that world, or establishing connections from this parallel, abstract fantasy world, music world through the real world.8

The video image (or live performance) is crucial to the clarity of many of these encounters between the music world and the real world. Video is also essential to an understanding of Liaison (2013) for bowed piano and dancer, a collaboration between the composer Megan Beugger and dancer and choreographer Melanie Aceto. A pulley system is built around the piano, and fishing wire runs under several piano strings, up through the pulleys, and to braces on each of the dancer’s limbs. For over a minute, the dancer sways toward and away from the piano without causing the strings to be bowed. These futile efforts set the scene for the rest of the piece, during which the effort and exertion is rarely proportional to its sonic gratification. Sometimes the smallest, least noticeable gesture has a strong effect, while at other times, the most dramatic trajectories yield no sound. The sounding depends on the tension of each fishing line, but other tensions play out in the body of the dancer. This interplay between body and instrument, motion and sound is compelling as it plays out in the piece.9 In Aaron Cassidy’s work, effort is not always rewarded with sounding results either. Cassidy separately notates multiple parameters of playing as independent streams of action that act variously with or against each other as obstruction, tension, or confluence. His work operates in a network of force fields, energy, effort, rawness, and exposure. Where artifice, control, and conventional beauty are lost, broken textures, interrupted flows, wasted efforts, and awkward constrictions are found instead, revealing a raw power of their own. One of the clearest illustrations of these multiple streams of activity is the wind duo, Being itself a catastrophe, the diagram must not create a catastrophe (2007–09), which has separate staves for embouchure and for each hand. In the video, it is possible to see many of these actions, only some of which result in audible sound and none of which offer a stable sound result.10 Cassidy writes of this piece: The changes in embouchure tension or reed placement have a certain general set of tendencies, but the interaction with the instabilities of the finger movements will often create quite dramatically different results from iteration to iteration.) This is,

80

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 3.1  Melanie Aceto performs Liaison (1) © Paul Hokanson

Figure 3.2  Melanie Aceto performs Liaison (2) © Paul Hokanson

Physicalities

81

incidentally, also the reason why material in my work is so often transitional—there are almost never steady states in my work, but rather many layers of independent shifts between states, forcing the alignment and interaction of those layers to be even more unpredictable.11

In this work, notation stands in a dynamic relationship with the performance and sound of a piece. What you see is definitely not what you hear, but it still is what the performer is to do. The notation does not describe a sound result, but rather prescribes the actions of the performer on numerous independent levels.12 The sonic result on the recording of solo string piece, The Crutch of Memory (2004), is one of splintered and interrupted flows of energy.13 One action is as likely to stifle another as it is to amplify it. As Mieko Kanno describes it: There is no indication, or even temptation, to suggest that pitch and rhythm, as articulated in the top stave, are primary parameters. And this corresponds to the musical reality: determinate pitch and rhythm gestures are not what one hears, and the pitch is almost always bending due to the changing finger-spacing and hand position as specified on the second and third staves. The overlaying of multiple parameters often produces unexpected outcomes (the aggregate of concurrent operations has infinite combinatorial possibilities), and sometimes these contradict each other (thus a decision has to be made) or never produce the same result (thus room has to be provided for an unpredictable outcome).14

Cassidy has changed his notation practices from one phase of his work to another, sometimes finding new ways of representing individual parameters, but more importantly, finding new ways to relate those parameters to each other visually. There is a strong practical concern for how readable a score is for a musician. The issue in many cases is not one of technique, reflexes, or training, but the simple question of where the eyes need to be directed on the page. If there are detailed instructions that are not intuitively related to one another happening in different parameters, it is cognitively difficult to take all that information in. Cassidy has a second reason for this shift in his notation: To move from a very digital, stratified notational space—that is, one that predominately notates discrete points (through numbers, letters, symbols, noteheads, etc.)— to a smooth, continuous notational space that better represents the actual topography of the instrument and the fluidity of possible motion across that space.15

But despite these changes in the appearance of a score, for example from The Crutch of Memory to Second String Quartet (2009–10), his musical concerns have carried over very strongly, placing a high value on the “unexpected conflicts, frictions, and ‘accidents’ that lead to unique sonic outcomes.”16 In both cases, the locus point of such a work, what makes it what it is, is not revealed on the page, but is totally dependent on its specific enactment. While this may sound like a vague truism for all notated music, many scores can be effectively studied on sight alone. Cassidy’s scores reveal multiple

82

Experimental Music Since 1970

strands of activity that could be separately analyzed, but the piece does not really exist until these parameters are physically intercutting one another. This need for a physical enactment takes on a new dimension in A Painter of Figures in Rooms (2011–12), for eight voices. Reflecting on his collaboration with the EXAUDI ensemble, Cassidy recalls “the efforts of eight different singers to reproduce exactly the same notation with exactly the same set of instructions generate wildly different results.”17 The voices themselves are of course different, but each singer’s understanding of his or her own vocal mechanism also proved to be unique in the workshopping process. For this most subjective of instruments, the move away from both a conventionally desirable sound and a sound that can be imitated is quite disorienting, even for a professional group that has worked with a vast swath of new and challenging music. Cassidy notates the actions in five different physiological categories: vocal fold tension (pitch), air pressure (volume), mouth shape, glottis position/tension, and tongue position. The tablature notation and prescriptive (rather than descriptive) approach to this notation has another clear impact in the recorded performance. Singers are engaged with their voices in an audibly curious, almost childlike manner. There is no particular vocal quality to strive for or imitate, but instead a combination of approaches to the vocal mechanism unearths its native resources.18 Each singer has to bring these elements out simultaneously, and in so doing they each find a “fundamental, bare, exposed, expressive voice.”19 Cassidy’s writing for the voice is clearly an extension of his instrumental writing, but there is one vocalist in particular who is a beacon of what is possible in a series of encounters with the voice that is based on the physicality of the mechanism rather than an established technique. Cassidy writes this of the vocal improviser Phil Minton: I am struck by the disparity between how I listen to Minton’s work when I can see him, either in person or on video, and when I cannot. It reveals a curious gap between the pure physiology of the voice and the physiology of the voiced body, that is, the gap between the actual sound production mechanism of larynx, breath, tongue, and mouth versus “the voice” as the representation of human physicality and expression.20

To watch Minton in performance is to see a state of great exertion and concentration. He often lets go of control completely, shaking his head or lips, or disrupting his vocal production with bodily movement.21 The mechanisms of the voice and all its surroundings—lips, stomach, throat, tongue, saliva, etc.—all become very present for the audience and tend to evoke rather alarming images and recollections of what it is to be human. Kenneth Goldsmith writes: Minton’s extended vocal technique is that of the scream. He’ll belt out incredibly long-winded, saliva-drenched marathon shouts that seem to last an eternity; instead of trying for the usual clarity of tone or preciseness of pitch, he’ll let his voice warble ’till its raw. After taking a deep breath in (breathing, too, becomes part of his compositions) he’ll start up again until it sounds like he’s going to collapse.22

Physicalities

83

The solo album likely to provoke the strongest reaction from a listener is A Doughnut in Both Hands (1998), in which Minton transgresses an astonishing number of vocal boundaries. As memorable as the transgressions themselves is the audible recovery from them. We know what he has done, that he has gone too far, and we hear him finding his way back to a more controlled, tolerable state. Much of the power of his work has to do with the sympathy or empathy one feels with the act of vocalization in all its forms. We all have made sounds, whether in illness or aggravation or fear or abandon, that we would rather keep private. Minton takes those sounds and makes them public, inspiring a unique cocktail of a reaction—amazement, familiarity, and disgust. The American composer Evan Johnson also works with the vocal mechanism in A general interrupter to ongoing activity (2011), though he works in terms of restraint, in contrast with Minton’s testing of boundaries. This piece, he writes, is “a study of the voice as an instrument that is uniquely capable of occluding itself.” The tongue blocks the airflow of consonants, whistles and hisses block the delivery of text, and “almost every physical effort partially overwrites every other.”23 Carl Rosman’s live recording from the 2011 TRANSIT festival carries this sense of perpetually interrupting itself, and seems strangely suppressed and unavailable, as is its intent: “A navigation of the boundary between audible and inaudible, communicable and private, vocal and muscular.” Obstruction is part of the work—it would not be what it is without these impediments. It is, in Johnson’s words, “a very limited and quiet sonic universe that is itself full of communicative potential.”24 Fragility and obscurity are recurrent themes in Johnson’s work. The opening instruction of “atendant, souffrir,” lists, little stars (2013) is “Cautious and circumspect— as if everything were breakable.”25 In the vocal ensemble piece vo mesurando (2012), phrases are “separated by . . . impossibly slow silent glissandi.”26 In die bewegung der augen (2012), “The constant tendency is to fade: into silence, into noise, into regularity, into impassivity.”27 “Active negative space” is the material of the string quartet, inscribed, in the center: “1520, Antorff ” (2014). He describes the inspiration for the quartet as “a riot of indiscernible detail” found in the background of a Dürer sketch that is “rendered indistinct by the actively pressing weight of the untouched expanses of paper delimiting it.”28 The piece sounds on the edge of a silence parallel to those untouched expanses of paper, frequently not sounding at all. When it does sound, it is threadbare and obscure. In the live situation, it might be imagined that the performer holds the only fair listening perspective, and yet the performer is faced with the task of constantly impeding the delivery. While the performers are faced with numerous impediments to any clear articulation of so much as a phrase, the audience is in a much less privileged position still. In my pouert and goyng ouer (2014), “The space of the work is the air directly in front of the performers’ bodies; it is not a space shared with the audience. . . . Whatever reaches the audience should be overheard.”29 Similar instructions and descriptions are given in other pieces, such as the pointed program note of vo mesurando: “These are all madrigalian figures that you are overhearing, but they are not for you.”30 In Apostrophe 2 (pressing down on my sternum) (2009), the two brass players are asked to face away from the audience for a “significantly more attenuated sound picture for the audience than the standard layout.”31 Johnson warns in this piece and

84

Experimental Music Since 1970

others against any degree of theatricality. These arrangements and impediments are devised for sonic purposes, not for a display—quite the opposite. They are the means to the habitation of a particular sound world that has a veiled, remote quality. Even in the midst of it, one doesn’t quite know what it is. Despite its low amplitude, this music requires a tremendous amount of physical exertion from the performers. They are required to enact both force and resistance, counterbalancing these weights against each other with no external assistance. While the music itself is covered, the performer is highly exposed. This vulnerable position creates a tension and energy that greatly enlivens these performances. The vulnerability of the performative situation also comes through in listening to pianist Kate Ledger’s recording of Ben Isaacs’ piece, All the things inside me are doing what they need to be doing (2010). The volume has to be turned way up, and it is best heard, not on a good speaker system, but with headphones. This is the first means for a non-live listener to engage with the piece’s processes of magnification. The mechanism of the piano is at least as audible as any typical piano sound, in that there is more percussive sound than pitch. Isaacs refers to the sounding result as “a continuous succession of brief kinetic flickers.” Only the top seven notes on the piano are used. The whole focus of attention, for eyes and fingers and listeners, is directed to one of the least used areas of the piano in this “rigorous examination of a tightly constricted space.” The dynamic constriction for the pianist is at least as crucial as the pitch constraint, involving “both extreme control and extreme risk, and an improbably dynamic range in which the loudest note is ‘as quiet as possible.’”32 The musical material itself is severely restricted and repeated. What lends such dynamism to the performance of this piece, and to Isaacs’ other works, is how he weaves these various constrictions together with the vulnerabilities of physical, human performance. The counterbalance of energies takes a different shape in the form of Kunsu Shim’s Happy for No Reason (2000). Shim is a Korean composer based in Germany, who was a member of the Wandelweiser collective in its early years. He cofounded a venue for new music with Gerhard Stäbler called EarPort in Duisburg, and they have collaborated on countless performances and projects. For the first three minutes of Happy for No Reason, each player repeats a sound several times that is “short and very loud.” “A combination of these sounds should be a mixture of extremely rugged, crystal clear, scrappy, yelling, screaming, sharp knife, explosive, tough, noisy, etc.” One player is instructed to “kick a metal bucket with full force so that it rolls away.” Following this uproar is a full minute of stillness and silence. For the next five minutes, the players sustain fragile, quiet sounds. Another player stretches a roll of paper tape across the room during this time. These three kinds of energy—loudness, stillness, and a fragile sustain, set each other off with a powerful effect.33 In marimba, bow, stone, player (1993), pebbles are placed on only a few bars of the marimba. The process for choosing the bars is separate from the choice of which bars are to be bowed. The bowed sounds without pebbles on the bars are not as present as those with them, since the pebbles cause gentle vibrations that enrich the sound. The delicacy required to perform this piece is tremendous, as each of four sections is fifty minutes long, and the piece depends on not displacing these tiny unsecured stones.

Physicalities

85

The indeterminate aspects of the piece (the chance procedures by which the stones are placed) create the vulnerability of the situation, and the specialness of those found moments of vibration. Michael Pisaro describes a performance of another work of Shim’s in which fragility is carried to extremes, and “seemed to be putting the world on the head of a pin.” In expanding space in limited time [1994] the bow sometimes moves only half its length in five minutes. If you saw the violinist playing you would think he was a living sculpture installation instead of music. . . . it took 20 minutes for me to hear any sound from the violin at all. Once I did start to hear it, over the course of the nearly two hours duration, the music became almost unbelievably rich. . . .34

The exertion of the performer to achieve such an almost-stillness for this duration requires great strength and discipline. In this recollection, it requires a parallel exertion of the listener. To hear this sound requires a strain of one’s senses—not only of hearing, but also watching the bow and viscerally imagining its contact with the string. The listener almost becomes a part of the performance, helping to bring about the sounds through attentiveness. The experience of this work also has to do with the magnification and vulnerability of these sounds in their presentation over time. expanding space in limited time is not available as a recording, though it has been performed in a number of places. If it required twenty minutes of one listener’s careful attention to begin to hear any violin sound in the live event, any document of it would be almost devoid of discernible content. The performative fragility of these works becomes the fragility of the listening experience. These two fragilities, instead of actually causing a break, become something else: a shared effort.

3.2  Resonant spaces I think of sounds in terms of wavelengths, from short to long. I’m dealing with lengths of sound, its physical dimensions. Even what happens in “I am sitting in a room” [1970] depends on the physical dimensions of the room and what wavelengths fit it.35 —Alvin Lucier What is the sound of a space? Some of the works in this section are themselves, or are based upon, analyses of acoustic properties of particular spaces. In other cases, the nature of the piece is fluid to the particular architecture in which it is performed. Alvin Lucier was a member of the Sonic Arts Union, and is known for his work with resonance. In Opera with Objects (1996), various objects on a table are used as resonators. The tip of a pencil is held to the object, and the pencil is struck repeatedly with another pencil. As the performer moves from object to object, the vast differences in the qualities of these sounds are revealed.36

86

Experimental Music Since 1970

In the Austrian composer Peter Ablinger’s Orte (2001), three rooms or halls within walking distance of each other are selected and analyzed for their acoustics, resulting in three unique microtonal scales that match the formants of each site. The audience spends a period of time at each site, where the musicians play the formants back into the room, and then the audience walks together to the next site. If only one site were attended, the piece would remain essentially unheard, since the key point is that the change between sites be registered.37 A vase, like a room, can come in many sizes, shapes, and materials, and have a distinct resonance as a result. In Lucier’s Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Vases (1993), the timing of the presentation of different acoustic spaces is not prescribed or consecutive, but emerges according to their resonant frequencies. The cellist is instructed to sweep up the range of the instrument, “searching for resonances in the vases which are picked up by the microphones and made audible for listeners.”38 The vases respond, each in its own time and voice. While the pieces mentioned so far are comparative by nature, much of Lucier’s work deals with the resonance of a single space or object. When the resonant frequencies of the chosen object are sounded by the flute, oboe, and clarinet in Risonanza (1982), the listener is effectively drawn into the object itself. The thing acted upon becomes the focus of attention, rather than the agents acting upon it.39 Attaché Case (1988) is a development of Chambers (1968), in which “Tape recordings of large environments, such as concert halls, cathedrals and railroad stations, are played into small resonant chambers, such as teapots, thimbles and suitcases.” In this case, the sound of a train (specifically on the ride from New Haven, CT to New York) is played on a cassette player within the briefcase. There is some irony in virtually placing a train into a briefcase, when briefcases are so typically brought into trains. Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields Forever) (1990) is another extension of Chambers. The melody played on piano is recorded and played back through a teapot, as the pianist slowly opens and closes the lid to reveal the frequencies emanating from the pot like steam.40 The saturation of a teapot with a melody is one of many ways to fill a space. Piper (2000) is a piece that involves filling a room with the full sound of a bagpipe, which normally finds its place in the outdoors. Lucier writes, “I had always loved the sound of bagpipes in the open air but thought that in an enclosed space, certain acoustic characteristics, caused by reflections from the floor, walls and ceiling, might be revealed.”41 A number of improvisational releases show an engagement in similar processes, including Stuart Dempster’s In the Great Abbey of Clement VI (1987), John Butcher’s Resonant Spaces (2008), and Michael Francis Duch’s Tomba Emanuelle (2013).42 Yoshi Wada first recorded Lament for the Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile (1979–) after spending several days and nights in a dry pool in Buffalo, New York. He explored the space both with his voice and with bagpipes, and wrote: “Although I normally do not like long reverberation added to my music, when I entered the pool I immediately liked the acoustics of the space, which had very long delay time. The pool gave rich resonance to the voice & bagpipe sound.”43 Many works that deal with acoustic qualities feature long lines, both visually and sonically. In Paul Panhuysen’s work, spaces are filled with points and lines. Little

Physicalities

87

Souls Singing in the Sun (2000) is an installation that filled the shaft of Fort IJmuiden with 48 cooking pans hung on a triangular spiral of steel wires. Panhuysen writes, “This i­nstallation ­produces continually changing patterns of sound and the loudness depends of the quantity of sunlight.”44 What is apparent from looking at the images of the installation is that the structure of the pans echoes the structure of the shaft: a cylinder closed on one side and open on the other. The resonators mirror the resonance of the enclosing space. The lines of Ginger Strings (2012) are vast lengths of piano wire. Panhuysen and another player play the wires, filling the room with sound as it has been filled with these visible divisors.45 Panhuysen made over 200 such long string installations over his career, each of them particular to a given space. The first of these, built in Mainz, Germany in 1982 with his frequent collaborator Johan Goedhart, was initially played for the purpose of causing visitors to notice it, since it was barely visible. René van Peer writes: These decisions led to a significant discovery: through these simplest of means (a length of wire stretched across a space) it is possible to make pieces that work simultaneously on a visual and a sonic level, integrating the two.46

Moving forward with this knowledge, Panhuysen chose spaces for his installations which had proportions with rich acoustic properties. The space becomes an instrument, and a determining factor of the piece. He writes: On the one hand I choose a certain space because its characteristics make it suitable for an installation; on the other hand, because these surroundings are fixed, the installation has to be grafted into them. This enables me to establish a strong relationship between my work and reality. . . .47

In this work, he developed a working knowledge of the acoustic properties of spaces based on their shapes: If you talk near the wall of a circular space, the sound goes around and is understandable for everybody who also stands near the wall. In a dome (regardless whether it’s a hemisphere or a parabola) all sounds occurring in the space are reflected to one spot on the floor. In a cube sound becomes a sphere, there are places that are totally silent, especially the corners.48

In each of these projects, Panhuysen’s goal was to “give voice to a space.” The shifting harmonics yielded by the long strings offered continuous sounds that operated in that way very effectively.49 Other long string projects by Ellen Fullman50 and Alvin Lucier are also linked with Panhuysen’s work through mutual awareness and influence. Fullman made her first recording of The Long String Instrument at Het Apollohuis, an arts platform that was run by Hélène and Paul Panhuysen. In Lucier’s Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977), the piano wire is activated by oscillators and responds to the

88

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 3.3  Paul Panhuysen: Little Souls Singing in the Sun, photograph © Pieter Boersma resonant frequencies of the room over an extended period of time, making small shifts in the atmosphere readily apparent with changes in the sound.51 Filling a space with sound or filling it with sounding objects is an additive process— learning about its boundaries by saturating it, as one determines the measurements of a vessel by filling it with water. The German sound artist Rolf Julius referred to his work as “Small Music.” Music for a Glimpse Inward (2005) is an installation that lines the outside of a large, empty room with small speakers. “The music played softly, heightening the listener’s perception of space and stillness.”52 Like much of his other work, it uses small sounds and small speakers to forge a new relationship for the listener with the space it fills.53 His aim was to create “spaces into which one can retreat, where one can find quiet, where one can see, hear, where one is able to concentrate, where one is isolated from the world around but still is able to participate in it.”54 The accumulation of small sounds in large spaces forms a mass of sound that engulfs and redefines the space uniquely for each person who enters it. Kabir Carter is an American sound artist, whose Report (2010) is an exploration of the boundaries of a space. Carter uses a microphone to engage in this process live: “By touching, rubbing, scratching, and striking surfaces within the selected environment, I generate reverberant, plosive sound events and nodal excitations that form an acoustic sketch of the room.”55 In quieting rooms (2012), the composer and software designer Michael Winter is interested, not in the dimensions of the room, but in its responsiveness. “A very crude genetic algorithm [that] attempts to put two signals out of phase and quiet the room.” The generation of the signals is responsive to the acoustic result: a new life cycle starts if the room fails to get quieter.56

Physicalities

89

Figure 3.4  Paul Panhuysen: Little Souls Singing in the Sun, diagram © Hélène Panhuysen Sound is always subject to the qualities of the space in which it is performed; but these pieces are remarkable in that such spaces function not only as the context, but also as the primary focus of the work.

3.3  Objects as instruments Just about anything can be an instrument. It doesn’t have to have a musical history. Some of the most compelling instruments can be simple, everyday objects found around the house. With objects that are so easily attainable, an aspect of play is brought out that is reminiscent of the way that small children explore their surroundings, not with intention or preconception, but with curiosity. James Saunders and Tim Parkinson have formed the Parkinson Saunders duo, and describe their instruments as “any sound producing means.”57 Much of their

90

Experimental Music Since 1970

repertoire uses very simple materials, such as a table, a paper cup, or wind-up toys. As a composer, Saunders includes cardboard, in both flat and box form, as a score which itself is meant to sound, as small objects are directed across its networks of lines and circles. Other scores in the object network (2012) series are made of aluminum and polystyrene sheets, folders, a padded envelope, and a piece of pine board.58 Object network is part of a larger series of works Saunders has called “on the sonic properties of materials.”59 With paper (2006/08, 2009–) uses a similar principle of sounding a paper score. Depending on the version and the page, the sound of the paper can be activated with a finger, a pencil, or scissors.60 In all of these cases, the paper itself is the instrument. The other object is parallel in function to a bow or a mallet. John Cage’s Cartridge Music (1960), in which sounds of unspecified objects are activated by a phonographic pick-up, is its antecedent in this respect. Saunders’ installation called Surfaces (2010–) is an exploration of the sounds made by flat materials. The score is a stack of 300 cards, each of which suggests an action that can be performed with materials like cardboard, a saw, paper, and tape. “Instructions may be repeated, reapplied to the same surface or transferred to a different one.”61 The first performance of this piece was a 24-hour live installation, performed by Simon Limbrick at the 2011 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. At the end of the performance there was an opportunity for the audience to look at or even take the materials, inviting analysis or speculation about how the materials had been transformed and the sounds they had produced in the process. While the transformation of the flat materials in Surfaces is the result of soundmaking, such materials are first transformed and then used as instruments in a series of workshops conducted by the British artist and performer Alwynne Pritchard and two colleagues. Sheets of paper, tin foil, and plastic of several different dimensions were shaped by participants according to Pritchard’s instructions. Not only the size but also the texture has a direct impact on the sound production of these instruments. She writes that a sheet of 80g A4 paper when flat, is a completely different instrument when it has been scrunched (and unscrunched) once, 10 or 100 times. And if one applies these processes also to a sheet that is very small (5    5 cm) or very big (2.5    1.5 meters) and then also to different materials of the same sizes, the sound possibilities become very rich indeed.

The same scope of variation in sound results from the number of times a sheet is cut, as well as whether it is loose or attached on one side. “The aim of the workshops,” Pritchard writes, is to understand composition from the construction of the instrument itself, (i.e.  how it’s made, how it works, how it can be played/adapted) to finding strategies for combining the various qualities of the instruments, thinking always of all the instruments in the room as a single sound source that can be combined and manipulated endlessly.

Physicalities

91

Figure 3.5  Paper, 5 x 5 cm rolled © Alwynne Pritchard

Figure 3.6  Paper, 5 x 5 cm, cut into strips © Alwynne Pritchard

Figure 3.7  Paper, 5 x 5 cm, folded © Alwynne Pritchard

Figure 3.8  Paper, 5 x 5 cm, scrunched 100 times © Alwynne Pritchard

The first performances with these instruments followed Pritchard’s instructions, but the participants develop their own notation and sound combinations with further practice.62 Sven-Åke Johansson is a Swedish composer and visual artist whose Harding Greens (2002) is a forty-six-minute symphony for cardboard boxes, “bowed by 22 players with bowing techniques that produce a new, almost ‘silent sound’ in all imaginable nuances.”63 The sound is silent in the sense that it does not voice pitch as clearly or immediately as conventional bowed instruments would; but there is a significant body of sound—both pitch and noise—that is drawn from these different-sized boxes. The visual juxtaposition of the boxes with this organized ensemble of qualified musicians

92

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 3.9  Sven-Åke Johansson: Harding Greens, performance sketch © Sven-Åke Johansson with their bows is fascinating, and the depth and specificity of the sound world drawn from these simple functional materials is a real surprise.64 A vivid example of the reassessment of the everyday is Giorgio Battistelli’s opera, Experimentum Mundi (1981). Percussionists and vocalists are onstage, but filling the foreground are craftsmen engaged in their trades: “A baker, cobblers, knife sharpeners, carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, pavers, a stone mason, bricklayers.” These craftsmen are from Battistelli’s home village in Italy, and go about their work with the precision and seriousness cultivated by years of experience. By the end of the performance, each craftsman has produced his own product in perfect synchrony with the musical and theatrical tempos of the score: a game of wedging notes and rhythm together that enhances the movements forged by ancient traditions.65

The construction of these objects—whether they are made of wood, flour, metal, or stone—has inherent sound and rhythm. There is no strain in their familiar tasks. Battistelli has not asked them to change the rhythms of their work, but has simply given them a narrative, a new setting, and cues for when to begin and end their work, as well as amplifying their sounds.66 What the audience witnesses, both visually and sonically, is genuine craftsmanship—not a simulation of, but genuine creation of objects and the sounds associated with these materials and activities.

Physicalities

93

While the previous examples begin with manufactured (or the manufacturing of) materials, Cheryl Leonard is a composer and instrument builder who draws sound from natural materials. In Music for Rocks and Water (2007), “Rocks are rolled, rocked, brushed, rubbed, stacked and even tickled. Water is dripped, drizzled, poured, and has air bubbles blown in it at varying depths.”67 Instruments in Trees (2003) uses leaves, driftwood, pine needles, and pinecones alongside—and as preparations of—the instruments of a string quartet. Han Shan Tree (2004) is an installation of driftwood mobiles suspended from a tree.68 Alison Knowles is a Fluxus artist who has an interest in the sounds generated by both natural and handmade instruments. In Play Paper (2003), her instructions are that the notation (made of fragments of onion skin) should be performed with “handmade musical instruments and toys.”69 Knowles has a particular interest in using paper that she has made herself. “I think the main thing I’ve discovered about paper in the past five years is that it can form itself . . . you get something which you could never predict.”70 Standard manufactured paper is not as likely to fit this description as the irregular, pulpy material that she has formed. At the same time, she likes to use materials that are common enough that they will resonate in the experiences of listeners. I’d like to have people make the jump to going home and listening—you mentioned Make A Salad [1962]—as they make a salad, or maybe for the first time . . . noticing the sound as they wrap paper around a box, and saying, “Hmmm, that’s kind of a wonderful sound, isn’t it?”. . . . I’m trying to inform people to have their own sound experience.71

Another class of object in Knowles’ arsenal is the dried bean. She has collected various kinds of beans, many of which have been sent to her from other parts of the world. Her bean turners combine handmade paper with these different varieties. Two of her “Paper Weather Instruments” are “The Gray Flax Open Bean Turner with Pigeon Peas” and “The Red Adzuki Bean Turner.”72 Why beans? She says, I like to use the beans, because they’re not really an art-connected element . . . since I’m interested in the sound and the feeling of real materials, it seems very appropriate to use beans, and then the sound of beans is just great, and it’s . . . a signature of my work, that I have these beans in these different containers.73

This escape from what is typically considered an instrument in favor of an everyday object is a kind of bridging that is of significant interest within the field of experimental music. What we listen to in a careful way does not need to be set off in its own category. Why not listen to beans or paper or plastic or cardboard? Hanna Hartman asks this question in a different way, by setting objects in parallel activity with traditional instruments. In Borderlines (2009), the dampened bowing of a violin is heard in relation to the amplified vibrations of objects. Garden pots and wood are bowed with metal rods, and metal washers spin down long metal screws.74 In RAINBIRDS (2010), the pressure and flow of air in the flute are visibly and audibly

94

Experimental Music Since 1970

likened to water as it runs through a type of sprinkler system. The use of this comparative mechanism directs greater attention to both of these elements of the performance, and endows them with a value that would be lacking for either of them in isolation.75 Hartman writes of her work that she “seeks to reveal hidden correspondences between the most diverse auditive impressions and in new constellations she creates extraordinary worlds of sound.”76 The juxtaposition of conventional instruments with found instruments establishes the distance needed to create such compelling reconciliations. Andrea Neumann has developed a practice with the instrument of the inside piano, and is, with Hartman, part of a group of female composer-musicians based in Berlin called Les Femmes Savantes.77 Neumann was trained in classical piano, and then her “exploration of the piano for new sound possibilities . . . led her to reduce the instrument to its strings, its resonance board and the cast-iron frame.”78 This assemblage of inner workings—this “leftover,” to use her term—became her instrument, until a piano maker created a lighter version of the instrument for her. She explains that “the single parts of an instrument . . . are studied separately and individually and are themselves examined with regard to their sonic potential.”79 The materials of the instrument are treated as objects in and of themselves. Her playing techniques include amplification and electronic manipulation, and she uses objects in various capacities that function as weights, bows, brushes, plectrums, and mallets. In one performance, she balances the tines of a fork between the frame and several strings and lightly pulls it upward in a single motion, causing it to pulsate rapidly for some time. Then she sets a whisk in motion that is fastened to a shelf by a clothespin. Some complex chain reaction silently begins as she steps in front of the instrument, sits, and dances to it with such attention to detail that it seems to be choreographed.80 But as she explains, “If I do something three times in a row, it sounds different every time. It is extremely difficult to predict a result and to create structures where I know exactly when something will happen.”81 She has a deep knowledge of the behaviors of these objects and instrument in relation to one another, and combines that knowledge with extremely close, in-the-moment listening. The decision of how to use objects in one’s practice is highly individual. Two composer-improvisers, the American Judy Dunaway and the Colombian Ricardo Arias have each focused for well over a decade on the sounds that can be drawn from balloons; but beyond the nominal similarity of their instrument and their commitment to it, their practices have very little in common. Arias’ balloon kit includes rubber bands and carefully balanced pieces of metal, and he uses accessories like polystyrene and sponges to play the instruments, as well as his hands.82 Dunaway goes for a much more sustained sound, often using vibrators as resonators, not shying away from the suggestive aspects of that choice.83 Jean-François Laporte is a Canadian sound artist whose Dégonflement (1998) is a piece for twelve balloon players who use it as a wind instrument as well as percussion. The graphic score gives them instructions to play in a loosely parallel way, accumulating these sounds together. Rie Nakajima is a UK-based Japanese artist who also works with basic objects, putting plastic bags, marbles, and buckets in motion through the use of motors in a manner reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine. In Occasions_002 (2011), the

Physicalities

95

large trash bag, whistle, and fabric are each hung from rods. These rods are rotated clockwise and periodically sound as they pass one or more obstacles on their path. These relationships determine the periodicity of the installation, which is at a threshold between regularity and irregularity. Time functions on many different scales, depending on the length of the orbit.84 In Occasions_001 (2010), the sound of the irregular surface of the floor is activated by the rotation of plastic cups, a bucket, a playing card, and a stone. The video of the installation ends with three slide whistles taped to a trash bag and played directly with the air escaping through three holes.85 In Pendulums (2009), a space is filled and discovered, as identical pairs of metallic pendulums and clock movements, at various heights and within several connected rooms, hit each other as they change directions.86 In an improvised performance on June of 2012, a ball, a marble, and other objects were caused to rotate, each within its own round space—a bowl, a cooking pot, a drinking glass. Each of these interactions has its own periodic rhythm that depends on the relative size of the two objects and the mechanism causing it to rotate.87 In Nakajima’s work, there are three main categories of objects: those that are in motion, those that propel that motion, and those that form boundaries. Occasionally the object in motion contains its own propulsion, such as a wind-up toy or a metronome or a pendulum. In live performance situations, she tends to work in a small space, such as a modest tabletop. In one well-publicized case she was offered a relatively massive, traditional stage—Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. She elected not to use the stage itself, but set objects in motion throughout the auditorium. Two separate accounts reveal how surprisingly immersive this accumulation was: From a position within the audience, she filled the hall with a crescendo of quietly whirring, thrumming, vibrating machines from a table of junk shop ephemera, her performance characterised by a singleminded focus. . . . She went on to patrol the aisles and staircases, listening, readjusting, composing as she placed sound objects among the audience. Starting with a single metronome placed on stage, she methodically built up an immersive, kinetic soundworld. . . .88 She casts objects all across the auditorium: a tin-foil sheet gasps under motorised friction in the aisle to my left, a metronome chimes at the edge of the stage, a wind-up toy writhes upon a glockenspiel somewhere behind me. At one point I feel as though I could close my eyes and use the proximity and reflections of each sound to paint the room’s exact dimensions onto my imagination—with lines springing forth from acoustic response and the unique interrelation between each of the sounds—but Nakajima keeps building beyond a point where this is possible. The noise thickens; individual surfaces become indistinguishable . . . and the piece moves from what started like wires strung delicately across empty space to the sensation of being submerged in an aquarium tank full of smog water. . . . Architecture disappears, and I can no longer hear my hand in front of my face. Breathtaking in more ways than one.89

96

Experimental Music Since 1970

Nakajima caused these modest objects to sonically fill and ultimately overwhelm the space. Pierre Berthet is a Belgian percussionist who, in his words, “Designs and builds sound objects and installations (steel, plastic, water, magnetic fields . . .).”90 In his Expirateur series of improvisations, the materials are a reverse vacuum cleaner and its hose, a bicycle inner tube, metal pipes, and rocks. In the videos of these performances, he stays very close to the action, constantly rearranging the materials according to their interactions. The vacuum pushes air out rapidly through the hose and then through the attached bicycle inner tube. The tube responds by flailing rapidly in one direction and then in the other. Berthet lines up the pipes, usually four or more of various lengths, to catch the exhalation of this air. Other objects may be present as interference as well, including plastic bags and long wooden poles. When the tube goes too wild and is not focused on the pipes, Berthet puts large rocks on either side of it to constrict its movements. He constantly intervenes, but his actions are always reactions to the trajectories he has set in motion.91 This interplay is fascinating because it is always hovering at the threshold of control and wildness, despite the apparent simplicity of each of the materials in isolation. An interesting contrast to Berthet’s performative approach is that of Serge Baghdassarians, whose installation leerlauf (2007) for plastic bottles and glass plates produces sound for hours as a result of a vacuum formed with contrasting air and water temperatures. The sound of air is again the focus, but it has no intervention other than the one that set up the initial situation.92 In kritische masse (2008), the air is also passively allowed to escape. The airstreams of balloons are “directed against a gap in a ping pong ball which causes the column of air within the ball to oscillate at a frequency.” The objects need no intervention in this setup, and the form of the piece correlates to the deflation of each balloon.93 (This piece, along with aerobic exercise [2007] forms yet another contrast with the balloon practices mentioned earlier.94) There is something subversive about a performance that involves no standard musical instrument. One direction to go is toward rarefaction—creating a new instrument, modifying an existing one, or using one so rare as to be unfamiliar. The opposite direction is to make sound through the use of materials so common that they can hardly be avoided in daily life. Through careful and creative attention, an object normally used in an office or a kitchen is valued for its properties and behaviors, rather than just for its function.

3.4  From shape to sound Music is frequently compared to visual art. In many ways, the frequency of this comparison seems counterintuitive. Dance, theater, and film share music’s essentially temporal attribute, and are usually reliant on music as part of their presentation. Certainly narrative music and text settings have a literary correlation. But these more direct mappings do not involve the same modes of speculation as the translation from a nontemporal to a temporal presentation.

Physicalities

97

Figure 3.10  x-y axis of time to pitch © Jennie Gottschalk, illustration: Elizabeth Latta The strength of this correlation is reinforced by the use of scores. In traditional notation, time is represented as traveling from left to right, correlating with the reading patterns of most languages. Low to high frequencies have corresponding low and high placements on the staff. Even that common phrasing, “low to high,” is a visual image. Solfege teachers will commonly move their hands up and down through the air to indicate ascent and descent of pitch. The use of a pitch-time x-y axis is an intuitive correlation. Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda are two interdisciplinary artists who collaborated on cyclo.id (1999–2011) an encyclopedic mapping of shapes on an x-y axis with their corresponding sounds on the x-y mode of an oscilloscope. In their artful book and CD-ROM release, they offer both two-dimensional and three-dimensional images, as well as both static and video images with corresponding sonic outputs. The project is founded on this correspondence: “The duality of sensory aspects is the foundation of our research.”95 The pitches and rhythms of John Cage’s Freeman Etudes (1977–80, 89–90) are based on star charts that were also converted into musical directions through the use of an x-y axis. As James Pritchett describes the process, A piece of tracing paper with twelve rectangles drawn on it (the rectangles representing the twelve staves of the etude) was overlaid onto a star map. . . . These star tracings were then converted to pitch-time events for the violin. . . . The horizontal placement of the tracings within their rectangles was transferred directly to the placement of notes, and were notated on the music paper by tick marks at the tops of the staves. The vertical placement of tracings determined their pitch class.96

The difficulty of the piece was compounded by the determination of other parameters through the use of the I Ching. This was by no means Cage’s first use of visual forms to generate musical material. Winter Music (1957) is an early example. The Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58) involved an elaborate drawing process,

98

Experimental Music Since 1970

and Atlas Eclipticalis (1961) is a foretaste of the Freeman Etudes in its method of transformation.97 Cage used a method of drawing around rocks to create pitch curves in the Ryoanji (1983–85) series. (Ryoanji is a stone garden in Kyoto.) These drawings map directly onto the notation. The shape of each rock drives the speed and direction of changes of pitch.98 Alvin Lucier has similarly mapped shapes of real things to a pitch/time graph in a number of pieces. Still Lives (1995) is a suite with eight movements, each of which is shaped according to Lucier’s drawings of objects he found around his home, including a bread knife, ferns, and a lamp shade. These drawings were aligned with pitch information and converted into recorded sine tones. The piano plays around these tones.99 Two years before Still Lives, Hildegard Kleeb and Roland Dahinden had given Lucier a panoramic photograph of a mountain range in Zug, Switzerland. Lucier transferred the outline of the mountain peaks to a new page and had Dahinden, a trombonist, slide upward and downward on the trombone to trace the peaks. “Roland is a skier,” he explained, “so I thought that he could slide down the mountains on his trombone.”100 The resulting piece is called Panorama (1993). Coincidentally, the artist Sol Lewitt, a friend of Lucier’s, was to exhibit a piece in Zug. On learning of Lucier’s piece, he asked for a copy of the panorama and used it as the basis of his wall drawing. His assistant drew a section of the panorama on the wall, and others were asked to successively trace the drawing as closely as possible just below. Nearly twenty years later, Lucier wrote a new version of the piece to coincide with the filming of a scene in the documentary on his work, No Ideas but in Things (2013). Panorama 2 (2011) is based on Lewitt’s resulting wall drawing; many string players try to follow the trombone line as accurately as possible. In both the visual and musical attempts at imitation, success is more apparent in the aggregate than in its parts: the lines become imprecise, but form a vibrant whole. The Welsh violinist and improviser Angharad Davies also used line drawings in her score for Cofnod Pen Bore/Morning Records (2011), but in this case they are meant to focus on improvisation, and are “layered and interpreted in any way by the performers.” Like the Zug mountain range, these lines are taken from factual data (“the composer’s own body temperature taken over a three year period”). They are presented on transparency sheets, so that the individual sheets (each representing a month) can be combined in various ways. In the performance on wandelweiser und so weiter, the performers do not seem to be following any obvious upward/downward progression, either in pitch or amplitude, as would be most predictable, but are each finding their own trajectory through their page or overlaid pages.101 For the Canadian composer and artist Chiyoko Szlavnics, drawing is a fundamental first step of the compositional process. “It begins with the creation of a drawing—a work of two-dimensional art, designed to represent the fullness of sound.”102 Visual images are conceived as and ultimately translated to sound images. Two of the hallmarks of the resulting sounds are glissandi and beating. The listener is set on a path from one pitch to another, and the intersections with sine tone that occur create beating which is part of that journey. For Szlavnics, this process makes the compositional work at once more abstract (not dealing with specific pitches or rhythms but working in an entirely different medium)

Physicalities

99

and more concrete (pencil has reached paper, and the result will have a direct effect on the sound). Once the drawing is complete, she transforms it into a score in four phases: 1. I superimpose horizontal and vertical grids on the image (define global scales), 2. I adjust the drawing and grid (set regions), 3. I name all the pitches (specify justintonation ratios; make local decisions) and orchestrate the work (colour and/or fuse sound), and 4. I produce a score more or less in traditional musical notation.103

For Gradients of Detail (2005–06), Szlavnics had ideas both for the sound and image of the piece as she began generating the material. The drawing was to be an “organic, plant-like figure,” and the instruments were to create “unfamiliar chords,” and to play between several critical bands. “So I began,” she wrote, “by drawing a plant-like figure, which had two main horizontal lines (an interval), out of which grew small bumps (or bulges), and which was traversed by two delicate lines, like the tendrils of an ivy.”104 Szlavnics says of the listening perspective that “the music demands full concentration, but at the same time, requires an openness and an ability to be in the moment, to let the music happen, to drop expectations.”105 The long duration of each motion is distinct from stasis; it is not sameness, but slowness. It is through this slowness that the listener is brought inside the shape. There is nowhere else to go. This sense

Figure 3.11  Gradients of Detail, 3 drawings, 2005. © Chiyoko Szlavnics

100

Experimental Music Since 1970

of ­immersion is often suggested by Szlavnics’ work. It is so clear where the sound has been and where it is going that the repercussions of that motion, both acoustically and in the psyche of the listener, become the primary considerations. What is happening in that space? What are the events of the trajectory and its intersections, both with other instruments and with sine tones? One might think that such consistent motion would become its own sort of stillness, but the way these components interact creates enough instability and uncertainty that such a state is not reached. There are no sounds other than these trajectories and their interactions. Even silence is only an introductory margin. In (a)long lines: we’ll draw our own lines (2004), the players begin their sounds after ten seconds. There are no breaks for the rest of the piece. Lines are perpetually being drawn by the instruments with their slow glissandi, which interact with other lines drawn by sine tones to create beating patterns. These beatings are most dynamic when one line is ever so slightly over or under another. In the slowness of Szlavnics’ work, this audible friction of the impact of one line upon another opens up a chasm to the unknown. Sonic behavior is no longer only linear, but a series of intended but unpredictable consequences. In league with several alter egos in the Grúpat collective, Jennifer Walshe has developed a number of approaches to musical shapes. Like Szlavnics, she tends to make or describe these shapes herself as part of the compositional process, rather than using found shapes. One of Grúpat’s members, Flor Hartigan, “creates staff systems using materials such as barbed wire, lace, and silly string, and invites the audience to make notations on them.” The score of Conturador (2007) is described as “intricate weavings and delineations, contours and finely-graded marks.”106 Scintillia (2007) pays homage to the stick charts made by Marshall Islanders for canoe navigation in its three scores made of bamboo, willow, and wicker. Two of the scores are “based on constellation positions and satellite orbits in the sky over Tallaght on 15 March 2007.”107 Walshe’s most clearly developed shape to sound process is in This is Why People O.D. on Pills/and Jump from the Golden Gate Bridge (2004). After following instructions to learn to skateboard, the performer is told: 4. Compose an imaginary path you would like to skate. This path should push and force you to limits, be rich, beautiful, complicated and stylish, and incorporate some tricks. . . . 5. Choose a pitch on your instrument. Skate your imagined path on this pitch. (You may choose to skate the path in slow-motion.) Every micro-detail of the pitch (tuning, timbre, dynamic, envelope, consistency, colour, texture, weight, feel, pressure, clarity, strength) should correspond absolutely to the experience of skating the path in your head.108

The path is an imaginary one, but it is made real through sound, on a single pitch. By limiting the pitch parameter, Walshe centers the conception and performance of the piece on its textural rather than typically musical qualities. Malcolm Goldstein is a composer, violinist, and improviser who worked with James Tenney and Philip Corner in the Tone Roads Ensemble in the 1960s and 1970s. His

Physicalities

101

graphic score, Jade Mountain Soundings (1983), for bowed string instrument, is similar in its areas of attention to Walshe’s, though it is more prescriptive in that the score includes the image that is to be traced and describes in detail how it is to be executed. The music focuses on aspects of sound-quality/texture expressed through the performance of a bowed string instrument: the physicality of generating the string to sound. Bow pressure, bow speed, and bow placement are fundamental considerations in the sound of this music. The graphic score indicated, by thickness and curve of line, changes in these aspects of performance technique. . . . Each pitch is sustained until, following a line on the graphic score, another Roman numeral is arrived at—at which point the string player changes bow direction and plays another pitch.

Figure 3.12  Malcolm Goldstein: Jade Mountain Soundings © Malcolm Goldstein

102

Experimental Music Since 1970

The thickness of each line is equated with bow pressure or speed, and its curvature shows bow placement. These readings are subject to the performer’s interpretation, but offer specific guidance.109 The path from shape to sound takes various forms in these works. In both the Goldstein and Davies examples, the physical shape directly becomes the notation of the piece. Szlavnics translates her shapes into relatively standard notation. Lucier’s notation of Still Lives incorporates both the shape and aspects of regular notation. The shape of each object was drawn onto the music paper.110 For Walshe, the performer’s imagination of a physical act and its resulting shape are evoked in detail, and that result is then reimagined and performed as sound. But these translations from shape to sound do not always involve created or drawn shapes. They can be found in nature, and their motion can be traced. Warren Burt’s Berries (2011) began with a photograph that he took of berries that had fallen from a tree. He processed the image and ran it through a piece of software that converts graphics to sound. After listening to the output, he stretched the duration of the piece to half an hour, finding that it sounded best in this extended duration. (“I’m nothing if not generous,” he explains.)111 Software and other technologies create the possibility to translate shapes to sound with minimal intervention. Burt stretched the duration of his recording, but then left the result untouched. It is also possible to process such shapes live, even as they move. Through the use of photoresistors, David Behrman, Bob Diamond, and Robert Watts sonified a passing cloud formation in Cloud Music (1974–79). The image of the passing clouds was monitored by video, and the photoresistors were placed on the video screen. As each photoresistor registers the passing clouds, the resistance changes and the sound is affected. One remarkable thing about this work is how transparently the speed of the cloud motion is sonified, not just as a line but also as a complex natural shape.112 Only a few of these works are represented through graphic scores. Sometimes the shape itself drives the work, without any score as intermediary. What they have in common is a quality of imagination that travels freely between physical shapes and sounds in the air.

Notes 1 “SLAPSNAPSTICKPIZZ,” http://www.arcoarcoarco.com/#!engagement/c1pw4. 2 John Lely and James Saunders, eds., Word Events: Perspectives on Notation (New York: Continuum, 2012), 133. 3 Daniel Vezza, “podcast 25-Simon Steen-Andersen,” http://composerconversations. com/2013/03/829. 4 Simon Steen-Andersen, Study for String Instrument #1 (Frederiksburg: Edition-S, 2011). http://www.edition-s.dk/music/simon-steen-andersen/study-for-stringinstrument-1. See one example of performance at https://vimeo.com/62835005. 5 Simon Steen-Andersen, Next to Besides Besides #1 (unpublished score, 2003/2005). http://www.simonsteenandersen.dk/pdf/NextToBesideBesides1.pdf.

Physicalities

103

6 “Simon Steen-Andersen: Next to Beside Besides (2003/6),” YouTube video, 4:27, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJdLMWIiLM. A video clip of a larger ensemble performance is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuGj_ misTxU&feature=youtu.be&t=1m36s, and full performances are at http://www. simonsteenandersen.dk/mp3/SSA-NTBB145.mp3. 7 Rasmus Holmboe, “Have You Seen the Music?” April 8, 2014. http://www.edition-s. dk/news/have-you-seen-the-music. 8 Vezza, “podcast 25.” 9 Megan Beugger, “Liaison,” YouTube video, 14:29, from a June 8, 2013 performance, posted by “Megan Beugger,” June 14, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=RxoGsRtc-9Iu. 10 Aaron Cassidy, “Being Itself a Catastrophe, the Diagram Must not Create a Catastrophe (2009),” YouTube video, 6:19, posted by “ELISION Ensemble,” November 1, 2009, http://youtu.be/LuKTHapd_io, and a second performance, 5:48, posted by “ELISION Ensemble,” November 1, 2009, https://youtu.be/8qygHanllak. 11 Aaron Cassidy, “I am an experimental composer,” posted December 29, 2012, http:// aaroncassidy.com/experimental-composer. 12 See Mieko Kanno, “Prescriptive Notation: Limits and Challenges,” Contemporary Music Review 26, no. 2 (2007): 231–54 for a discussion of prescriptive notation, in particular of Cassidy’s The Crutch of Memory. 13 Aaron Cassidy, The Crutch of Memory, NEOS 11201, 2012, compact disc. 14 Kanno, “Prescriptive notation,” 251. 15 Aaron Cassidy, “Constraint Schemata, Multi-axis Movement Modeling, and Unified, Multi-parametric Notation for Strings and Voices,” Search New Music 10 (2013): 2. http://www.searchnewmusic.org/cassidy.pdf. 16 Cassidy, “Constraint Schemata,” 14. 17 Ibid., 24 18 Aaron Cassidy, A Painter of Figures in Rooms, NMC DL2012-15, 2012, digital release. 19 Cassidy, “Constraint Schemata,” 22, 24. 20 Aaron Cassidy and Aaron Einbond, Noise in and as Music (Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield Press, 2013), 37. 21 See http://youtu.be/wCS4vUym0_8 for one of many examples available online. 22 Kenneth Goldsmith, “Phil Minton: A Doughnut in One Hand,” 1998, at “Kenny G’s A Popular Guide to Unpopular Music,” http://www.wfmu.org/~kennyg/popular.html. 23 Evan Johnson, A General Interrupter to Ongoing Activity (unpublished score, 2011). 24 Johnson, Interrupter, ii. 25 Johnson, “atendant, soufrir,” lists, little stars (unpublished score, 2013). 26 Johnson, vo mesurando (unpublished score, 2012). 27 Johnson, die bewegung der augen (unpublished score, 2011–12). A recording is available at http://fociarts.com/music-we-care-about-1-ray-evanoff. 28 Johnson, inscribed, in the center: “1520, Antorff” (unpublished score, 2014). 29 Johnson, my pouert and goyng ouer (unpublished score, 2014), ii. 30 Johnson, vo mesurando. 31 Johnson, Apostrophe 2 (pressing down on my sternum) (unpublished score, 2008–09). 32 Ben Isaacs, All The Things Inside Me are Doing What They Need to be Doing (unpublished score, 2010), https://benisaacscomposer.wordpress.com/works. 33 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOXhUFfJCuQ and https://vimeo. com/22876738.

104

Experimental Music Since 1970

34 Michael Pisaro, “Wandelweiser,” posted September 23, 2009, http://erstwords. blogspot.com/2009/09/wandelweiser.html. 35 Alvin Lucier, Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995), 38. 36 See a performance at https://vimeo.com/81319919. 37 Peter Ablinger, “Orte/Places,” http://ablinger.mur.at/orte.html. 38 Lucier, Reflections, 396. A recording is available at Alvin Lucier, Antiopic, ANSI002, 2005, compact disc. 39 See Lucier, Broken Line, Mode 281, 2015, compact disc, and Reflections, 378. 40 See “Alvin Lucier Project 7/6 Nothing is Real,” YouTube video, 11:06, from a May 20, 2010 performance, posted by “Dag in de Branding,” January 7, 2012, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=adUkYPkPhRg. 41 Alvin Lucier, Ever Present, Mode Records, mode 178, 2007, compact disc. Liner notes, 1. 42 Stuart Dempster, In the Great Abbey of Clement VI. New Albion Records, NA A013, compact disc. John Butcher, Resonant Spaces. Confront 17, 2008, compact disc. Michael Francis Duch, Tomba Emmanuel. SOFA Music SOFA 543, 2014, compact disc. 43 Yoshi Wada, Lament for the Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile, EM Records, EM1074CD, 2007, compact disc. Liner notes. 44 Paul Panhuysen, “Little Souls Singing in the Sun,” http://www.paulpanhuysen.nl/ popup/w3/10.htm. 45 See http://vimeo.com/36148437 and http://www.paulpanhuysen.nl/popup/ rp2012/2.htm. 46 Paul Panhuysen, Partitas for Long Strings, XI Records, 1998, compact disc. Liner notes, 8. 47 Ibid., 10. 48 Ibid., 10. 49 Ibid., 16. 50 See discussion in Chapter 2, Learning by Making. 51 See Alvin Lucier on “‘Music On A Long Thin Wire’ interview by Jason Gross,” April 2000, http://www.furious.com/perfect/ohm/lucier.html, Music on a Long Thin Wire, Lovely Music, CD 1011, 1992, compact disc, and Reflections, 360. 52 Rolf Julius, Raining, Western Vinyl, WV93, 2012, compact disc. See http:// westernvinyl.com/shop/wv93. 53 For other examples, see the Western Vinyl releases at http://westernvinyl.com/ artists/rolf-julius. 54 “Music for the Ears,” http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv75. 55 “LARM review by Trine Friis Sørensen,” http://www.kabircarter.com/report.html. 56 Michael Winter, “Quieting Rooms,” http://www.unboundedpress.org/quieting_ rooms_score_final.pdf. 57 “About.” http://parkinsonsaunders.wordpress.com. 58 James Saunders, “Object Network (2012),” http://www.james-saunders.com/ composing-2/object-network-2012. 59 Saunders, “Composing,” http://www.james-saunders.com/composing-2. 60 Saunders, “with paper (2006/08, 2009-),” http://www.james-saunders.com/ composing-2/with-paper-20068-2009. 61 Saunders, “Surfaces (2010),” http://www.james-saunders.com/composing-2/ surfaces-2010. 62 Alwynne Pritchard, e-mail message to author, October 24, 2015.

Physicalities

105

63 Sven-Åke Johansson, “Harding Greens,” http://www.sven-akejohansson.com/en/ composition/harding-greens. 64 See a second video clip at https://vimeo.com/115830783. The full recording on DVD is available at http://www.sven-akejohansson.com/en/discography/harding-greens. 65 “Experimentum Mundi (1981),” http://www.giorgiobattistelli.it/en/opere/teatromusicale/experimentum-mundi. 66 Giorgio Battistelli, Experimentum Mundi, Naxos 2059948, 2015, DVD. 67 Cheryl Leonard, “Music for Rocks and Water,” http://www.allwaysnorth.com/ rocksandwater.html. 68 Leonard, “Han Shan Tree.” http://www.allwaysnorth.com/hanshan.html. 69 Alison Knowles, Fluxsweet, Rossbin, RS024, 2006, compact disc. http://www.rossbin. com/rs024.htm. 70 Quoted in Julia Robinson, “The Sculpture of Indeterminacy: Alison Knowles’s Beans and Variations,” Art Journal 63, no. 4 (2004): 113. 71 Ingrid Chu and Savannah Gorton, “Alison Knowles: An Interview with the Seminal Fluxus Artist,” November 11, 2011, http://performamagazine.tumblr.com/ post/12642141632/alison-knowles-an-interview-with-the-seminal-fluxus. 72 “Alison Knowles: Paper Weather Instruments,” May 1, 2013, http://subtropics. org/2013/05/01/alison-knowles-paper-weather-instruments. 73 Alison Knowles, interview with Gustavo Matamoros, 1995, http://subtropics.org/ fishtank-radio-interviews. 74 Hanna Hartman, “Borderlines,” YouTube video, 10:16, from a June 1, 2012 performance by the Curious Chamber Players, posted by “Bvnmpotsdam,” August 22, 2012, https://youtu.be/Y_pIqNnfM3w. For more closely visible examples of some of these processes see https://vimeo.com/25547140. 75 Hanna Hartman, “Rainbirds,” Vimeo video, 8:17, posted by “Uli Decker,” June 12, 2012, https://vimeo.com/43936443. 76 Hanna Hartman, http://www.hannahartman.de/index.html. 77 See http://femmes-savantes.net/en/lesfemmessavantes/les-femmes-savantes. 78 “Andrea Neumann,” http://femmes-savantes.net/en/lesfemmessavantes/andreaneumann. 79 Andrea Neumann, “Playing Inside Piano.” Echtzeitmusik, 205. 80 “Andrea Neumann | Concert.” Vimeo video, 15:37, posted by “Kutin,” August 31, 2010, https://vimeo.com/14577016. 81 Matthias Haenisch, “Materiality and Agency in Improvisation: Andrea Neumann’s ‘Inside Piano,’” Noise in and as Music, 167. 82 Ricardo Arias, “solo de batería global (balloon kit solo),” Vimeo video, 1:11, posted by “Ricardo Arias,” January 13, 2010, https://vimeo.com/8723193. See also Música Global, Nur/Nicht/Nur BERSLTON -102 12 02, 2004, compact disc. 83 See Judy Dunaway, “Drone Improvisation on Bass Balloon,” YouTube video, 5:20, posted by “Jeweltone16ONE,” May 30, 2008, https://youtu.be/aWpqZckpsUY, and other examples at http://www.jeweltone16.org/judydunaway/listen.html. 84 Rie Nakajima, “Occasions_002,” http://www.rienakajima.com/_work/_installations. html/Occasions002.html. 85 Nakajima, “Occasions_001,” http://www.rienakajima.com/_work/_installations. html/Occasions001.html. 86 Nakajima, “Pendulums,” http://www.rienakajima.com/_work/_installations.html/ pendulums.html.

106

Experimental Music Since 1970

87 “Rie Nakajima @ Audiograft 2014,” Vimeo video, 9:48, posted by “Audiograft,” March 29, 2014, http://vimeo.com/90363481. This and other performances are documented at http://www.rienakajima.com/_work/_performances.html/ Performance.html. 88 Peter Meanwell, “On Location,” The Wire 361, March 2014, 83. 89 Jack Chuter, “Live: The New Experimentalists @ Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, 14/01/2014,” January 15, 2014, http://www.attnmagazine.co.uk/performance/7177. 90 “Pierre Berthet,” http://pierre.berthet.be/spip.php?rubrique3. 91 “Expiratory (Vacuum © inverted),” http://pierre.berthet.be/spip.php?rubrique14. 92 “Leerlauf,” http://www.sergebaghdassarians.net/pages/leerlauf.html. 93 “Kritische Masse,” http://www.sergebaghdassarians.net/pages/kritischemasse.html. 94 “Aerobic Exercise,” http://www.sergebaghdassarians.net/pages/aerobicexercise.html. 95 Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai, Cyclo.id (Berlin: Gestalten, 2011), preface. 96 James Pritchett, “The Completion of John Cage’s Freeman Etudes,” Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 2 (Summer, 1994): 266. 97 For a detailed examination of these three pieces, see Pritchett, The Music of John Cage, pages 109–25. 98 For a discussion of Ryoanji, see Pritchett, 188–91. 99 Alvin Lucier, Still Lives, Lovely Music, CD 5012, 2001, compact disc. Liner notes. 100 Lucier, Reflections, 272. 101 wandelweiser und so weiter, compact disc box set, Another Timbre 56, 2012. Liner notes, 11. 102 Chiyoko Szlavnics, “Opening Ears: The Intimacy of the Detail of Sound,” Filigrane 4 (2006), http://www.chiyokoszlavnics.org/texts/details.pdf, 1. 103 Ibid., 5. 104 Ibid., 10. 105 Ibid., 11. 106 Jennifer Walshe, “Conturador,” Soundcloud track, 19:57, 2013, https://soundcloud. com/grupat/conturador-by-flor-hartigan. 107 Walshe, “‘Scintillia’ by Detleva Verens,” Soundcloud track, 6:20, 2013, https:// soundcloud.com/grupat/scintillia-by-detleva-verens. 108 Jennifer Walshe, This is Why People O.D. on Pills/And Jump from the Golden Gate Bridge (unpublished score, 2004). 109 Malcolm Goldstein, Jade Mountain Soundings, in Sounding the Full Circle: Concerning Music Improvisation and Other Related Matters (Sheffield, VT: Malcolm Goldstein, 1988), http://www.frogpeak.org/unbound/goldstein/goldstein_fullcircle. pdf?lbisphpreq=1, 63–67. 110 Lucier, Still Lives. Liner notes. 111 Warren Burt, “Berries,” Soundcloud, posted by “NFSA Australia,” 2015, https:// soundcloud.com/nfsaaustralia/sets/lateral-listening-ep-13-warren. 112 Nicolas Collins, Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (New York: Routledge, 2009), 214. See video excerpts at https://vimeo. com/51240280.

4

Perception 4.1  The position of the listener How is a listener invited to place herself in a work? The works in this section offer carefully considered perspectives—literal or figurative, physical or imaginative—from which they can be experienced. Listening is not all that is required here: This work takes place within a context that needs to be considered thoughtfully, often based on its visual or visceral aspects as well as the specific behaviors of sound. Pauline Oliveros has established a practice called Deep Listening that fosters aural engagement with one’s surroundings: “Listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what one is doing.”1 She further explains: Deep Listening is expanding our attention. In Deep Listening we talk about two forms: focal attention and global attention. Focus [focal] is more like digital, in that focused attention needs to be renewed moment by moment, in order to exclusively follow a stream of some sort. A stream of speech for example; you have to keep renewing your attention to what is being said. . . . Global attention is expanding to take in and listen to everything that is around you; inside of you. When we do this, and we can expand almost infinitely to include, and this is what I call inclusive listening, everything that is possible to listen to. Most of the time we are discarding what’s going on as not important, but in order to do what I call Deep Listening we have to include everything.

The inclusivity of attention, questioning of what we hear and how we hear it, how we digest or process or remark upon it, is integral to Deep Listening. Oliveros conceives of her works as “attentional strategies”2 that lead to this approach. Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (2005) is a small book filled with such strategies, including warm-ups, breathing exercises, and detailed descriptions of each activity, including journaling, walking, conversing, recording, interacting, and singing. The exercises were written down for use in workshop situations, but can be done by anyone with an open attitude. One of the participants in Oliveros’s sessions comments: When I really listen in this way I hear differently, in the sense that merely being open to listening changes how I perceive sounds, which in turn changes how I listen, and so on in an ever expansive fashion. This is where discernment comes into play.3

108

Experimental Music Since 1970

While Oliveros is committed to Deep Listening as a practice, there are all sorts of other creative ways of focusing attention on the listener’s perceptual experience.

Architectures of sound Jürg Frey is a Swiss member of the Wandelweiser collective. In his work, the sense of place is metaphorical. The listener moves around within the space created by his sounds and silences in a way that has more to do with thought than with acoustics, physical placement, or the passage of time. He describes his music as either “completely without individual parts,” or with sections “tied to each other by an invisible thread,” with as many new beginnings as there are sections.4 The Streichquartett 2 (1998–2000) is a compelling example of the first type. A sustained chord is pulled across the strings, followed by a brief pause. In the Bozzini Quartet’s recording of this piece, the quality of this sound is both grounded and ethereal, present and otherworldly. There is another break in the sound, and following this the duration from one chord to the next varies slightly, hovering between four and eight seconds. The listener is placed in a single, suspended moment that is expanded—never broken or disrupted—into a duration of thirty minutes.5 Frey could be referring to this piece or many of his other works when he reflects: In place of the memory of individual events we sense rather a direct manifestation of life, a richer experience of life. It is not simply an idea; an idea appears to me as a lower category in our consciousness. It is the reality that one is alive that makes us joyful in this moment. It is the feeling that I am here and life is present. This is an unambiguous sensation, but at the same time it is very complex because it is so encompassing. And it is with this sense of living that the room, often with a minimum of sound, is completely filled.6

The sense of filling the room often translates for Frey into the image of his work as architecture. There is both structure (a space to occupy) and empty space (room to move around). Frey explains: A place or a space is created, and it is essential that it has empty space. The material will be used to limit this space, and this space will be influenced by the type of use of the products and the different qualities of these materials. In music there are then the surface of the sound, scope, its registers and the relationship between the different levels of the breaks that hold this volume open and permeable.7

Silence is an essential component of these sounding architectures. So, too, is a kind of flatness. He writes, “A characterization would disturb the identity that proceeds from the compositional-temporal architecture and the beauty that is hidden deep in the tones.”8 Frey is drawn to sounds that are conducive to the creation of such spaces. “The sounds are like markers in time and space and give a kind of beauty to the structure

Perception

109

of sounding, listening, and composition. It is a being-there, a slight but clear presence without urgency.”9 He quotes the poet Fernando Pessoa’s phrase about a “light, fresh breeze . . . which lends personality to the air,” and then explains that this breeze is his “idea of music. The air in the space is brought into motion, and the nature of the sounds lends personality to the air. There is not one artist who brings the sound across,—here the sound comes across itself, if the player lets it, lets it go.”10 The player is in a position of allowing, of listening, of maintaining a state of what Frey terms “permeability” throughout the performance. Despite its apparent simplicity, Frey’s music asks much of and offers much to both the listener and the performer. An unusual quality of attention, relaxed and yet steady, is needed. “The pieces never flow easily into time,” he writes, “but instead have a formal resistance, in which the emotional power inherent to the form develops.”11 This emotional power depends on the willingness of the listener to consciously place herself within the form of such a piece, as if she were stepping inside and walking through a building. Of the performer, Frey demands a technique so robust that it subsumes all show of skill, sending it deep into the background of the listener’s experience of the work. The interpreter deploys his mastery of the instrument to achieve a virtuosity consisting in producing sounds in such a way that he himself disappears and all that remains is sound in space. Any insecurity, be it instrumental, emotional or physical, immediately shifts the interpreter into the foreground and interferes with the monochrome experience. . . . He reacts with seismographic sensitivity to the slightest change, the subtlest crossing of the threshold between monochromely undirected situations and the shaping of time, which suggests a direction and a path.12

In Ohne Titel (2 Violinen) (1995–96) and the first two string quartets, the players act as a single instrument, always starting a dyad or chord in unison and leaning into that sound together. This stability of configuration and attack invites a focus of attention on rhythmic and instrumental instabilities for the duration of the work. In Frey’s work, the ear is often drawn to the relative states of sounds, from solid, stable sounds to something with much more delicacy or fluctuation. He tends to present solidity alongside instability in one of several ways. In Streichtrio (1997), a technique is described in the score that results in “a mixture of tone and noise. Emerging overtones open up.”13 Clear pitches may also be placed next to more amorphous sounds in the orchestration of the piece. In 60 Pieces of Sound (2009), two instruments play notated pitches, and the third is indeterminate. “The ensemble plays pitches and/or noises. A rich sound with overtones is possible.”14 One player in Time Intent Memory (2012) is assigned to non-pitched instruments, and is asked to add “background and shadows.” But here the contrast between instruments is softened, as all of the music is to be “lightly touched and sketched.”15 A third means of presentation of such delicacy unfolds over time. Frey will sometimes embed an extremely delicate moment between solid sound objects, as if to protect them within a defined space.

110

Experimental Music Since 1970

In effect, the solidity of structure of Frey’s compositional work provides the listener with a protected space in which to breathe.

Immersions The American composer Laurie Spiegel is known as the developer of the influential MusicMouse software, which is just one example of her interest in how people participate in musical processes. In the notes to The Expanding Universe (1975), she writes: The violence of sonic disruption, disjunction, discontinuity and sudden change desensitizes the listener and pushes us away so we are no longer open to the subtlest sounds. But with continuity and gentleness, the ear becomes increasingly re-sensitized to more and more subtle auditory phenomena within the sound that immerses us.

In this piece she strives for a “sufficiently supportive continuity” that invites the listener to let down her guard and be fully attentive.16 She explains further: It seems that people are fending off a great deal now. The dominant process is overload compensation: how can I rule out things that I don’t want to focus on so that I can ingest a manageable amount of information and really be involved in it. Attention is now the scarce commodity. Information used to be the scarce commodity, “information” including music of course.17

Like Frey, she creates these spaces out of sound. There is no remarkable physical component to The Expanding Universe, but tones seem to emanate from one another under the influence of a powerful gravitational tonality. There is fluidity within the environment but its dominating principles never shift. In the American multimedia artist Camille Norment’s work, a different type of immersion takes place: a participant is often invited into a physical environment that is delimited in surprising ways. Notes from the Undermind (2001) takes place in a padded cell—“a hidden space of the social unconscious.” Poles ring at different pitches until they are grasped by people in the space and muted, and their resonance is affected by speech and other sounds.18 Conversely, people’s actions or sounds are not disruptive but disrupted in Dead Room (2000), in which every surface is covered with sound insulation and subwoofers create “subtle intangible disturbance.”19 Within the Toll (2011) is an eight-channel sound installation that creates a sound barrier between the greenery of a sculpture park and a parking area: Like a shimmering sonic mist, the seductive yet haunting voice of the glass armonica encircles a “swell” in the landscape that simultaneously recalls a swollen belly and a burial mound. The hovering compositions and their subtle spatial dynamics alter the psychology of the space by intermittently echoing layers of

Perception

111

sound as musical fragments across a clearing, like a sonic memory in a call and response with itself.20

In all of these cases, the participant is informed through both sight and sound that she is in some sort of bubble—a strange space in which things operate differently. Max Neuhaus draws listeners into his work through subtle differences. It is not loud sound that catches their attention, but a relative silence in the midst of sound (as in the Times Square installation21) or a sound that was there and suddenly is not (Eybesfeld) or that shifts almost unnoticeably (Three to One). By filling a space with sound, however subtle, and equating it with a space to be inhabited, Neuhaus is gently but effectively immersing the listener in an entirely transformed sense of place. This is not an attempt at controlling experience, but rather at creating “catalysts for shifts in frame of mind.” Sometimes when I finish a work I take several people through it before it opens to get a sense of the range of what they are hearing, but I am not interested in knowing what they are experiencing. In a way it is none of my business. I am concerned with the catalyst, the initiator; their individual pathways are very private, their own.22

Through such an immersion in sound, he enables the listener to have her own interaction with time, place, and memory. Phil Julian (aka Cheapmachines) could be talking about Neuhaus’s work as well as his own when he writes: What interested me was music that “overwhelms” the listener in some way, or more specifically that completely inhabits the space it is given. This does not necessarily have to be achieved via extremes of volume, but can come more via a physical “presence” to the sound.23

For Neuhaus, the physical presence of sound is more likened to color than it is to any sort of physical overpowering; yet this color is immersive. In many of these works, sound colors advance and recede according to the physical location of the listener. Part of the description of Eybesfeld (2007) reads: Walking along a graveled road one enters an invisible volume of sound. The space enfolds its aural context. . . . But it is not until listeners step out of this field of sound and are confronted with the reality of a new dimension there, that they realize it.24

It is not until leaving the sound field that the change is perceptible. What emerges gradually disappears abruptly. The absence of sound is more apparent than its presence, and retroactively reframes the last few moments of the listener’s experience. This momentary shift becomes a more palpable experience in Three to One (1992). There are three rooms, each connected by a stairway. Each room has a different sound

112

Experimental Music Since 1970

color. According to Neuhaus’s design, the ascent begins without an awareness of the shift in sound color, but in the listener’s descent, “aural memories begin to fuse the distinctions into one differentiated whole.”25 Three things that are unknown, each discovered successively, become one thing that is known in context. The stairways might have been doorways, but that would erase the physical work involved in creating such a sense of transition. A piece that does use doorways as transitional spaces is Untitled (1996), placing a different sound color in each of the arches: placing listeners in their present in their future in their past according to their moment26

By coloring these prominent points of transition with sound, Neuhaus overlays a static experience (sound in space) with a temporal experience (walking) and complicates the linearity of the walk. The braids of anticipation, experience, and memory are unraveled through the fixedness of these sounds in traversable space. In Neuhaus’s work, the color is present and can be inhabited, while in Peter Ablinger’s Sehen und Hören (1994–), “movements in space . . . condense into color spectra.” This process is part of his idea of “verticalization,”27 in which linear time is transformed into qualitative blocks of sound. The Sehen und Hören pieces are, in Ablinger’s thought, emphatically musical works that are presented as photographs. They have been taken with a moving camera with extended exposure time. The motion is a linear process that maps to a musical conception of time, and the exposure time has an effect that correlates to the processing techniques used in pieces such as his IEAOV series.28

Figure 4.1  Peter Ablinger: Ohne Titel (2002), Untitled (12 photographs) © Peter Ablinger

Perception

113

This difference between the horizontal and the vertical can be likened to a traditional concert experience versus an installation. Linear time becomes navigable space. In the Ablinger example, the photographs are not an immersion in themselves, but they are documents of the transition from a narrative experience to a nontemporal experience of color and form.29 Phill Niblock describes himself as “the forgotten Minimalist.”30 His drones, like Ablinger’s photograph pieces, suggest a nontemporal experience. They are continuities, a narrowing of attention to the point that a typical object of focus (surface pitch or rhythmic movement) does not hold the attention, but instead its results do. It is as if the tones that are played simply become boundaries or containers in which something else happens. On the Touch Three release, the breathing and other transitions of the instrumentalist are edited out. The attack and release of a note are two of the aspects that define it most clearly, and yet in each of these tracks, Niblock has placed us in the middle of the sound as quality and accumulation.31 We listen to tones that emanate from a particular instrument, but somehow we are not really listening to the instrument itself, just as one doesn’t really see an elephant if all that is visible is a patch of its skin. Where in Ablinger’s Sehen und Hören pieces, time becomes color, in Niblock’s hands, instrument becomes color. In Alto Tune (2004) there are very gradual accumulations of sound. A new tone is introduced after some time, as if the other tones have generated it. Whether the instruments are saxophones or low brass, as in disseminate (1998), the experience doesn’t seem to have changed in nature, but to have transposed.32 In every aspect of his work, Niblock is directing attention to the listening experience itself. In the winter solstice concerts held at Experimental Intermedia, he broadcasts different videos throughout the space. As a result, the viewer must make choices about how to focus his or her attentions on the diverse range of stimuli. . . . Yet, there is no intended matching of film and recorded sound in exhibition. On the contrary, it is Niblock’s goal to expand these singular, enigmatic texts outward, into the register of perceptual experiment in which the audience becomes engaged in a non-prescriptive form of phenomenological participation in which sound and image maintain the seemingly paradoxical relationship of simultaneity and interdependence.33

One piece is superimposed with another. Niblock is deliberately unexacting about the way this aggregate is to be presented or taken in. There is not a definitive view, experience, or performance in terms of the configuration of the content, but the listener must piece it together. Niblock is adamant about the fact that each person’s reaction is unique, and not guided by him. On being questioned closely about his musical intentions, he responds, “This music is the statement I set out to make. It is not to lead somewhere else.”34 As the interviewer describes his own particular response to the work, Niblock steadfastly refuses to either validate or deny his perspective, except insofar as it is that person’s experience. “I am interested in these different perceptions of what is happening.”35 In The Movement of People Working (2003), Niblock’s footage

114

Experimental Music Since 1970

of people around the world engaged in manual labor is played simultaneously with a sequence of his musical works. There is a constant effort by many viewers and listeners to find correlations between the two and to ascribe these correlations to Niblock. We are conditioned to map sight to sound, both in everyday life and in the media, so this impulse is a difficult one to break. When Niblock was probed on this point, his response was definitive. You told me once before that there’s no relationship in your mind whatsoever between the images and the music, but I wanted to push the point a little . . . PN Any relationship is purely bullshit and your problem . . .!36

It is challenging to pull Niblock’s pieces apart for special consideration, and this challenge seems deliberate in its many dimensions. A number of his works are presented in The Movement of People Working, but they are part of the fabric of the whole video work, which is continuous, and emphatically not divided up by section. In addition to this, Niblock tends to accumulate his pieces as he accumulates his tones, superimposing one on another. In terms of “hearing a piece,” or hearing Niblock’s work, the best approach is to give up and immerse oneself in his larger project. “I am sitting down to learn what X is, what it sounds like and how it behaves,” is an attitude that will only lead to frustration with this work. There are some simple answers: there are drones and accumulations of tones and beating. These factors are often present in his work. But the more interesting aspect comes when you have put yourself in the type of situation he has made the music for: an engulfment of at least two (and quite possibly three) of the senses. The third sense comes into play through the fact that the beating is so much a part of the music, and builds so unremittingly, that it can be felt as much as it is heard. For Niblock, it is crucial that the music be heard in multiple dimensions. “I mean, the whole idea of this music coming out of a stereo system instead of a quad system, to me is a disaster. Because it isn’t engaging the space of the room, the acoustic environment.”37 The music is to saturate the space: I am interested in filling the space and the time so that the music does not have this kind of pulsing in the air space, this rhythmic pulse. It is very much about filling the performance space. I am interested in having the space filled with sound waves so that it gets a different kind of plasticity, not so much more openness, but more like water.38

In this fluid environment, the listener makes her own experience, choosing how to track any images, how to associate them with the sound, how to inhabit the space that is filled with this sound, and how to engage with the beats it produces. Paul DeMarinis’s Rain Dance (1998) offers a different manner of immersion, one that he calls an “interactive and literally immersive sound environment.” Water streams fall onto the umbrellas that the participants are holding. The water passes through nozzles that affect the vibrations, and specific pitches emerge with the impact of the

Perception

115

drops on the umbrella.39 It is through the impact that only occurs with the listener’s presence that sound is produced. A different and far more constrictive immersion takes place in Re-Titled (2006), which takes place in a tunnel under a bridge. Lights are activated by sound, so the tunnel is entirely dark when the space is quiet. Pulses of light are excited by momentary sounds, and traffic on the roadway “fills the space with an enormously loud roar,” as well as with light. The presence and absence of light reveals “the nodes and nulls in the sound itself.”40 As with Niblock’s work, this piece creates an immersive experience through a combination of architecture, image, and sound. The form or development of the work itself is not significant or even trackable. What changes is the listener’s perception of how one thing relates to another, and the impact of the entire situation. In Standing Waves (1976), the composer and trombonist Stuart Dempster creates an immersive situation by combining a loud note with a particularly reverberant acoustic—the Grand Chapel in Avignon—in such a way that the note as he plays it is indistinguishable from its echo. This single first note, after I stop playing, continues for 14 seconds into silence just before the next note. You will eventually learn to tell when I quit playing and leave only the echo, but at first you may be deceived.

Dempster continues the interaction for twenty-two minutes, emphasizing various partials and multiphonics. The technology is simply the acoustic of the chapel, which causes the trombone sounds to fold back on themselves, completely filling the space at times with sound. The sound mass is occasionally lightened through deliberate pauses. The quality of sound is very distinct from both the Niblock and the DeMarinis examples, but it is another way of enveloping the listener through the use of a reverberant acoustic. Dempster multiplies the forces in the 1978/87 version of this piece through layering of multiple tape parts, creating beatings and layerings with the live performance that offer a different, more fluid form of submergence in the sound. This time the performance is within a concert hall, and is not as reverberant as the chapel, but the five-channel sound system increases the sound mass significantly within this space.41 The Spanish sound artist Francisco López offers another type of immersion by creating situations filled with unknowns. The listener hears sounds without associated images or documentary information. López denies the documentary function that is so commonly associated with field recordings. “In my conception,” he writes, “the essence of sound recording is not that of documenting or representing a much richer and more significant world, but a way to focus on and access the inner world of sounds.” La Selva (1997) is a field recording made in the Costa Rican rainforest, and it is brimming with layers of activity. López sees this release not as a document of something, but as an opportunity for listening. We know where it was recorded, but little more than that. López offers the challenge to enter into the experience of the document itself. The richness of this sound matter in nature is astonishing, but to appreciate it in depth we have to face the challenge of profound listening. We have to shift

116

Experimental Music Since 1970

the focus of our attention and understanding from representation to being. Or, in other terms, we should be free to do this. When listening to this CD, I hope you will desire to be there, in La Selva, but I also -and especially- hope you will be amazed to be here, in La Selva.42

In his live performances, López is known to offer blindfolds to audience members that they can voluntarily use to create a more concentrated listening situation. The La Selva release can of course be heard in any way the listener chooses, but the sounds themselves offer a deeply immersive experience.

Distances of sound Sounds travel and can be heard at various distances. “Spatialization” is a term that applies to work in which the sound producing elements are deliberately placed in a way that highlights these variations in distance. This term applies to some, but not the majority of the works considered in this section. The perception of increasing and decreasing distance can be accurate and literal. It can also depend on manipulations, such as John Chowning’s “Simulation of Moving Sound Sources,” which “controls the distribution and amplitude of direct and reverberant signals between the loudspeakers to provide the angular and distance information, and introduces a Doppler shift to enhance velocity information.”43 The physical sense of distance can be combined with a psychological sense of distance, as in Laetitia Sonami’s work. In other examples, the use of floating speakers adds an element of indeterminacy to the distances of sounds. Distance is felt in a very personal way in the sonic beds conceived by the British composer and sound artist Kaffe Matthews,44 Pascale Battus’s massages, and in the home environments of Bill Dietz’s Tutorial Diversions. Laetitia Sonami has developed an instrument called the Lady’s Glove, with which she uses MIDI signals to control synthesizers and samples. She writes: After 30 years of aimless wandering, I came up with a way of categorizing sounds. I think of them as distances—mainly distances from me but also distances from each other; geographical distance, or psychological distance, or distance on an imaginary line which stretches from iconic realism to abstraction.

She explains some of her logic and associations. Ease of recognition and quietness are associated with closeness, and loudness and unintelligibility with distance. “The rodeo PA’s, the Japanese politician PA’s, the police PA’s: they all speak in the void.” She writes that she has “the urge to constantly juggle distances by shifting sounds like a card trickster in the hope that it is the listener who will move freely between imaginary anchors.”45 She has developed a performance technique that aligns with this conception of distance. With the Lady’s Glove, a gesture near the body will have a different effect than the same gesture far from the body, and its distance from the ground will also

Perception

117

affect it.46 Psychological distance and physical distance play together as factors in her performative practice.47 These distances need not be large to present discernible change. Pascal Battus has been performing Sound Massages since 2000 using very small sounds and motions. My aim is to bypass the medium in which the sound wave propagates and divides—air—and substitute instead skin, bone and flesh. This radically upsets the listener’s space and inner listening. The interesting point is that I can neither hear nor feel what the listener hears and feels.

These sounds are heard only by a single individual, and at times “seem to come from within his or her own head.” In another type of massage, the sounds are made in the air around the listener’s ears. In both cases, there is an experience of sound that is directed inward. Sounds are related to the immediate space either just outside of or within the listener’s own head.48 The dynamics of distance are internalized for the American composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi. His recommendation of headphones for hearing his work bypasses all of the apparent visual or physically traceable aspects of distance. The use of close-mic positions for recording is also part of an “aesthetics of myopia.” Utilizing close microphone positions and insisting on headphones, music was to become an event that played itself out as vividly and as crisply as possible, between the ears, in the cavity of the brain. Short individual sounds were then sampled and classified in a computer database; this allowed for the disembodied and immediate shifts of one recorded event to another, bypassing even the very brief transitions required by the performer’s musculature to produce changes.49

The rapid shifts from one performed sound to another present one form of disorientation. Another, more visceral type is the use of reverberation as a dynamic element of the work. Ming Tsao writes, “One is often jolted from that experience, awakened, through magnified sounds and abrupt shifts of perspective.”50 Reverberations can be “shattered,” as they are in the “Crustacean” sections of The Jargon of Nothingness (2007). Tsao describes this reverberation as “one in which slices of the decay of a sound are pasted to others obeying a very different room acoustics (i.e., transgressing ‘the natural law of uninterrupted decay’).”51 They can also be “infected” (turned inside out). Magnifications can be projected at an angle, and the level of focus and distance of the sounds are also variables. There are three such states: “(a) distant/ blurred, (b) distant/crisp (via spectacles) and (c) close/crisp (via magnification).”52 This conception of sound construction in Jargon of Nothingness is not only visual, but also tactile. Sounds are objects to be manipulated, distorted, and transformed, and this activity is projected directly into the ears of the listener. The myopic perspective, brought about both through the close placement of the microphone on acoustic sounds and by hearing the composition through headphones, places the listener in

118

Experimental Music Since 1970

the midst of a complicated situation. The material must be navigated, but pathways are only momentary and ultimately illusory. Finally the sound world must be accepted on its own terms, as a constructed universe that is the real, disorienting experience of the listener for the fifteen minutes of its duration, and possibly a good amount of time afterward. While Takasugi manipulates his recordings to create jarring shifts of perspective, the Russian composer Dmitri Kourliandski also uses “maximally close” microphones in his falsa lectio (2013) release, but does not suggest such shifts. “Thus we tried to gain the effect of entering the instrument, entering the sound anatomy. This effect permitted us to open up lots of hidden noises which are usually swallowed down by the concert hall acoustics. While listening with headphones this sound physiology comes ahead.” The sounds produced by each of the soloists are presented without any sense of removal. If anything, the listener is closer to the sound than the performer. The exertions required of the violinist in prePositions (2008) are intensely audible, as are the mechanisms of the instruments themselves that normally get washed away in the sheen of acoustics. Both FL (2008) and Voice-off (2008) are called “a trip inside the interpreter.” The sounding flute and the voice both rely on the vocal mechanism, and it becomes an experience of vicariously hearing one’s own vocal mechanism in a state of intense exertion.53 Claudia Molitor is a British composer and artist whose 10 mouth installations (2011) conflates listening with the act of eating, presenting ten different ways to eat three different foods: popping sugar, pretzel sticks, and pumpkin seeds. The aim of the piece was three fold, to create an incredibly intimate piece, one that only the participating individual could feel, hear and taste; to draw attention to the fascinating sounds that occur even when engaging in something so every-day as eating; and of course it was a great way to draw attention to the interconnectedness of the senses.54

The listening experience is literally inverted. It is directed toward the activity taking place in a cavity more or less between the ears. Like Takasugi and Kourliandski, Richard Chartier intends much of his work to be heard through headphones. He works in a reductionist line, in what has come to be known as “microsound.” The Series (2000) release55 is “meant to be experienced at low volumes or on headphones,” but this first option seems unlikely to yield any but the most faintly perceptible sounds except under the most perfect of conditions. Will Montgomery writes, “Inevitably, the listener wants to turn up the volume but this never quite works: the high frequencies hardly seem to get any louder and the low frequencies are simply too big for domestic speakers.” Even in the headphone situation, the sounds are elusive. It is only through repetition that it becomes clear that subtle tones are being emitted. As Montgomery puts it, “The music pulls the ears towards its own disappearance.”56 Along with Decisive Forms (2001) and Of Surfaces (2002), this release defies any useful description, except insofar as to underline the necessity of full attention and carefully considered listening conditions.

Perception

119

Listeners and sounds in motion In a large, open space (1994) is a work by James Tenney that calls for twelve or more musicians to be distributed “as widely and evenly as possible,” and to sustain pitches from the given harmonic series. The audience is invited to travel freely within this space. The geography of the space is not mapped to the harmonic series, and its placement shifts with each player’s change of note. The listener is immersed in this changing series, choosing a path through a changing landscape.57 The sound sources are distributed in a way that allows for this navigation. The sounds themselves do not shift in position, but the listeners do. Alvin Lucier has used beating patterns to create actual movements of sound in space, without any directed movement of the sound sources. The piece that explores these phenomena at the greatest level of depth is Still and Moving Lines of Silence in a Family of Hyperbolas (1973–74, 1984), which is “concerned with using sound to sculpt new shapes within a space.” In the voice piece of that set, the singer will “beat the lower [tone] in one direction and the higher one in another direction, and if you’re sitting in the audience you receive those changes of pressure at different places in different parts of the audience.”58 Lucier further explains that “each person in the audience perceives the waves moving by at a different time.”59 The listener is placed within a geography. They do not just imagine that sound is traveling. Each listener actually experiences a different timetable in relation to the sound. Some of this perception of course depends on hearing and attention, but the same person would also experience a different timetable from a different place in the room. The difference in reception is made visible in the section of the work for dancers. Part of the score reads: Any number of dancers discover troughs of quiet sound along axes of pairs of loudspeakers which they may follow, changing directions, if they wish, at intersections. . . . Close tune any number of oscillators, causing hyperbolas between loudspeakers to spin in elliptical patterns through space at speeds determined by the tunings and in directions toward the lower-pitched loudspeakers.60

The motion of these sounds in space is explained simply in relation to Crossings (1982): “The beats move from instrument to loudspeaker when the instrumental sound is higher than the pure wave or from the loudspeaker to the instrument when the instrumental sound is lower.”61 Mary Jane Leach has focused on writing pieces for multiples of the same or similar instruments, and has configured the sounds in place, time, and pitch so as to place the listener in a field of beating patterns. Additionally, the timbral equivalencies between the pitches and instruments offer the semblance that a note is traveling through space, but is otherwise unaltered in its transfer from one performance site to another. In Note Passing Note (1981), “Straight lines indicate actual physical movement,” as the singer passes from one recorded channel to the other on a steady pitch.62 In Trio for Duo (1985) there are four performance sites in the four corners of the room, surrounding

120

Experimental Music Since 1970

the audience: taped alto flute, taped voice, live flute, and live voice. Leach drew on the similarity of her own singing voice to the alto flute, and projected the live parts through speakers to make the four parts sonically equivalent.63 “Lines are passed from voice to voice, weaving a tapestry of matching and contrasting timbres.”64 Ron Kuivila has said that his own work involves “the creation of sound fields that are sensitive to movement.”65 To get at this effect, he has transposed ultrasound into a range audible to humans: Any time something moves, any sound that happens to bounce off the mover is shifted slightly in pitch. This doppler shift is normally too small to be heard. The expansion of pitch intervals just described makes this phenomenon fully audible. Ultrasound is more easily affected by air currents and changes in temperature and humidity. The sound retains this imprint as it is transposed, bringing it within hearing.66

In Untitled (1984), he set up a system that was responsive to people’s movements, and was most sensitive to movements that were slow and steady. The presence of a barrier of broken glass enforced a cautious approach. “Visitors literally moved through a sound world composed for them.”67 Michael Brewster works extensively with sound as it relates to particular spaces, and speaks of his works as acoustic sculptures: Sound has properties beyond its considerable powers of evocation that are actual spacial physical things we can feel and locate with our ears, sometimes with our bodies. Sound has physical size, actual dimensions in feet or meters, as well as density, vibrancy, rhythms and textures. Walking through it in its resonant state provides an experience similar to perusing a landscape but from the inside, with all of your body instead of from the outside with just your eyes. It shows us the “near field.” Like a solid it has volumes, edges, planes, fullnesses, flatnesses, roundnesses, and hollows: the works. It comes “fully equipped” to elaborate our experience sculpturally.

He uses sustained standing waves to “actually press the object of attention around the viewer . . . while locating, dislocating, and relocating their awarenesses of the place they occupy.” It is essential for him that the listener is in a dynamic relationship to the work from the midst of it. Usually we listen from afar, like we see, always at a distance. Our attention expands outward from here to over there. In these acoustic spaces we can hear only here, from in here. The scope of our attention implodes. The where of the experience happens here instead of there.

These works are tuned to a particular space, and like Kuivila’s pieces are sensitive to the movements of their inhabitants, so that someone “could move throughout that space

Perception

121

and cause the whole field to displace itself, and the original quiet area you’d be hiding out in would suddenly become real loud.”68 This work operates in terms of nearness and distance, as in the case of slider (1999): “Three modulated tones slid into the room, blooming into a field of near and distant incidents.”69 Events occur in the space, rather than over time. The Dream House of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela is essentially detemporalized, in that it has been in operation for over twenty years. This installation uses a combination of light, acoustics, and tuning to create an utterly immersive experience. Kyle Gann recounts his experience in the Dream House in 1994: Walk into The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry and you’ll hear a whirlwind of pitches swirl around you. Stand still, and the tones suddenly freeze in place. Within the room, every pitch finds its own little niche where it resonates, and with all those closebut-no-cigar intervals competing in one space (not to mention their elegantly calculated sum- and difference-tones), you can alter the harmony you perceive simply by pulling on your earlobe. . . . Moving your head makes those tones leap from high to low and back, while that cluster in the seventh octave, with its wild prime ratios like 269:271, fizzes in and out. Marian Zazeela’s light sculptures in the same space are the perfect visual analogue.70

The situation created with these tunings and this space invites a dynamic sense of location, and has caused Gann, among other visitors, to navigate that geography as an act of exploration. Bill Dietz writes that his “work has focused on the genealogy of the concert and the performance of listening.”71 His Tutorial Diversions bring the listener back into a home environment in presenting a series of navigations through the listener’s own familiar spaces and materials: At their core, they’re most effective when used on your own, in your own space, with your own sound system, and most importantly with your own source material. There, you’re relating to something you take pleasure in (your favorite song, for instance) in a different way, a way which (because of your personal investment) cannot be shared.72

The setup for a number of these pieces involves running the selected track through specially designed software that alters its dynamic contour. In Lo soffia il cielo . . . così, the new sound file is played through a single speaker, and the listener is to move through the room so as to hear the song at a single dynamic. The distance from the speaker becomes the variable in the control of the listener-performer.73 What would have been a passive listening experience becomes quite literally an active one, as the room is navigated in relation to the loudness of the music. 3-Part Dances (2009–10) uses a parallel concept, but this time the room or even the building can be exited to maintain the volume level.74 In Home Jetty (2013), a large and unobstructed space is to be found, and the task is to “discover the PROFILE’s threshold of audibility.” Dietz

122

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 4.2  Bill Dietz: Home Jetty, Figures 3a, 3b © Bill Dietz suggests that a spiral pattern, either clockwise or counterclockwise, will be the most effective fulfillment of this task.75 A number of methods have been developed to actually move the sound sources. In Tuning Up (2008), Stephen Cornford, in collaboration with Bill Leslie, sustained a chord among balloons.76 Casey Farina and James Diomede’s project CONDOR is a sixchannel audio system played via bluetooth in robotic blimps.77 Lucio Capece works with miniature speakers—sometimes in balloons and at other times in pendulums—that interfere with each other’s space both audibly and visibly. In Music for PENDULUMS and SINE WAVES in Different Tuning Systems (2013), these contrasting tunings further agitate this relationship, as does the feedback emitted by the third speaker.78 Capece writes of another related piece that it operates as a suggestion “to think and perceive sound in terms of movement, distance, light and space.”79 In the Australian composer and instrument builder Greg Schiemer’s A Concert on Bicycles (1983), “an outdoor audience rides bicycles en masse tuned to a radio broadcast played through moving ghetto-blasters.”80 The cyclists hear the sustained sounds from their own vehicles, as well as Doppler effects produced on the other bicycles in motion toward or away from them. Schiemer recalls: Sound reflections off the ground, off stationary objects alongside the bicycle path and off the walls of a tunnel near Scrivener Dam accounted for some interesting effects that had not been anticipated. One of these effects was the impression of sudden aural activity produced simply by a single strong reflection off a stationary object such as a large rock or post. The cyclist would simply experience this as a moving sound whizzing past one’s head as one rode by as if a magpie swooped by.81

By putting all of these participants in motion, a whole complex network of sonic relationships in space was created. Gordon Monahan makes sound environments and sound sculptures, which include Speaker Swinging (1982). This work calls for three performers to swing speakers on long ropes as they emit sine waves. Lucier recalls the performance of this piece in a

Perception

123

Figure 4.3  Gordon Monahan: Speaker Swinging (1982), photo of performance at the Music Gallery, Toronto, 1987, photo by Dwight Siegner © Gordon Monahan basketball court at Wesleyan. “As the speakers spun around the performers’ heads the pitches of the waves rose and fell slightly because of the Doppler effect.”82 “Speaker Swinging,” Monahan writes, “was first inspired by hearing Trans Am automobiles cruising on a hot summer night with Heavy Metal blaring out of the windows. As the cars cruised by, there was that fleeting moment of wet, fluid music, when one tonality melts into another.”83 On the video, the first image is of the three men powerfully swinging these speakers on long lengths of wire. The house lights fade, and the illuminated speakers draw circles in the air. Gradually the attention is drawn away from the physical actions and toward the complexity of the Doppler effects as the three speakers approach and recede in shifting patterns.84

Disembodied sound Many works discussed so far have removed deliberation from sound production, or have directed attention to sounds that are being made independently of any performance. But there are also works that call for no physical production, reproduction, or recognition of actual sound. They exist solely as internalized aural impressions. More specifically, they might evoke memories of past sounds, constructions of a present unvoiced sonic experience, or imaginations of potential future sounds. Bill Drummond, formerly of the pop group The KLF and now operating in the context of Penkiln Burn, made a text piece called STOP (2008) that appeals to both memory and imagination, asking the reader first to “THINK OF A SOUND / EXPERIENCED

124

Experimental Music Since 1970

IN YOUR PAST / THAT HAS AFFECTED YOU / LIKE NO OTHER” and then to imagine an equivalent sound “TO BE EXPERIENCED IN YOUR FUTURE.”85 IMAGINE (2006) presents a scenario in which there is neither music nor specific memory of the sound of music, and then continues: Then imagine people coming together to make music with nothing but their voices, and with no knowledge of what music should sound like.

This piece activates the aural imagination, but also a type of imagination involved in writing or reading fiction. The scene is alternately dystopian and utopian. It illustrates a void and then repopulates it. It is a speculation. How would you make music if everything we knew about music was gone, except the simple fact “that it had been important to you and your civilisation?”86 The association of sound with feeling things at some level of depth runs through Drummond’s work. In SHOW (2007), 100 residents of a city are asked to remember and describe a local sound “that evokes emotion.”87 Drummond brings the listener firmly into the present in ON THE MOUNTAIN (2006). The instruction is to ascend Rescheskogel (a mountain near Salzburg) and “AT THE TOP / TAKE TIME TO LISTEN / TO WHAT IS INSIDE YOUR HEAD.”88 What is heard could be related to the past, the present, or the future, but irrespective of that, it is a present, independent reality that those sounds are occurring to the listener at that time: It is a present reality. In a related piece, CLIMB (2006), after climbing to the top of any mountain the listener-performer is to listen to the sound of “The17,” which is Drummond’s alternately imaginary and ad hoc actual chorus.89 A description of that sound is to be recorded and e-mailed to a specified address. When the number of such descriptions reaches 17, they will be compiled into a score.90 That score will likely also exist in the aural imagination of the listener-performer. Peter Ablinger’s Weiss/Weisslich 11B (1994–) is a series of instructions to generate a score based on a transcribed experience. He activates the imagination of the listener through a series of specific sound descriptions. Since 1994 a series of scripts have been written for which I would sit for 40 minutes each and write down what I actually hear. I would love to think about this noise protocol as music: one imagines the sound which is actually read. The music arises in the head of each reader or listener. I think “real” music is not too different from that.91

The piece exists in two parts. The first part is not an imagined sound, but a transcription of sounds that are produced and heard in that forty-minute session. Technically there is a vocalized performance of the transcription, in that it is read aloud, but Ablinger’s intent is to elicit a relationship to the described sounds, rather than to the performed text. He has developed a method of performance to de-emphasize the performative aspect: For a reading performance I suggest using a microphone to be able to speak almost voiceless and without expression (like “inner” reading, like reading not for an

Perception

125

audience but only for oneself). Read slowly to give time to imagine the sounds that appear in the text.92

The layout of the text similarly suggests a realization that is as unperformative as possible, equalizing letters and words by capitalizing everything and avoiding all punctuation. The first few lines of the only text available in English translation appear below. THE UPWARDS RISING MAGPIE-LIKE CROAKING OF THE BLUE JAY THE NOISE FROM THE TIRES OF A PASSING VEHICLE A SLOW DOWNWARDS GLISSANDO OF A SINGLE-ENGINE PLANE AGAIN THE CROAKING RISING UPWARDS AND ANOTHER QUITE DIFFERENT BIRD’S VOICE WITH VARIED TRILLING AND CALLING A CAR HORN IN TWO PARTS AND THE CONTINUOUS BRIGHT ROAR OF TRAFFIC IN THE DISTANCE NEARLY EVEN STATIC BUT WITH DELICATE MODULATIONS BRIEF SEQUENCES OF HUMMINGBIRD IMPULSES LIKE WEAK DISCHARGES FROM ELECTRICAL WIRES. . . .

Ablinger’s instruction that the voice be “like ‘inner’ reading . . . only for oneself ” has significance that spills over into several other pieces. Michael Pisaro’s braids for (silent) reader (1997) is scored for just such a voice, but it is never physically voiced. Each line of text is to be read over six seconds, which are counted internally. “The rate of reading within each line is determined by the performer; when the end of a line is reached early, the reader waits until 6 seconds have elapsed before proceeding to the next line.”93 This temporal stipulation has at least two functions. First, it prevents the piece from becoming a simple reading exercise, as if it were any other text. Each page, with these guidelines, lasts for five minutes. Whatever speed of reading someone may have is likely slowed down. The second function of this six-second rule is to create an internal counterpoint. The same mind that is reading is also counting. This discipline is challenging. It might lead to creating or discovering a differentiation between an internal counting voice and an internal reading voice. Francesco Gagliardi is a filmmaker and performance artist whose Reading series (2008) offers various instructions on how to silently read a book, some of which are mirrored in the instructions, such as: Reading Reading 66 (silently) (silently) Read read every every word word twice twice. Keep keep track track of of the the meaning meaning. Note Note: really really read read each each word word twice; twice; don’t don’t just just repeat repeat it it in in your your head head.94

Like the Ablinger piece, the image or meaning behind each word is emphasized, but the double appearance of each word is a type of articulation that has sonic properties.

126

Experimental Music Since 1970

Pisaro’s and Gagliardi’s reading pieces occur in the moment. New information is presented to the listener-performer that is understood in successive moments as sound. Ablinger’s Sehen und Hören (discussed earlier in the chapter) and Tom Johnson’s Imaginary Music (1974) do not unfold in a linear way, but rather as single images. Where Ablinger uses photographic processes to suggest noise as an excess of information, Johnson hand-draws his scores using music notation symbols. These symbols suggest a musical reading, but do not trace a line from one end to another. Since they exist only in imaginary form, they can remain an abstraction in the mind of the listener.95 Ablinger’s Die Generalpause (2001) offers an image of removal of persistent sound for various durations and distances. Prohibition on motor vehicle traffic Duration: 1 minute/1 hour/forever Spatial extension: 1 street/1 district/everywhere96

This piece could be performed either in relation to heard sounds, using an imaginary subtractive capacity, or purely in the imagination. It is an interesting question which would be easier to do, and in the one-minute or one-hour version either one could easily be attempted. While the cessation of traffic noise carries overtones of bliss, AUFHÖREN (1995) (translated as both “to cease and to suddenly listen”) presents three isolated and drastic sound images, two of which promise to be quite loud. 1. Destruction of the freeway from . . . to . . . 2. Demolition of the building on . . . street, number . . . 3. Termination of the discourse on . . .97 These ellipses in the text can presumably be filled in with whatever object presents the most vivid or memorable sonic image. In February 26, 2000, the Israeli sound artist and composer Amnon Wolman describes an even more dystopian sound: A new sound, a very nervous, taut and nerve-racking sound. You hear it and almost want to put your finger in your ear to dampen it, but you hold back, reasoning that it will mutate, it will turn into something else, but it doesn’t. . . . Every once in a while the volume seems to have a bearing and it is possible that perhaps it will disappear, but it doesn’t. . . . When you (and I) spin our heads it seems to alter only slightly, but then you recognize that it didn’t really change.98

Wolman’s score sounds like an act of hypnosis. It is creating a sound image, describing its cause, effect, and associations. It plays on the likely past experiences of the listenerperformer. People will often hold out a false hope that a sound nuisance is lessening, only to find that it has not actually changed. Wolman’s suggestion of this experience is the lure into a suspension of disbelief, making this fiction sound horribly vibrant.

Perception

127

Pauline Oliveros’s Any Piece of Music (1980) turns imagination again to more positive ends, and invites a series of speculations, asking the question, “If you could write any piece of music, what would you write?” The question is to be answered “in as many ways as possible.” The piece operates as a command to let the aural imagination overcome any sense of limitation: “Assume that no kind of restraint exists.”99 The activated aural imagination may be the ultimate music venue, the site of limitless potential. Benedict Mason describes the scores in his book, outside sight unseen and unopened (1999) as existing “in the mind of the reader, whose imagination may well devise private virtual spaces and scenarios which cannot ever be practically realised.”100 It is a book of “Texts, images, to read, perform and imagine.” David Toop describes it as “a kind of book of hushed revelations, to be dipped into, and privately pondered.”101 One of these pieces, telling, asks the reader to “find a simple abstract music,” and keeps defining that music through both description and negation. There are options, but there are also limits, and the listener is guided to “the sound the instrument makes / and what happens when it / activates and energises the acoustical space.”102 The aural imagination is a resource that is tapped by composers in the process of creation. The use of it as a site for the work itself is a field that invites further development, and thoroughly negates the passivity so commonly associated with hearing or listening.

The listener constructs the music How does a listener know what it is that is being heard? Psychoacoustic and otoacoustic phenomena challenge the concept of an objective, externalized sound construct. The work is completed only at the site of the unique psychology and physiology of the listener. If it is not heard, felt, and processed, it has not essentially taken place. The German composer Marcus Schmickler writes that “Lately, he has been interested in the epistemic dimensions of music/sound.”103 Palace of Marvels (2010) presents Escher-like stairways of apparent pitch ascent that somehow never really go anywhere. Each piece in the work is based on the phenomenon of the Shepard tone, which has been likened to a sonic barber pole.104 The pieces are convincing in their presentations of increasing elevation (and occasional sequences of descent), whether in the rapid scales of Risset Brain-Hammer or the slow and deliberate arpeggios of Mystery Bouffe. But somehow nothing happens; we have not gone anywhere in all that time. The mechanisms of pitch recall only serve to highlight stasis, while moment-tomoment observations only recognize ascent. This cognitive dissonance between the perception of clear directionality and the realization of stasis over improbable stretches of time causes the listener to question her own listening, both as present perception and as memory. The whole release causes an ongoing conflict between sensory information on the one hand, and memory and cognition on the other. Each piece presents this process in a different way, but those differences reveal the effectiveness of the technique and sustain that cognitive dissonance throughout the hour of the album. The title is based on Jacques

128

Experimental Music Since 1970

Attali’s reference to Leibniz’s palace of marvels, in which occupants of the house have no notion that all of their actions are being surveyed.105 Here, the listener hears the listening process, apparently critically, but arrives at no conclusions. She does not realize how the forces around her are shaping her experience. While this work of Schmickler’s plays with perception and memory, psychoacoustic phenomena such as difference tones and binaural beats create the illusions of sound traveling in space, and of other resultant tones which are not externally produced but are distinctly heard by the listener. If two similar, high-frequency sounds are produced less than 20–30Hz apart, a third tone (a difference tone) will present itself to the listener which is the subtractive difference between the two high frequencies. This sound is not being emitted externally, but is clearly, objectively perceived by the listener under the right conditions. But if it happens only within the hearing mechanism, is it truly objective? It could be called physically subjective yet mentally objective. The sound is a computable, mappable phenomenon. Maryanne Amacher took psychoacoustics to a whole new zone of exploration with her life’s work on otoacoustic emissions. For her, the science behind them was critical in establishing that these emissions were not the result of some sort of auditory hallucination, but were actual, documentable phenomena that occur within the ears of most humans. In a 1992 New York Times article, Dr. William A. Brownell was quoted as saying, “Physiologists are still marveling at the discovery that ears produce sound. It is almost as astonishing as if the eye could produce light or the nose produce odors.”106 This article was a pivotal turn for Amacher, who had been experiencing and exploring these phenomena with great commitment but had lacked the scientific information to clarify and justify her work. She found out more about the history of this research, and that it went at least as far back as a paper written by Thomas Gold in 1984. He wrote: The theory of hearing which I propose then involved an active-not passive-receiver, one in which positive feedback, not just passive detection is involved. We now have very clear evidence, after these thirty-six years, that indeed an active receiver is at work, but we still have not got a receptive group of physiologists who deal in this field. The medical profession still has not got a clue as to why 15 kilocycles should be coming out of somebody’s ears.107

This line of inquiry often meets with a basic skepticism as to its occurrence. Amacher used restrained language about these phenomena because of academic reservations. My writing is somewhat timid, and also conservative mainly due to my critical MIT advisors who were concerned that the reader might possibly suspect these descriptions to be more of a phantasm coming from my head!108

Otoacoustic emissions are widely recognized in the scientific community now, but are not usually taken into account in the musical world. In the medical field, this phenomenon has been used, among other purposes, to test hearing in infants.109 If it is recognized as being important in the musical world, perhaps others will carry on in

Perception

129

Amacher’s line of work. She herself was puzzled as to the apparent lack of interest in it among musicians. This is a mystery to me! And very strange! Hearing plays such a critical role in composing, that recognizing and acknowledging the range of what our ears do in response to the music we create would seem to be particularly desirable to pursue more explicitly and understand further!110

At the center of Amacher’s compositional concerns is the evocation of that type of experience in the listener: “What perceptual modes they trigger . . . how we particularize acoustic information to construct distinct transformative experiences.”111 To this end, she has developed what she calls sound characters. As Bill Dietz describes them, they are: Sound Characters, individual audio profiles with highly differentiated acoustic characteristic and with names like “The Fright,” “The Hardbeat Force,” “The Burning Gold,” and “God’s Big Noise,” literally interact (are overlaid, approach each other, overwhelm each other) within a given sonic scenario (maybe a miniseries staged in short—or not so short—consecutive segments over a period of days or weeks, or a sound screening—a narrative installation structure repeated regularly which visitors are meant to experience from beginning to end).112

Her two solo CD releases are given this name: Sound Characters and Sound Characters 2, as if to suggest that the listener is not experiencing the entire plot, but only some of the agents that could be set in motion within a larger narrative. This whole listening situation involves very carefully tuned installation and “structure-borne sound,” in which “the sound shapes interact with structural characteristics of the rooms before reaching the listener.” In these fuller installations, “the audience enters the set and walks into the ‘world’ of the story.” The spaces are “immersive aural architectures.”113 Within that context, the interaction of the sound characters within the hearing of the listener is the unfolding drama. The speakers from which the sounds emanate, more emphatically than in most other contexts, only serve to set other speakers in motion: the resonances of the architecture, and the internal speakers emanating from the ears of each listener. Amacher describes that fuller context as another aspect of this documentation: In concert my audiences discover music streaming out from their head, popping and converging with the tones in the room. They discover they are producing a tonal dimension of the music which interacts melodically, rhythmically, and spatially with the tones in the room. Tones “dance” in the immediate space of their body, around them like a sonic wrap, cascade inside ears, and out to space in front of their eyes, mixing and converging with the sound in the room.114

Amacher’s available releases are limited documents of these fuller experiences, but even as “artifacts,” they are powerful. In Sound Characters, the individual characters are

130

Experimental Music Since 1970

presented without the types of interaction one would experience in a full installation. The first track of Sound Characters, “HEAD RHYTHM 1” AND “PLAYTHING 2,” immediately activates this hearing. Similarly to the way that the feeling of surprise informs us that we are having a new experience, the introduction of tones that don’t seem to belong, that are felt deep within our ears rather than simply being projected from the speakers, signals that something different is happening here. The opening is made up of high pitches, and a lower tone quickly develops in the inner ear. This is gradually replaced by lower and grittier interactions that do not fully reveal what they cause us to hear. It is only when the track ends that it becomes apparent that the earthquake is still going on in the aural mechanisms that have been activated. In track 4 of the documentation of the Teo installation, sounds seem to rapidly approach and recede, taking on various textures of roughness and smoothness, sometimes operating as a sort of threat, and at other times stabilizing as a drone. Even in the home listening environment, one’s own physiology is felt to be in dynamic relationship with the recording.115 Ultimately, all of the particularities of Amacher’s installations have a single, clearly stated purpose: to clarify the aural phenomena occurring within our own ears. “It is a music which emphatically brings attention to what is happening to us.”116

Mediated hearing On a balcony over a busy street in Barcelona, Emmanuel Holterbach placed two small microphones into two carboys. These large, resonant chambers of glass have narrow necks that “swallow” the normal city sounds. The city, the traffic, and especially the sirens are ethereal from the new listening position inside these bottles.117 Jacob Kirkegaard made vibration recordings along iron fences as tugboats and wind pass by on the Rhine. Bands of sound gently emerge and disappear, each in its own vivid type of motion.118 In a gallery in Copenhagen, Kirkegaard hung three large metal plates, one made of copper, one brass, and one iron. They all have the same dimensions and occupy the same room, but the contact microphones and speakers hidden on the back of each plate tell a different story. Using the plates not only as the source of recording, but also as projection (the medium through which the speakers play), the three materials have distinctly different qualities of sound.119 Under a subway bridge in Seoul, Jiyeon Kim attached a contact microphone to one of its columns, capturing a new perspective on the sound of passing trains.120 Just outside her home, she attached contact microphones to objects she found nearby, capturing the sound of the rain from the perspective of a metal door, a clothes dryer, a wine glass.121 In fifteen locations across four continents, Jodi Rose records the cables of bridges. The surface and the environment present themselves to the listener in equal measure for speculation. Can these sounds be associated with anything that is known about their locations? Are the clear differences in sound obvious because of structure or setting? To what degree does setting influence structure?122 For Toshiya Tsunoda, a field recording is not expressive of an independent surrounding reality. It is a mediation that he likens to landscape painting. All human

Perception

131

conceptions of “reality” are mediated by factors too vast and subjective and believable to be reliable. Our faculties are limited. We only sense our environment from one position at a time. If we employ technology to circumvent these limitations, we become more aware that the technology itself is limited in what it can capture and reproduce. In the face of an honest recognition of how little we can actually know, even of the places most familiar to us, there are three basic approaches available. One is to stop trying to know them—or similarly, to continue not to try. A second option is to try harder, to define a scope and become goal-oriented about widening or deepening a knowledge base. Tsunoda takes a third approach, which is to thoroughly accept that limitation and continue to engage with his environment from the most specific and limited spaces he can find. Any field recording has numerous aspects of mediation, among which are the location, the time, the recording technology, microphone placement, editing, and mastering, as well as the sound system, environment, faculties, education, and attention of the listener. Tsunoda adds another mediation: the micro-environment through which the environment is heard. Field recording is often compared to photography, but in this embrace of limitation Tsunoda has highlighted an advantage over visual equivalents: sound permeates more effectively than image. This is an accepted aspect of daily and nightly human experience. You can close your eyes, but hearing is not effectively stopped. Earplugs and noise canceling headphones are only partially effective, and night sounds can either wake or infiltrate the dreams of a sleeper. Walls and fences block vision, but they rarely block sound. Using the permeability of this medium, Tsunoda has placed his microphones inside bottles and ducts, downpipes and drain hoses, a crack in a manhole lid, a small opening in a cliff wall, on a long rope, near an insect, in the sand by the sea.123 These choices are not calculated to reveal an environment, but to intersect with some of the presences in a situation in a filtered way. Tsunoda is preoccupied with the most fundamental aspect of sound: vibration. Sound travels through the air through vibration, but it is most effectively projected through surfaces. Sounds are more diffuse outdoors than indoors. Tracks 1 through 4 of The Argyll Recordings (2007) alternate between mic placement on the open ground and within some tall grass. All four recordings were made at Dunadd, in Scotland. The alternation between these two environments heightens the sense of difference. The ground recordings are obscure and practically unvoiced, but palpable. The grass recordings capture the wind almost as melody, in the “phase shifts created by the grass shivering in the wind.”124 By constricting his recording environments within containers, Tsunoda limits the typical connections with visual images, and heightens the relation to the sense of touch through which vibration is palpable. TramVibration (2006) captures the vibrations of a subway car, which are felt more than seen by the passengers.125 For Tsunoda, the vibration is the field that is being recorded. Defining the “Field” for each recording is an important part of my work. For example, if there are two big sound sources in a given place, and these two sound sources were interfering with one another, then the vibration created by this

132

Experimental Music Since 1970

interference is the “Field” for this space. “Field” is always expressed in its entirety, as a sum of its parts.126

Locating the field at the location of interference adds a whole host of new parameters to the sound. The length and material of the fence, as well as the noise of the car, are factors. Not only that, the size of the tunnel and what kind of material was used to construct it, also play a part. In addition, the temperature and humidity inside the tunnel. . . .

Though all of these considerations seem objective and technical, Tsunoda uses the admission of subjectivity (or denial of objectivity) to outline his practice, along with the language of vision: I do not consider recording as a device to check how things happened in reality. Rather, recording to me is a type of documentation, that is in itself an “image,” independent from the reality or the actual time and space where the recording took place. In this regard, recording, to me, is most like landscape painting. A landscape artist sees a scene from a first-person point of view. In other words, the observer (the artist) is inseparable from the object that is being observed. What I want to demonstrate to the listener is the “substance” or the “expansion of space” depicted in my recordings. . . . Documenting is not just a hollow version of reality, but it is in itself a complete, autonomous being that exists within its own space and time. . . . I prefer to describe my recordings as a “trace” of reality, rather than a “relation” to reality. . . . These recordings are not autonomous works of art, but rather a mere by-product of the reality that took place.127

These traces are deliberately and consistently differentiated from familiar, seemingly unencumbered situations. Tsunoda further defamiliarizes many of his recordings by isolating one channel from the other. What is heard is never two different recordings, but sometimes silence on one and the recording only on the other, or two different angles of the same concurrent situation. In Low Frequency Observed At Maguchi Bay (2007) the recordings are mirrored by a second track that omits any frequency above 20Hz. Michael Pisaro writes: Thus, for all intents and purposes, you will not hear anything emanating from the speakers during these mirrored low frequency recordings. But this does not mean nothing is happening. . . . The bass speaker cone will be moving. Get up close to the cone and watch—or even touch it. It is vibrating, in a visible and tactile (but for us, silent) way. Pure vibration, abstracted of sound.128

That differentiation between channels occurred in the mastering situation with a single recording. In the first part of The Temple Recordings (2013), two identical devices

Perception

133

(stethoscopes with built-in microphones) are placed on the heads (the temples) of Tsunoda and Koichi Yusa. They stand side by side, facing the same landscape. The two channels reveal similarity, but invite close listening in order to observe difference. The pulse in the left channel is much louder than in the right. A wind catches one microphone before the other. There are slight, compelling differences in the external sounds. Pisaro writes that this piece conveys “one of the most profound images of contemporary listening: multiple subjects, diffuse object.” Tsunoda does not claim to objectively represent the landscape observed by both participants or to represent their individual experiences of it. There is no commentary, and no decision-making beyond the initial parameters of the project—the bodies to be recorded, the positions for the microphones, and the location of the event. The fact of difference between these two channels invites the listener to observe her own subjectivity in relation to that fact of differentiation. There is the perpetual option to listen more closely to one person’s temple and position or the other’s and to speculate about the nature of the experience. The more one does so, the more clear it becomes that that experience, on a cognitive, perceptual, emotional, or any other level, is unavailable. About the two people making the recording, Tsunoda asks: “What is the experience of the person who is standing by you like?” Then we may start wondering “Is the same landscape composed in this person’s brain if our consciousness shares the same landscape?” Obviously, experience is unique to each person. Even if we can talk about the impression of our own experience with someone else, we cannot confirm with each other exactly what the experience was like.

The relationship between two subjects, even faced with the same experience or landscape, is only one of proximity. Extending this sense of difference, Tsunoda writes, “There is no relation among temples, air microphones and brain waves. Our brain waves do not stir the air.”129 None of these elements of the recording process have anything to do with each other except for their physical proximity in the event. The listener’s attention creates only an illusion of a relationship with the event, and not an actual one. That which is unknown becomes even more unknown. Pisaro comments: “It’s the space between, the place [of] the overlap that concerns him.”130 Tsunoda is preoccupied with these intersections between subjects, objects, and environments, and his work allows for richer comprehension through an acceptance of limitation.

4.2  The perception of time While the composers in this section occupy distinct sound worlds, what unites them here is their persistent interest in temporal perception. As a painting can suggest

134

Experimental Music Since 1970

three-dimensional spatial relationships on the flat surface of a canvas, a sound work can manipulate the listener’s perception of the flow of moments and durations. Innovations in the domain of visual art have proven to be specific and helpful models in the pursuit of altered modes of temporal perception. Morton Feldman wrote of the “painters whose tactical solutions were to contribute so much to this problem that confronted me.”131 For Aldo Clementi, painting was a “catalysing agent of the experiences he had already had.”132 Bernhard Lang and Bryn Harrison both seem aware of the irony of the situation. Lang writes, “It is an interesting fact, that we are only able to describe temporal changes via spatial metaphors, and spatial changes via references to a before and after.”133 Harrison is “drawn to the idea that painting, as an immobile art form, can convey movement and conversely, that music, as a temporal art, might be able to convey stasis.”134

The wide canvas The length of a piece is one of its most immediately distinguishing features. While it is only a marker, a technical and obvious measurement, pieces with a duration of 30 or more minutes often have an immersive effect, in a similar way that a mural fills a wall and the viewer can, for a time, see neither the left nor the right edge of the work—or in temporal terms, the start or the finish. Feldman has stated an intent to escape from the habitual structures of time— emerging from man-made structures and getting out into nature. These open spaces translate, in many instances, into long durations. He writes, “I am not a clockmaker. I am interested in getting to Time in its unstructured existence. That is, I am interested in how this wild beast lives in the jungle—not in the zoo. I am interested in how Time exists before we put our paws on it—our minds, our imaginations, into it.”135 The structures of time (seconds, minutes, etc.) are artificial, however logical they seem to be. Feldman is nevertheless averse to considering himself a master of time. Time is the object of Feldman’s attention, rather than the subject of his manipulations. He places sounds within it according to its whims. Feldman’s approach to time as a “wild beast” is illustrated in two ways. First, his working method involved writing in ink to make sure he maintained his concentration. “And if I see that I’m crossing out, I just leave the piece and go at it another time.”136 A  lack of concentration would be, in the context of his thought, a return to clockmaking, to artifice and regularity. Even human imagination pales in comparison with the wildness of capital-T “Time.” So concentration replaces imagination as the fundamental requirement of his working method. Feldman was fond of recounting a conversation he had with Karlheinz Stockhausen, who asked him what his secret was. “I don’t push the sounds around,” he replied. Stockhausen “mulled this over, and asked, ‘Not even a little bit?’”137 Feldman’s music is inextricably linked to his intuitive compositional process and the foregrounding of concentration over calculation. Feldman was once asked how he knew when he had arrived at the last page of the piece. “I find that as the piece gets longer, there has to be less material. That the piece itself cannot take it. . . . there’s less going into it, so I think the piece dies a natural death.

Perception

135

It dies of old age.”138 Again, he uses the image of a creature that lives and breathes; but the creature in this case is not time, but the piece. Feldman’s duration would be weakened, or cut short, by the presence of too much material. Finally it either collapses under the weight of the material, or there is no longer enough material to sustain activity. That breaking point is the threshold that decides Feldman’s durations, rather than any preconceived idea or imposed requirement for how long the piece should be. One outcome of Feldman’s sustained interest in the temporal canvas is the long piece. Listeners who speak about their experiences of these long, late works tend to reflect on a sense of removal from the normal passage of time. The total duration itself, and the working process by which Feldman arrived at it, is a major factor in that sense of removal. The decision to listen through the six hours of Feldman’s String Quartet II (1983), whether live or on recording, is not made lightly. When asked about its length, Feldman said, “I think that the piece is so long because our attention span is so short! Five minutes is too long for most people—it’s a serious problem.”139 Referring to For Philip Guston (1984), he said, “There is an hour-and-ten-minute piece which is a very long hour-and-ten-minute piece—but this? This piece doesn’t give you the feeling that it’s four hours.”140 The scale of the piece was found in the process of writing it. Feldman acknowledges Mark Rothko’s influence when he writes that “scale is discovered and contained as an image. It is not form that floats the painting, but Rothko’s finding that particular scale which suspends all proportions in equilibrium.”141 Michael Pisaro offers an explanation for the quality of transparency that he and other members of the Wandelweiser collective bring to their temporal canvases. They are not “telling time,” but creating a space in which the listener can find his or her own time. The piece becomes, not a duration to mark, but a space to occupy. The sounds of the piece do not take over that space, but point to its dimensions and to any other events that may occur within it. For many years, music concerned itself with forcing a structure onto time. Beginning with the music of John Cage, it has become possible to see time as having its own structure: not as something imposed on it from the outside by music, but something which is already present, which exists alongside the music. The inner structure of time: time as experienced by the body in a great variety of ways. Time structured by repetition, by flow, by fatigue, by novelty; time which is felt only in moments of transition, where duration is only figured in retrospect: this is the time we know, as opposed to the time which is told.142

The time in which a piece is heard coincides with a place and with the consciousness of the listener. This coincidence or intersection is acknowledged as containing all sorts of perceptions, feelings, reactions, and conditions either external or incidental to the composed work. Rather than telling time, Pisaro approaches it with curiosity. He writes that the pieces in entre-moments (2006) are “concerned with projecting musical interludes onto a duration.”143 A projection implies a degree of transparency, and the sounds of this piece (sustained instrumental tones, soft sine tones, slow and quiet piano chords) certainly are transparent, in that other sounds can be heard through them.

136

Experimental Music Since 1970

Among many examples of Pisaro’s long pieces, A Transparent Gate (with ten panels) (2011) lasts for exactly 100 minutes, and entre-moments for five hours. Antoine Beuger, another member of the Wandelweiser collective, has a number of such long pieces, including the calme étendue (1996–97) and the silent harmonies in discrete continuity (2002) series, sections of which could last anywhere from forty-five minutes to nine hours. When the piece becomes the entire event, it is no longer analogous to one of several paintings on the wall, or pieces on the program. It is the wall, or even the entire building into which the listener has walked. The work is immersive in duration but transparent in quality. In both Pisaro’s and Feldman’s lines of thought, the composer does not control time, but acknowledges its conditional ebbs and flows. Sounds come forth and bring their own logic and necessities, both in the writing process and the listening process. Time is not told, but occupied and discovered. (Listeners bring their own circumstances and perceptions to the duration.) The experience of time is a complex phenomenon, and it is projected as such.

The shallow surface It is not only in pieces of notable durations that temporal perception can become an important aspect of the listener’s experience. The British composer Bryn Harrison and the Italian composer Aldo Clementi tend to play, not with extended durations, but with surface depth. In painting, an illusion is created when the flat surface seems to have dimension. Harrison and Clementi each create illusions of temporal stasis by flattening musical surfaces. Their counterpoints are so saturated that they create impenetrable and ultimately disorienting surfaces of activity. Harrison explains Clementi’s work in visual terms, using his own perceptual experience of it as an example. To borrow painterly terms, the removal of the “figure—ground relationship” and the “all-over” effect that this removal creates offers no direct perspective of depth. Yet, at the same time, this music is not of the type that resides entirely on the surface: Clementi provides the illusion of a multiplicity of surfaces, each surface juxtaposed like plates of glass. The myopic result of such an approach gives listeners an opportunity to experience a very different musical perspective—an alternative viewing point for the work. For me, Clementi’s music ensures a closerange listening experience.144

By creating a tangled web of activity at a surface level, both Clementi and Harrison draw attention to the mystery of what is imperceptible, what lies under the surface. They weave multiple instruments, lines, and textures so tightly that the images of foreground, background, and depth are submerged in a single complex surface. The surface itself becomes an object of focus, of illusions, of perceptions that are questioned and doubted. Clementi describes the massive tangle of the prerecorded flute parts of Fantasia su roBErto FABbriCiAni (1980–81) as “an enormous field of vegetation stifling a small

Perception

137

plant.”145 The canonic material spreads through the twenty-four parts in multiple forms and transpositions, engulfing the live flute part. In Surface Forms (repeating) (2009), Harrison creates a dense haze of activity by restricting all the instruments to playing “similar harmonic and rhythmic material within a confined dynamic and pitch range.”146 Feldman also achieves the flat surface he seeks in part through registral limitations. “The lower register is gravity,” he writes. “If you omit it and use only higher registers, there’s no gravity. The music remains suspended and ethereal.”147 This goal is explicit and overarching, and applies to pitch choices, timbre, and dynamics in addition to register. He writes of For Frank O’Hara (1973) that “My primary concern (as in all my music) is to sustain a ‘flat surface’ with a minimum of contrast.”148 Harrison asks, “What happens when time is presented in such a way that it appears to be drastically slowed down or even momentarily suspended? What happens when a sense of musical progress becomes redundant and how, as a composer, does this affect my approach to musical language, form and structure, both on a micro- and macrolevel?”149 In seeking answers to these questions, he has studied Feldman’s late, long works, Clementi’s ensemble works, and the techniques of visual artists such as Bridget Riley, Agnes Martin, Mike Walker, and Tim Head. His answers, while synthesizing ideas from all of those sources, are ultimately his own. While Clementi uses tightly wound canons and Feldman intuits subtly shifting patterns, Harrison uses pitch cycles that, always returning and starting again, powerfully suggest to the listener that he or she has not actually moved anywhere in time or space, but is considering and reconsidering the same static surface. The extended piano work Vessels (2012/13) seems never to begin nor to end, but always to be held in a fragile balance. It is inspired by a Howard Skempton string quartet called Tendrils (2004), which Skempton describes as “continuous undulating lines that sustain their effect throughout.”150 In Vessels, processes act upon the pitch material in apparently limitless transformations within a narrow space, bending these tendrils at every possible angle but never breaking them.151 The “waterfall illusion” is a term used in perceptual psychology that deals with the confusion between stasis and motion. John Berndt applies this term to the Illuminatory Sound Environments (ISEs) of Catherine Christer Hennix and Henry Flynt. Hennix’s The Electric Harpsichord (1976) was seen by Flynt as the inaugural piece of this new genre, which Berndt describes in a way that mirrors visual illusions: “Grasped by perception, each detail seems to slip instantly away, the vivid surface contrast of the piece endlessly dissolving or folding back into a churning vista just outside of clarity.”152 Other pieces in this genre include Flynt’s Glissando No. 1 (1979) and Celestial Power (1979), as well as Hennix’s Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis (1976–2013).153 Through their particular and complex methods of overlaying and repeating material, these pieces have the effect of suspending time. Stephen Snook considers the twin paradoxes of musical stasis and images in motion when he writes about the influence of M. C. Escher on Aldo Clementi. Escher’s interlocking and gradually evolving repeated figures seem ironically to put time into motion within the intrinsically static frame of the picture, while

138

Experimental Music Since 1970

Clementi mirrors and reverses this process by so saturating the aural surface of his works with repetitive moving lines that their intrinsic temporal motion becomes subsumed into an aural stasis, producing a diffuse sonic “image” within an indeterminate “frame.”154

In Escher’s visual context, repetition creates a sense of time passing. Gianluigi Mattietti draws an analogy between Escher’s patterns and Clementi’s canons when he writes, “Thus the periodised patterns may, just like the circular canon, expand into infinity, since a small portion of the pattern is able to occupy, by translation, the whole space.”155 In Clementi’s auditory context, and through the very methods he borrows from Escher, repetition suspends time. Their means are similar, but the effect is superficially opposite; and yet the real, achieved goal is arguably parallel: to invert the perspective of the listener.

The veiled grid Three of the artists who have served as models for these composers—Agnes Martin, M. C. Escher, and James Hugonin—have used regular, grid-like structures, which they undercut with some sort of veiling or distorting technique. Agnes Martin developed her own artistic language through the use of what she called “the grid.” Lawrence Alloway writes of Martin: As she draws it, the grid is half-way between a rectangular system of coordinates and a veil. It is put down in pencil so that the network consists of marks far less clearly given than we are accustomed to in American painting with its usual standard of high emphasis and unrelieved clarity.156

A musical parallel to Martin’s present yet obscured grid is Pisaro’s frequent instruction to the performer to use a stopwatch, rather than to count and maintain a pulse. Having this external grid—the stopwatch—in place, the performer is allowed to lose time, knowing that it is being kept for him. The internal marking of beats is loosened, and is obscured in the sounding result. The grid also allows both Martin and Pisaro to transcend the normal margins or limits of a canvas or a duration. By removing the internal boundaries of the grid, by which it was seen to stop and start, Martin emphasizes not the succession of the modular bits from, say, left to right, but the wholeness of the module, its occupancy of space rather than its duration in time.157

Despite the difference in mediums, in this case the metaphor is directly analogous. Alloway suggests that a clearer grid would be countable, and in that way become a temporal viewing experience. For Pisaro’s performers, sounds are not counted but placed. Sounds occur over time, but time is not subdivided in a perceivable way.

Perception

139

The even subdivisions that do exist occur at a structural level, and are obscured by the details of the material. Martin could be writing not only of her own work but Pisaro’s when she says: My formats are square, but the grids never are absolutely square; they are rectangles, a little bit off the square, making a sort of contradiction, a dissonance, though I  didn’t set out to do it that way. When I cover the square surface with rectangles, it lightens the weight of the square, destroys its power.158

James Hugonin’s paintings are color fields made up of what appears to be intricate tiling, each piece of which carries one distinct color. His explanation of his working process has a clear musical influence. I paint elliptical or oval forms oscillating and fluctuating in different colours within a very fine linear grid. These forms are located at varying distances apart from each other creating intricate and subtle rhythms. Using many variations in close tones, it becomes possible for random movement to evolve and occur within the rectangle. It is the reflected light pulsating from adjacent colors that creates an indeterminate and unpredictable color field emanating light. Nothing dominates.159

Bryn Harrison has taken direct inspiration from this process. His work parallels both Hugonin’s color fields and Clementi’s canons. The textures and pitch cycles work against the dominance of any instrument. Harrison’s rhythms are, like Hugonin’s, intricate and subtle, and are derived from sketching time-space versions of the rhythms and transferring them onto a grid representing the subdivisions of conventional notation. This grid can be stretched or contracted to create subtly shifting rhythmic relationships between instruments over time.160 There is often a discernible pulse within Harrison’s work, but in Surface Forms (repeating), as performed by the ELISION Ensemble, it is slow and indistinct. The larger units are the repeating cycles that, according to the composer, repeat every forty seconds.161 Harrison writes of his use of cycles that “My intention has been to create the perception of an object that appears both static and in motion, comparable perhaps to ripples in a stream or watching a torrent of rain.”162 These cycles are incredibly difficult to discern in the density of activity taking place. While pulse is audible, the larger organizing principle is not. For artists such as Martin and Hugonin, the grid is a device or structure that allows them to transcend the limitations of surface. For composers, the beat, or ictus, tends to make a grid audible. To zoom in on this contradiction, the grid at work in a painting can be immediately perceived as a governing structure, absorbed, and forgotten in observation of finer details and effects. A closer analogy to an unobscured grid in music might be a process piece by James Tenney or Alvin Lucier, in which the form is so transparent that other details become the objects of attention. In a musical work unfolding over time, a pulse is constantly reinforcing itself. The performer is conscious of it throughout the work, and so too is the listener. Feldman explains,

140

Experimental Music Since 1970

The moment a composer notates musical thought to an ongoing ictus, a grid of sorts is already in operation, as with a ruler. . . . Even if it be asymmetrical in its placement, the proportion of one component to another is hardly ever substantially out of scale in the context of the whole. . . . If we examine asymmetric phrasing . . . we find that the partitioning is concentrated enough in time to hear the mosaiclike process of the grid at work.163

Feldman found a means of veiling the grid, initially in Crippled Symmetry (1983), by assigning different meters and rhythmic values to each of the three parts. Each part has its own grid—in this case a pulse—and the differences between them are destabilizing: They obscure, rather than enforce, one another’s regularity of pulse. The overlaying of three different grid densities results in shifting temporal relationships that flicker in a way similar to the effects achieved by Martin or Hugonin, so that the parts “intermingle in ever-changing alignments.”164 Another approach to temporal containers is adopted by Pisaro, in which he radically expands the size of the container, often into temporal units with a base of a minute. He calls it “a set of regular time units whose stability sets the changes of the material in relief,” citing the examples of Ricefall (2) (2007) and Fields Have Ears (6) (2010–11).165 In both versions of Ricefall, the subdivisions within that time are impossible to align as pulse. Rice is dropped onto various surfaces, at speeds that change every minute (measured and coordinated by stopwatch). The relative speed can be controlled, but not, in the majority of cases, the attack point (the moment at which a grain of rice hits the surface). All of these varying—and separately unpredictable—parts operate simultaneously, and then shift in unison. Each performer is suddenly following a new instruction, and the total level of density changes. There is a perceptible change at every minute mark, and yet a minute operates very differently from a traditional pulse. It is equally precise, but the difference occurs in perception. In The Principles of Psychology (1890), William James cites research that the maximum uncounted time that can be accurately estimated ranges from five to twelve seconds.166 In Pisaro’s distance (4) (1997), the challenges of counting are put on the performers, who are to play the same material—supposedly simultaneously—every forty seconds without using stopwatches and without cues. By bringing out the variability of temporal perception, Pisaro again veils the grid, even while apparently using it to structure the piece.

Repetition, automation, and audible illusions An interest in temporal and sonic illusions leads to (or possibly results from) a fascination with visual artists who deal with similar distortions of perception. As a flat surface can be transformed into a confusing or enveloping spatial experience, an as-yet-unfilled duration can be transformed into a disorienting temporal experience. These experiences, whether of time in music or of space in art, are immersive. The canvas may be large, or the piece may be long. In some cases the size or duration is unremarkable, but the material is designed to disorient the listener.

Perception

141

The Austrian composer and improviser Bernhard Lang touches directly on temporal issues in his microscope-like examinations of sound. By looping, and in that way focusing on a narrow band of material, that narrow band is placed under a sort of microscope, filling a duration with limited material. Sample explosion means, that the whole richness of perception of a musical structure is developed from a very limited selection from the original. This leads to something Phenomenologists might have called eidetic view of a signifier, of a gesture, a sound, looking into the core of something. The loop becomes a sort of phenomenologic microscope, a way to look at the other hidden side of an object. This limitation of the basic footage is something very astonishing, since it substitutes the techniques of development with those of unfolding, of uncovering, of recalling, exploding and memorizing. . . . The original sample is . . . re-read in different ways, all information being there from the start.167

In practice, the speed of the looping will change throughout a section of a piece by Lang such as Differenz/Wiederholung 2 (1999), increasing and decreasing the levels of magnification. This practice is not unlike those of the filmmaker Martin Arnold, who Lang acknowledges as the “trigger” for the whole Differenz/Wiederholung series. The previous quote is from an article he wrote on the impact of Arnold’s work on his own. In the same article, he writes that “The Cut is the Beat.” Citing Gilles Deleuze, he compares the video cuts that happen within movement to rhythm: They determine the rhythm of the film. Arnold’s Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998) is full of this rhythmic play with cuts, both audibly and visibly. The length of the fragments and the resultant speed of the looping keeps shifting within the same scene, treading repetitively over the same footage and altering its meaning. It is the temporal equivalent of changing the magnification of a microscope so that tempo and repetition become the dominant parameters. In Lang’s music, particularly in Differenz/Wiederholung, time suspends within a moment, things move along more quickly for an unpredictable period of time, and then it is again suspended. In O Kokos Tis Anixis (Grains of Spring) (2013), Toshiya Tsunoda follows a procedure that is in its description somewhat similar to Lang’s, but in effect completely different. The loops are not written out, but are made with field recordings from the Miura Peninsula in Japan. These loops often highlight the event that Tsunoda has named as central to the track, such as “the sounds of small fruits falling in the grass as the wind shook the tree” or “the sounds of ashes bursting in the fire built by fishermen.” The material may be looped from 3 to 100 times, and itself might be long enough to sound each time as a clear event, or so short that the loop becomes, in Tsunoda’s words, “like a simple electric sound.”168 Apart from those electric sounds, many of the loops are created so carefully that the repetition sounds for a time as if it occurred in the natural setting. By establishing these situations so carefully, Tsunoda creates a kind of stasis that may only be recognized well after it has begun, or only in retrospect as he advances to new material. Four of the eight tracks, all of which convey “events happening in a short unit of time,” are over twenty minutes long. The listener is placed in such an

142

Experimental Music Since 1970

intimate relationship with the sounding events that they have no means to judge the actual scale of their duration. Lang’s description of his own looping process shows its relevance to Clementi’s compressed canons: Since the loop contents mainly refer to small cells, I developed the notion of cellular counterpoint: there are complex counterpoints contained within each cell, but this [sic] complex structures are repeated, thereby magnifying and examining the content of the cell, sometimes changing the original meaning. Due to the circular structure of the loop I became interested in infinite canons again, but this is a side effect [sic] of the whole concept, a kind of ironic play.169

Though the idea of complex miniature counterpoints echoes Clementi’s ultra-tight canons, Lang closely attends to his repetitions, moment by moment. Clementi, on the other hand, uses Cage’s “idea of a sound organism that develops autonomously once the code has been established,” saying “the recipe guarantees the result.”170 He writes: We needed to start from a zero point of craft and of stylistic ineffability: an ultra-fine grain consisting of mixed-up microscopic details, a continuum without direction, a texture, a material of the highest quality that is guaranteed not only to become a good suit when entrusted to a skilled tailor (what a contradiction!), but also to endure despite being torn up. . . . Furthermore, the internal, dense complexity (and complicatedness) needed to legitimise any external arbitrariness.171

The material itself is carefully made, and is then subjected to automatic processes. The rhythm and pacing of the piece result from how these processes work on the pre-crafted material. Automation is appreciated as a means to draw attention to the material and to the process, rather than to Clementi as the craftsman of the final musical product. Feldman, on the other hand, writes, “My music is handmade. So I’m like a tailor. I make my buttonholes by hand. The suit fits better.”172 As discussed earlier, his compositional method was intuitive. The work was heard and written, by the power of what he referred to as concentration. Christian Wolff says of Feldman: The most remarkable thing about him, or about his work was the way he made it . . . with no discernible system whatsoever. In other words, he wrote entirely, you might say, by ear, and by the seat of his pants.173

In the same interview, Wolff goes on to consider Feldman’s use of loops. The aesthetic outcome of Feldman’s looping could hardly be more different from Lang’s in terms of speed and timbre, but the process is quite similar. In the later [pieces], one of the ways that he makes things go on is, he repeats a lot. He gets into loops. He’ll make a kind of musical gesture and just repeat it 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 times.174

Perception

143

The choices of what material to loop and at what speed become major factors in Lang’s and Feldman’s work. Feldman sets up variation and repetition as dynamic forces at play with one another. He writes: You can either do two things with music, you could be involved with variation, which in simple terms means only vary it, or you could be in repetition. Reiterative. What my work is, is a synthesis between variation and repetition. However, I might repeat things that, as it’s going around, is varying itself on one aspect. Or I could vary repetition.175

Dora Hanninen responds directly to that line of thought and work when she writes of her experience of Crippled Symmetry, “While I can abstract from the musical surface to recognize the individual repetitions as repetitions, as a listener I am rather drawn into their subtle and persistent phenomenal transformation.”176 Clementi goes against this approach, preferring an undifferentiated temporal universe, a saturation, to such a zooming in on sound objects. His overall concern with temporal stasis is similar, but his desired end result is, if anything, diametrially opposed to Feldman’s flickering patterns and Lang’s shifting levels of magnification. His artistic influences, in addition to Escher, include Piero Dorazio, who fills the canvas with streaks of interlocking color, and the geometric forms that fill Victor Vasarely’s canvases. The need not to hear any single interval or any other detail, and the need to void any type of articulation, led to a kind of static materiality: in this way, a dense counterpoint around a cluster gives rise to continual total chromaticism, eliminating the perception of individual internal movements, which in turn ensured a constant vibrancy. This counterpoint becomes . . . more optical-illusory than material. . . . Everything flows equally into an absolute stillness.177

Harrison’s approach in this respect is, like Clementi’s, more global than local. In seeking to direct or manipulate the attention of the listener, he cites the influence of Bridget Riley. When writing six symmetries [2004] I made a careful analytical study of how Bridget Riley uses the curve. I wanted to be able to convey in musical terms the same sense of transition and oscillation that occurs in the paintings of the midseventies. The result was a series of rhythmic canons that I coupled to pitch cycles, running these backwards or permutating the rhythmic sequences to create the variations in the piece. . . . Riley herself has spoken of the sensations that arise when clusters flow into each other along the twists of a curve. In musical terms, this creates a type of art that is situational—it is not about creating the results but the things that make up the result.178

These “things that make up the result” are more analogous to Clementi’s machineready fabric than to Feldman’s hand tailoring. Pitch cycles are carefully interlocked

144

Experimental Music Since 1970

with other systematic rhythmic processes in the planning phases of the process. Repetition is the device used to set up a mode of relating to the material. An earlier artistic model, and one that was an early influence on Riley, is pointillism. Colors are separated out but create an aggregate in their repeated usage, and the viewer can look more closely to see what is going on. It is questionable whether the listener can do the same thing, even with careful repeated listenings.

The art of forgetting Works that are temporally disorienting often involve similar disorientation of memory. Feldman gives several examples within his own work. He said, “In my [second] string quartet I often do things to alienate memory. For example, I might have something return, but it returns in a different ordering. It seems only a little familiar.”179 Answering a question about the increasing length of his pieces (including this quartet), he said, What does any artist do when he doesn’t have any problems? He looks for new ones. . . . You also have to develop your own paraphernalia to hold it together, rather than maintain the conventional idea that what develops might hold a piece together . . . you just find ways to survive in this big piece.180

An important part of that survival kit is the calculated dislocation of memory. He explains how such dislocation occurs in one of his extended piano pieces, Triadic Memories (1981). One chord might be repeated three times, another, seven or eight—depending on how long I felt it should go on. Quite soon into a new chord I would forget the reiterated chord before it. I then reconstructed the entire section: rearranging its earlier progression and changing the number of times a particular chord was repeated. This way of working was a conscious attempt at “formalizing” a disorientation of memory.181

Pisaro tends to obscure memories in two apparently opposite ways. His use of extended intervals of silence plays with the listener’s experience of time passing. These intervals have the effect of putting the listener more deeply into the time and space of the performance. In the context of a live performance of a piece such as the seventyfive-minute mind is moving (1) (1996), the listener is hopefully in an attentive state, but during the long silences finds herself lacking sufficient musical material to draw that attention. By emptying a time interval of explicit markers, Pisaro illumines the listener’s consciousness of time passing and, in turn, the fickle nature of that perception. In his more recent work, another kind of forgetting has been achieved through saturation. In terms of the “inattentive gaps,” I think there’s something in the high density of pieces like A Wave and Waves [2007], July Mountain [2009], Ricefall (2), Hearing

Perception

145

Metal (2) [2010–11] and Fields Have Ears (6) that actively encourages a state where one is constantly “forgetting” what one just heard. I’ve come to enjoy the experience of hearing a piece for a third or fourth (or fiftieth) time and hearing new things in it. This still happens to me with these pieces.182

The altered sense of time he brought about in other pieces by shining a mirror of sorts on the complexity of the listener’s own thought process occurs in these works through a massive and incomprehensible accumulation of data. Harrison writes of a similar effect within one of his pieces, Repetitions in Extended Time (2008). “At first the repetitions appear indistinct, fleeting and constantly changing, but, as time progresses, figurations become more prominent and obvious and the details themselves begin to take on their own identity.”183 If the material has not been absorbed in the first place, it is not available in the listener’s consciousness to be either remembered or forgotten. It may, however, be perceived in the second, third, or later instance. Repetition within a piece, or repeated hearings of the same piece, may reveal more or different details of the sonic surface. As these details are detected, the music is renewing itself—appearing as if it is fresh material. The tension between the surface sameness and the flickering recognition of details further complicates the listener’s experience of the passage of time.

What is found when time is lost? The various techniques embedded in this music are designed to evoke a set response from the listener, but to create a space to relate in new ways to a duration, or to the temporal relationship between sound events. Why? What is the motive behind, or the effect upon the listener of, this play with temporal perception? There are many possible answers. One possibility is that these works immerse us in a duration in order to take us out of it. They reveal that our experience of the passage of time is not as logical, chronological, and inherently predictable as we would tend to assume in the daily flow of life. Any of these pieces can act as a kind of removal from, or suspension of, the normal passage of time. In taking us away from what we think we know, an experience of such a work brings us back to a state of wonder, as in childhood, when assumptions are as yet unlearned and anything could happen within a day, or an hour, or a moment. An experience is not classified by its duration, but is remembered for how it has changed us. Experience sits on time, but is not determined or limited by it. So much of what we do is timed or scheduled that expert intervention may be needed to draw us out of a sense of time as the constriction of experience. Such experts—the composers who bend or break temporal grids—will often use what is referred to in art as an “all-over” approach, in which the edges of the canvas (or the start and finish of the piece) do not acknowledge its boundaries. The canvas is literally filled, with no hint of a boundary except its edges. In the work of all of the composers discussed, the listener will tend to feel as if they have been suddenly placed in a preexisting environment at the opening, and just as abruptly taken out of it at the close. The start and end points of the audible experience of the piece seem arbitrary and, if the piece is sufficiently convincing, unreal.

146

Experimental Music Since 1970

Feldman writes, “Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange ‘abnormal’ events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries.”184 Delving into a world of artistic influence, he speaks of the play with perception as a means of activating self-reflection and a sense of wonder. Mondrian, Rothko, Guston—all of them seem to have come to art by another route, a route abandoned and forgotten by modernity, yet, to my mind, the path that has really kept art alive. If I can retrace this route (one has to make great historical leaps in order to do this); if, say, I begin with Piero, go on to Rembrandt, to Mondrian, then to Rothko and Guston—a certain sensation begins to emerge: a sensation that we are not looking at the painting, but the painting is looking at us. The reason for this is that this kind of painting is not conceived as a spatial reality. . . . The modernist, in his way, has made the limitations of his medium his subject. . . . Anything that ignores these limitations, gives us the sense of an enigma.185

The pianist Louis Goldstein confirms the effectiveness of Feldman’s work in this line when he writes of his experience of performing Triadic Memories. My own sense of time is stretched and tugged in ways I never before experienced. There come moments when the unit of time I am measuring in my mind suddenly doubles and simultaneously begins to move at half the previous tempo. Sometimes I experience beats of time slower than I have ever been able to imagine. For me, the sublimity of the ending, 100 minutes into the piece, results from two possible conclusions playing off each other. Sometimes the effect is one of utter tragedy, when in spite of great effort, time finally does break down and an awareness of terrifying emptiness is discovered. Other times I remember the words of the artist-protagonist in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Bluebeard. . . . “It was pure essence of human wonder.”186

Pisaro speaks of a similar expansion of perception and overall awareness that has been sought after and encountered within the community of the Wandelweiser collective. The immense richness of the network by which we feel time is a crucial part of the way we experience life. To be in touch with this network is to be content. As Agnes Martin says: “Joy is perception.” In our music, the listener’s time and musical time meet halfway. The music, by taking its course, by being always on its way but never in a hurry, redirects the feeling of time. We may follow its progress easily, and therefore need not devote much effort to staying on the path. In this situation our eyes stray to the path running alongside us, on which someone just like us is walking. In this way the music is a mirror in which we see ourself, reflected through a gauze made of time that is stretched across the mirror. The gauze is held in place by sound.

Perception

147

While Harrison, Clementi, and Lang will tend to saturate a duration with sound in their efforts to alter temporal perception, much (though certainly not all) of the work of the Wandelweiser collective is concerned with transparency. To delve more fully into Pisaro’s metaphor, the gauze, time, takes the place of the canvas material that stretches through the boundaries of the piece. Some sounds are usually needed to make sure it is understood as music. They must be placed carefully, so as to hold it in place, or else the duration will be lost: attention will wander away from the performative situation. The changes in Pisaro’s work—from sound to silence or from one type of sound to another—tend to occur at regular time intervals. The listener can wander or be recalled to the situation from one sound or silence to another. Pisaro continues, Sound moves the air, and is thus always an indicator of space and location. But, more importantly, sound needs time to reveal itself. Sound and time are thus interwoven: sound rides on time and acquires its identity; time is marked by sound, and becomes perceptible.187

Time is one of the fundamental concerns of the musician. Listeners have been transported for centuries into new modes of perceiving time, from the visceral pulses of dance music to the suspension of time in an operatic aria. In more recent times, the influence of innovation in visual art has given composers a whole new set of tools, enabling them to explore new avenues of temporal perception in their work. In so doing, they set meaningful and transformative experiences in motion.

Notes 1 “Mission Statement,” http://deeplistening.org/site/content/about. 2 “SA Issue 7: Pauline Oliveros on Deep Listening,” http://soundamerican.org/paulineoliveros-on-deep-listening. 3 Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2005), 57. 4 Jürg Frey, “Life is Present,” 1996. http://www.wandelweiser.de/_juerg-frey/texts-e. html#LIFE. 5 Frey, “Streichquartett II,” String Quartets, Bozzini Quartet, Edition Wandelweiser Records, EWR 0410, 2006, compact disc. 6 Frey, “Life is Present.” 7 Frey, “Weite der Landschaft—Tiefe der Zeit,” 2008. http://www.wandelweiser.de/_ juerg-frey/texts.html#WEITE. 8 Frey, Six Instruments, Series (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 2002). 9 Frey, “Wo ist das Stuck?” 1999. http://www.wandelweiser.de/_juerg-frey/texts. html#WO. 10 Frey, “Weite.” 11 Ibid. 12 Frey, “And on it went,” http://www.wandelweiser.de/_juerg-frey/texts-e.html#AND.

148

Experimental Music Since 1970

13 Frey, Streichtrio (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 1997). 14 Frey, 60 Pieces of Sound (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 2009). 15 wandelweiser und so weiter, Another Timbre 56, 2012, compact disc box set. Liner notes, 11. 16 Laurie Spiegel, The Expanding Universe, Unseen Worlds, UW09, 2 compact discs. Liner notes, 19. 17 Frank J. Oteri, “Laurie Spiegel: Grassroots Technologist,” http://www.newmusicbox. org/articles/laurie-spiegel-grassroots-technologist. 18 See http://www.norment.net/work/objects-installations-ind/notes-from-theundermind. 19 See http://www.norment.net/work/objects-installations-ind/dead-room. 20 “Within the Toll,” http://www.norment.net/work/sonic-performance-ind/withinthe-toll_performance. 21 See Chapter 6, “Site-Specific Works.” 22 Neuhaus, “Notes on Place and Moment,” http://www.max-neuhaus.info/ soundworks/vectors/place/notes. 23 Noise in and as Music, 125. See Public/Private (https://philjulian.bandcamp.com/ album/public-private) and Displacement (https://philjulian.bandcamp.com/album/ displacement) as two examples of Julian’s work with drones. 24 Max Neuhaus, Eybesfeld. http://www.max-neuhaus.info/images/Eybesfeld.gif. 25 Neuhaus, Three to One. http://www.max-neuhaus.info/images/ThreeToOne.gif. 26 Neuhaus, Untitled. http://www.max-neuhaus.info/images/untitled(Rivoli).gif. 27 See Chapter 5, “Treatments of Sonic Information.” 28 Peter Ablinger, “IEAOV,” http://ablinger.mur.at/ieaov.html. 29 Peter Ablinger, “Sehen und Hören,” http://ablinger.mur.at/docu03.html. 30 “Biography & Photos,” http://www.phillniblock.com/biography_photos_images. html. 31 “Phill Niblock—Touch Three,” http://touchshop.org/product_info. php?cPath=9&products_id=116. 32 “Zinc & Copper Works/Phill Niblock disseminate/Labor Sonor,” Vimeo video, 9:38, posted by “Daniel Costello,” March 21, 2010, https://vimeo.com/10321958. 33 Juan Carlos Kase, “Phill Niblock’s Observational Cinema,” in Working Title, ed. Phill Niblock et al. (Dijon: les Presses du Réel, 2012), 435. 34 Niblock, Working Title, 97. 35 Ibid., 98. 36 Ibid., 126. 37 Ibid., 319. 38 Ibid., 101. 39 Paul DeMarinis, Paul DeMarinis: Buried in Noise (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2010), 159. 40 DeMarinis, Buried in Noise, 181. 41 Stuart Dempster, Standing Waves, New Albion NA013, 1987, compact disc. Liner notes. 42 Francisco López, “Environmental Sound Matter,” April 1998, http://www. franciscolopez.net/env.html. 43 John Chowning, “The Simulation of Moving Sound Sources,” Computer Music Journal 1, no. 4 (1977): 48. 44 See “music for bodies,” http://www.musicforbodies.net/wiki/Main_Page.

Perception

149

45 Laetitia Sonami, “Seizing a Sound and Smelling Its Belly to Fit in a Folder,” in Arcana III: Musicians on Music, ed. John Zorn (New York: Hips Road, 2008), 220–22. 46 Laetitia Sonami, “lady’s glove,” http://sonami.net/ladys-glove. 47 See also “Laetitia Sonami at the Second L.A.S.T. Festival,” YouTube video, 28:17, from an October 14, 2014 performance at the L.A.S.T. Festival, posted by “Piero Scaruffi,” October 25, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-1W4YVXZis and The Ear Goes to the Sound: The Work of Laetitia Sonami (Oakland, CA: Kicked Your Height, 2014). 48 Pascal Battus, “Pascal Battus: Sound Massages,” Leonardo Music Journal 16 (2006): 76. Also see track 15 on accompanying CD. 49 Steven Kazuo Takasugi, “Vers une myopie musicale,” in Polyphony & Complexity, ed. Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Frank Cox, and Wolfram Schurig (Hofheim: Wolke, 2002), 293. 50 Ming Tsao, “Between the Lines of Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s Recent Work ‘The Jargon of Nothingness,’” Musik & Ästhetik 31 (2004): 4. https://www.academia. edu/4516225/Between_the_Lines_of_Steven_Kazuo_Takasugi_s_recent_work_The_ Jargon_of_Nothingness_. 51 Tsao, “Between the Lines,” 6. 52 Ibid., 11. 53 Dmitri Kourliandski, falsa lectio, Bandcamp release, August 26, 2013, https:// fancymusic.bandcamp.com/album/falsa-lectio. 54 James Saunders, “Interview with Claudia Molitor,” September 23, 2012, http://www. james-saunders.com/interview-with-claudia-molitor. 55 Richard Chartier, Series, Bandcamp release, September 2000, https://richardchartier. bandcamp.com/album/series. 56 Brian Marley, Mark Wastell, and Damien Beaton, eds., Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum (London: Sound 323, 2005), 269–70. 57 James Tenney, In a Large, Open Space (Lebanon, NH: Frog Peak Music, 1994). 58 Alvin Lucier, Reflections (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995), 164. 59 Lucier, Reflections, 158. 60 Ibid., 344. 61 Lucier, Crossings (Kiel: Material Press, 1984), 37. 62 Mary Jane Leach, Note Passing Note (Valley Falls, NY: Ariadne Press, 1981), http:// www.mjleach.com/scores/NotePassingNote.pdf. 63 Frank J. Oteri, “Mary Jane Leach: Sonic Confessions,” http://www.newmusicbox.org/ articles/mary-jane-leach-sonic-confessions. Leach, Trio for Duo (Valley Falls, NY: Ariadne Press, 1985). 64 Leach, “Program Note,” http://www.mjleach.com/program%20notes/ TrioforDuoProgramNotes.pdf. 65 Words and Spaces, 212. 66 Ibid., 213. 67 Ibid., 214. See also Ron Kuivila, “Untitled: An Interactive Installation,” ICMC ’85 Proceedings. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx/untitled-an-interactiveinstallation.pdf?c=icmc;idno=bbp2372.1985.054. 68 Michael Brewster, “Where, There or Here?” 1998. http://acousticsculpture.com/ essay2.html. 69 “See Hear Now: A Sonic Drawing and Five Acoustic Sculptures,” 2002, http://www. michaelbrewsterart.com/albums/see-hear-now/See-Hear-Now-catalog.pdf.

150

Experimental Music Since 1970

70 Kyle Gann, “The Tingle of p ´ mn – 1,” http://www.melafoundation.org/gann.htm, quoted from Village Voice, October 4, 1994 (Vol. XXXIX No. 40, p. 84). 71 “Bio,” http://www.tutorialdiversions.org/bio.html. 72 Bill Dietz and Martin Beck, “MUSICAL PLEASURE »IS« SEXUAL PLEASURE,” April 14, 2015. http://www.akademiesolitudeblog.com/2015/04/14/musical-pleasureis-sexual-pleasure. 73 Bill Dietz, 8 Tutorial Diversions (Stuttgart: Edition Solitude, 2015), 26. 74 Ibid., 48–53. 75 Ibid., 64–69. 76 Stephen Cornford, “Tuning Up (2008),” http://www.scrawn.co.uk/5.html. 77 Casey Farina, “project CONDOR,” http://caseyfarina.net/project/projectcondor-2008. 78 Lucio Capece, “Project # 3—Music for Pendulums and Sine Wave Sin Different Tuning systems,” http://luciocapece.blogspot.com/2013/01/sunday-6th-janauray. html. 79 Capece, “Project# 0—Bracketing,” October 23, 2014, http://luciocapece.blogspot. com/2014/10/29th-october-2014-most-recent-project.html. 80 “Greg Schiemer,” http://gregschiemer.net/about.php. 81 Interactive Radio Author(s): Greg Schiemer Source: Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 4 (1994), p. 19. 82 Alvin Lucier, Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014), 140–41. 83 Gordon Monahan, “Speaker Swinging,” http://www.gordonmonahan.com/pages/ speaker_swinging.html. 84 Monahan, Seeing Sound: Sound Art, Performance and Music 1978–2011 (Scarborough: Doris McCarthy Gallery, 2011), 25, 58. See also the accompanying DVD for a documented performance. 85 Bill Drummond, “326. Stop,” http://www.the17.org/score_bill.php?score=326. 86 Drummond, “1. Imagine,” http://www.the17.org/scores/1. 87 John Lely and James Saunders, eds., Word Events: Perspectives on Notation (New York: Continuum, 2012), 183. 88 Drummond, “358. On the Mountain,” http://www.the17.org/score.php?score=358. 89 Drummond, “A Brief But Evolving History of The17,” September 2009, http://www. the17.org/about.php. 90 Drummond, “6. Climb,” 2006, http://www.the17.org/score_bill.php?score=6. 91 Peter Ablinger, “Weiss/Weisslich 11B,” http://ablinger.mur.at/docu02.html. 92 Ibid. 93 Michael Pisaro, Braids (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 1997). 94 Lely and Saunders, Word Events, 18. 95 Tom Johnson, Imaginary Music (New York: Two-Eighteen Press, 1974). 96 Ablinger, “Unmögliche Stücke,” http://ablinger.mur.at/zettel-003_unmoeglichestuecke.html. 97 Ibid. 98 Lely and Saunders, Word Events, 153. 99 Oliveros, Deep Listening, 38. 100 Lely and Saunders, Word Events, 276. 101 Ibid., 277.

Perception 102 103 104 105 106

151

Ibid., 113. “Profile,” http://piethopraxis.org/profile. “The Sonic Barber Pole: Shepard’s Scale,” http://www.cycleback.com/sonicbarber.html. “Palace Of Marvels (queered pitch),” http://editionsmego.com/release/eMEGO-113. Malcolm W. Brown, “Ear’s Own Sounds May Underlie Its Precision,” New York Times, June 9, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/09/science/ear-s-ownsounds-may-underlie-its-precision.html. 107 Thomas Gold, “The Inertia of Scientific Thought,” originally published in Speculations in Science and Technology 12, no. 4 (1989): 245–53, quoted in Zorn, Arcana III: Musicians on Musicians (New York: Hips Road, 2008), 12. 108 Zorn, Arcana, 10–11. 109 See, for example, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9018364. 110 Zorn, Arcana, 13. 111 Ibid., 10. 112 Bill Dietz, “Maryanne Amacher,” November 12, 2009, http://www.tutorialdiversions. org/Documents/MA%20BD.pdf, 1. 113 Maryanne Amacher, Sound Characters, Tzadik TZ 7043, 1999, compact disc. Liner notes. 114 Ibid. 115 Maryanne Amacher, Teo, Tzadik, TZ 8055, 2008. 116 Zorn, Arcana, 16. 117 Emmanuel Holterbach, “Deux Dames-Jeanne (Barcelone),” Soundcloud track, 3:30, 2014, https://soundcloud.com/emmanuel-holterbach/deux-dames-jeanne-barcelone. 118 Jacob Kirkegaard, “Eisenwind,” 2015, http://fonik.dk/works/eisenwind.html. 119 Kirkegaard, “Phonurgia Metallis,” 2009, http://fonik.dk/shop/shop-phonurgia.html. 120 Jiyeon Kim, “under_the_bridge,” Soundcloud track, 4:45, 2012, https://soundcloud. com/teum11/bridge_feedback. 121 Kim, “drops,” Soundcloud track, 5:28, 2012, https://soundcloud.com/teum11/drops. 122 Jodi Rose, “Singing Bridges—Vibrations,” Bandcamp release, 2005, https:// singingbridgesmusic.bandcamp.com/album/singing-bridges-vibrations. See http:// singingbridges.net/artist/index.html. 123 Michael Pisaro, “Membrane—Window—Mirror: (The folded worlds of Toshiya Tsunoda),” Surround 3 (2015), http://surround.noquam.com/membrane-windowmirror. Toshiya Tsunoda, “Extract from Field Recording Archive #2: The Air Vibration Inside a Hollow,” http://www.hapna.com/H1.html. 124 Tsunoda, The Argyll Recordings, edition.t, e.01, 2008, compact disc. Liner notes. 125 See Chapter 2 for more on this piece. 126 Toshiya Tsunoda, “About My Field Recording,” Reductive Journal 1, July 31, 2014. http://www.cimaural.net/reductivemusic/journal/journal_one.html. 127 Ibid., 32. 128 Pisaro, “Membrane.” 129 Tsunoda, The Temple Recording, edition.t, e.03, 2013, 2 compact discs. Liner notes. 130 Pisaro, “Membrane.” 131 Morton Feldman and B. H. Friedman, eds., Give My Regards to Eighth Street (Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2000), 146. 132 Maria Rosa De Luca (translated by Chantal Howell), “From Carillons to Carillon: A Study of Clementi’s Infinite ‘Mechanisms,’” Contemporary Music Review 28 (2009): 6, 526.

152

Experimental Music Since 1970

133 Bernhard Lang, “Loop aestetics Darmstadt 2002,” http://members.chello.at/ bernhard.lang/publikationen/loop_aestet.pdf, 9. 134 Saunders, Ashgate, 289. 135 Feldman, Eighth Street, 87. 136 Morton Feldman and Chris Villars, eds., Morton Feldman Says (London: Hyphen Press, 2006), 51. 137 Feldman, Eighth Street, 143 138 Feldman, Morton Feldman Says, 205. 139 Ibid., 185. 140 Feldman, Eighth Street, 200. 141 Ibid., 149. 142 Pisaro, “Time’s Underground,” http://www.wandelweiser.de/_michael-pisaro/texts. html#Times_Underground. 143 Pisaro, entre-moments (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 2006), 2. 144 Harrison, “Enclosed Spaces,” 271. 145 Quoted in Roberto Fabbriciani, “. . . with Aldo Clementi,” Contemporary Music Review 30, nos. 3–4 (June 2011): 204. 146 Harrison, “Scanning the Temporal Surface: Aspects of Time, Memory and Repetition in My Recent Music,” Divergence Press 1 (March 2013): 63. 147 Feldman, Morton Feldman Says, 35. 148 Feldman, Eighth Street, 127. 149 Bryn Harrison, “Cyclical Structures and the Organisation of Time: A Commentary on My Recent Compositional Work” (dissertation, University of Huddersfield, 2007), 1. 150 Howard Skempton, “Tendrils,” http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780193588806. do. 151 Bryn Harrison, Vessels, with Philip Thomas (piano), Another Timbre, at69, 2013, compact disc. 152 Henry Flynt, Glissando No. 1, Recorded 025, 2011, compact disc. Liner notes. 153 “Catherine Christer Hennix & Henry Flynt: ‘The Illuminatory Sound Environment,’” http://issueprojectroom.org/event/illuminitory-sound-environment. 154 Stephen Snook, “Aldo Clementi: Works with Guitar,” https://www.dramonline.org/ albums/aldo-clementi-works-with-guitar/notes. 155 Quoted in Graziella Seminara, “The ‘Theatralised Canon,’” Contemporary Music Review 30 (February 2012): 258. 156 Agnes Martin and Lawrence Alloway, Agnes Martin (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1976), 9. 157 Ibid., 9. 158 Martin, Writings (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005), 29. 159 Harrison, “Cyclical Structures,” 84. 160 Saunders, Ashgate, 287. 161 Jennie Gottschalk, “ELISION: transference (3)—Bryn Harrison,” http://www. soundexpanse.com/transference-bryn-harrison. Harrison, “surface forms (repeating),” Transference, Huddersfield Contemporary Records, HCR02CD, 2010, compact disc. 162 Bryn Harrison, “The Tempo of Enclosed Spaces: A Short, Personal Reflection on the Ensemble Music of Aldo Clementi,” Contemporary Music Review 30, nos. 3–4 (2011): 272.

Perception

153

163 Feldman, Eighth Street, 136. 164 Dora Hanninen, “A Theory of Recontextualization in Music: Analyzing Phenomenal Transformations of Repetition,” Music Theory Spectrum 25, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 60–61. 165 Lucas Schleicher, “Michael Pisaro: A Conspiracy Against the Ordinary,” http://www. brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9204:micahelpisaro-interview&catid=74:interviews&Itemid=91. 166 William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (New York: Dover, 1950), 613. 167 Lang, “Cuts’n Beats: a Lensmans View,” http://members.chello.at/bernhard.lang/ publikationen/CutsAndBeatsNotesonMartinArnold.pdf, 7. 168 Toshiya Tsunoda, O Kokos Tis Anixis, edition.t, e.04, 2013, 2 compact discs. 169 Lang, “Loop aestetics Darmstadt 2002,” 7. 170 De Luca, “From Carillons to Carillon,” 527. 171 Clementi, “Commentary on My Music,” Contemporary Music Review 28, no. 6 (2009): 509. 172 Feldman, Morton Feldman Says, 208. 173 “Christian Wolff Interview,” http://goingthruvinyl.com/wp/2012/04/christian-wolffand-gerard-rejskind-interviews-listen-3345-s02-ep06-drinking-orange-juice-withchristian-wolff (no longer available). 174 Ibid. 175 Feldman, Eighth Street, 185. 176 Hanninen, “Recontextualization,” 61, 94–5. 177 Clementi, “Commentary on My Music,” 508–9. 178 Saunders, Ashgate, 290. 179 Feldman, Morton Feldman Says, 186. 180 Ibid., 92. 181 Feldman, Eighth Street, 137. 182 Schleicher, “Michael Pisaro.” 183 Harrison, “Scanning the Temporal Surface,” 62. 184 Feldman, Morton Feldman Says, 36. 185 Feldman, Eighth Street, 79. 186 Louis Goldstein, “Morton Feldman and the Shape of Time,” http://www.cnvill.net/ mfgldstn.htm. 187 Pisaro, “Time’s Underground.”

154

5

Information, Language, and Interaction Sound is a type of information and can be treated as such, either spontaneously or as a document. In “Treatments of Sonic Information,” documents of sound events are transformed in ways that (like the works in the previous section) borrow visual metaphors and techniques. “The Sounds of Living Beings” deals with communication among animals, in addition to the exploration of human sound-making. Another aspect of human communication is then explored in the sonic uses of language, from its smallest components through to considerations of delivery, sense and nonsense, and translation. Finally, the “Interaction” section locates the most fruitful instabilities of various projects at the points of encounter between musicians, or between one or more musicians and a responsive technology. The works explored throughout this chapter reveal the various susceptibilities of communicative acts to forces of patterning, individuality, circumstance, and influence.

5.1  Treatments of sonic information Sonic information (including sound recordings, radio, and noise) can be treated in ways that shed light on its nature. Verticalization and pixelation are metaphors pulled from the visual domain and translated into techniques that reveal the qualities or components of sound documents. Peter Ablinger and JLIAT both use such analyses to further consider the “totality of sounds.”1

Noise Noise is often understood to be either uninteresting or disturbing sound. The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger is fascinated by noise, and draws a distinction between noises in their specificity and noise in its totality. He writes: Noise and noises are not the same. In fact, they can be almost opposites. What the singular form refers to is the totality of white noise. What the plural refers to is the many individual objects, the event-related noises of everyday life.2

156

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 5.1  Peter Ablinger at the waterfalls of Krimml © Peter Ablinger In his foundational essay “Rauschen,” he further describes the German term, “Rauschen,” (white noise) as “the totality of sounds—‘everything always’ in its acoustic representation. Comparable to white light that contains all colours, white noise contains all frequencies, and—poetically speaking—all music . . . maximum density, maximum information.”3 Ablinger’s compositional output is staggering in its variety of approaches to the complementary concerns of “noise” and “noises.” Weiss/Weisslich 7b: Rauschen (1998) is about “the idea of totality in its acoustic representation: white noise.” It has had multiple realizations, using radios, loudspeakers, and a waterfall as noise-producing elements. But he expands the image of noise to include more possibilities—“as a fact in reality or as a thought in your mind.”4 Weiss/Weisslich 33 reveals the changeable impression of a single source of noise by recording it from increasing degrees of distance, and then playing it back at

Figure 5.2  Peter Ablinger: Weiss/Weisslich 33, illustration © Peter Ablinger

Information, Language, and Interaction

157

equal volume.5 Another method of differentiating supposedly similar noises is in Weiss/Weisslich 18 (1992/96). The World Edition recording presents the sound of wind blowing through eighteen different types of trees for forty seconds each. Even with no pauses between the recordings, the differences of sound from one tree to the next are immediately apparent. According to Ablinger, the sound of two trees of the same species in the same season will be the same, regardless of their location; but as the recording demonstrates, different species are simple to distinguish from one another.6 This piece is a response to a formative experience of Ablinger’s: The corn stood high and it was just before harvest. The hot summer east wind swept through the fields and suddenly I heard das Rauschen (noise/the sound). Although it was often explained to me, I can still never say how wheat and rye are different. But I heard the difference. I believe it was the first time I really heard outside an aesthetic circumstance (say, a concert). Something had happened . . . one way or the other, it seems to me, all the pieces I’ve made since have to do with this experience.7

Taken on its own terms, noise can have all sorts of shadings and qualities. What seems to be a generality becomes a specificity. James Saunders’ components derive their value solely through their assigned context (2009) calls for “2 radios, barely audible and tuned to different static sounds.” The sounds are produced on four different wood surfaces played with a violin bow. The piece is designed to explore the similarities and differences in these sounds, as the two musicians each play through the fourteen pages in a different order. The bowed wood sounds are unstable because of the limited physical control that can be exerted at the low dynamic level that the piece calls for: “o-pppp (----) on the edge of silence; sound will stop and start uncontrollably.” The other dynamic indication has a similar instability: “ppp () very quiet, with naturally occurring, unforced variations.” The resultant flickering in and out of presence or resonance is a potential match to the quality of the radio static. At times these sounds will be difficult to differentiate. The piece poses the question: Will the radio or the block of wood yield the more interesting information? It becomes difficult to maintain an assumption that a piece of wood is more real than a radio, or that a radio is more complex than a piece of wood. These considerations lead squarely back to the quote from Jack Burnham’s System Esthetics (1968) that is used as the title of the piece. Michael Pisaro’s White Metal (Grey Series No. 2) (2012–13) is also concerned with the differentiation of noises. Rather than presenting them side by side, he leaves the choice of specific noises up to the performers, and maps them to the exact timings of a Harnoncourt recording of Mozart’s 40th Symphony.8 “The starting image of the piece,” writes Pisaro, “was layers of white(-ish) noise, intense or dense enough so that at first differentiation between noises or layers might be nearly impossible.”9 The “at first” is the key phrase in the description, since the sounds are gradually pulled apart and their differences are revealed. Joe Panzner and Greg Stuart are staunch advocates of this work, having developed hundreds of new sounds for each realization. By continually seeking out new audio materials, each of which is subject to transformations within

158

Experimental Music Since 1970

the performance, they amplify the paradox of formal cohesion and an overwhelming multiplicity of difference.10 Ablinger is similarly interested in presenting degrees of difference and density (of sound/noise/noises) that are to be navigated by the listener. Der Regen, das Glas, das Lachen (1994) is described as “the juncture of a one tone piece and white noise.” The one tone is a single glissando over an octave that encompasses all the possible tones within its range. Meanwhile: The total sound passes in stages through 6 further layers of simultaneous sound until it arrives at a single level of white noise. . . . What is played is extremely dense and a large part of the orientation is left to the listener. Over long periods she is left alone to listen in to the various levels of the piece, to find her way IN THE SOUND. This process of listening in is an essential part of the piece itself, the actual event, the reason it came into being.11

Ablinger’s work is often initially perceived as a sort of a confrontation. In many ways this is true, but the confrontation is not with the listener but with a passive listening mode. The density at which sonic information is presented negates the possibility of finding a single path through it and has an initially bewildering effect. It could be likened to being dropped in the middle of a dense forest and trying to find a way out with no guidance. Each listener’s path will be different depending on hearing, attention, and associations. The density of sound is too great to be ignored, and there is often a feeling of entrapment, or claustrophobia. But when the listener is able to differentiate between the individual gradations and contours of the sounds, a new experience becomes possible. Ablinger writes: As soon as we shift our attention to its perceptual consequences, as soon as it is no longer about treating the sounds as individuals to be liberated, but about the real individuals—about us, the listeners—then white noise becomes a wonderful field for experience and exploration. In particular, the field of (individual) projection, interpretation, and acoustic illusion is well suited for examining the area of listening and the constructive role of our brain in that process.12

To find this path for oneself in some of the “noisier” of Ablinger’s works is exhilarating, because it is so clearly one’s own. What initially feels like an oppressive situation becomes empowering. In the Instrumente und Rauschen series, acoustic instruments are given a notated pathway through the recorded noise. As Ablinger explains, A very elementary music of scale fragments and sustained tones, almost completely hidden behind a surface of coloured static noise.—Or, the other way round— A series of drawings in time where the background, the paper is the main element, while the disappearing figures on this paper are taken back to the state of illusion.13

Information, Language, and Interaction

159

Background and foreground coalesce into one ambiguous canvas, presenting both detail and totality, and one is discernible from the other only with the greatest concentration. In Violine und Rauschen (“Veronica”) (1995/96), the violin sustains a single note which can barely (and only at times) be discerned from the background sound. In part 5, the violin adds to the texture and noise, rather than blending. The sonic surface and the violin part mask each other, making it an exercise in close listening to discover when the violin is playing. A piece outside of the series, 1–127 (2002) also touches on this kind of construction. In all but one of the 127 instances, the guitar plays a clear, methodical scale, which is interrupted by a recording of street noise. What becomes clear only after listening to multiple segments of the audio recording is that the guitar is playing along with the noise so precisely that one cannot be differentiated from the other.14

Verticalization Another technique for accumulating sounds is to layer multiple streams of sound on top of each other. These layers often have some attribute or source in common, but otherwise there is no internal coordination. In an early example, Charles Ives, influenced by the childhood experience of seeing and hearing two marching bands cross in a parade, overlaid different keys in the early Fugue in Four Keys on “The Shining Shore” (1897), tunings in Three Quarter-Tone Pieces (1923–24), and styles and melodies as well as keys in Central Park in the Dark (1906) and The Unanswered Question (1906).15 John Cage used multiple radio frequencies in Imaginary Landscape 4 (1951) and Radio Music (1956), and forty-two different recordings in Imaginary Landscape 5 (1952). Ablinger has established a process of “verticalization” that would not have been technologically possible in those earlier examples. Rather than dealing with noise itself, as in the previous examples of his work, in Weiss/Weisslich 22 (1986, 96) he begins with well-known musical masterworks. Using specially designed software, he “verticalizes” the complete symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, and Mahler into blocks of sound lasting forty seconds per composer. Christian Scheib writes: The traditional foreground/background conception, the signal to noise ratio conception cannot even been [sic] applied to a work like this. Noise is not the enemy of information, it is by its coloredness, by its texture, by the change from one texture to the next one, the enabler of information.16

What looks on the surface like a drastic reduction is also a clarification of the specific sonic qualities of each composer’s work. Floods of sonic information submerge a pitch space, making it difficult to clearly discern the change from one moment to the next, or to differentiate low from high except in a vibrant continuum. A layering of high and low, melody and accompaniment, is no longer in effect. What you hear, then, is saturation. And yet Mozart’s saturation sounds entirely distinct from Beethoven’s,

160

Experimental Music Since 1970

which is completely different from Bruckner’s, Schubert’s, Haydn’s, or Mahler’s. It could be fascinating to play any two of these condensations for someone who was unfamiliar with both composers and see if they could predict whose music they would prefer in its more intended form. What is remarkable is that in each case, a significant musical body of work is transformed into something that is barely a temporal experience. Through this verticalization process, these complete symphonies become qualities of sound. Marko Ciciliani, an Austrian composer and audiovisual artist, has also turned music into distinct units of noise in Pop Wall Alphabet (2011).17 All of the songs of a particular pop album (one for each letter) are layered on top of each other, along with a spectral freeze that continually presents the entire sonic output of the album. The spectral freeze gradually fades out over the course of each track, and the songs cut out in order of their duration. As both the songs and the freeze diminish, the listener’s ability to isolate musical materials is gradually augmented. Ciciliani writes: For quite some time I have had a fascination with the changes in perception that occur when familiar materials are condensed and concentrated, and in observing how well known material gradually becomes alienated and eventually unrecognizable as it is superimposed in an increasing number of layers.18

This piece would have a very different effect if the entrances were timed so that all the songs ended, rather than began, at the same time. The listener could then observe the reverse transformation from clarity to noise. As it is now, the process takes place twentysix times over, so the listener can become more familiar with the layering and unlayering and observe the change in character of the noise from one band and album to another. In the Ciciliani example, the spectral freeze is a monolithic verticalization of the entire album. What occurred over time (width, in this analogy) becomes simultaneous (height). In Ablinger’s Nerz und Campari (1998), the freeze is clearly longer than the material it has frozen. Over five minutes, the instrumentalist plays a very finely divided scale (60 tones per octave) from the low to high range. Following that, for forty minutes, the entire freeze is broadcast, along with any other incidental sounds that were recorded in that live five-minute interval. The material does not change at all for those forty minutes, but is described as “a ‘large,’ ‘wide’ surface-noise, a static sound-wall of inner complexity, as it cannot be captured at once, but can only be experienced by spending some time with it.”19 The entire traversal of the instrument’s range becomes one giant, detailed, sustained chord. This basic premise holds throughout the IEAOV series, in which “sounds as an input (the ‘palette’) turns into a color of sound as an output.”20 There are other ways to manipulate the duration and content of an existing musical recording. In the first track of the French composer and turntablist eRikm’s Variations Opportunistes, short samples of one very short clip of a Jean-Philippe Rameau harpsichord piece are looped to saturate a much longer duration. This activity is carried out through microscopic decisions, choosing the exact sample according to its properties, the rate of looping, and the precise moment to move on and make the next set of decisions within that five-second segment. The track seems to be defying gravity, gradually moving forward in a clear and open sky. When eRikm focuses on a

Information, Language, and Interaction

161

dissonance about halfway through the piece, it becomes clear that this is an entirely different territory, and then the glitch, which is characteristic of his work more broadly, becomes suddenly apparent. The pitch bends in ways that enter another sonic territory altogether. After this crazy ride we are dropped into the original source material, which sounds surprisingly simple after so many manipulations. In five seconds, the flight ends, and there is a rapid fade-out.21 A less hands-on approach is Leif Inge’s 9 Beet Stretch (2005), which begins with a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and stretches its duration, without pitch distortion, to last exactly twenty-four hours. This piece exists as a continuous webstream, repeating every twenty-four hours.22 Though everything is slowed down to less than 1/22nd of the original speed, the result feels strangely hurried, as the listener is teased with the prospect of tracing every contour. There is so much musical activity, however, that such tracking is basically impossible, and is doubtless impossible to retain over the flow of twenty-four hours. 9 Beet Stretch invites the listener back to the symphony at its original speed, to find it both more familiar and more strange after delving into this transformative fantasy.

Pixelation Pixelation (the division of images into discrete blocks of color) is key to the digital reproduction of images. An analogous process is used in the digitization of sound. The conceptual artist James Whitehead (known as JLIAT) has developed an unusual thought experiment based on the premise of the digital reproduction of sound in “All Possible CDs.”23 An audio CD stores music by patterns of bits. Each audio sample is 16 Bits, and each second of sound has 44100 samples. So a second of sound is 16 multiplied by 44100 bits, or zeros and ones in the binary number system. Multiply this by two for stereo, and then by 60. And this gives the number of bits that make up one minute of sound. The original Audio CD standard allowed for a maximum recording time of 74 minutes, so multiply this number again by 74, And this will give us the maximum number of bits on a CD. Multiply 16 by 44100, by 2 by 60 by 74 and we get 6265728000. That is the total number of bits that can be stored on a normal CD or CDR. . . . The actual physical CDs in the world are actualizations of these virtualities. Actual objects, physical CDs, being intensities on this virtual plane.

JLIAT has calculated the number (in the billions) that would cover every possible combination of recorded sound on an audio CD. Although it is a very large number, this thought exercise leads to questions about artistic endeavor. This theory is a somewhat more plausible version of the notion of a monkey eventually typing the complete works of Shakespeare using random keystrokes. If artistic work can be reduced to bits (or pixels, or letters, or numbers, or any other discrete and quantifiable unit), how can artists differentiate themselves? The implication is that the artist is as replaceable as,

162

Experimental Music Since 1970

and ultimately replaceable by, the recorded artifact. Walter Benjamin anticipated these concerns in his 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” By working with the pixelation of sound, Ablinger has directly engaged with this set of concerns. For the World Venice Forum 2009, he recorded a boy’s reading of the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court. The frequencies of that vocal performance were analyzed, and the data were used to depress the keys of the piano according to the analysis. Deus Cantando (God, speaking) (2009) is the result and is probably Ablinger’s most widely viewed work.24 He describes the methodology as follows: (2) Time and frequency of the chosen “phonograph” are dissolved into a grid of small “squares” whose format may, for example, be 1 second (time) to 1 second (interval). (3) The resulting grid is the score, which is then to be reproduced in different media: on traditional instruments, computer-controlled piano, or in white noise.25

This procedure has been carried out in the Quadraturen series, and is echoed in various ways in Ablinger’s other work. By using a grain, or resolution, of about 16 units per second, he approaches a level of detail at which the articulation of the piano can be recognized as spoken word. His interest, he explains, is not in reproduction itself, but in “the sudden shift into recognition . . . the observation of ‘reality’ via ‘music.’”26 Quadraturen IV (“Selbstportrait mit Berlin”) (1995–98) also calls for a perceptual shift between realism and approximation. The use of a CD in performance underlines the point that a recording is in itself a digitization or pixelation of whatever it documents. The time and frequency grids shift between (and sometimes within) the sections. At times in the recorded version, a regular pulse in the orchestra is more prominent than the recordings of ambient city sounds. In the fifth section, one first hears a fairly regular pulse in the orchestra with pitches that are not at all static, but jump around widely. After an acceleration, the sounds of a restaurant are suddenly audible as the CD fades in. The orchestra emulates these sounds in parallel, delivering an increasingly complex rhythm to match the sounds of many people speaking at once. The acceleration continues, and the orchestra and the recording command equal attention. Gradually the illusion develops that the orchestra is doing the speaking. The recording becomes inaudible, and after another moment the track is over. Ablinger writes: The sound of the ensemble can in principle be compared with that of the recordings. The music becomes an observer of reality. Compared with “reality,” “music” is defined in terms of a scanner (with horizontal rhythm and vertical pitch). To be precise, in terms of a very rough scanner which hobbles far behind the complexity of reality. But at the same time, such hobbling reflects the truth of the observation process as well as being an aesthetic phenomenon in itself.27

Digitization is a reduction in complexity. An image, whether visual or sonic, is mapped onto a grid, and all of the information embedded in it is forced to conform to its

Information, Language, and Interaction

163

divisions. There are a limited number of possibilities in any given parameter. If  the grid is examined closely enough, we see that the 0s and 1s of digital data are highly redundant, and yet through their use we have access to a wider scope of information than ever before in history. Ablinger considers this contradiction very closely in his work. As he explains, All pieces within the series “Augmented Studies” may be seen as a continuation of my exploration into redundancy. Most of the series (though not all) takes, as its starting point, the redundancy of maximally simple material, or, carry on the redundancy/rigour of method/algorithm as a structural vehicle to finally arrive at its opposite—density and complexity. True to all pieces in the series, however, seems to be the intent of focus—the tension between redundancy of material and complexity of experience.28

Augmented Study (2012) is a “Proportion canon from a slow glissando over one octave.”29 Any canon is by definition full of redundancy. The same material is traversed by each of these seven parts (though at different speeds). Each part in itself is redundant as it travels by glissando up a scale at a steady rate, and the range of an octave that it travels is very familiar. The sounding result, however, is like an intricate story unfolding in the colorations of the parts and how they relate to one another. In Hypothesen über das Mondlicht (2012), Ablinger increases the resolution of both pitch and rhythm to “generate an algorithm capable of understanding and reproducing the rhythmic complexity created by reflections of the moonlight on the surface of the sea.” This attempt to translate activity from nature to music is one that he believes to be a failure. The piece is a “micro-rhythmic/micro-tonal proportional canon created out of one single, ascending, regular, 25-cent scale over the range of a flute,” and evokes a radiantly complex, shimmering quality with its sixteen parts, but in the end it is “something else.” A high resolution is a prerequisite to success in such an attempt at reproduction, but not a guarantee of it. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that it is not a translation from sound to sound, but a two-part translation from a natural process to a mathematical form (an algorithm) and then to sound. The resolution makes no difference if the relevant information is not captured in the first place. As a reproduction, this piece may be a failure. But as a speculation, as a means of expanding a tool set and making something fresh, it is a compelling success.30 Joanna Bailie works with both recordings and acoustic instruments, often using some type of transcription process. To Be Beside the Seaside (2015) is a series of transcriptions—three different speculations based on sound recordings. The first movement is a hybrid processing of two recordings that are linked only conceptually to the sea. The first of these is a recording of the second movement of Debussy’s La Mer (1905), “Jeux des vagues” (“play of the waves”) and the second is a field recording of the waves breaking on Brighton Beach. Bailie made freezes from the recording and out of those created twenty-five chords. The chords are approximations of those freezes, transcribed as exactly as possible but presented in conformity with the twelvenote-per-octave grid of equal temperament. The rhythm is based entirely on the field

164

Experimental Music Since 1970

recording. The performance note for the movement is, “Like waves breaking on a beach (literally).” Like the chords, the rhythm is presented within a type of grid, in that the smallest rhythmic subdivision is the sixteenth-note. There is no need for a higher resolution for this hybrid reproduction, either harmonically or rhythmically. The interest of the movement lies in the thorough amalgamation of these two recordings. Both the pitch and rhythm of the second movement are taken from a single source: a Herbert von Karajan recording of the third movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony. The rhythm of Bailie’s movement, which she calls “Slow sliding reveal,” sounds familiar, but the pitch material is band filtered so that only the “very high spectral content” of the recording is used. The performance note for this section is, “Like the ghost of a symphony.” The “reveal” can be likened to the gradual exposure of an analogue photograph in solution. As the deeper hues fill in, the image starts to become clear. As soon as it is fully exposed and the Beethoven is recognized, Bailie’s movement abruptly ends mid-phrase. “Double flicker waltz” carries the ironic instruction, “Robotically precise, but romantic!” It is not in itself danceable as a waltz, but is rather an interpolation of two Johann Strauss waltzes, Wiener Blut (1873) and G’schichten aus dem Wienerwald (1868). The samples alternate rapidly at the opening, but the rhythms gradually expand. Bailie explains: As it slows down, and I make the rhythmic durations kind of more and more equal, they start relating to each other. The samples from one start relating to the other, and they build a kind of new story from it. And that’s something that comes from slowing something down, that you have time to actually start constructing these things as a listener.

In discussing this piece, Bailie named Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho (1993) as a major influence. A well-known film (Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho [1960]) became something completely different through the method Gordon used to sample it, slowing down the rate of the film to three frames per second. Bailie distorts the reproduction in each of these movements and in the process creates a unique relationship with the orchestral setting and repertoire.31 The advent of recording and subsequent manipulative technologies, far from replacing human creativity, has facilitated the exploration of music, noise(s), and the totality of sonic information.

5.2  The sounds of living beings Human sound production The musicians in this section actively explore all manner of sounds that humans can produce, including but not limited to those of the vocal mechanism.

Information, Language, and Interaction

165

The German composer Gerhard Stäbler’s JC/NY (1992) uses sounds made by humans in their everyday activities, “ranging from reading and writing to eating and sleeping.” Special attention is paid, through amplification, to the sounds of the body—coughing, breathing, digestion. These particular sounds in the recording are not unusual, but the deliberate foregrounding of them is. These are sounds that may unintentionally come up in a concert situation, but this time they are the focus of attention. The audience is also part of the performance: The listener is challenged to play an active part in the creation of his own or his neighbours’ experience of the work: by tapping the ear, by covering or uncovering it, or by using the hand to enlarge the outer ear. . . . Index finger held lightly over the cartilage flap of the ear and ooopen-close-oopen-close!32

This component of the piece underlines the point that humans can not only make sound, but also obstruct it. The involuntary aspects of hearing are emphasized—not only the sounds of the human body, but also the use of one audience member to influence the listening experience of another. This instruction also invites an invasion of personal space, in that not every audience member necessarily knows his or her neighbor or is willing to come into physical contact. In Rachengold (1992), Stäbler employs another largely involuntary human mechanism—the gargle. He sings in falsetto while gargling over the course of over five minutes, discovering how much he can control or manipulate the vocal mechanism in this state. The exploration of vocal mechanisms can also take place through small sounds. Ami Yoshida is a Japanese vocalist who describes her work as “a barely audible sound that is perceived as sound itself rather than as vocalization.”33 She operates in a state of extremity, completely withdrawn from normal modes of communication or singing. The unusual qualities of this approach, combined with the use of this most viscerally empathetic instrument, bring the listener to a very raw place as well. Tiger Thrush (2003), a solo album of Yoshida’s, is unremitting in its exploration of the hidden pockets of the vocal mechanism.34 It’s not about volume, but about strain and intent. Aaron Cassidy writes that these sounds disconnect the voice from the body. These sounds are made in a microscopically small physical space in the throat. Like the squeal of air coming out of the pinched opening of a balloon, or like the unpredictable squawk from a clarinet reed, they are the noises not of their resonating chambers but instead of a tiny, compressed, pressurized space.35

This work presents a sound image of profound solitude. More than the display of screaming in Stäbler’s . . . drüber (1972/73), Yoshida’s introverted, internalized, barely projected and yet piercing sounds activate the sense of having no other outlet but the limited form of one’s own physiology.36 Joan La Barbara has been an important vocal collaborator with Cage, Ashley, Lucier, and Feldman, among many other composers. In her own compositional work,

166

Experimental Music Since 1970

she shares an interest with Yoshida in exploring the possibilities of the voice within tight boundaries. Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation (1974) is an incredibly diverse range of activity that makes the constraint of a single note feel like a completely open field in itself. Overtones and undertones are almost constantly appearing and flickering in various degrees of prominence. Timbre, roughness, and the shaping of the vowels are in relaxed but apparently constant motion. Circular Song (1975) is comprised of upward glissandos on an inhale and downward glissandos on an exhale. Tom Johnson writes of this first of two CDs of the Voice Is the Original Instrument release that it is not yet in a “product development stage,” but finds these explorations more fascinating in their “raw experimental form” than he would expect to in a more finished product.37 This raw data, so patiently and skillfully delivered, is an invitation to each listener to explore his or her own voice in a parallel way.

Animal sounds and communication La Barbara’s Les Oiseaux qui chantent dans ma tête (1976) is described as “a series of ululations, birdlike calls and sonic gestures.”38 She does not attempt to replicate or translate actual birdsong, but rather to evoke memories and imaginations of birdsong, relating it back to a more human condition by way of the voice. Humansounding ululations transition into what seem like remarkable characterizations, brief appearances of loons, cockatiels, and woodpeckers with distinct vocal characteristics of timbre, rhythm, pitch, and articulation. One of the most striking aspects of this performance is the kind of roughness of timbre that she captures, having zoomed in on methods of obstructing the vocal mechanism to get at certain types of birdlike sound. In Syrinx (2003), Pamela Z also mediates between more and less birdlike sounds, but through the means of technology. Z is a composer, vocalist, and media artist based in San Francisco. For this project, she slowed down a recording of birdsong and emulated it. She then learned to sing the melody and sped her voice up until it was the same length and pitch as the original birdsong. The piece is made from multiple layers of the various permutations of the birdsong and the human interpretation of it.39

The listening process is in equal parts revealing about the function of the technology, the adaptability of the voice, and the nature of the original birdsong. The iterations are audible, and the transformation is evident. While many people imagine what it would be like to fly, Z found a way to make her own voice sing like a bird, in what George Lewis calls a “dialogic imagination of subjectivity.”40 Chris Mercer is an American composer of primarily electroacoustic music whose Birdsong Gloves create a feedback situation with cheap hearing aids to emulate both birdsong and cricket stridulation. The fingertips of the gloves each have headphones planted into them.41 In the video example, high tones are sent in upward and downward glissandi as the hands quickly circle around the hearing aids in rapid shifts of proximity.42

Information, Language, and Interaction

167

Dialogues While imitation is one means of relating to animal sounds, they can also be provoked as a response to stimulus. Emmanuel Holterbach summoned the musicianship of a group of New Zealand parrots by playing gongs for about five minutes continuously. Gradually, they approached and started trilling with the gong. As more birds engage, the intensity and types of interaction constantly shift throughout the track. The gong itself seems plain in comparison with the sounds the parrots use to respond to it. They are interacting with the overtones and with one another. This improvisation explores a focused moment of influence between a human-made sound and the musicality of the birds.43 Mimus Polyglottos (1976) is a project designed by Ric Cupples and David Dunn that culminated in an outdoor recording of a single bird responding to electronically generated sounds. The first stimulus tape was of recorded birdsong, and was successful in provoking a response. The second, distorted stimulus had quite the opposite effect. “The bird exhibited extremely agitated physical behavior and stopped singing for the stimulus duration.” The alterations to the mockingbird song caused alarm. It is surprising, then, that a synthetic approximation of the rhythm and timbre of mockingbird songs was not alarming to any of the birds who heard it, but triggered a highly complex interaction. In the recording, the bird deftly interacts with various aspects of the recording, including pitch, rhythm, and timbre, but never settles either on a single aspect or on direct imitation. A great musical mind is at work, full of facility and flexibility and creativity. The performance still feels spontaneous and fresh after many listenings.44 Several sections of Dunn’s Oracles (1974–75) provide a communication stimulus to be played outdoors—through loudspeakers to plants and canines, and underwater to sea life. Practical considerations are necessary in the setup of the two sections. Section four calls for high amplification and alternates one minute of playing the tape with a minute in which the tape is silent, so that there is an open duration for the wolves, coyotes, or other canines to respond. These alternations take place over an extended period of time, and changes in the environment are recorded and documented. Like Mimus Polyglottos, the composition consists of two things: a recording and a situation. Oracles operates as a series of propositions, all of which will yield information that could not have been known in advance with any degree of specificity. Each section sends the performers out into the natural world to find answers that are specific to the wildlife found in the chosen time and place. In The Audible Phylogeny of Lemurs (2008–12), Chris Mercer has used recordings and research gathered over years to present lemur sounds grouped by their function. He studied the lemurs in depth, initially through playback studies on alarm responsiveness and then through further observation, and finally drew them together so as to advance a better understanding of their functions and contexts. My goal is to preserve and augment the calls’ natural characteristics and to group and combine them so as to explicate relationships between calls of different

168

Experimental Music Since 1970

species, making the phylogeny audible and the beauty and complexity of the calls accessible. . . . The vocalizations are documented for context of emission, crossreferenced with the scientific literature, and meticulously cleaned, enhanced, edited, and spatialized to reveal their acoustic structures and phylogenetic relationships.

The various species of lemurs in these pieces present a diversity of activity through the quantity of samples that is astonishing from the first moments and throughout the seventeen-plus minutes of the piece. He also provides quite a lot of detail in describing the activity taking place within each section. The calls of Part I are related to social interaction, and in Section I, they are grouped in order by degree of arousal. Section VI presents expulsive calls that have a series of great names, including the “double-unit sneeze call,” the “growl-huff,” the “shee-fak,” the “plosive bark,” and the “snort.” These brief sections are concentrated with activity.45

Animal spaces Animal communication occurs not only within social contexts, but also within defined physical spaces. A beehive or a tree is a vibrant acoustical space when it is filled with insects, and can be studied as such. Patrick Farmer is a British musician, sound artist, and writer who describes himself as “often utilising more and more fantastical methods to create sounds that are themselves, wonderfully ordinary.”46 This statement applies to gwenynen fel | y  drenewydd (2009), in which Farmer positions the microphone—and by extension the listener—in particular locations within or adjacent to beehives in a single apiary. Each of the eight tracks on this release has a unique profile. What is heard from “Top ledge of hive no 3 above small entrance” is an unstable churning or circulation. Pitch gradually becomes apparent around the five-minute mark, but seems far less present than the noise texture. The sounds of individual bees will not carry as powerfully through the top ledge of the hive as the collective sounds. The quality of the noise in “On ceramic stopper of hive no 1” is vastly different from what comes before it. The ceramic stopper acts as a filter, so that trends of pitch and activity are heard, but there is little to no specificity apparent. This example seems the most protected, the most removed from the activity of the bees. In immediate contrast, the bees are individually audible in “Top entrances of hives nos 3 and 4.” As buzzes and trajectories of flight are heard, the recording takes on some of the attributes of a small ensemble work, highlighting interactions between several bees at a time. All this is done without any direct interference on Farmer’s part. As he puts it, “The placement of microphones in recording situations like this I have long felt to be more important than the processing and assemblage that inevitably ensues. I often spend much longer just sitting and thinking about where to attach them than I do anything else.”47 This particular placement captures intense periods of activity and motion. In “Top right of hive no 2” is heard a rich, deep resonance with no real sound specificity. It sounds like it could be the sound of a highway heard from an inner room of an apartment. At other moments it sounds like wind. At no point does it sound

Information, Language, and Interaction

169

like bees. A close listening to these recordings gives the impression that it would be impossible to understand the sounds and activities of bees in any significant degree. Miya Masaoka has also used bees in her sound works, but her work is live and sonically interactive. In Bee Project #1 (1996), 3,000 bees are in a glass beehive on the stage. The sounds of the hive are amplified, mixed, and manipulated according to a score. The piece also calls for koto, violin, and percussion. In Bee Project #5 (2001), for 3,000 bees, koto, computer, and video, the sounds of the hive are mapped and spatialized in eight channels to sonically place the audience in the hive.48 She has further explored insect immersion in Ritual (1997–99) by releasing giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches onto her naked body and setting up sound samples that are triggered by their movement.49 In the last track of Taiwan-based sound artist Yannick Dauby’s La rivière penchée (2004), the featured insects are not bees but crickets. Their sounds first become apparent around the 1:45 mark, delicately interspersed with wind chimes. Leading up to the nine-minute mark, the cricket sounds re-emerge, far more present, both sharp and delicate in a complex series of polyrhythms and flickering changes in intensity.50 With all the other sounds going on in the track, it might seem that this track is not as much about crickets as Masaoka’s or Farmer’s works are about bees, but the structure of the piece deals with different aspects of the insects’ sounds. Crickets tend to be heard under the cover of darkness, and their sound rarely is heard suddenly, but noticed after the ear has already processed it. The cover of the wind chimes is analogous to the circumstances in which crickets are heard. Another key example of entering into an insect environment is David Dunn’s somewhat terrifying The Sound of Light in Trees (2005), which has already been discussed in Chapter 2.

Habitats, ecologies, biophonies Most of the previous examples involve a single species in a contained situation, but animals of course do not only exist in isolated units. While the British sound recordist Chris Watson has used innovative microphone techniques to capture single animals (a cheetah, an owl, a whale) and groups of like animals (spider monkeys, vultures, hippos, elephants) in Outside the Circle of Fire (2012), “Ol-Olool-O” on the Weather Report album (2003) is a distillation of the sounds of fourteen hours in the Masai Mara in Kenya into an eventful eighteen minutes.51 A lion, humans, various insects, wind, birds, thunder, rain, and all sorts of other wildlife all make appearances. No sound is presented in isolation, and the listener is drawn into an evocation of a highly complex and diverse stream of events. The next track on the album, “The Lapaich” is again eighteen minutes long, but this time it is a compression not only of fourteen hours, but of four months—the sounds of a highland glen in Scotland from September to December. Like “Ol-Olool-O,” it is not a compression in the sense of single events happening more quickly, but in the speed of overlap. Certain birdsongs carry for minutes at a time before they are eventually overtaken. The track breaks correspond to the change in month, and contain activities

170

Experimental Music Since 1970

happening within each of those months. It is clear from the sounds themselves that October is colder than September. The wind takes on greater dominance, and the character of the animal vocalizations is markedly different. As the album notes state: The weather has created and shaped all our habitats. Clearly it also has a profound and dynamic effect upon our lives and that of other animals. The three locations featured here all have moods and characters which are made tangible by the elements, and these periodic events are represented within by a form of time compression.52

November is even starker and sounds positively dangerous, dense with wind and chill, with cows and birds cutting through the thick night air. December is far quieter, with no plant life exposed to pick up the sound of the wind, but only some birds singing quietly. “Midnight at the Oasis” on Cross-Pollination (2011) is also a time compression, this time from sunrise to sunset in the Kalahari desert in South Africa, featuring “the dense and harmonic mosaic of delicate animal rhythms recorded in this remote habitat.”53 The American bioacoustician and sound recordist Bernie Krause has developed the term “biophony” to mean “relationships of individual creatures to the total biological soundscape as each establishes frequency and/or temporal bandwidth within a given habitat.”54 He writes of the need to record not only single animals, but more complete ecologies as well. His long-term engagement with recording habitats has yielded alarming observations of how the sonic environment has changed over time. When I began recording over four decades ago, I could record for 10 hours and capture one hour of usable material, good enough for an album or a film soundtrack or a museum installation. Now, because of global warming, resource extraction, and human noise, among many other factors, it can take up to 1,000 hours or more to capture the same thing. Fully 50 percent of my archive comes from habitats so radically altered that they’re either altogether silent or can no longer be heard in any of their original form.55

When he learned of a logging company’s claim that “selective logging” would have no environmental impact, he captured a recording of a meadow in the area before it was done and a year later, at the same time of year, and compared the two results. The birds were no longer present. Returning to the same site fifteen times over twenty-five years, he found: The biophony, the density and diversity of that biophony, has not yet returned to anything like it was before the operation. But here’s a picture of Lincoln Meadow taken after, and you can see that from the perspective of the camera or the human eye, hardly a stick or a tree appears to be out of place, which would confirm the logging company’s contention that there’s nothing of environmental impact. However, our ears tell us a very different story.56

Information, Language, and Interaction

171

Krause illustrates this example with sonograms in one of his books, The Great Animal Orchestra. He also shares a pair of sonograms from living and dead areas of the same coral reef in Fiji. Of the enormous variety of animals he lists from the first example, only some snapping shrimp remain.57 Krause is committed to the project of telling the stories of whole environments, rather than just single animals or species, in sound. In 2013 he related: Hearing the sounds in context with each other tells the creature story in a very different way. From my perspective, taking the voice of a single animal from a habitat and trying to understand it out of context is a little like trying to comprehend an elephant by examining only a single hair at the tip of its tail.58

In the biophony, different species find their own acoustical niches in which to communicate, and “it is possible to define animals’ geographical territory through an analysis of biophonic expression.”59 He has found through his repeated visits to the same sites that as the habitat changes, the “acoustic fabric” also changes. Animals have to adapt by altering their communication, and there is a measure of confusion as these shifts take place over “weeks, months, or in some cases, even years.”60 Krause is concerned about context, not only in the ecological sense, but also in terms of how the natural world is exhibited and comprehended. Creatures from similar habitats are presented together, but “Sound in zoos and museums is still driven by systems where the visitor pushes a button to hear a sound or see a video. Designers still install sound systems that constantly repeat the same program over and over.”61 He has made numerous installations that provide a far more realistic presentation of how these sounds actually occur in nature.62 David Dunn echoes these concerns about context when he writes: You cannot dismantle this whole with an expectation that its guests will reveal their motivations in isolation from the party. The profuse interconnections between these organisms betray the limitations of reductionist thought and I am left with the realization that it is the evidence of this wholeness manifesting as sound which I must learn to respect if not comprehend.

Dunn’s Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond (1991) is a collage of underwater recordings from North American freshwater ponds.63 Some of the recordings are presented at actual speed, while others are at half speed. Besides that one time/pitch shift and the layering of different recordings, there are no other alterations to the sound files. It becomes clear that there is a complex interaction between the organisms and their context. “Then there are these emergent rhythms, these elastic pulsations of life, sounding as if the very morphology of these little beings and the pond’s macro body were dependent.” The rhythmic structures are unimaginably complex, but the clicks, though consistent, seem to Dunn to be “sensitive to the assertions of others.” For him, listening to and working with these sounds is an act of speculation and wonder. “Since most of the insects generating these sounds have not been studied for their sound making capacities, the specific sources remain a mystery.”64

172

Experimental Music Since 1970

Jana Winderen is also keenly aware of how little is known of underwater soundscapes. The title of The Noisiest Guys on the Planet (2009) refers to shrimp, and the recording was made off the coast of Norway. “They seem to be everywhere, whoever it is making this sound. When you go for a swim and listen underwater you can even hear them. But who are they?” She posed the question to marine biologists specializing in shrimp, who asked a wider network of experts. The scientists were forthcoming with their knowledge, but their responses highlighted for Winderen just how little is known about underwater environments in terms of sound. I know that pistol shrimp make sounds when they snap their claws to paralyse their prey, but do others in the same family do the same? No one seems to know. Underwater there is very little known about the soundscapes created by living creatures, and few understand the details of variations between the various grunts, knocking sounds and rumbling sounds that cod, haddock, pollock, other fish and crustaceas [sic] produce, and how they experience and orientate themselves through the use of sound.65

Though Winderen has some educational background in fish ecology, she poses these questions as an artist. Her aim is not to establish facts, but rather to provoke speculation, and especially to ask the question, how little do we know? She writes: In the depths of the oceans there are invisible but audible soundscapes, about which we are largely ignorant, even if the oceans cover 70% of our planet. I am also experimenting with different types of microphones to collect sounds which are not obviously recognisable, but give room for broader, more imaginative readings.66

Watson, Dunn, Krause, and Winderen each have unique interests and techniques, but they share a fascination with the capacity of sound to reveal the scope of the mystery that still surrounds the natural world.

5.3 Language Every time someone speaks—or even imagines speaking—language is structuring sound. Some composers embrace linguistic structures as sonic structures, while others play with the qualities of the human voice under the influence of these patterns and meanings.

Letters, spelling, and phonetics In Three Songs (2007), Jennifer Walshe (under the alias of Ukeoirn O’Connor) reimagines vowels as landscapes, and landscapes as vowels. O’Connor, she writes, “was

Information, Language, and Interaction

173

particularly interested in what scholars of phonetics call the ‘vowel pool’: the matrix of all possible vowels. No single language uses all the vowels contained in the vowel pool.” This pool is extended to include a number of European and Asian languages. The landscapes pictured from South Dublin County are shown in relation to the vocal tract to indicate tongue positions. “In this work, the macrological geographical structures of South Dublin are replicated micrologically in the singer’s mouth, producing vowel sounds from Vilnius, Tibet and Berlin.”67 These shapes are given voice, and their linguistic content is mapped using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). How literal these correspondences are is open to question, given the fictional nature of the Grupát project of which this piece is a part.68 Nate Wooley’s [8] Syllables (2011) and [9] Syllables (2012) use the IPA to “create parameters for how the sound is made.” The aspects that are shaped include tongue, teeth, throat, and oral cavity, all of which have a clear impact on the sounding result of the trumpet. Wooley’s intention was to steer himself away from “proper trumpet sound,” and the results are sometimes unstable, sometimes distorted, sometimes simply inflected.69 Bonnie Jones, a Korean-American musician and writer, spells out a text with her voice in by the time (2012) in a way that makes the words difficult to track. Using a monotone voice, pausing only occasionally between words, she reads each letter of the sentence, “By the time I reach the end of this sentence, our bodies will have changed.” She writes that she is “interested in how people perceive, ‘read’ and interact with these sounds and texts given our current technological moment.”70 we’ve (2010) is a silent video screen capture that implicitly suggests a silent, temporally structured performance by the viewer. The cursor blinks for some time, then the first letters and words are spelled out slowly, with pauses long enough to invite impatient completions. The text gradually disperses between the top and bottom of the screen. Words that were written in sequence disappear and reappear, and are heard more as memories than as new internal sound productions. The process leaves the observer with the feeling of having been muted.71 The A. Typist project centers in Seoul, and involves both writers and musicians. A piece of writing is the entire score of each piece, and a typewriter with a modified mechanism and attached motors is the instrument. The typewriter is modified to enhance and explore the sounds of writing. Language becomes clearly yet indirectly audible through this mechanism. The initiators of the project ask the question, “Can the act of writing be another way of producing music?” The attempts to answer that question enhance and amplify the sounds of writing. We applied sound technology to the mechanism of a typewriter so that, in addition to the original sound of the typewriter, a sound derived from writing is produced. In this way, the act of writing can be another way of producing music/non-music works.72

The formal markers of new lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages are evident in listening to “Been here before” on the profile (2011) release. The auxiliary, unpredictable

174

Experimental Music Since 1970

sounds of the typewriter rumble in the foreground in a way that continually disrupts any momentary sense of regularity. In the typing of the single sentence of the second track, “Who in the hallway can be driven out and run away at the same time,” the whole machine seems to malfunction in an accumulation of insistent high metallic pulses. In “This hallway is empty,” the sentences are quite short and the sound is much more prone to interruption by the auxiliary motors. This project offers a way of performing text that translates language directly into sound while paradoxically obliterating any semantic structure. Words are not represented with any meaning, but the length of the structural units (words, sentences, lines, paragraphs) is reflected. The behavior of the motors operates in unpredictable relation with these other factors, and would vary from one performance to another.73 Description for Other Things (2011) operates more as a text score than as an actual text to type. The thirty-five close-typed pages could not be replicated through manual typing in under seventeen minutes, and when keystrokes are heard, they are not particularly fast. What is more audible is the action of the machine and its auxiliaries. The descriptions of the actions to be performed on the typewriter are the substance of the text, and are presented in a repetitive (though not directly copy-pasted) manner in the liner notes. Any logical correspondence with the text is severely challenged by the form of this presentation, both in text and in sound. Nothing is literal. Keystrokes are not plausibly word for word, and even the prescribed actions are not carried out in the manner described. The time stamps in the booklet fail to match the durations of the tracks. The project almost completely contradicts its textual basis. Ryu Hankil and his collaborators (including Kim Taeyong, Lee Youngji, lo wie, and Manfred Werder) have continued to explore various forms for this project with vastly different results.74

The ordering of words Luiz Henrique Yudo is a Brazilian composer based in Amsterdam. His On Words (2000–01) series takes a systematic approach to an English language dictionary. Each letter has its own corresponding piece, and the form and duration of the piece are determined by the words found in the dictionary under that letter in alphabetical order. Braille code is the means by which the letters are translated into music, but the output of that translation varies according to the semi-open instrumentation—for some letters melodic, for others harmonic. The letter J has the most easily followed documentation in video form, complete with the words corresponding to each musical phrase, the definition, and the occasional written commentary from the pianist, Sergei Zagny, such as on the words jurisdiction and jurisprudence.75 The structure is sufficiently clear that the words can be tracked from the lists that Yudo has published.76 The alphabetical ordering gives a corresponding pitch ordering, so that the musical phrases start with the same pitches and only diverge with the first letter that changes. The culmination of the project, the two-hour On Phobia, is not sourced from the dictionary, but from a list of 527 phobias.77 Michael Oesterle’s all words (2014) is a choral, consecutive setting of the 1,015 threeletter words in the official Scrabble dictionary. The words are presented in “waves” at a rate of nearly two per second in the ten-minute EXAUDI premiere. The regular pulse

Information, Language, and Interaction

175

and simple melodic lines present the set of words as an entity, rather than individual words as carriers of meaning.78 In reviewing the piece’s premiere, Tim RutherfordJohnson pointed out that the alphabetical organization of the words shapes their attacks into clear sections, not only the A’s and the B’s, but “all the words beginning ‘ab’, ‘ac’, ‘ad’, and so on. Again, each of these has a particular sonic character. So the list is not an undifferentiated stream, but has a form and shape of its own.”79 Another approach to a wide selection of words is through an instrument designed for improvisation by Alessandro Bosetti, who is an Italian composer, performer, and sound artist. Mask Mirror is an instrument made of samples of his own speaking voice, projected through a speaker and designed to blend with his live voice as much as possible. The samples are language fragments organized into categories of various sizes, from sound granules to phrases. A key on the keyboard triggers each category, and as he starts a sentence he will press a key and see where the phrase directs his narration. Bosetti built this instrument as a way to improvise with the kinds of materials that have come to interest him most: “Voice recordings and montages, interviews, conversations, misunderstandings, translations and—more broadly—sense.” These improvisations take turns that are generally improbable, and often quite funny.80 The best condition for me to play with Mask Mirror is that of emptying my head as much as I can before a show and then to start saying the first things that come to my mind. . . . I then keep going from there trying to be open that whatever may come or develop.

Bosetti’s view of the Mask Mirror has evolved over time, almost as if it is a living and breathing alter ego that is an equal player with him in the performative situation. I used to think about Mask Mirror as an instrument that I play along with my voice but now I sometimes think that it is Mask Mirror that plays me or whatever thing inside of me that could be roughly called language. By giving little kicks of randomness it activates other ways to use, play, reconstruct or deconstruct my linguistic abilities.81

Finding music in language Language itself can be a source of music. There are many methods of focusing attention on the spoken word as organized sound. Speech patterns are as full of sonic information as they are of linguistic information. The American composer Kenneth Gaburo’s Testimony (c. 1987–90) is part of his larger Scratch Project installation. He gathered over 600 video responses to the question: In the event of a nuclear war, human life would be sacrificed. This sacrifice could not occur unless human life was thought to be expendable. In this, your life is included. How do you feel about being expendable?

176

Experimental Music Since 1970

Each person, from as diverse a set of backgrounds as possible, faces the camera and answers the question over several minutes. In the installation setting, thirty of these videos play simultaneously in what Gaburo calls a “grand noise”: It’ll be just human noise—talking—and if you just want to listen to that and hear how monitor fifteen is talking to monitor twenty-five across the way, these words will sort of jut out. That’s one way to experience it, but it is also possible to get close, like you would to a painting, and have this great viewing and listening to any one. My idea is that it would be something like paintings.82

In addition to the clear ideological concerns of this question, which was asked during the Cold War, is a clear focus on the sound qualities of “human noise.” People are simply talking, but their response is treated as art, equivalent to a painting in a museum setting. The melody inherent in language is one of the most significant musics of everyday experience. Because language is coded as meaning, its musical features are often overlooked. These musical aspects can be investigated as specificities—the pitch contours, rhythms, and articulations of a particular person’s speech—or from another direction—the implied music of a text. Paul DeMarinis writes: Hidden beneath speech’s words and music’s melodies I hear the singing of a voice more ancient than language. No longer are we aware that as we speak our voices rise and fall, following the deeper contours of speech melodies that prefigure our sense and our meanings.83

Alien Voices (1988) is an installation in which the melodic contour of the listener’s spoken text is analyzed and played back on a synthesizer. “By experimenting with the different settings,” writes DeMarinis, “you can discover to what extent you rely on melody to understand meaning and perhaps speculate on the linguistic content of musical melody.”84 The listener becomes an active participant, and the installation behaves as a mirror, or perhaps more accurately a document that is produced with drastic filtering. By removing both meaning and timbre, other qualities of the participant’s quality of speech are revealed. DeMarinis’s Music as a Second Language release is filled with related investigations. In Leçon par l’aiguille (1988), the melodic trajectories of an old French language instruction record are traced by glissandi. The recording is further treated in Fonetica Francese to find its inherent harmonies “by a process of melodic quantization.” An Appeal (1990) is “a fit of legal dictation plagued by spurious vocal melodies.” The recorded voice is given a melody, initially a downward scale. The wording and the accent are from a familiar, legal context, but they are transformed into melodies completely alien to that context. Odd Evening (1988) traces the rhythmic and melodic attributes of a Chinese radio play with “musical doubles.” The pitches of these doubles conform to a pentatonic scale, rather than being perfectly adherent to the found pitches of the spoken words. This approach is a somewhat literal tracing of recorded

Information, Language, and Interaction

177

speech. As DeMarinis puts it, “The rhythms and melodies of speech are mirrored by their musical doubles.”85 But the choice of instruments of course relates to the overall intent of the piece. Steve Reich places the recorded clips of people’s voices within the dense texture of the string quartet in Different Trains (1988). These melodies were based on Reich’s transcriptions of each vocal clip. The strings play the inflections of a retired Pullman porter and of several Holocaust survivors as they recount their experiences on trains.86 Pamela Z also works with the melodic qualities that she finds in recorded speech. Her work with sound loops led her into this line of work: When spoken text is repeated by a machine, you can hear the fundamental tone of something that you thought was unpitched. So I began composing based on the melodies in natural speech, which I never would have done if I hadn’t discovered the digital delay.87

Her interest in these melodies has drawn her to capture certain types of speaking. Geekspeak (1995) is made up of recorded speech of researchers and programmers at Xerox PARC. Small Talk (1998) presents three different speech types: A disembodied computer voice mediates between a working-class, African American male voice, delivering a series of well-worn pickup lines, and the object of his interest, a female voice that is clearly expressing disinterest in the male’s attempt to frame her as fair game.88

Voice Studies (2003) explores vocal production and evokes vocal profiling through the presentation of various accents.89 Peter Ablinger’s Voices & Piano (1998–) is an ongoing series of pieces that have two parts: the recorded voice of a public figure, and a concurrent response to that voice played by the pianist. At the time of writing, there are fifty of these pieces, representing a wide cross-section of ages, nationalities, etc. But it is the individual traits of each voice and the specific attributes of the recording that are of interest to Ablinger. He writes, “Reality/speech is continuous, perception/music is a grid which tries to approach the first.”90 He combines formulaic aspects of analysis with conditional, subjective decisions about how to underline each person’s statement. Neither the analysis software nor his own musical instinct is adequate in itself to effectively create this musical relationship. He offers one such example: “Sometimes I hear it having a very specific rhythm in it and this may lead me to imitate its tempo. But then it never fits!”91 The fluid realities of human communication cannot be reduced to mathematical descriptions. But these analyses help in the process of making each piano part as specific as possible. Part of the charm of these works is the sense of relationship that each listener brings to many of these figures. In some cases their voices may be a fresh discovery, though their work or historical importance is well known. Then there are two comparisons that become possible: the voice compared to that prior knowledge, and the recorded

178

Experimental Music Since 1970

voice compared to the piano accompaniment. In the case of the Morton Feldman setting, the piano part mysteriously closes the gap between the subtlety of his music and the lack of subtlety in his manner of speaking.92 The American composer Paul Lansky’s Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion (1978–79) uses a single reading by Hannah MacKay of “Rose-Cheekt Lawra” (published 1602) as musical material for six transformations. Each of these fantasies has a different relation to the original. The first piece multiplies her voice, giving each track a different melodic formation and developing a harmonic flow. The next versions seem to submerge the voice to varying degrees, until in the fifth fantasy articulated speech is barely audible. The last fantasy ornaments, rather than transforms, the original recording, and its inherent melodies are apparent after having heard the other treatments.93 Charles Amirkhanian’s Heavy Aspirations (1973) also uses a single spoken voice recording, but treats it in more identifiable ways through repetition—doubling it and creating two-part counterpoints. The speaker (the conductor Nicolas Slonimsky) has a very rhythmic, highly articulated, accented manner of speech that commands attention immediately. Though there are clear pitch inflections, the ear is drawn to the rhythm and the articulation of the delivery, particularly in the rapid-fire speech of the two versions of the voice in the last minute. Amirkhanian frequently writes his own texts, creating sound poems out of just a few words that he performs over several tracks and drawing attention to the sounds of each of the words. Church Car (1980–81)94 and Just (1972)95 are two such examples. Church Car accelerates rapidly over its short duration, and both pieces share qualities of insistence and rhythmic specificity with Heavy Aspirations. Gold and Spirit (1984) was written for the Olympics in Los Angeles. A chorus of 64 identical voices is increasingly processed along with sounds related to sports.96 I recorded sports sounds and collaged them into a piece, mixing them with the sports cheers that I am so fond of like “rae man rae” and “go van go,” and these are blended together into a kind of sports fantasy.97

These cheers are chant-like sounds—performances, in a way, though their intentions are more related to a sports tradition than a musical one. Robert Ashley found another type of middle ground between everyday or recreational activity and musical composition with his operas for television. The first of these projects was a series of video portraits of seven composers—himself, David Behrman, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, and Terry Riley—called Music with Roots in the Aether (1976). Taken in isolation, these videos seem like quirky, semi-staged interviews. Taken together, they form a unit that is parallel in its scope of settings to his later television opera, Perfect Lives (1978–80). The Philip Glass interview takes place in a fourth grade classroom, and students enter the space and do their own things while it is going on. Pauline Oliveros integrates her piece, Unnatural Acts Between Consenting Adults (1975), into her interview. An actress comes in and gives her a dramatic makeover as she has a serious conversation with Ashley about her work. (At one point the camera returns to Ashley, and he is in

Information, Language, and Interaction

179

a new, flashy outfit.) Gordon Mumma circles a football field on a bicycle while Ashley whistles in a seat placed in the middle of it. As Mumma rides up, Ashley exclaims, “Gee, Gordon!” as if it is a chance meeting. During his own interview, Alvin Lucier is in the midst of a performance of Outlines of Persons and Things (1975) along with Ashley and two other performers. They are all in front of loudspeakers that are playing clusters of sine tones, “creating moving sound shadows.”98 All of these disparate scenes offer memorable settings for conversations. Ashley was friends with each of the composers he interviewed and references matters that have no apparent connection to their work. The manner of the conversation is informal, but it is highlighted through the setting, the surrounding activities, and the camera work. These conversations are not simply (and not always) about music. For Ashley, they are music, and he calls the work a music-theater piece.99 The Perfect Lives (1978–80) opera follows more directly in this line than is immediately apparent. This piece is more thoroughly Ashley’s composition, rather than being a collaborative effort with other composers, though there was certainly a great deal of collaboration with his band of performers. What is parallel is the use of fairly ordinary settings, juxtaposed with theatrical—or at the very least unusual— actions. The composition is made of speech, performed in something of a chant but with no sense of formality. The scenes take place in a supermarket, a bank, a bar, a church, and a back yard. The manner of text delivery shifts from one setting to another. “The Bank” is much faster than “The Supermarket,” and “The Bar” enters into a more proclamatory mode than anything preceding it. In “The Church,” Ashley stands at the front with a preaching scarf, taking on a preacher’s manner of delivery. There is a musical accompaniment under all of this, primarily by “Blue” Gene Tyranny, that was not composed by Ashley but is an informal, sometimes lounge-like jazz piano style of accompaniment. It lends a charm and atmosphere to the work, but is not to be mistaken as the substance of it. Like the physical settings of Music with Roots in the Aether, it provides a context for speech. Perfect Lives has both an instrumental and a theatrical floor of activity, but all of this is background to the foreground: the musical qualities of the delivery of the text. The focus on the musicality of the text is also enforced by the tenuous relation of the text to a decipherable narrative. If a story is to be found, it could only happen through repeated listening. The sentences are complete, but the sense of a narrative is something that only feels trackable for isolated moments, rather than from one moment to another. The listener does not get caught up in a story, but rather in the telling of it. This relation to narrative focuses attention on the rhythms and contours of the speech. Ashley was interested in the prosaic: what people experience every day and know best. It might be said that television is to opera as singing is to speaking. Both Music With Roots in the Aether and Perfect Lives are made for television, and Ashley developed them to be broadcast on television networks. Television is everyday entertainment, as speech is everyday communication. (Keith and Mendi Obadike’s internet opera, The Sour Thunder (1996–2002) is a more contemporary extension of this line of thinking, and also plays with both genre and the musical qualities of speech patterns.100) Perfect Lives has a libretto, a makeup artist, a series of sets and scenes,

180

Experimental Music Since 1970

and an instrumental accompaniment. Everything other than the lack of song makes it clear that this is an opera, and without the ongoing musical accompaniment it might be considered theater. But Ashley’s performative speech, as well as that of his other performers, is something between song and regular speech. It does not defy regular accentuation and never fully launches into song, but it is projected as music. These musical qualities can be broken down in a few basic ways. Pitch inflections and rhythmic nuance are part of a native speaker’s basic knowledge base. If two or more people read the same text, their actual pitches and speeds will vary, but the relative pitch and internal rhythms will have some correlation. The third basic quality goes beyond the instructions inherent in the words. It is the character, as embodied and projected by a vocalist. Ashley’s descriptions of the vocal qualities of his characters are diverse and specific. The Immortality Songs (1993) is a study in various types of ranting.101 The opera Crash (2013–14) has three vocal types. One is “a person singing as if speaking on the telephone; that is, with the particular, brief intimacy that comes in phone conversations.” The second sings in “a detached, deliberate style, as if reading a classic poem,” and the third recites, “very briefly, the important events and ideas the man-subject has lived through” with an “almost unnoticeable vocal tic, a kind of rarely heard stutter.”102 Six singers rotate among these three characters throughout the work. Now Eleanor’s Idea is a series of four operas, each of which is based on a different form of interrogation.103 In one of these operas, el/Aficionado (1987), the singer is given a “character defining” pitch that “forces a certain ‘character’ to emerge.”104 Ashley clarifies that beyond this pitch and the givens of the text, “the singer is entirely free to invent the vocal character,” and underlines the importance of those specific decisions to the performance. The performers of Ashley’s works are nothing like chanting automatons. There is ample room for interpretation—perhaps more so than in most sung work. Ashley’s operatic innovations are vast. He was prolific, and explored this approach to composition over the course of decades. Another aspect of his composition is the way the ensemble behaves. As mentioned earlier, voices will rotate among parts, so that often there is no single singer-to-character mapping. There will often be a soloist and a chorus, and the chorus relates to the soloist in complexly rotating configurations. In Celestial Excursions (2003), In an intricate vocal system, a principal voice is “chased” by other voices whose parts rotate in sequence in a given order. The result of this technique creates a complex jungle of voices, delivered with an extraordinary rhythmic intensity rarely heard in ensemble singing.105

There is an abundance of spoken voice, sometimes decipherable, and often not. These voices become accompaniment, even orchestration, as they combine past the point of intelligibility. In Atalanta (1982–91), performers have to frequently start over, without a reference point or agreement with other members of the ensemble.106 In this way Ashley weaves indeterminacy in in terms of timing and ensemble work. Ashley’s radical step was to elevate speech itself to the status of music by giving it a context worthy of opera. His works are extended flights that illuminate the musical qualities of the spoken word.

Information, Language, and Interaction

181

Vocal performance and sound poetry, sense and nonsense Sound poetry is a field of its own, and includes people who have come from both literary and musical backgrounds. In the United States, PennSound was founded in 2003 and offers thousands of recordings of poets reading their own poems, as well as information about individual sound poets.107 Two related organizations offer further resources: the EPC at the University of Buffalo offers a sound poetry portal, and UbuWeb includes a vast repository of these materials.108 When the Australian composer and sound poet Chris Mann was asked, “How are you like your music?” he replied on both of their behalfs, “Irrelevant,” and went on to offer this explanation: “There is this moment in primary school where they explain the difference between language and music, and something gelled, you know you were seven or eight. I was away that day.”109 His music emanates from his own spoken delivery—a delivery that takes vocal inflection to new extremes. Spending even a few minutes on his website or with his app called “The Use,”110 several things become clear. His speech has wild variations of pitch, sometimes with a rapid ascent or descent, but more often in abrupt cuts from one register to another. In any given clip, over 200 of which are available, the inflection is likely to range from a casual middle register to a needly falsetto, down to a gravelly bass. Some are very brief, while others are thousands of words long. The rhythm is as variant as the pitch, with rapid accelerations and sudden dead stops that offer a very bumpy ride. His texts suggest a reckoning with ideas, but those ideas remain elusive. Mann refers to “sense making” as “an act of charity. . . . This is what humans do, this making sense. We do very graciously and we do it very generously, and we are so practiced at it that we do it unconsciously.”111 Mann has tapped into a presentation of both words and their sounds that eludes that unconscious generosity. The words are strung together in what seems to be a stream of consciousness style, and if there were any hope of tracing a thread of meaning through them it would be completely unsettled by his performance. Though words and phrases can still be recognized, they might as well be in a foreign language. In this way the sound rapidly becomes the focus of the listening, rather than sense-making. Tomomi Adachi is a Japanese vocalist and composer whose Osuterokomusa (2006) has a rapid-fire delivery with a wide range of pitches. He calls it “an exploration in polyphony from a monophonic text.” Like Mann, he is evidently more interested in sound than sense, but has gone further to obscure any emergence of sense through “complicated canonic methods.” Furthermore, the text is polylinguistic. On listening to this ecstatic delivery, it is doubtful that even the most straightforward of statements would be comprehensible. The speed, combined with the variety of pitch, language, and articulation confirm that language is used here completely in the service of sound.112 Jaap Blonk has invented several languages as a part of his compositional and performative work with text, including Onderlands, Ingletwist, GeenKrimps, and Mixed Nonsense. (“Out of respect for the Artist we try to find some Sense, but then it turns out she doesn’t mean any Sense.”113) Onderlands is performed in a number of diverse characters, so as to show that it is malleable to context, from the nursery rhyme-like “Glopvoets” to the rough and tumble “Glag 1,” to the robot-like voices of “Glag 3” and the jazzy quality of “Dongstra.”114

182

Experimental Music Since 1970

Blonk is constantly finding new ways of expressing or translating text into sound. A contrasting example is the sound poem, Sound (1999). The text itself is about sound, breathing, the voice, hearing, and listening, and he finds countless methods of representing the text and inviting the listener to emulate this process. Are you listening? You’re listening. You’re breathing in. You are holding your breath. Your ears are whirring. You hear the whirring in your ears. It is a timeless whoosh.

The listener’s ears are in fact whirring because Blonk’s voice is blowing across the microphone on the R’s of “whirring.” The closing lines are full of onomatopoetic words, each articulated and illustrated with relish. Bam! A delicious pang. And a jolly boom! Your innards are a-thundering. How heavenly it shrieks and screams. Rages and roars. Hammers and thumps. Thwack!

Figure 5.3  Jaap Blonk: Plea for Proof, “Impediment,” first phase © Jaap Blonk

Information, Language, and Interaction

183

Slap! What a delight. Bang! Wallop! A blaring hullabaloo. A heavenly hubbub that shouts with laughter inside you. Rave! Ecstasy drones and beats. How it screeches and yelps and echoes and hoots in the sonic paradise in which you’re listening. You hear! You hear, you hear sound! Sound.115

It sounds like an uncommonly enthusiastic and skillful rendering of a children’s book, amplifying both volume and contrast to most dramatic effect, but never losing the alliance with the text.

Figure 5.4  Jaap Blonk: Plea for Proof, “Impediment,” intermediate phase © Jaap Blonk

184

Experimental Music Since 1970

Translation For Blonk, written language is a fundamental aspect of notation, and the process he went through in creating his notation has been a significant influence on his development as a composer. When he began writing sound poetry, he used regular written Dutch, German, French, and English, but found that the IPA had greater possibilities, “making it possible to use different pronunciations of the same letter in one text. So I could create poems with more variety of sound color.” Having reaped the benefits of this transition, he found himself ready for even wider horizons, and he began to extend the IPA with his own signs. “This developed into the—ever unfinished—system I am using now for functional sound poetry scores: BLIPAX (Blonk’s IPA Extended).”116 These shapes became part of his creative process in translating the sounds he produced into notation, and they took on further life as shapes and as objects to be translated back into sound. Traces of Speech (2012) is a project that began with the letters of BLIPAX, hand drawn and then subjected to two different types of treatment, or translation. One of these is an electronic version created by importing the raw data into audio software and treating it digitally. The resultant sound output becomes part of the recording. The second treatment of these images is by running the characters through optical character recognition (OCR) software twice, once with an English setting and once

Figure 5.5  Jaap Blonk: Plea for Proof, “Impediment,” English OCR excerpt © Jaap Blonk

Information, Language, and Interaction

185

with a German setting. Both resultant texts are unintelligible, but Blonk finds ways to articulate them. His greatest challenge was “the interpretation of the multitude of punctuation signs.”117 He tried to solve this problem in very different ways through the different pieces. In “Plea for Proof,” he interprets these marks as “inward plosives.”118 In these types of translational processes, subjective interpretation tends to be discouraged. Blonk writes that in Traces of Speech he “refrained from pursuing any personal expression.”119 Craig Kendall, the digital editor and sound designer of Yasunao Tone’s Musica Iconologos release, writes: It should be noted that there was never any exclusion or repeated inclusion of sounds based on their final result. To his credit, Tone always remained true to the poem’s structure regardless of his personal impressions of the music, and in a sense the sounds were a type of “chance operation” in form, as their final organization was established long before the project began production.

Kendall’s task was to use sound to create an “encoded description” for each detailed image of Chinese character chosen by Tone. Robert Ashley writes: Tone has “translated” the Chinese character for us, not into words (which obviously would be inappropriate), but into its signifier, both in its form (its visual template) and in its literal trace as a word or combination of signs in the Chinese language. The result is a music of startling accuracy and purity.120

The sound of these pieces certainly does have a startling quality to it, quite unlike anything else because of the nature of the process and the total allegiance to its results. Most of the shaping power, beyond the shapes of the characters themselves, is in the hands of the sound designer. He made some select choices, such as mapping the length of the sound to the meaning of the word it was derived from, and pitch-shifting the sound to reflect “the phonetic implications of the spoken Chinese word.” These remain translational, rather than interpretive processes. Molecular Music (1982–85) similarly involves translation, though in that case it is a process involving a number of steps in an analogue, rather than digital process.121 Total faithfulness to the translational process is also a hallmark of Clarence Barlow’s Progéthal Percussion for Advanced Beginners (2003–). Barlow invented a language based on percussion techniques, and then he translated English and German texts into that language. “You could take a translating machine and translate them back into English and German.”122 The translated texts included Hamlet’s soliloquy, as well as two UN resolutions. Translation is often quite challenging. Prosody, sentence structure, cultural associations, and hidden shades of meaning are all facets of the original that can be lost, even with the most skillful attention. The only aspect that remains stable is its meaning, and even that is uncertain. “Lost in translation” is a cliché for a reason. Then why do it? It is a point of access to things that have been made in foreign territories. Great works can travel across cultures, and while much is lost, some degree of understanding or

186

Experimental Music Since 1970

exposure is also gained. Translation is a recognition that while there are various ways of constructing meaning, there is a common base of understanding across cultures. But for some people, the artifacts of what is lost or vulnerable are of significant interest in and of themselves. Alessandro Bosetti took spoken voice radio messages that were only partially decipherable, and went through a laborious transcription process. Then he used them in a radio broadcast, inviting listeners to engage in a game of telephone with the fragments, either transcribing or recording what they understood. These fragments were relayed to Michael Meilinger, a professional radio broadcaster, over several hours. He had to work hard drastically deviating from his daily practice. I tried to keep some tension with him and avoid that some relaxation could lead him to adopt a more playful or theatrical tone. It worked. Nevertheless by the end of the whole process he came out of the speaker booth with a big smile on his face and I felt relieved.

When Bosetti spent time with all the submissions, he experienced it as a hall of mirrors: I would have expected the message to progressively deteriorate, rot, fall into pieces of complete abstraction. I would have expected a triumph of entropy. But meaning was naturally coming back in this collective process, far away people holding hands, holding ears.123

The recordings are of real communications, but they are so garbled that any effort to make sense of them is an act of speculation. The various misunderstandings, overlaps between understandings, and fragmentary narratives piece together in fascinating ways.124 Translation can occur not only across languages, but also across art forms. Temporal art forms are often mapped to each other, and this is so common as to be almost unremarkable. It is normal for a dance, film, or theater piece to use music as a fundamental part of the work. Cartoons are often scored with particular precision. But translations between temporal and nontemporal forms, or between linear and nonlinear, are less permissive of direct correlations. The American composer Sam Sfirri’s Beckett Pieces (2009–10) are translations of small fragments of text drawn from Beckett’s novels to a series of textual performance instructions. The way in which sound is produced becomes a metaphor for the suggested image or action of the fragment. The text, “Delicious instants” (2009) suggests something that reveals itself for all too short a time. It advances too late and recedes too soon. In Sfirri’s version, the conductor cues, and the musicians silently count a pulse of their own choosing. At the second cue, they each “reveal their pulses” with short sounds. On the third cue, they cease playing. Each player chooses a pulse, but the beginning and ending of its sounding version is at the discretion of the conductor, and the sounds are at the discretion of the players. The shared agency brings about

Information, Language, and Interaction

187

Figure 5.6  Sam Sfirri: “one way or the other” © Sam Sfirri these sounds. No one fully controls the nature of the sounding material. It is only through the coinciding of cue with pulse and tone that the sounds come to be, and that coincidence is all too brief. Other translations are more direct. In “for the choice of directions” (2010), each player chooses two sounds and finds a path between them. Another direct example is included in its entirety just below: These pieces highlight the fact that translations carry the unique stamp of their translator. Another composer would likely treat the same texts very differently. (An interesting comparison in the nature of translation, though with different source material, is Michael Pisaro’s use of text in harmony series (2004–06).125) For “the undulating land” (2009) Sfirri uses the configuration of two instrumental groups to suggest a horizon. Each player in each group chooses one quiet tone. One player from each group plays, beginning together. When a tone ends within a group, a different player plays.

As the land is full of variations, the shifts in one group will likely not occur simultaneously with the shifts in the other. “Tones last the natural length of an exhale, bow stroke, or decay.” The land undulates between the groups, flickering on one side and then the other according to processes driven by the physiology of the musician and the topography of the instrument. Translation is emulated not only from one language to another and from language to music, but can occur in any way that establishes a statement in a different context. The “From Shape to Sound” section of Chapter 3 presents many examples of this type of pathway. Other composers have engaged in different conceptions of translation as well. The Berlin-based British interdisciplinary artist Chris Newman writes that for him, the “act of translating later became seminal as in—from one medium to another—from life into an artistic medium.”126 He works between text, music, video, and painting, among other forms.127

188

Experimental Music Since 1970

Sarah Hughes is active as a visual artist as well as a composer, and also makes use of text in her creative work. She has an ongoing interest in translational processes within and between these activities. In making A reward is given for the best inframmary fold (2015), she began with an existing work of her own music. I decided to rewrite the score for this commission as I’m interested in how things get translated from one medium to another, and a different set of instrumentation is like working with a different set of materials. . . . The translation/reworking is present in most of my work, and filtering through an idea by reworking it a number of times is something I’ve been interested in for a long time. This could be reworking sketchbooks as screenprints, using the same sculptures in various installations or using the same sections to rework a composition. These are becoming more and more interrelated.

One example she offers of this practice is a release that was conceived by Joseph Clayton Mills, Sifr (2015) was initially created by Joseph Clayton Mills as an audio recording, and then sent to seven composers (Ryoko Akama, Sylvain Chauveau, Jonathan Chen, Patrick Farmer, Sarah Hughes, Michael Pisaro, and Adam Sonderberg) with the request that they create a score to accompany it. Mills writes, “By reversing the trajectory of the relationship between a score and its interpretation—by making the music, in essence, a ‘score’ for composition—Sifr plays with issues of authority, musical representation, and what constitutes composition.” It is a reverse engineering of the sounding work, done with varying degrees of specificity and in different forms by each of them. Farmer’s instructions (along with graphics and definitions) are in tiny print on business-sized cards and come with a magnifying glass. Sonderberg’s score is a singlepage graphic with a grid of numbers associated with each ten-minute interval. Pisaro’s Drip Music No. 13 is a text score in the line of George Brecht, combining a fictional scenario and specifics of the sounding work within 100 words. Hughes’ text plays between association, quotation, and direct (though very general) instruction. Chaveau’s is a photograph. Akama’s clear but open instructions are engulfed by a meditation on a specific locality in Paris. Jonathan Chen’s stack of six cards presents the work in layers, breaking it apart into specific attributes that are still quite variable to the decisions of the performer.128 None of these scores resembles another, but each one draws from the original sound file and bears the mark of the translator.

5.4 Interaction Interaction, improvisation, indeterminacy These three terms are not interchangeable, but they share a common center: the unknown. Indeterminacy is the unknown itself, or that which is subject to conditions. Improvisation implies a temporal unknown. The music is not known in advance, but

Information, Language, and Interaction

189

unfolds spontaneously. Interaction is a social unknown. The actions of two or more agents are interdependent. In regular usage, it is also understood that improvisation tends to involve the agency of one or more musicians, while indeterminacy can often be more prescriptive.129 The question of who makes the decisions and how they are made seems to be at the root of some of the controversy that has developed over John Cage’s usage of the term “indeterminacy” to the exclusion of “improvisation.” Briefly, Cage considered his indeterminate works to be composed, rather than improvised. Structured decisions counteracted subjectivity while opening up new experiences.130 Philip Corner said: I never understood why Cage didn’t go any further. . . . He opened up something and then he stopped. Since Cage was so concerned with getting rid of what he called the Western claptrap, to stop at the point he did and attack improvisation, which is spontaneity and vision and being in the moment and research and search—by the end of his life, he was negating the basis of his whole aesthetic.131

Anthony Braxton made a parallel statement with another layer of connotations: “Both aleatory and indeterminism are words which have been coined . . . to bypass the word improvisation and as such the influence of non-white sensibility.”132 George Lewis, who has deep experience across these ostensibly separate categories, rejects the notion of a partition between them: It should be axiomatic that, both in our musical and in our human, everydaylife improvisations, we interact with our environment, navigating through time, place, and situation, both creating and discovering form. On the face of it, this interactive, form-giving process appears to take root and flower freely, in many kinds of music, both with and without preexisting rules and regulations.133

The placement of agency in a musical interaction reveals more about it than any categorization. How are the musical decisions structured? If there are no structural preconditions, what are the conditions that have an effect on the decisions of the musicians?

Groups, collectives, and long-term interactions A musical interaction can be judged by its results, but when it is fully improvised, the only preliminaries that offer any clue of what is to come are the musicians involved, their instruments, and the understandings that exist between them. On occasion, two or more musicians will begin an improvisation without having any knowledge of each other’s work, or perhaps only a one-sided awareness. The situation becomes more or less experimental depending on how they individually and collectively decide to explore their situation. More commonly, they are part of a scene, whether local or international, and there is background knowledge of the types of interactions they might have. Then there are established units—longstanding groups with clear ground rules.

190

Experimental Music Since 1970

These three kinds of situations are roughly analogous to the social situations of strangers, acquaintances or friends, and families. An interaction of some sort is always possible, but the starting point is different. Within any of these contexts, similarity and difference, familiarity and strangeness are all part of the potential material. What are the social preconditions, and what is in the nature of the interaction as it takes place? How are the musicians listening to one another? To what degree are they responding, contradicting, interacting, negating, ignoring, agitating, questioning, obscuring, overriding, supporting, directing? All these things happen in improvisation, just as they do in conversation. Threads of commentary are traceable among numerous musicians involved in long-term collaborations (and not only improvisations), and light some pathways through types of musical interaction that often go unexplained. Recurrently, musical relationships are explained in social and political terms. Cornelius Cardew was a powerful musical influence in the UK, and founded the Scratch Orchestra with Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton in 1969. He defines a scratch orchestra as “a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (musicmaking, performance, edification).” The five types of musical activity outlined in the draft constitution of the Scratch Orchestra are: scratch music, popular classics, improvisation rites, compositions, and research projects. The group was most active from 1969 to 1971, and was basically inoperative by 1974; but it cast a very long shadow. As Parsons has said: When one thinks of achievements one looks at monuments and finished works. In a sense what the Scratch Orchestra achieved was not like this, it was more to do with influences or currents which have been set in motion. It got people thinking about music in a different sort of way. Then it went into the London Musicians’ Collective and other collectives around the country. It influenced the way people thought about music as a social activity. It made me realize that music is always something that involves people doing things together, and that’s just as important an aspect of music as the structures and the abstract aspects which are embodied in notation. So I think it was the awareness of the social dimension of music which was most influential at the time, and has remained influential for a lot of us since that time.134

In addition to the London Musicians’ Collective, AMM was an improvisational group that overlapped with the members of the Scratch Orchestra. AMM was established in London in 1965, and is still ongoing, though in a different and reduced configuration. (If these letters stand for something, it has not been disclosed.) Their ideology has always been one of starting from nothing: no score, no formal system,135 no discussion of what they will do in an upcoming concert, and no reverting to “ready-made or repeated forms”: Each performance begins again—as far as possible—from nothing—without preconception—not only inventing the particular performance, but, in a sense

Information, Language, and Interaction

191

re-creating the whole musical condition without reliance on the forms of its history—of course an impossibility.136

Keith Rowe adds that they even made a formal agreement not to discuss performances afterward. We decided to formally have a music which was totally improvised, without any restrictions to form. We would not play heads. We would not have structures. There would be no pre-discussion for a performance or no after-discussion after a performance about the performance. That was quite formally set down. . . . And I think it is true to this day, now 36 whatever years later, that we have never discussed a performance.137

The one form, then, is their agreement as to a lack of form and abstention from discussion of their improvisations. One possible reason for this second rule is that in having those conversations, they might arrive at an unwelcome consensus about what constituted a “good” performance, and influence one another toward some sort of ideal sound, rather than a spontaneous response to one another and all of the circumstances of the situation. Cardew, at one time a member of the group, reflected: We are searching for sounds and for the responses that attach to them rather than thinking them up, preparing them and producing them. The search is conducted in the medium of sound and the musician himself is at the heart of the experiment.138

Victor Schonfeld underlined the importance of having sufficient scope and dimensions to engage in this experiment: long stretches of silence in which to find “a whole new world of sounds which were previously hidden or overlooked,” as well as “all the dimensions of musical space to create the feeling that sound is a solid object in solid space.” Sounds are placed alongside each other in layers, and everyone (audience and improvisers alike) has an individual experience of those layers according to their depth of focus, their location, and any other factor that may be at play. “There is no whole or centre, only parts.”139 John Tilbury has reflected that “the relation of the individual to the collective is not antithetical, that individuality is achieved and refined not in spite of, but through others.”140 AMM’s cultural and musical practices were aligned with individualism and a nonhierarchical structure. Reflecting on this parallel between AMM and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Hamza Walker writes: They are literal about practicing democracy as a non-hierarchical thing, in the music, as an allegory for a model of liberational modes. But at the same time, you know, it’s very hard to improvise. We always think about it like, oh, freedom! But it actually becomes about how the weight is to be distributed. Collective model. It becomes difficult. So there’s the tension between an organized nationalism—the cementing, gelling, hardening agent to a sense of black identity—and democracy.141

192

Experimental Music Since 1970

The AACM was formed in Chicago in 1965 (the same year as AMM) in order to empower its individual participants. As John Shenoy Jackson and Muhal Richard Abrams put it, “The AACM intends to show how the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised can come together and determine their own strategies for political and economic freedom, thereby determining their own destinies.”142 Within the context of the AACM, particularly as its genesis took place alongside the Civil Rights Movement, it was essential that every participant have a voice. Members were not just encouraged, but required to bring their own work to the group. While spontaneous dialogues are fostered in much of this work, and there are often calls for improvisation, the underlying structures have been determined by the individual musicians. George Lewis is a member of the AACM (as well as a trombonist, composer, software designer, and musicologist) and wrote the most substantial book on their history: A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (2008). He puts this sense of urgency around its structures in stark terms: Indeed, it seems fitting that in the wake of the radical physical and even mental silencing of slavery (as distinct from, say, an aestheticized silence of four minutes or so), African Americans developed an array of musical practices that encouraged all to speak. As a socially constituted scene, the AACM embodied the trope of individuality within the aggregate, both at the level of music-making, at the level of the political organization of the collective, thereby providing a potential symbol for the new, utopian kind of sociopolitical system that Szwed describes.143

AACM member Wadada Leo Smith’s statement of his own musical philosophy echoes and extends this clear focus on individualism throughout the social and sonic relationships he establishes: The concept that i employ in my music is to consider each performer as a complete unit with each having his or her own center from which each performs independently of any other, and with this respect of autonomy the independent center of the improvisation is continuously changing depending upon the force created by individual centers at any instance from any of the units. the idea is that each improviser creates as an element of the whole, only responding to that which he is creating within himself instead of responding to the total creative energy of the different units.144

Human interactions tend to fall into familiar patterns, and musical interactions are subject to similar conditions if there is no intervening structure. For AMM, the intervening structure was their mode of working, which was formally stated and agreed upon. For the AACM, it was essential to instead have new voices and input, developing the strength of the collective by listening to each other’s ideas both in music and in whatever other forms the musicians chose to communicate them. Lewis has called the group an “unstable polyphony” of voices.145

Information, Language, and Interaction

193

The Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza was begun in Rome in 1964 by a group of composer-instrumentalists. The term “Nuova Consonanza” does not refer to a new harmony, but rather “to an aesthetic agenda: to look beyond the boundaries always reaching for ‘new correspondences.’” Like AMM and the AACM, they had rules: The collective work assumed a set of commandments that were accepted by all members: no priority of an individual player was to be allowed, no sound was to be produced which was bound to the tonal system, no rhythmic periodicity should be created, no easily remembered motives were to be introduced, no exact repetition of a former occurrence was to be performed.

Much like AMM, Nuova Consonanza based its operation on rules that are negative, rather than positive, though it is a different type of property that is being negated. AMM’s most emphasized restrictions relate to communication. Nuova Consonanza’s limitations articulate musical familiarities that are to be avoided. These last four stipulations are designed to avoid a sense of musical familiarity in terms of harmony, melody, or rhythm. The first of these rules echoes the concerns of individualism of the other two groups, though again the specifics are different. In the AACM, individual players alternately assume prominence through that “unstable polyphony.” As long as it remains unstable and no one assumes an overall prominence, they are not at odds with their intentions. Nuova Consonanza’s nonhierarchical structure is a blanket statement, applied throughout each performance. As a group of active composers, they worked to differentiate their individual practices from their collective practice. Alongside a reduction of means, Franco Evangelisti’s statement captures another of the positive musical values of the group: “The distribution of individual energy in the service of the collective idea.”146 Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) was also formed in Rome in the mid-1960s, and like its peer groups developed a clear set of guidelines. As stated by member Alvin Curran, MEV has functioned according to the following understanding: In a democratic musical state, as MEV imagined, there are no hierarchical structures (hence no leaders or followers, no agreed compositions, conductors, no scores, plans or goals, and no beginnings or endings), only the appreciation of a collective “flux” and the demands of its unknowable genetic structure.

The value of democracy and lack of hierarchy echo the other groups, and the emphasis on the “unknowable” is resonant with AMM in particular. Curran’s fellow MEV member Richard Teitelbaum reveals the multiplicity of their influences, ranging from Cage to European expressionism but with a particular interest in the “AfricanAmerican experimental tradition,” including Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. “In part it was that influence that encouraged MEV’s music toward interaction, stimulus, and response rather than the cooler, non-reactive independence espoused by Cage.”147

194

Experimental Music Since 1970

A significant level of trust among the members of the group is, for Curran, both essential and variable. With reckless abandon he tells how this variability plays out. In an ideal state, all performing musicians will listen with equal intensity and understanding to every audible sound and musical gesture as if it were their own, and respond only when they must. . . . An important corollary allows this agreement of trust to be momentarily voided, in cases of inspired autism. Furthermore, this premise, while centered on an instinctive understanding of creative risk and the benefits of increasing it progressively, did not make us—the MEV group—immune from getting screwed or from making lousy music, but it did help in getting us to some unimaginable spaces.148

Rhodri Davies’ assessment of the functions of improvisation echoes Curran’s interest in the more shaded—or less perfect—aspects of human interaction: It’s not necessarily about making things work. If anything, it’s about finding a way of being together and sharing ideas; that’s all it is, really. It’s not about making this product, this perfect music and repeating it. It’s about sharing a space, sharing ideas, and even disagreeing in the music. It’s finding alternative modes and other ways of being together.149

In a discussion about the improvisational activities of a Berlin-centered grouping of musicians called Echtzeitmusik, the percussionist Burkhard Beins used the term “collective-interactive processes” to loosely define what draws them together. It’s a concept that applies musically to quite differently working, and sounding, groups who are maybe even already working in the threshold regions of other musical fields, even though they still belong here regardless.150

Echtzeitmusik is a book that provides valuable insight into both this community and the various types of improvisation and other experimental work in which its participants are involved. Davies and Beins are both represented in this book, and are also part of a trio with Mark Wastell called The Sealed Knot. The instrumentation of The Sealed Knot has changed from acoustic to electroacoustic, and Wastell has played cello and double bass at different times. Beins explains a sense of evolving continuity: But despite all those transformations there remains a specific chemistry that is very much The Sealed Knot. I think it’s especially due to those shared experiences we make that the trio continues over such a long time. The fact is that this particular constellation of three individuals allows us to enter new territory again and again.

They sometimes go for one or two years without playing, and Wastell finds that makes for “a very raw and open experience.” At the point of this particular interview they were discussing an upcoming performance with a new instrumentation. “We start afresh.”

Information, Language, and Interaction

195

In trying to define their characteristics, Davies defines “a consistent drive towards regeneration and renewal.” The music itself is hard to define for its features, exactly because of the one consistent factor in their approach to making it. Wastell’s description of their performance documented on the and we disappear (2009) release resonates with other statements about free improvisation among members of established groups. We simply played one of those memorable shows where everything fell into place. No plans, no blue print, no pre-conceptions. What is evident from the recording is the closeness of our group language. Our timing, use of dynamics, density versus space, push and pull. Where and how these elements manifest in a performance is informed by prior engagement with one another musically, but also very much part of the “then and there” aspect of a live show.151

The deliberate abandonment of established forms—whether they be pulse, tonality, notation, hierarchy, preplanning, or any other overt structuring device—is not essentially a negation in any of these cases, but an affirmation: It affirms individualism and collectivity, liveness and presence.

Types of rejection This need to reject, avoid, circumvent, or negate is frequently asserted among improvising musicians. The French percussionist Lê Quan Ninh describes the avoidance of familiarity using territory as a metaphor. It’s up to the improvisers then, to search out other locations where the geography of the playing space is not already so defined, a territory upon which we can explore its hidden nooks and crannies without risking a repatriation by those default codes and signs. . . . Territory. A fundamental element of play, can be made to resonate. Will this vibration of space not let us glimpse a no-man’s land, a space without geography, in no way carved-up according to criteria for membership: an atopy capable of welcoming all languages?152

Another section of Ninh’s Abécédaire, called “Dance,” is about the types of interactions that occur among musicians within such a territory once it has been found. Everything one needs for movement and sonic intervention comes from this space we’ve co-located. It demonstrates how different ways of being can work together. This space enables us to unfold the atopy of our gathering. “Immediacy, absence of deliberation, rejection of intervening propositions, no jumping to conclusions.”153

Like many of the long-running groups already discussed, Ninh has made certain types of rejection explicit. Deliberation, propositions, and conclusions are all forms of consensus-building that are well placed in political or business settings, but the avoidance of them in a musical setting is, for Ninh, a more productive type of contract.

196

Experimental Music Since 1970

John Butcher, a British saxophonist, has articulated this need to go against the grain and avoid consensus in specific terms. If I can spot, if you like, the consensus in the group, there’s a temptation, a tendency I have is to go against it. . . . whether that involves things like volume, if it involves not playing melody, I return to the saxophone as a melody instrument, very often, because I don’t by and large enjoy those situations where a lot of material has been proscribed before you even start the improvisation.154

Reflecting on a collaboration with Toshimaru Nakamura called between (2006), Keith Rowe reflects: “between,” for me is about the tension and space between objects, and how we might occupy this area, to reside if you like between the conventions, to locate the flexibility that comes from de-theorizing the dogmas. It seemed to me as if Toshi and I were navigating a route through a familiar part of town, where each of the buildings stood for and represented expectations, styles, outcomes and histories. We wanted to resist entering the buildings and to stay between.

Rowe articulates a necessity to get away from tendencies and histories—not only collective histories or knowledge, but personal habits and inclinations as well. Speaking of her duo with Utah Kawasaki called Astro Twin, Ami Yoshida states an avoidance, not only of familiar musical materials and of collaboration, but of music itself: We don’t perform with the idea of creating something musical. How can I put it? As materials, we take these garbagelike sounds that have hardly ever been used before, and each of us tries to make them resonate more and more. I don’t just use my voice—I also do things like scrape the floor with the mike. Our respective sounds are totally unrelated to each other. Since Kawasaki’s sounds and actions have no connection to mine, it ends up being this sort of garbagelike ensemble with a completely non-functioning collaboration style. In a sense, it’s as if we’d chosen the sounds and the performance style that were the least likely ever to become music.155

This series of rejections—of relationship in performance, of that which is known, of music itself—is the basis of their work together.

Power plays and other forms of relating The risk of complacency is inherent in any established group of improvisers. John Butcher’s and Alvin Curran’s ideas of going against the grain quoted earlier reflect this concern. To listen is not always to agree. If there is no opposition, no dynamic of agitation or disruption, there is a risk of running out of things to say. Lucio Capece,

Information, Language, and Interaction

197

an Argentinian musician and composer based in Berlin, suggests other ways of introducing new elements to keep the interaction lively: I think that is fundamental if you play with people to think [of] the music as a collective production, that means to relate. But the ways we relate should not be the most obvious, It can be boring to play in a very responsive way. To oppose, to disappear, to ignore, to cover the other one can be very interesting. The basic situation, is to be aware of the others’ presence at any moment and to decide actually, more than anything, how much we want to relate playing and listening. To stop listening and to stop relating for a while, as a way to create tension and go deeper into the interaction itself can help to produce dynamism and make the music very alive.156

Diego Chamy, a frequent collaborator of Capece’s, reiterates the potential of various types of imbalance to create interesting musical situations. He phrases it in terms of plays for power. Force and power relations are everywhere, and a collective improvisation is no exception. One can see all kinds of power relations in a collective improvisation. The problem is that, among improvisers, these relations are mostly seen as negative. Many musicians believe that they must achieve a kind of balance of forces when they play together; but this balance is impossible to achieve: force relations are by nature unbalanced. Besides, the attempts to approach balance go directly against music: if there would be a balance, the music wouldn’t have any life and there wouldn’t be any reason to start playing. In fact one is driven to play by this unbalance and should try to affirm it and to make it even more unequal.157

This point of view seems to be at odds with the aims of democracy and equality advocated by so many of the musicians in this section; and yet it might simply be a reflection of actual interactions, rather than a more remote idealism. It draws from the real experience of how people relate to each other, which is often fraught with tension, misunderstanding, and imbalance.

Individual and collective decision-making Christian Wolff ’s ensemble music is largely concerned with decision-making, both individually and collectively. This approach first became clear during the 1960s, with pieces like For 1, 2, or 3 People (1964), Edges (1968), and through most works in the Prose Collection (1969/71/85). The development of this aspect of his work runs parallel to the formation of AMM, EMV, and the AACM, as well as the Scratch Orchestra. Wolff was in dialogue with members of all of these groups, and has directly collaborated with most of them. His social and political concerns include the flattening of hierarchies, which resonates strongly with the concerns articulated through these various groups’ platforms, agreements, or constitutions. What makes his project distinct in this respect

198

Experimental Music Since 1970

is that he embeds these concerns in the structures of his written scores. He develops and notates methods to bring out nonhierarchical musical relationships, not only between the musicians, but between composer and musicians. He writes: Apart from giving individual players ranges of choices in what and how to play, my main interest has been the mutual effects players have on each other in the real time of performance.158

Burdocks (1970–71) is made up of “different, distinctive compositional ideas in ten parts” that can be played in any number, either “simultaneously or overlapped.”159 “The players should gather and decide, or choose one or more representatives to decide, what sections will be played and in what arrangement.”160 The piece was dedicated to Merce Cunningham, and references “the mix of things and the spirit which kept them both apart and together.” He describes “Many various processes, activities, states felt as if they were coming—spinning, breaking off, drifting, walking, just moving—from a source which was magnetically there, and kept eluding you; and each element of that variety could still be itself.”161 Each musician has a choice of how to perform the instructions for each section, always in active relation to the other musicians. Wolff ’s balancing of individual agency and collective decision-making is a careful fluctuation in the degree and type of openness. As James Saunders writes, in Ordinary Matter (2001–04), “Each player makes a unique contribution to the performance, one which might radically shape the outcome.” As Wolff puts it, “So, you go back and forth between very precise things and music where your choice is more open, which is an idea I like, you know, running the gamut; that brings you freedom. I think of it as maybe helping people to understand what they could do when they are free.”162 This understanding of freedom might not be so readily attained if the score was more open. The crossing of the threshold between freedom and constriction in either direction causes more reflection on the difference between those states than remaining in one or the other. In movement IV of Spring (1995), Wolff asks each player to select any two phrases to play, “keeping an ear out for what others are doing.”163 Individual choices do not occur within a vacuum, but within a wider scheme of relationships, all of which are endowed with the exact same degree of agency through the simple fact that everyone’s score and instructions are identical. Wolff explains the procedures of the Eisler Ensemble Pieces (1983) as aiming at “directness, clarity and scope for the players for experiment and collaboration,” and relates this “way of making music” to the “genuine equality of people, social and economic rationality, and peace” that are among the aims of socialism. The pieces are active negations of “subjectivism, of conservative and arbitrary forays into the past, of elitism, and of despair.”164 The prose score of X for Peace Marches (1985) invites any number of players to “take part, for as long as it takes, thinking not so much of filling the space and time as indicating a purposeful presence (consider ways of conveying presence sometimes by doing less, even nothing, while maintaining alertness).”165 The musical instructions rely

Information, Language, and Interaction

199

not only on collaboration, but cumulative action, arriving at understandings among musicians in the course of the work through exploration, repetition, counting, and unison. Behind this instruction is the background of the nonhierarchical situation. Wolff is not telling them exactly what to do, but simply giving suggestions of the types of activities to engage in together. The situation is quite similar, though the instructions are different, in Instrumentalist(s)—Singer(s) (1997). Each participant is to “think of, or find, or use found material for a melody.” The melody is not given. Once they have gathered their melodies and are playing together, everyone has six options of what to do, “in any sequence and with any number of repetitions in any sequence.” Among these options are to perform their own melody, imitate another person’s melody, remain silent, or accompany the other musicians using seashells.166 Again, there is freedom (choice of melody, choice of sequence) and interrelation (imitation, accompaniment). Wolff also suggests arriving at an agreement for how to end the piece, in a further instance of creating consensus among the musicians. The score for Exercises (1973–74) gives the unison of melody as the point of reference, but it is a moveable point: As rhythm and speed, articulation, amplitude, color, and modes of playing are all flexible, any player may try to establish what the point of reference for unison is at any point in the course of playing. If, however, a movement by a player, say, in the direction of faster is not generally picked up by the rest, he must return to the prevailing speed.167

This is another form of consensus-building. The players can devise different ways of adhering to the given path—the melody. But within this process, anyone can act as a catalyst. Stephen Drury reflects on this work from the standpoint of performance: The beauty of the Exercises, though, comes from the unwritten necessity involved in playing them. Beyond mere rule-following or open improvisation, these works require the musicians to ask and answer questions of personal and group performance practice. It is music made personal through consensus.

He adds: “In an ensemble performance, the directive ‘try to stay together’ encapsulates this ambiguity; not ‘stay together,’ and not ‘go off on your own’; the deviations from the norm becoming the substance of the piece.”168 Philip Thomas illustrates this point in his account of a 2004 performance of Exercise 10: The rehearsal in the afternoon was good and we felt comfortable with our interpretation of the piece. In the concert everything changed. The speed at which we played was more variable and, on the whole, faster. Our ability to keep together was severely challenged and there was a tangible sense of panic and concentration (amongst the performers, but possibly also for the audience). It was a thrilling performance.

200

Experimental Music Since 1970

It is my suspicion that the catalyst for the change that occurred between rehearsal and performance was provided by Christian Wolff. Just as in his notation practice he plays agent provocateur, so in performance he facilitated change and the capacity for furthering the performers’ experience, thus considerably enlivening the situation.

After discussing this general approach with Wolff, Thomas concluded that “a crucial aspect of his role as performer and composer seems to be to facilitate change.”169 One of those changes is in how decisions are made and what roles are played by both the composer and the performer. Wolff is known not to give directives or critiques in the rehearsal situation, but to adhere to the flexibility and ambiguity of the score. The rehearsal situation is a social situation, and by exerting his authority as composer he would prevent a more democratic process of conversation, disagreement, and compromise. As Thomas writes, “In a very practical way, the notations often act as a catalyst for discussion and implicitly challenge hierarchical structures that exist within groups. Furthermore, many of the works through their actual procedures facilitate a democratic approach to performance.” This conversation is both verbal and musical. Participants must listen to each other as interpreters of the score, and within the musical execution also “respond to, trigger, and attend to actions and sounds by other performers within the group.”170 Wolff wants the musicians playing his work to be active decision-makers, rather than to implement a scripted set of actions. Music itself simply happens when people get together and make sounds. This is the situation that interests me now. Furthermore, I am interested in having everyone participate when that happens.171

Anthony Braxton is also keenly interested in group participation. He says of himself, “I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.”172 Both he and his work absorb a multiplicity of influences, and projects such as Sonic Genome (2003–) are spontaneously influenced by every participant. Sonic Genome is an ongoing project described as “an interactive musical environment, almost an avant-garde theme-park for performers and listeners alike.” The primary model for the piece is biological: “Ensembles form and split apart like cells dividing and reforming into new organisms.”173 The project centers on the use of Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music system, which he originally envisioned as “a system of tracks, like a giant choo-choo train system that will show the connections, so where a soloist is moving along a track, that will connect to duo logics, trio logics, quartet logics,” so that “combinations and connections in between systems” are demonstrated.174 The other guiding analogy of the Sonic Genome Project is a social one. Over fifty musicians are involved, and comprise what Braxton defines as a country, which is further divided into states (fifteen to twenty people) and cities (three to five people). Leadership roles are assigned to members of Braxton’s 12+1tet, and people from the community are invited to participate after participating in introductory workshops. In critic Steve Smith’s words, Braxton’s music is “less a compositional strategy, and more

Information, Language, and Interaction

201

a utopian model for an ideal democracy.”175 Individuals are free to move between these cities and states, and “encouraged to develop internal surprises.”176 Jonathan Piper writes, “I don’t know of anyone besides Braxton who essentially hands a six inch stack of scores to the players and lets them choose what to play, when to play, and who to play it with.”177 There is structure, musical material, and guidance, but there is still a great deal of agency invested in each participant. The listener is also encouraged to “walk inside the music,” finding an individual route through these networks of activity. Ensemble work is a factor that multiplies the possible outcomes of indeterminate situations exponentially. Every participant’s decisions depend not only on navigating the written instructions, but also on what the other participants do. The British composer James Saunders is interested in “group behaviours and decision making,”178 which he explores in his open-form works. The question of agency is central to the things-to-do series. Each piece has a different configuration of who directs the sounds and who is directed. In i decide what it is i am going to do (2014), each player (of any number of players) calls out what they will do and then does that thing. The player has made a list ahead of time of noises, pitches, devices, and processes. Instructions could be “noise 1,” “pitch 3,” “process 2 off,” “device 4 on,” etc. The audience witnesses a narrated version of independent, concurrent agency. Most of the pieces seem to have a social analogy, and i tell you what to do (2014) might be likened to a dictatorship (or perhaps an orchestra). One person directs at least four players. you say what to do (2014) is like a series of committees, each with a figurehead who must obey the instructions of each of three to six assistants. lots and lots for us to do (2014) might be likened to an agreeable couple, each of whom does exactly as they are told. Perhaps the most realistic configuration is choose who tells you what to do (2014). Every player is both issuing instructions and choosing whose instructions to follow. As children navigate between their parents’ instructions, their own desires, those of siblings, and eventually teachers, friends, employers, etc., they learn in various ways that it is both undesirable and impossible to follow every direction. A two-year-old’s delight in saying “no” is one of the earliest assertions of personal agency. Similarly, players in choose who tells you what to do “may change their allegiance at any time.”179 In Michael Pisaro’s anabasis (3) (2015), players are not directly responsive to (or defiant of) one another, but operate collectively within a given framework. Each of the fifteen or more performers has a part with a unique set of timings. Each of these parts has twenty durational intervals, and each duration is to be filled with a different sound. These sounds are richly described through pitch, quoted poetry, and colors associated with transformation among five characters (sea, coast, city, country, desert). There is, however, a great deal of agency granted to the musicians in terms of internal durations, articulation, and instrumentation. “The goal is to have a number of independent parts that somehow blend into a gradual sonic transformation between five characters, moving from the sea to the desert (i.e., an anabasis).”180 Like Braxton, Pisaro is modeling a successful collective. Any hope for a collective (military, revolutionary, artistic, etc.) lies in coherence outside law. In musical terms, this means a score that gives large-scale pattern and

202

Experimental Music Since 1970

guides to some degree, the smaller scale details. But the coherence lies not with the score, but with the contingent situation: of playing and of listening. Each version of the piece is an adventure in a wilderness where “any individual sound whatsoever” can suddenly find itself in a sensible whole of no one person’s making.

The premiere performance lasts for an hour, and reveals these gradual and surprising shifts in texture. Because of the number of independent parts and the overlaps among them, it is to be expected that change will be gradual. What is unexpected is that consensus will be audible—that real change will occur in the collective. And yet, making their decisions within these guidelines, the musicians who performed the piece achieved a lively, dynamic, and totally convincing coherence.181 anabasis (1) (2013/14) is Pisaro’s original formation of this conception of group movement, and involves five musicians, four of whom each focus on a different type of substance (sands, winds, tones, waves). Pisaro’s driving question behind this piece was this: “Is there a way of tracing the ‘found’ discontinuities of an event like Kingsnake Grey into a composed work?” (Kingsnake Grey is a field recording of sundown in Congaree National Park that is part of the Continuum Unbound set along with Congaree Nomads and anabasis (1).) He was looking for a situation that provided for a greater sense of contingency than could be afforded by a single creator, and invited four other “distinct musical personalities” into the process: Patrick Farmer, Joe Panzner, Greg Stuart, and Toshiya Tsunoda. I began to envision a structure that gave place to each musician, but in a way that a) the story of the piece would be affected irrevocably by what they did, and b) that their sounds would be constantly tugged at by those of the other musicians.182

Each musician created his part separately. The tracks were assembled and mixed according to a predetermined structure, and then underwent a process called “unbinding,” which is “any sort of change to continuity.” Pisaro lists some examples of the elements of unbinding: Silences or pauses. Cadences. Fades. Interruptions. Changes. Cuts. (Hard cut, soft cut, cut and replace, and so on.) Loops (real or apparent, made or found). Time elongated or stretched. Overlapping arcs. Processes ending or beginning. Events. Time stopped. Time disappearing.183

Information, Language, and Interaction

203

Where anabasis (3) creates a structure in which to find continuity, anabasis (1) is subject to a framework that seeks out “change to continuity.” And yet the overall sense of directionality is the exact reverse of anabasis (1), from sand to waves rather than from sea to desert. Both pieces focus on the movement of the group, though one group is aware of its context and the other is not. anabasis (3) seeks out discontinuity among the few, while anabasis (1) seeks out continuity among the many. Both pieces rely on the agency of the individual within a governing framework.

Cueing When agency is situated within musical interactions, the manner in which cues are given and received becomes a key factor of the performance. Where a look, a nod, or a particular sound can function as a simple prompt, actions and reactions, causes and effects, can be considerably less predictable. superstition’s willing victim (2007) is a piece by the American composer Joseph Kudirka that sets up a type of cueing almost destined for failure in every articulation. The attempt to match another player is not on the basis of anything other than duration. “Each player chooses one other player, attempting to anticipate both when the other player will start their sound and end their sound, playing their own sound at the same time.”184 What follows is a series of “if ” statements, or options for what to do in case of failure—if the player starts or ends the sound too soon or too late. In this somewhat brief text score, a complicated set of relationships is established, where communication flows in a single direction between one player and another. Interaction is only partial when only one player is attempting to listen and respond, rather than both. In either/or (2008/09), James Saunders sets up a series of logic gates that determine whether a player is to make a sound or not. Each player selects two other players as reference points, and follows a series of cues that determine whether or not to play. These rules change throughout the piece. There is a list of sounds to choose from, but when to play is determined in the moment by the actions of the other players.185 Dominic Lash’s interest in cues relates to his experience as an improviser in several different types of settings. In For Six (2013), there are three pairs of players, and each player’s choice of actions between (1) silence, (2) continuous sound, and (3) irregular sound depends on which of those sounds the partner is producing. The player has the option to stay with the current sound or change sounds, but can only change according to the given if/then condition. By making the changes for each player mutually dependent, Lash sets up a chain reaction that no one can predict or control. Each player has selected a different sheet of the score. Though every decision affects the options of the partner, there is no direct knowledge of how a change will enable any given option. The players in each pair are locked in an interaction, but only see its outcomes in retrospect.

204

Experimental Music Since 1970

2

if 1 then 1 if 2 then 3 if 3 then 1

Figure 5.7  Dominic Lash: For Six (graphic from final page of score) © Dominic Lash Having explored tenuous relationships within the instrumental mechanism— for example, between bow and string186—Charlie Sdraulig developed an interest in similar instabilities between musicians, asking the question, “Could subjective decisions affecting parameters beyond temporal relationships render the interaction between performers as tenuous and unstable as the interaction I had set up between a performer and their instrument?”187 In the video of close (2012), the musicians are evidently watching and listening very closely for the smallest gesture, and only making the smallest of sounds until the middle of the piece.188 But Sdraulig found that the notation of close did not allow for the “continuous cueing” that interested him.189 The score of between (2012–13) does not look like a score, but rather a very detailed, forty-four-page set of performance notes for violin and flute. These performance notes are questions, annotations, and directions, as the musicians are to “read the sounds like a score.”190 In the two realizations on video, the musicians face each other very closely without the usual barrier of music stands. A series of questions shapes the performance in real time: what sound is it? is the sound more continuous than mine? is the sound louder than mine? is the timbre of the sound changing at a faster rate than mine?

The assigned responses to all but the first of these questions is to be delivered with a very slow rate of change: Each variable should undergo change at a glacial pace. More specifically, any change within a given sound’s variable from one extreme to another should occur over the equivalent of two breath lengths or two bow lengths.191

This piece is the first in the process series. Subsequent pieces in the series integrate these kinds of questions into a spatial notation with cueing arrows. What the various performances of the pieces in this series share, besides a tenuous sound quality that seems always to be traveling slowly along a continuum, is a sense of focused collective attention, “an environment where active, close, subtle and sensitive listening is prioritised.”192 Christian Wolff ’s Lines (1972) defines lines to be passed between the members of a string quartet, but leaves the durations open. “Thus,” he writes, the “viola lets her sound go when she wishes, at which point the violin must pick it up immediately, holds it as

Information, Language, and Interaction

205

(audience)

(audience) 1a

2a

3a

4a

1

2

3

4

(audience)

Figure 5.8  Nomi Epstein: communications for a.pe.ri.od.ic, Stage Set-Up diagram © Nomi Epstein desired, lets it go for the cello to pick up, and so forth.”193 It is equivalent in some ways to a ball that is in one player’s possession and must be passed to the next. Both the throw and the catch have to be executed carefully if the sound is not to fall (or fall silent). In directing the a.pe.ri.od.ic ensemble in Chicago, Nomi Epstein has cultivated an interest in how musicians listen to each other and interact. communications for a.pe.ri.od.ic (2015) establishes two musically interlocking groups of four musicians. Each player listens to one musician but plays for another. There are nine different types of activity that they each play, some of which involve contingent responses to this paired musician. Each of the eight parts has a unique timeline of which activity to perform when. The configuration is simply presented, and the activities themselves are often less of a performative challenge than a listening challenge: Between you and your listening partner, play 14 sounds, separated by silence (if possible). One of you will begin, then you will alternate, each playing 7 sounds, until all 14 sounds have been played. Because your listening partner is different from your playing partner, you often times will need to listen and play simultaneously.194

All of the musicians play the shared fourteen sounds at the same time, and there are three such episodes interspersed through the piece. Apart from this synchronicity, the temporal containers are different for each player, and that adds to the challenge of responding to someone who is transitioning between different types of activity, and, in fact, is responding to a different musician. In two groups (2015), Epstein extends this idea of asymmetric listening and responding in the relationships between each group of ten vocalists. Every member of group two chooses a member of group one and responds in this way: After every 2nd long-tone s/he sings, you will sing a very, very slow descending glissando beginning on the pitch you heard. . . . When you complete your glissando, listen again, and choose either the same or a different performer of Group 1 for their 2nd long-tone as a cue for your next glissando.

Each member of group two chooses a moment to whistle for the duration of one long breath, and each member of group one choose two of those ten moments to stop singing and simply listen to the whistle.195

206

Experimental Music Since 1970

Games and communities In the American composer and improviser John Zorn’s game pieces, collected in the box set The Parachute Years, the techniques and imaginations of players with vastly different musical experiences are harnessed in a clear yet flexible framework. Zorn used “the simplest possible ‘equations’ (instructions)” to “generate music of a high degree of complexity.”196 He explains, “My concern is not so much with how things SOUND, as with how things WORK.”197 Archery (1979) deals with the possible combinations of duos and trios within the ensemble. There are rules for their interaction that are also subject to the decisions of individual performers. For example: At any time any player can call any divisi system, which in turn can be broken at any time by any player (in a number of ways, the simplest of which is by taking a “solo”—only one “soloist” at a time is permitted).

Part of Zorn’s motivation is to present the whole work as a form of energy, rather than as a flow of time. In his words, he wants to develop a vertical conception of time, “as an energy that appears immediately everywhere, and can be collected, balanced and regenerated in ‘pockets’ of information/material.”198 Another intention and outcome in these works is a type of rigor, a focusing of attention. When there are specific rules and vocabularies, musicians are brought to a state of specific, heightened attention that is at least equivalent to challenging notated music, and perhaps more challenging in the demand for spontaneous reaction. Bruce Ackley recalls that in Lacrosse (1977), “The rigor required kept our attention riveted and the improvising tightly focused. Yet each player was able to bring their personal approach to this music that operated on a multiplicity of levels.”199 The choice of musicians for these game pieces is crucial for Zorn, and is a major reason for the obscurity of the actual rules of play. He prefers to be the one to explain them directly, “in rehearsal as part of an oral tradition.” Cobra (1984) is the culmination of Zorn’s experiences with these other game pieces, and his best-known work.200 The composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell is a key member of the AACM and also used to play in the associated Art Ensemble of Chicago. He developed a tool to facilitate improvisation as a specific response to a recurrent problem. In conducting improvisation workshops, he found that imitation tended to betray a state of being perpetually behind: You’re doing the phrase and then someone else is coming up and doing it. That means that they’re not really there in the moment. They’re waiting around to listen to see what you’re doing. I would describe it like being behind on a written piece of music—you really know your part, and I don’t really know mine, so I’m kind of following and listening to see what you’re doing and because of that I can’t really be with you. That was one of the problems I wanted to correct, getting people to function as individuals inside of the improvisation so that counterpoint is maintained, which is a very important element in music.201

Information, Language, and Interaction

207

If an improviser is always in a position of following, it implies that there is a leader, and therefore a hierarchy, rather than an open and multifaceted conversation. Mitchell’s response to this problem is a series of cards that he calls “The Card Catalogue,” six of which are given to each player. The musicians can play the cards in any order and at any tempo, so the ensemble aspects of the performance are indeterminate. Theses [sic] scored improvisations were build [sic] to do this—fix players so that they don’t follow. . . . What it does is it gives players a longer time to function in an improvisation that’s really working. That helps because I found that it builds concentration.202

Improvisation is primarily learned in the doing, and Mitchell and others have developed ways of suggesting new behaviors to displace the habits that tend to develop. John Stevens’ book, Search & Reflect: A Music Workshop Handbook (1985) is a series of improvisational exercises. Maggie Nicols developed her improvisational practice as a singer through such workshops with Stevens and others in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, and is committed to the activity of inviting other people into her own improvisational workshops at the Oval House Theatre in London. I’ve always been very rooted in diversity of community, and the gathering is open to anybody. Not just any musician, but people who are not musicians. And I don’t mean just other artists, but people just in off the street. . . . More and more people are sort of recognizing that skilled improvisers can use our skills to include rather than exclude, which doesn’t mean that we don’t want to work with other skilled improvisers. However, that diversity creates a different kind of virtuosity . . . social virtuosity.203

The opening of these events to the community as participants is an expansion of the dimensions of the exercise. While musicians have some shared reference points, this invitation leads to different conversations that take less for granted, and all of the participants learn from each other.

Inhabiting a space together (improvisers, audience, context) Jason Kahn is a widely traveled improviser, having established deep ties in major hubs of activity in Asia, Europe, and the United States. For him, the physical presences of his collaborators and the audience are essential. Social space is key to collaboration for me, whether this be in the context of a live improvisation or working together in the studio with someone. Just as acoustical space provides the resonance for the sound of our instruments, so too does social space provide a place for our thoughts to reflect, deflect, sound in other ways than acoustical resonance can. And for this to occur I need to be in the same room with my collaborator.204

208

Experimental Music Since 1970

The actual experience of being with people is tangibly different than any technological solution. Just as a person-to-person conversation is markedly different from a phone call for more than acoustical reasons, entire dimensions are lost through online collaboration, and there is no commonality of context or acoustic. For Kahn, the liveness of the experience is not only temporal, but spatial and personal. It extends to the presence of an audience as well: When I perform before an audience I sense their energy, their presence. I feel my own thoughts resonating in the space of the audience’s presence and I sense their energy on a physical plane, as well. The presence of an audience puts me in a totally different place. I could play in the same room without the audience and the experience would be totally different, and not only because the acoustical properties of the space would have changed without people in it. Generally speaking, the further removed I feel from the audience—because of stage size, room configuration, etc— the less I enjoy the playing experience. The audience is essential.205

The text accompanying a release called Tables and Stairs (2011) by Robin Hayward (tuba), Ferran Fages (sinewaves), and Nikos Veliotis (cello) was written by one of the hosts of their meeting in Athens. The musical interaction was grounded in the hospitality of the gathering and shaped by the receptivity of the listeners. As the evening got closer, less thought was given to the expected outcome and more to the feel-good spirit of the evening. . . . And then it happened; after a few exploratory minutes, the three musicians became one and the warmest possible tones filled the cool summer night. Remarkably structured in its spontaneity, the music was split in separate parts or steps of roughly eight minutes each, meanwhile—within these parts—the exchanges between the musicians evolved with striking beauty. The fourth part brought us back to near silence, closely anticipating every next move.206

In the recording, the concentration is apparent, as well as something of the quality of that shared experience. Musicians and the audience inhabit that space together, truly part of the same context, and somehow we as focused listeners to the document of this meeting are there with them on that summer night. Toshimaru Nakamura articulates the sense of inclusion of audience and space in the overall context in a way that resonates with the previous account: When I play with other musicians, I don’t play with them, I play with the space including this musician—not directly human to human. If you’re a musician, okay, let’s play together. But I don’t play with you—I play with all of the elements around you, around us. So I don’t really confront you as one individual—you are part of many other elements in the space around you.207

An example of a similar approach by two of Nakamura’s frequent collaborators is available on the Filament (1998) release by the duo of the same name: Sachiko M

Information, Language, and Interaction

209

and Otomo Yoshihide. The sounds (sinewaves, handmade electronics, and acoustic turntable) are barely graspable, and are best listened to when there is nothing and no one stirring. There is a palpable intensity about the way the two musicians are interacting. “Here, the meaning of ‘listening to sound’ is more important than that of ‘producing sound.’”208 The act of listening truly is more palpable in this recording than the sense of any performance, and the listener—even at a greatly removed place or time—is woven into this act of intensive listening.

Technology as conversationalist, technology as environment Joel Chadabe has worked with interactivity in music—particularly electroacoustic music—both in writing and in his own compositional work. He suggests that interactivity in music can be grouped into four basic types. The first is simple action and reaction—press a key on the piano and hear a note, etc. The second is “fly-by-wire,” like a pilot flying a plane “at a higher level of abstraction while giving control of complex local variables over to the system.” The third and fourth types pertain most directly to this section. In the interactive model, “instruments have thoughts of their own and react autonomously to input supplied by the performer, just as in conversation when another person responds to what you do.” Chadabe credits George Lewis and Robert Rowe as composers who have made great contributions in this area. The fourth type is likened to “sailing a boat in windy seas,” or encountering some sort of a “life model.” In the previous type, there is action and reaction on a somewhat equal plane. In this case, the interaction is taking place, whether literally or figuratively, between a musician and an entire multidimensional context.209 George Lewis describes his Voyager system as “a nonhierarchical, interactive musical environment that privileges improvisation.”210 The software generates output based on the input of over 30 parameters of musical performance. Some of these parameters are represented in the output based on an average over time. Other important musical choices are generated internally via random numbers. These processes provide much of the “personality” of the system, and include melody and harmony, orchestration, ornamentation, pacing, transposition, rhythm, pacing, and internal behavior options, such as whether and how to react to input, or how quickly to change parameter and which should be changed.211

In two available recordings,212 the Voyager software seems to have quite a vibrant personality of its own, and yet it is capable of assimilating any information that is thrown at it. Lewis’s image of a performance with Voyager as a conversation avoids two extremes, and gets at something more radical in the process. The first of these extremes is implausibility. While the interaction is unpredictable in any number of ways, it is important to him that a “believable context” be established. I’m looking for something that seems plausible, but is also somehow not as expected, that I could then trace back, as I would do in improvisation and say, well

210

Experimental Music Since 1970

yeah, that seems like an answer. It’s not what I was expecting to hear, but I could see that. I don’t agree, but I could see that.213

The second extreme, then, is simple agreement, echoing or direct input-output. The Voyager system has its own way of processing things that is not controllable by the musician who is playing with it, and is endowed with a degree of artificial intelligence capable of even defying Lewis’s intentions.214 (Paradoxically, that is a mark of its success.) “If you want to hear the program play in a certain way,” suggests Lewis, “you figure out how what you want to hear is organized, and you start playing that way yourself.” The interaction is a “subject-subject model of discourse, rather than stimulus/response.”215 Chadabe conceived of Many Times . . . (2001) as an environment—an instrument that “takes the sound produced by a performer and from it produces many different transformed instances of it throughout the performance space, multiplying the performer’s actions so that it comes from loudspeakers on the left, on the right, above, behind, from here, there, everywhere.”216 The sound production of the musician proliferates throughout the space, becoming an entire environment. The acoustic instrument is transformed by Chadabe’s electronic instrument into an entire weather system that the performer must navigate. The environments created by the five musicians recorded for the EMF release are so distinct that they seem not to be operating according to the same rules. The system is consistent, though. It is the substance—the sound materials and their behaviors under these conditions—that makes the great difference, as well as the moment-to-moment choices of each musician within that environment. David Tudor’s Rainforest IV (1973), like the previous versions of Rainforest, is an “electroacoustic environment” that encourages interaction from musicians and audience alike. Interactions are happening on many planes, in that the musicians are exploring the environment individually and the audience moves freely among the sounding objects.217 Various objects are used as acoustic filters. In the summer 1973 workshop, these included “old bedsprings, barrels, cookie sheets, wood planks. Someone blew out two transducers by trying to resonate the bathroom plumbing under the toilet.”218 Through the introduction and integration of these large objects it became a sound sculpture to be navigated by the performers. Tom Johnson wrote this of the performance in The Village Voice: It kept Tudor and his assistants interested for five and a half hours. . . . They just seemed to enjoy keeping the sounds going for those who wanted to stay, and for those who would come back later on. I suppose they were also having an enjoyable time feeding various sounds into various objects, testing how the objects responded to different things, trying to find resonant frequencies, and listening to subtle variations.219

The two recorded versions in the box set called The Art of David Tudor have entirely different sonic qualities, apart from the sense of accumulated chaos, exploration, and enjoyment of the sound worlds being discovered. A group of proponents of this work

Information, Language, and Interaction

211

called Composers Inside Electronics formed out of the 1973 workshop, and they have continued to present the work dozens of times over the following decades.220 Tudor’s Neural Synthesis (1992–94) is not a piece in any usual sense, but was the outcome of a proposal by Forrest Warthman that together they develop “a computer system capable of enveloping and integrating the sounds of his performances.” As Warthman describes it: It generates sound and routes signals but the role of learner, pattern-recognizer and responder is played by David, himself a vastly more complex neural network than the chip. During performances David chooses from up to 14 channels of synthesizer output, modifying each of them with his other electronic devices to create the final signals.

It is a complex system, in which inputs and outputs are completely interchangeable at will. Unpredictability is fostered by the complexity of the system, and also by the sensitivity of the neurons to internal thermal noise.221 Each of the performances on the Neural Synthesis release has an entirely different mode of interaction, as does the version on the box set release.222 Tudor is responding to a set of conditions that is highly complex, and seems (to use that other meaning of neural) to have a developing mind of its own. Neural Network Plus (1992) is performed by both Tudor and Takehisa Kosugi, and the level of activity seems to be multiplied, corresponding with the fact that there is more than one agent responding to the activity of the neurons. Like Tudor, David Behrman has worked with custom-built technologies to develop “situations rather than set pieces.” Tudor initially worked for long periods with such systems himself before eventually giving them over to other musicians. He was fascinated with the potential contained within the system, and explored it extensively. Behrman’s interest is centered more strongly on the interactions of other musicians with the systems he sets up. There’s the model especially in the European tradition of the Creative Superperson (the Composer), and the lesser worker musician (the performer) which I’ve wanted to get away from. I like the idea of sharing in the creation of something and don’t mind getting less than 100% of the credit for it. I like designing software which can be lifted off the ground, so to speak, by a wonderfully imaginative musician who does something with it that I never would have dreamed of.

He offers an example of one such surprising outcome—a performance of his QSRL (1998) by Maggi Payne. She performs the flute (which one normally thinks of as a gentle instrument) in a very strong and sometimes harsh way, making the electronics (which one might normally think of as mechanical and a bit macho) seem sinuous and yielding and gentle. I never in a million years could have imagined this relationship; I felt really happy that the situation was left open enough so that such a thing could occur.223

212

Experimental Music Since 1970

Behrman’s methodology enables such things to occur. “The performers have options rather than instructions, and the exploration of each situation as it unfolds is up to them.”224 This openness is enforced by the responsiveness of the computer to the musician. In On the Other Ocean (1977), the two musicians’ harmonies affect the electronically produced harmonies,225 putting “the human being back in the forefront,”226 as Thom Holmes writes. Unforeseen Events (1991) similarly uses circuits that sense the pitches of the musicians, as well as other aspects of their performances. Lucier’s description of the piece suggests an enjoyable game with intermittently changing rules: Unforeseen Events is in four parts. In all of them the computer responds to trumpet calls, long tones, and single notes, creating harmonies, chords, and arpeggiated figures that sustain or change pitch and timbre in subtle ways. In Part Two, Fishing for Complements, the composer listens to what’s going on and enters changes into the computer. In Part Three, Witch Grass, only when the performer pauses do the harmonies move away from their origins and don’t stop until the performer plays again.227

Lucier clarifies that the charm of the piece, for him, is in the indirectness of causeand-effect relationships: “Most of the time the relationships are interrupted and distant and therefore engage the listener in tantalizing ways.”228 These are only two examples of many pieces in which Behrman has explored the possible relationships between musicians and electronics. He reflects that these systems suggest the forms of performance or interaction, but welcomes departures from those practices as well. “I think that the vocabulary develops as you work on the piece. But sometimes, a performer can break out of the vocabulary, and do something that seems strange, and sometimes that’s very nice.”229 Behrman is not focused solely on electronics and the choices of the musicians who work with it. His conception of interactivity is large enough to include the audience member, or in particular the visitor to an installation. He and George Lewis set up an installation called In Thin Air (1997) that enabled visitors to manipulate a three-part canon while viewing a live visualization of the sounding result. He writes: The idea of “In Thin Air” and similar installations was that no matter what you do the music should always remain lively, and that you don’t have to know anything about music in order to engage the system and find it rewarding.230

Like his rejection of the “Creative Superperson” earlier, Behrman, as well as Lewis, is interested in situations that offer agency to the other participants in a musical work and to at least partially flatten the hierarchies and structures that art music seems to carry as baggage. They see their work as being that of creating an interesting situation, and then stepping back to let others reckon with it. Behrman sums it up: An analogy that I like for interactive music is that it’s like a piece of sports equipment—a bicycle, say, or a sailboat. The design is very important, but all the

Information, Language, and Interaction

213

experiences of bicycling or sailing can’t be foreseen or controlled at the boatyard or factory, nor should they be.231

Richard Teitelbaum underlines the value of a “highly complex set of stimuli and responses to the improvised input” in his own practice: Some years ago, in attempting to define his idea of indeterminacy, John Cage said that he likes to be in a situation in which he literally doesn’t know what he is doing (Cage 1962). Similarly, my notion here is that by creating an interactive situation in which the performer cannot consciously comprehend or predict the outcome of his actions, his/her mind will bypass more superficial levels of thinking and rational control to reach something deeper.232

These interactive systems are artificial musical intelligences that, as Teitelbaum puts it, “mimic in some ways the mysterious interactions between freely improvising human performers, responding to their own and each other’s spontaneous musical gestures.”233 The logic, actions, and reactions between human performers further enhance the mysteries of the interactive or improvisational encounter.

The interaction is the score Music predates written language, children sing before they write, and much of the work in this book (especially installations and electronic work) was not communicated through a score. But the absence of a written score is not what draws the works in this section together. The process of conveying a piece has been blurred in various ways, and the composer and the first interpreter(s) of a work often work closely together in the process of its realization. What is remarkable about the working processes of Meredith Monk, Éliane Radigue, and Luke Nickel is that they draw the specific personhood of each collaborator into the content of the work. From the very inception of the process, long before any performance, a meaningful interaction shapes the foundational content of the material. It cannot exist without the context and content of that interaction. Specific attributes of the musician—character, life experience, values, associations, memory—are undivorceable from the piece. The work simply does not exist without the weight of those specific characteristics. If there is a score, it only assumes its form on an instrument, in a conversation, in a relationship, or in the minds, hearts, or memories of the people who have come together to extrapolate an idea through sound. Kate Geissinger, one of Meredith Monk’s key collaborators, describes their working relationship in this way: What I realized was that she was picking me for me . . . skills that were inhabited by me. . . . it really made me understand that she wants the essence of the person to come out. And when for instance I can’t do a show because I have some conflict, it’s difficult. It’s much more difficult than if it were some other performance, because

214

Experimental Music Since 1970

she needs that time to get that essence of that person, and you really feel like part of you is in it. And so you feel much more invested in it.234

The personal working relationship is as crucial to the work as any sounds that are developed, and the individuality of the musicians involved is a part of the work that cannot be excised from it. Éliane Radigue exclaims: I’m so fortunate to have these wonderful people lend me their talent, it’s a gift for me, all these extraordinary musicians! Real happiness is working together. We have known such pleasure, sharing these intense exchanges, that’s what’s important.235

Radigue has been known for her work with the ARP 2500 since the 1960s. Four decades later, she and her key collaborators (especially Charles Curtis) discovered, through a great focus of concentration and dedication of time, a working method that situates the sound in the collaboration, and not in a written score. In its current, more established form, the process often begins with an image brought by the musician and continues with an extended process of exploring the sonic possibilities that they arrive at together. As the working process itself has been refined over time, so too have the techniques been sculpted into their clearest and purest forms of exploration. Over twenty musicians have worked with Radigue at the time of this writing, some alone, some more than once, and some in ensembles. Every piece that has been performed has been developed and rehearsed in that formation in residence with Radigue, and occupies at least three durations and spaces—the number of days developing the work in Radigue’s apartment, the performer’s individual preparation, and a substantial amount of time, usually fifteen minutes or more, in the space of the performance.236 What is the nature of the sounds that are explored in these collaborations? Charles Curtis writes: The diffusion of sound is to my mind one of éliane radigue’s great subjects. a sound’s primary source is only a very small part of its phenomenal reality. overtones, combination tones, resonance, sympathetic resonance, all make up the infinite array of resultant, or secondary, phenomena, which ultimately define sound as we experience it. radigue’s music achieves an extraordinary degree of clarity in this range of sound experience.237

Naldjorlak (2004–09) is a large piece in three parts, each created through an intense collaborative process. The first of these was made with Curtis. She made selections from the techniques and sounds he shared with her. This process was her “shopping.” They worked in great detail with each other and with the instrument. We discussed at length the ordering of the techniques and sound-states, and the ways in which the characteristic instabilities of a sound-state would shape its

Information, Language, and Interaction

215

own gradual transformation. i practiced extremely quiet transitions and ways of connecting the sections through fingerings and string adjacencies. we discovered a very logical sequence that follows the geography of the cello, seemingly working down to the root of its sound.

One of the key decisions was to tune the cello in a way that “seeks to consolidate, as nearly as possible, all of the resonating parts of the instrument.” Curtis’s description of their work with the wolf tone clarifies the kind of work that is accomplished in these sessions. The search for self-sameness reveals a unit of distance we would not have discovered without having attempted to bridge it. we cannot bridge it, because it is inside. the object sought is contained in the subject; tuning to it is the painstaking calibration of the difference that is the self. working with éliane is learning to hear as she hears.238

This was not to be Curtis’s and Radigue’s only collaboration. After Naldjorlak, she embarked on a new project, even more ambitious in scale, called OCCAM OCEAN (2011–). One of the main common points between these pieces and Naldjorlak is, as Radigue says: These pieces are for the instrumentalists, they were not composed for an instrument, but for the instrumentalists. . . . It’s personal, this music belongs to them.

She goes on to explain, “It’s an oral transmission, an extremely delicate material. You can’t write it down, it’s impossible to write such music.” The relation to the instrument is best captured through the most direct means. As she describes the collaboration process with Curtis, “The score became the whole body of the instrument.”239 Much of this work has to do with secondary results. Radigue describes her “sound quest” as centering on “the soul, or the spirit of sound,” which she relates to richness and resonance and more specifically to “partials, sub-harmonics, the harmonics, etc.”240 Curtis says, “You don’t know, where are these sounds coming from? You play one thing and something else results. And the great art of this music is to organize it in such a way that what is produced as a secondary resonance is stronger than the primary act that is being played.”241 In Radigue’s words, “I’ve learned the subtle pleasure which comes from trying to discipline a sound. To hold a feedback at exactly the right distance, you better watch out!”242 Emmanuel Holterbach’s description of her earlier work with feedback shows its connection to this recent work: We are inside the timbres, riding on dense, complex frequencies. There is not just one oscillator making a continuous sound slightly modulated, there are many of them functioning together. Eliane was working this way using several filtered oscillators, modifying the sound, coating it, revealing, generating, elaborating all

216

Experimental Music Since 1970

the aspects of the harmonics, resulting in this mass of sound. Then when she puts all this together in a montage, the results are magic.243

Radigue’s reflections on the feedback works parallel the experiences that performers and listeners have had of the Naldjorlak and OCCAM OCEAN series. “I grew to like this slow, precise way of working,” she says. “The result was a music that takes its time, is demanding on the listener, and will not forgive only one thing: that you do not listen to it!” Her collaborative projects, like this earlier work, are processes of listening. Rhodri Davies, one of the first collaborators on OCCAM OCEAN reflects, I just love the whole process of how the piece took shape, really. And it kind of appeared from nowhere, in a way. It was partly a form of osmosis, or as if Eliane was transmitting this piece to me.244

The relationship between composer and performer becomes central to the work. It happens directly, face to face, and more importantly, “heart to heart.”245 The immediacy of that relationship transmits powerfully in live performance. The video and audio reproductions of these works lose more than the acoustic subtleties of transmission. There is a sense of presence that is brought to the work that is mostly lost in any recording. The musicians were fully engaged in the process that brought their portion of the piece into being, and the listeners are making this work with them, watching it take shape in a shared space and experience. Luke Nickel is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist who also segments the communication of a score into separate communications. He writes of Made of My Mother’s Cravings (2014): “I created the piece by telling each member of the quartet instructions: some secrets, some to share. The group then assembled the piece in rehearsal, largely without my input. This is the result.”246 In both recorded performances, there is an unusual quality of rawness. The players are participating in an oral, folkloric tradition without any sense of irony or flippancy. Each player is working hard to project something that is already internalized. The interaction among the players is not simply about execution, but about content, and about differences in perception between each of them. The June and November 2014 performances are in a displaced interaction with one another too, as memories of the score have been eroded or replaced.247 Factory (2014) is a set of verbal scores that were given to the violinist Mira Benjamin and then, by agreement between her and Nickel, permanently deleted in that physical form. These scores are now accessed, not even through the composer, but through conversation with Benjamin as their living archive. She is aware of her unique and somewhat strange function in the development of the work, not only in dialogue with Nickel, but especially in her interactions with the musicians who access it. Because I accept whatever happens coming out of me as being completely legitimate in this, I don’t feel a huge sense of pressure to preserve some historical thing. I don’t think that fundamentally that’s what this is about. So I think that if I do forget, that’s the score happening. I don’t think it would be a very joyful experience

Information, Language, and Interaction

217

for anyone if I was really trying to adhere to some kind of rote system. . . . For me, the score kind of keeps building, because as other people access it, it includes those conversations too. . . . one of the fundamental sort of things that Luke gave me license to do at the beginning . . . is to forget. I think the process is infinitely interesting because I just keep forgetting things.

But it is Nickel who best articulates the relation of the work and the process to Benjamin herself. He writes: I think creating it was specifically about Mira and her particular skills of conceptualization, realization, ultimate generosity, pragmatism. . . . These characteristics if divorced from the piece would not allow it to exist.248

The fruitful irony here is that Benjamin’s fluid sense of the nature of the piece is her most essential attribute as the access point for it. She explains further: I think for somebody to really be able to get to the heart of this type of way of working, one can’t be all that concerned with ownership. It would just stop anything from happening. This work is all about contamination.249

In all of these projects, the point of access to the work becomes the primary site of interaction, and it infuses the performance with those unique dynamics.

Notes 1 Peter Ablinger, “Rauschen,” http://ablinger.mur.at/rauschen.html. 2 Cassidy and Einbond, Noise in and as Music (Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield Press, 2013), 5. 3 Ablinger, “Rauschen.” 4 Ablinger, “Weiss/Weisslich 7: Rauschen,” http://ablinger.mur.at/ww7_wasserfall.html. 5 Ablinger, “Weiss/Weisslich 33, ‘Die Farbe der Nähe,’” http://ablinger.mur.at/ ww33.html. 6 Ablinger, “Weiss/Weisslich 18,” on Weiss/Weisslich, World Edition 0008, 2002, compact disc. 7 Ablinger, “Weiss/Weisslich 18,” http://ablinger.mur.at/docs/ww18engl.pdf. 8 Jennie Gottschalk, “wandelweiser und so weiter NYC III,” May 29, 2013, http://www. soundexpanse.com/wwusw-nyc-3. 9 Michael Pisaro, White Metal (Grey Series No. 2) (unpublished score, 2012–13). 10 See http://dromosrecords.com/catalogue_makam.php?id=1 and http://www. senufoeditions.com/wordpress/?page_id=720. 11 Peter Ablinger, “Der Regen, das Glas, das Lachen,” http://ablinger.mur.at/ werk89drdgdl.html. 12 Cassidy and Einbond, Noise in and as Music, 8. 13 Peter Ablinger, “Instrumente und Rauschen,” http://ablinger.mur.at/i+r2_i+r.html.

218

Experimental Music Since 1970

14 Seth Josel has recorded 95 of these segments in the CD 33-127, mode 206, 2009. Evan Johnson’s liner notes may be the single-best introduction to Ablinger’s work available, and are also at http://ablinger.mur.at/werk2000_1-127text.html. 15 Apparently his father was a direct influence on this set of habits, in having his children sing in one key while he accompanied them in another. See http://www. charlesives.org/02bio.htm. 16 Peter Ablinger, “Weiss/Weisslich 22,” and Notes by Christian Scheib, Vienna/Austria, http://ablinger.mur.at/ww22.html. 17 One segment of this piece can be heard at https://soundcloud.com/ciciliani/popwall-alphabet-m. 18 Cassidy and Einbond, Noise in and as Music, 191. 19 Peter Ablinger, “IEAOV,” http://ablinger.mur.at/docu07.html. 20 Ablinger, “IEAOV,” http://ablinger.mur.at/ieaov.html. 21 See Erik M., “Frame,” http://www.erikm.com/music/?var_ajax_redir=1 and the recording at https://erikm.bandcamp.com/album/variations-opportunistes-2007. 22 The ongoing stream can be found at http://www.park.nl/park_cms/public/index. php?thisarticle=118, and more information on the project is available at http://www. harsmedia.com/SoundBlog/Archief/00550.php. 23 JLIAT, “All Possible CDs,” http://www.jliat.com/APCDS/index.html. 24 Peter Ablinger and Deus Cantando (God, singing). http://ablinger.mur.at/txt_ qu3god.html. See also a video documenting this project at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4. 25 Ablinger, “Phonorealism: The Reproduction of ‘Phonographs’ by Instruments,” http://ablinger.mur.at/phonorealism.html. 26 Ablinger, “Quadraturen,” http://ablinger.mur.at/docu11.html. 27 Ibid. 28 Ablinger, “Augmented Studies: about the series,” http://ablinger.mur.at/txt_augst. html. 29 Ablinger, “Augmented Study für 7 Violinen,” http://ablinger.mur.at/txt_augst_ augmented.html. Listen at https://soundcloud.com/midnightsledding/peterablinger-augmented-study. 30 Ablinger, “Hypothesen Über das Mondlicht,” http://ablinger.mur.at/txt_augst_ hypothesen.html. 31 Joanna Bailie, To Be Beside the Seaside (unpublished score, 2015). “Tectonics Festival Glasgow 2015.” BBC Hear and Now. BBC 3. London, UK, May 16, 2015. 32 Gerhard Stäbler, . . . Im aufhörlichen Wirbel . . ., col legno WWE 20021, 1998, compact disc. Liner notes, 12. 33 “Profile,” last modified January 12, 2001, http://www.japanimprov.com/ayoshida. 34 Ami Yoshida, Tiger Thrush, Improvised Music from Japan, IMJ-504, 2003, compact disc. 35 Cassidy and Einbond, Noise in and as Music, 51. 36 For other examples of vocal extremity, see Chapter 3, The Physicality of Performance. 37 Tom Johnson, The Voice of New Music (Eindhoven: Apollohuis, 1989), 3, http://www. editions75.com/Books/TheVoiceOfNewMusic.PDF. 38 Joan La Barbara, Voice is the Original Instrument, Lovely Music, CD 3003, 2 compact discs, CD 1, track 5. 39 Pamela Z., “Syrinx,” SoundCloud track, 6:11, https://soundcloud.com/pamela-z/syrinx.

Information, Language, and Interaction

219

40 George Lewis, “The Virtual Discourses of Pamela Z,” Journal of the Society for American Music 1, no. 1 (2007): 73–74. 41 Chris Mercer, “The Birdsong Emulation Gloves,” http://musictechnology.music. northwestern.edu/Mercer/Research.html. 42 Mercer, “Birdsong Gloves,” YouTube video, 0:58, posted by “camercer72,” January 13, 2009, https://youtu.be/Aag-t5pMhpQ. 43 Emmanuel Holterbach, “Sérénade pour Nestor Kéa,” Bandcamp release, 5:32, August 8, 2013, https://emmanuelholterbach.bandcamp.com/track/s-r-nade-pour-nestor-k-a. 44 David Dunn and Ric Cupples, “Mimus Polyglottus,” on Music, Language and Environment, Innova Recordings, innova 508, 1996, 2 compact discs. Ric Cupples and David Dunn, Mimus Polyglottus (unpublished score, 1976). 45 Mercer, “Research,” http://musictechnology.northwestern.edu/Mercer/ Research.html. Mercer, “The Audible Phylogeny of Lemurs,” YouTube video, 17:33, posted by “camercer72,” December 15, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PQe7SACPQy4. 46 “About,” http://patrickfarmer.org/about. 47 Ibid. 48 Miya Masaoka, “Skin & Insects,” http://www.miyamasaoka.com/interdisciplinary/ skin_insects/index.html. 49 Masaoka, “Compositions,” http://www.miyamasaoka.com/music/compositions/ index.html. 50 Yannick Dauby, La rivière penchée, Bandcamp release, October 7, 2013, https:// kalerne.bandcamp.com/album/la-rivi-re-pench-e. 51 Chris Watson, Outside the Circle of Fire, Touch, TO:37, 1998, compact disc. http://touchshop.org/product_info.php?cPath=9&products_id=14 and Weather Report, Touch, TO:47, 2003, compact disc, http://touchshop.org/product_info. php?cPath=9&products_id=15. 52 Watson, Weather Report, http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/catalogue/to47_chris_ watson_weather_repo.html. 53 Chris Watson and Marcus Davidson, Cross-Pollination, Touch, Tone 43, 2011, compact disc, http://touchshop.org/product_info.php?cPath=9&products_id=464. 54 “Bernie Krause Biography,” http://www.wildsanctuary.com. 55 Bernie Krause, “The voice of the natural world,” https://www.ted.com/talks/bernie_ krause_the_voice_of_the_natural_world/transcript?language=en. 56 Krause, “The voice of the natural world,” TED talk, 14:48, June 2013, http://www.ted. com/talks/bernie_krause_the_voice_of_the_natural_world?language=en. 57 Krause, The Great Animal Orchestra (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), 68–73. 58 Krause, Into a Wild Sanctuary (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1998), 78. 59 Krause, The Great Animal Orchestra, 100. 60 Krause, Into a Wild Sanctuary, 80. 61 Ibid., 100. 62 Krause’s website, which includes numerous audio examples, is http://www. wildsanctuary.com. Other related (but not affiliated) projects include the Wildlife Sound Recording Society (http://www.wildlife-sound.org), WildSounds (http:// www.wildsounds.com), and Martyn Stewart’s site (http://naturesound.org). 63 This piece is available on the CD Angels and Insects, and an excerpt is available here: http://www.davidddunn.com/~david/sounds/Chaos.mp3.

220

Experimental Music Since 1970

64 David Dunn, Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond (unpublished essay, 1991), 2–4. 65 Jana Winderen, The Noisiest Guys on Planet, Bandcamp release, June 16, 2009, https://janawinderen.bandcamp.com/album/the-noisiest-guys-on-the-planet. 66 Winderen, “Artist Statement,” http://www.janawinderen.com/information. 67 Jennifer Walshe, “‘Three Songs’ by Ukeoirn O’Connor,” Soundcloud track, 8:43, posted by “Grupat,” 2013, https://soundcloud.com/grupat/three-songs-by-ukeoirnoconnor. 68 See Chapter 6, Histories. 69 Nate Wooley, (9) Syllables, Bandcamp release, 48:09, April 10, 2013, https://mnoad. bandcamp.com/album/9-syllables. 70 Bonnie Jones, “by the time,” Soundcloud track, 16:14, posted by “ICA London,” 2012, https://soundcloud.com/icalondon/bonnie-jones-by-the-time. 71 Jones, “we’ve. 2010, screen capture, 17:15,” YouTube video, 17:14, posted by “Bonnie Jones, November 28, 2011,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUyTG1M36KA. 72 “The Typist,” http://www.echoraum.at/typist.htm. 73 Kim Taeyong, Lee Youngji, and Ryu Hankil, Profile, Manual, manualcd05, 2011, book and compact disc. “A. Typist,” http://lo-wie.blogspot.com/p/a-typist.html. 74 Ryu Hankil, Descriptions for Other Things, Mediabus, 2011, book and compact disc. 75 “‘On Words: J’ by Luiz Henrique Yudo (en),” YouTube video, 18:59, posted by “sergeizagny,” May 28, 2011, https://youtu.be/30-cQPqr0vU. 76 See for example “ON WORDS: O,” https://soundcloud.com/luiz-henri/on-wordso. 77 Luiz Henrique Yudo, “On Phobia,” Soundcloud track, 1:57:01, https://soundcloud. com/luiz-henri/on-phobia. See www.phobialist.com. 78 Michael Oesterle, “all words,” Soundcloud track, 10:43, https://soundcloud.com/ michaeloesterle/all-words-2014. 79 Tim Rutherford-Johnson, “Michael Oesterle: all words,” https://johnsonsrambler. wordpress.com/2015/10/20/michael-oesterle-all-words. 80 Alessandro Bosetti, “I could see the clouds over Neukölln,” YouTube video, 9:56, posted by “alessandrobosetti,” September 24, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zPYcp5t3k30. 81 Bosetti, “Mask Mirror,” http://www.melgun.net/live-projects/mask-mirror. 82 “Composer Kenneth Gaburo: A Conversation with Bruce Duffie,” April 9, 1987, http://www.bruceduffie.com/gaburo.html. 83 Paul DeMarinis, Paul DeMarinis: Buried in Noise (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2010), 208. 84 Ibid., 208. 85 DeMarinis, Music as a Second Language, Lovely Music, CD 3011, 1991, compact disc. Liner notes. 86 Alvin Lucier, Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014), 175. 87 Tom Sellar, “Parts of Speech: Interview with Pamela Z,” Theater Magazine 30, no. 2 (2000), http://www.pamelaz.com/theater.html. 88 Lewis, George E., “The Virtual Discourses of Pamela Z,” Journal of the Society for American Music 1, no. 1 (2007): 57–77. Pamela Z., A Delay is Better Than a Disaster, Starkland st213, 2004, compact disc. 89 Lewis, “Virtual Discourses,” 74. 90 Peter Ablinger, “Voices and Piano,” http://ablinger.mur.at/voices_and_piano.html.

Information, Language, and Interaction

221

91 “SPEECH MUSIC AND/OR Alessandro Bosetti in conversation with Peter Ablinger, Tomomi Adachi, Arturas Bumšteinas, Jenny Walshe and Alexander Waterman,” http://www.melgun.net/read/speech-music-and-or-alessandro-bosetti-inconversation-with-peter-ablinger-tomomi-adachi-arturas-bumsteinas-jenny-walsheand-alexander-waterman. 92 Ablinger, Voices and Piano, with Nicolas Hodges (piano), Kairos, 0013082KAI, compact disc. 93 Paul Lansky, Fantasies and Tableaux, New World Records, NWCR683, 2007, compact disc. Liner notes. 94 Charles Amirkhnian, “Church Car,” on Mental Radio: Nine Text-Sound Compositions, New World Records, NWCRL523, 2009, compact disc. 95 Charles Amirkhanian, “Just,” on 10+2: 12 American Text Sound Pieces, 1750 Arch Records, S-1752, 1975, compact disc. 96 Charles Amirkhanian, Walking Tune, Starkland, ST-206, 1997, compact disc. 97 “Charles Amirkhanian,” posted August 2008, http://cec.sonus.ca/econtact/10_2/ AmirkhanianCh_KD.html. 98 Alvin Lucier, Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995), 356. 99 Robert Ashley, “Music with Roots in the Aether,” http://www.lovely.com/titles/ vhsroots.html. 100 See https://obadike.squarespace.com/#/opera/and http://blacknetart.com/sour, as well as Mendi and Keith Obadike, The Sour Thunder: An Internet Opera, Bridge 9158, 2004, compact disc. 101 Robert Ashley, Outside of Time (Köln: MusikTexte, 2009), 78. 102 “‘Crash’ an opera by Robert Ashley,” http://roulette.org/events/robert-ashleys-crash. 103 Ashley, Outside of Time, 72. 104 Robert Ashley, EL/Aficionado, Lovely Music, LCD 1004, 1993, compact disc. Liner notes. 105 “Celestial Excursions,” http://lovely.com/titles/cd1007.html. 106 “Atalanta (Acts of God),” http://lovely.com/albumnotes/notes3301.html. 107 “podcast #6: PennSound pedagogy,” https://media.sas.upenn.edu/Pennsound/ podcasts/PennSound-Podcast_06_pennsound-overview.mp3. 108 See Sound Poetry, http://epc.buffalo.edu/sound/soundpoetry.html and UbuWeb, http://www.ubu.com. 109 Preston Wright, “An interview with Chris Mann,” July 2002, http://musicmavericks. publicradio.org/features/interview_mann.html. 110 See https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-use/id407969043?mt. 111 Ibid. 112 “Tomomo Adachi,” http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Adachi.html. 113 Jaap Blonk, “For Just A Little HondeKip,” http://www.jaapblonk.com/Texts/ hondekip.html. 114 See http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jaapblonksbraaxtaal and the first Onderlands poetry cycle at http://www.jaapblonk.com/Texts/onderlands_1.html. 115 Blonk, “Sound,” http://www.jaapblonk.com/Texts/sound.html. 116 Blonk, “Plea for Proof (From Traces of Speech),” Experimental Music Yearbook, http://www.experimentalmusicyearbook.com/Plea-for-Proof-from-Traces-of-Speech. 117 Blonk, Traces of Speech (out of print, 2012), http://www.jaapblonk.com/OutOfPrint/ Traces_of_Speech.pdf, 5.

222

Experimental Music Since 1970

118 Blonk, “Plea for Proof.” 119 Ibid. 120 Yasunao Tone and Craig Kendall, Musica Iconologos, Lovely Music, CD 3041, 1993, compact disc. Liner notes. 121 “Yasunao Tone,” http://www.lovely.com/bios/tone.html. 122 “Clarence Barlow: Interview by Bob Gilmore,” August 1, 2007, http://www. paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/barlow.html. 123 Alessandro Bosetti, “Arcoparlante,” 2009, http://www.melgun.net/wp-content/ uploads/2013/10/ArcoparlanteText.pdf. 124 Bosetti, “Arcoparlante Excerpt #1,” Soundcloud track, 4:54, 2014, https://soundcloud. com/alessandro-bosetti/arcoparlante-excerpt-1. 125 Michael Pisaro, Harmony Series (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 2006). 126 Quoted in Lauren Redhead, “The Reason Why I am Unable to Live in my own Country as a Composer is a Political One: The Politics of Self-Alienation in the Music of Chris Newman,” http://www.terz.cc/magazin.php?z=362&id=364. 127 See Tim Parkinson’s video introduction to Chris Newman at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=qzVLo8L34mM and https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2zdXY3xzPPU. 128 Sifr, Suppedaneum 06, 2015, CD-R and seven scores, http://www.suppedaneum. com/sifr.htm. 129 See Chapter 1, Indeterminacy, and in particular the section, “Prescribed Actions, Varied Consequences.” 130 For a sustained look at Cage’s views of improvisation, see Sabine Feisst, “John Cage and Improvisation: An Unresolved Relationship,” in Musical Improvisation: Art, Education, and Society, ed. Gabriel Solis and Gabriel Nettl (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 38–51. 131 Marcus Boon, “Philip Corner: A Long Life, Endless as the Sky,” http://marcusboon. com/philip-corner-a-long-life-endless-as-the-sky. 132 Quoted in George E. Lewis, “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,” Black Music Research Journal 16, no. 1 (1996): 99–100. 133 Ibid., 117. 134 Tony Harris, The Legacy of Cornelius Cardew (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 79. 135 Cornelius Cardew, “Towards an Ethic of Improvisation,” from Treatise Handbook (London: Edition Peters, 1971), xvii–xxi. 136 AMM, Laminal, Matchless Recordings, MRCD31, 1996, 3 compact discs. Liner notes. 137 Subsonics, episode 3, directed by Nester Frenkel, aired June 26, 2003 (Sydney: SBS-TV, 2003), VHS video. 138 Derek Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), 130. 139 AMM, Laminal, Liner notes. 140 Ibid. 141 Naomi Beckwith and Dieter Roelstraete, eds., The Freedom Principle (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2015), 195. 142 George Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), ix. 143 Ibid., xii.

Information, Language, and Interaction

223

144 Leo Smith, “Notes on My Music (Part 1),” http://www.wadadaleosmith.com/pages/ philos.html#1. 145 “George Lewis, Catherine Sullivan, Sean Griffin Afterword, an Opera,” http://www2. mcachicago.org/event/george-lewis-catherine-sullivan-and-sean-griffin-afterword. 146 Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, edition RZ, ed. RZ 1009, 1992, compact disc. Liner notes. 147 Musica Elettronica Viva, New World Records, 80675-2, 2008, 4 compact discs. Liner notes. 148 Ibid. 149 “hcmf//2010: string theories: rhodri davies q&a,” 2010, http://www.hcmf.co.uk/ String-theories-Rhodri-Davies-QA. 150 Burkhard Beins, et al., ed., Echtzeitmusik Berlin: Selbstbestimmung einer Szene (Hofheim: Wolke, 2011), 124. 151 “What’s New? The PoD Roundtable,” http://www.pointofdeparture.org/archives/ PoD-28/PoD28WhatsNew.html. and we disappear, Another Timbre, at23, 2007, compact disc. In addition to this release, you can see another full set at “The Sealed Knot: Live at Exploratorium, Berlin, 19 March 2015,” YouTube video, 1:02:12, posted by “PluxQuba,” May 17, 2015, https://youtu.be/6QGOWgML2Go. 152 Lê Quan Ninh, Improvising Freely: The ABCs of an Experience, trans. Karen Houle (Guelph: PS Guelph, 2014), 79. 153 Ibid., 31. 154 Taking the Dog for a Walk, directed by Antoine Prum (Luxembourg: Ni-Vu-NiConnu, 2014), ~9:30. 155 Yoshio Otani, “Ami Yoshida Interview,” Improvised Music from Japan 301 (2002–03): E-6. 156 “Fifteen Questions Interview with Lucio Capece,” http://15questions.net/interview/ fifteen-questions-interview-lucio-capece/page-3/. 157 “Jean-Luc Guionnet interviewing Diego Chamy,” July 2009, https://sites.google.com/ site/diegochamy/texts/jean-luc-guionnet-interviewing-diego-chamy-1. 158 James Saunders, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 362. 159 Christian Wolff, Gisela Gronemeyer, and Reinhard Oelschlägel, eds., Cues: Writing & Conversations (Köln: MusikTexte, 1998), 496. 160 Quoted in Philip Thomas and Stephen Chase, eds., Changing the System (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 92–93. 161 Wolff, Cues, 358. 162 Thomas and Chase, Changing the System, 124. 163 Score reproduction, Ibid., 111. 164 Wolff, Cues, 508. 165 Ibid., 480. 166 Ibid., 482. 167 Quoted in Thomas and Chase, Changing the System, 217. 168 “SA10: Conversations with Drury . . . Pinkas . . . Pisaro . . . Polansky,” http:// soundamerican.org/stephen-druryinterrogation-of-soundmicro. 169 Ibid., 217. 170 Ibid., 214. 171 Wolff, Cues, 92.

224

Experimental Music Since 1970

172 “ABOUT ANTHONY BRAXTON,” http://tricentricfoundation.org/bio-history. 173 “Sonic Genome,” http://tricentricfoundation.org/projects. 174 See http://tricentricfoundation.org/musical-systems for a detailed description of Ghost Trance Music. 175 Quoted in http://tricentricfoundation.org/projects. 176 Quoted in J. D. Considine, “8 hours + 60 musicians = 1 sonic genome,” http://www. theglobeandmail.com/news/national/8-hours-60-musicians-1-sonic-genome/ article4303839. 177 Anthony Braxton, 9 Compositions, Firehouse 12 Records, FH12-04-03-001, 2007, 9 compact discs. Liner notes. 178 “Biography,” http://www.james-saunders.com/biography-2. 179 All of these scores are available at http://www.james-saunders.com/scores-2. 180 Michael Pisaro, anabasis (3) (unpublished score, 2015), 2. 181 “Anabasis (3),” Soundcloud track, 1:00:34, posted by “Greg Stuart,” 2015, https:// soundcloud.com/greg_stuart/anabasis-3. 182 Michael Pisaro, Continuum Unbound, Gravity Wave, gw013, 2014, 3 compact discs. 183 Pisaro, anabasis (3), 4. 184 John Lely and James Saunders, eds., Word Events: Perspectives on Notation (New York: Continuum, 2012), 238. 185 James Saunders, Either/or (unpublished score, 2008/09), http://researchspace. bathspa.ac.uk/932/1/either-or.pdf. 186 See “Interaction in Line, Breath and Process” (unpublished manuscript, October 2013), http://www.charliesdraulig.com/Interaction%20in%20line,%20breath%20 and%20process.pdf, 1–2. 187 Ibid., 5. 188 “Charlie Sdraulig, Close (2012) performed by Joe Browning, Charlie Sdraulig and Alice Purton,” Vimeo video, 7:33, http://vimeo.com/charliesdraulig/close. See score at http://www.charliesdraulig.com/close.pdf. 189 Sdraulig, Close, 7. 190 Sdraulig, Between (unpublished score, 2012–13), http://charliesdraulig.com/ between.pdf, iv. 191 Ibid., 31. 192 Sdraulig, No One Both (unpublished score, 2013), http://charliesdraulig.com/ no%20one%20both.pdf, i. See “Charlie Sdraulig, No One Both (2013) performed by Ensemble SurPlus,” Vimeo video, 13:04, posted by “Charlie Sdraulig,” November 3, 2013, https://vimeo.com/78454586. 193 Wolff, Cues, 496–98. 194 Nomi Epstein, communications for a.pe.ri.od.ic (unpublished score, 2015). 195 Epstein, two groups (unpublished score, 2015). 196 John Zorn, The Parachute Years: 1977-1980, Tzadik, TZ 7316, 1997, 7 compact discs. Liner notes, Archery. 197 Ibid., Liner notes, Pool. 198 Ibid., Liner notes, Archery. 199 Ibid., Liner notes, Lacrosse. 200 For a detailed discussion of Cobra, see John Brackett, “Some Notes on John Zorn’s Cobra,” American Music 28, no. 1 (2010): 44–75.

Information, Language, and Interaction

225

201 Anthony Coleman, “Roscoe Mitchell,” http://bombmagazine.org/article/2730/ roscoe-mitchell. 202 Jason Gross, “Roscoe Mitchell Interview,” May 1998, http://www.furious.com/ perfect/roscoemitchell.html. 203 Maggie Nicols, interview, taking the dog for a walk, Minton and Nicols interview, 24:00. 204 Tobias Fischer, “Interview with Jason Kahn 2,” http://tokafi.com/15questions/ interview-jason-kahn-2. 205 Ibid. 206 Ferran Fages, Robin Hayward, and Nikos Veliotis, Tables and Stairs, Bandcamp release, 31:30, January 16, 2011, https://thesorg.bandcamp.com/album/tables-andstairs. 207 David Novak, “Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyô,” Asian Music 41, no. 1 (2010), http://www.music.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.musi.d7/files/sitefiles/ people/novak/NovakOnkyoAM41_1.pdf, 46. 208 Filament, Amoebic, AMO SAT 03, 2001, compact disc. Liner notes. 209 “A Brief Interaction with Joel Chadabe,” SEAMUS Newsletter, April 2007, http:// www.trigonmusic.com/docs_ks/SEAMUS_NEWS/07_Issue2_April_Chadabe. pdf. For more on interaction from Chadabe, see “Interactive Composing: An Overview,” Computer Music Journal 8, no. 1 (1984): 22–27, http://www.joelchadabe. com/articles/interactivecomposing.pdf. Other sources on this topic include Robert Rowe, Interactive Music Systems: Machine Listening and Composing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993) and Cort Lippe, “Real-Time Interaction Among Composers, Performers, and Computer Systems,” http://www.music.buffalo.edu/sites/www. music.buffalo.edu/files/pdfs/Lippe-Japan-2002.pdf. 210 George E. Lewis, “Too Many Notes: Computers, Complexity and Culture in Voyager,” Leonardo Music Journal 10 (2000): 33. 211 Lewis, Voyager, Avant, Avan 014, 1993, compact disc. Liner notes. 212 Ibid., and Endless Shout, Tzadik, TZ 7054, 2000, compact disc. 213 George Lewis, “Why do we want our computers to improvise?” Vimeo video, 1:15:00, posted by “Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music,” November 5, 2013, https:// vimeo.com/78692461. 214 For more on AI and improvisation from Lewis, see http://www.hemi.nyu.edu/ journal/4.2/eng/en42_pg_lewis.html. 215 Voyager, liner notes. For more from Lewis, see George E. Lewis, “Interactivity and Improvisation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music, ed. R. Dean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 216 Chadabe, “Statement,” http://www.joelchadabe.com/statement.html. 217 “Rainforest IV (1973, realized 2001),” http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/guides_ bibliographies/david_tudor/av/rainforest.html. 218 Quoted in David Tudor, The Art of David Tudor 1963–1992, New World Records 80737, 7 compact discs. Liner notes, 25. 219 Tom Johnson, “David Tudor’s ‘Rainforest,’” in The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982, http://tvonm.editions75.com/articles/1973/david-tudors-rainforest.html. 220 See http://composers-inside-electronics.net. 221 David Tudor, Neural Synthesis, Nos. 6–9, Lovely Music, CD 1602, 1995, 2 compact discs. Liner notes. http://davidtudor.org/Articles/warthman.html.

226

Experimental Music Since 1970

222 See disc 7 of The Art of David Tudor—Neural Network Plus (1992). 223 “David Behrman, Interview by Jason Gross,” August 1997, http://www.furious.com/ perfect/behrman.html. 224 David Behrman, “Leapday Night,” http://www.lovely.com/albumnotes/ notes1042.html. 225 Behrman, On the Other Ocean, Lovely Music, LCD 1041, 1996, compact disc. Liner notes, http://www.lovely.com/albumnotes/notes1041.html. 226 Thom Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music (New York: Scribner’s, 1985), 103. 227 Lucier, Music 109, 83. 228 Ibid., 83. 229 Kalvos and Damian, “David Behrman: Kitchen Sink Electronics; No Compromises,” http://econtact.ca/10_2/BehrmanDa_KD.html. 230 “David Behrman, Interview by Jason Gross.” 231 Ibid. 232 Richard Teitelbaum, “Improvisation, Computers and the Unconscious Mind,” Contemporary Music Review 25, nos. 5/6 (2006): 504. 233 Ibid., 507. 234 Babeth Vanloo and Meredith Monk, Meredith Monk: Inner Voice (New York: First Run Features, 2010). 235 Virtuoso Listening, (2011, La Huit), DVD. 236 See Luke Nickel, “Occam Notions: Collaboration and the Performer’s Perspective in Éliane Radigue’s Occam Ocean,” Tempo 70, no. 275 (January 2016): 22–35 for an overview of Radigue’s collaborative practice. 237 “Éliane Radigue Naldjorlak,” http://www.shiiin.com/shiiin3.php. 238 Ibid. 239 Éliane Radigue, “Naldjorlak I,” in Agape: Miguel Abreu Gallery, June 3–July 28, 2007, ed. Alex Waterman (New York: Miguel Abreu Gallery, 2007), 18. 240 Virtuoso Listening. 241 Ibid. 242 Ibid. 243 Ibid. 244 Ibid. 245 Éliane Radigue, Pour répondre à le demande de Julien, trans. Luke Nickel, Portraits Polychromes no. 17. 246 Luke Nickel, “Made of My Mother’s Cravings: June 2014,” Soundcloud track, 9:12, 2015, https://soundcloud.com/lukejnickel/made-of-my-mothers-cravingsjune-2014. 247 See Ibid and “Made of My Mother’s Cravings: Nov 2014,” https://soundcloud.com/ lukejnickel/made-of-my-mothers-cravings-nov-2014. 248 Luke Nickel in discussion with the author, October 28, 2015. 249 Mira Benjamin in discussion with the author, April 30, 2015.

6

Place and Time What are the sounds of a place? How does it change from moment to moment, from morning to afternoon to evening to night, over seasons, years, decades, centuries? How near or far are the sounds? Are the sound sources in motion? Are you in motion? How can a place or a duration be better understood through sound? While some of these questions are easily asked and answered, others are impossibly speculative. No one can possibly know every sound of every place, or even the sound of a single place over a long period of time. But there are people who are deeply engaged in these questions, and pursue them in a number of ways. The projects discussed in the “Mappings” section tend to be inherently active and restless, involving various forms of transport, tracing boundaries, asking impossibly wide-ranging questions, questioning the ways things have traditionally been done, and testing perceptual as well as geographic boundaries. In the second section, site-specific works are not only (and not necessarily) about a specific place, but are in some way dependent upon its configuration or features, using one or more aspects of the site itself as an instrument. Finally, the last section looks at new ways of approaching history through objects, technologies, historical sites, musical pasts, and ultimately imagination.

6.1 Mappings Tracing lines through space One key feature of any map is the line. Whether it traces a geographical formation, a border, a transit route, or a guided tour, it details a way to traverse or circle a given territory. Emeka Ogboh is a sound and video artist who refers to two of his field recordings as “verbal maps,” in which the conductors of Danfo buses in Lagos call out the routes. There is plenty of commotion in competition with the listing of the stops, but the conductor’s voice cuts through all the conversation and traffic noise and tells the route.1 In Lagos by Bus III (2010) the outdoor sounds are overpowered by one passenger’s powerful speaking voice as he repeatedly invokes “almighty God.”2 Dogaman (2014) is dominated by a sales pitch inside the bus.3 In Lagos by Bus IV (2010), many separate

228

Experimental Music Since 1970

conversations can be overheard, as well as the conductor calling out stops and taking fares, the opening and closing of the door, the revving of the motor, and other traffic passing by. Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma (2010) is a field recording from the final months of operation of the trains of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México. Watson rode the train for a month as part of the crew for a BBC TV series called Great Railway Journeys, and incorporated his recordings into this sound piece.4 Watson’s notes on the piece read as a text score, but they can never be executed again. Take the ghost train from Los Mochis to Veracruz and travel cross country, coast to coast Pacific to Atlantic. Ride the rhythm of the rails on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México and the music of a journey that has now passed into history.

In fact, the last words of the note, “passed into history” make that impossibility plain, revealing that is not a prompt to action, but an invitation to a specific listening and imaginative experience. The listener takes the journey with Watson across Mexico, from the west coast, east and south across the country to Veracruz. Watson writes that the piece was “inspired by Pierre Schaeffer,” whose Étude aux chemins de fer (1948) was also based on the sounds of trains and is understood to be the first piece of musique concrète. Watson’s piece differs from Schaeffer’s in its relative length and its linearity. Only a portion of each leg of the journey is represented on each track, and some tracks are quite short; but the environmental sounds seem to gradually change, while the sounds of the train and that “rhythm of the rails” remain somewhat constant. In addition to these examples that make use of (mostly field) recordings, lines can be traced through space in a live performance situation. There are three different types of sound production in David Dunn’s Skydrift (1976–78). Ten vocalists form a broad circle in the center. The sixteen instrumentalists (four each of flute, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone) and four speakers (broadcasting a four-channel tape) form an evenly spaced enclosing circle around the vocalists. During the thirty minutes of the performance, the instrumentalists move very slowly outward until they have expanded the circle to about half a mile in diameter.5 The space is to be vast, open air, and remote, with low amplitude ambient sound.6 The recording is of a performance that took place on December 11, 1977. It is not a document of any participant’s experience, but a rough approximation, a compromise between those various experiences. Dunn’s decision to subsequently interview each of the participants foregrounded their individual perceptions. They literally each heard a different piece, based on placement, orientation, and motion in space, along with more subjective factors. Even the singers in the inner circle were oriented toward different segments of the expanding circle. Many people spoke about the strange or compelling aspects of the experience for them. Alan Brewer commented that the acoustics seemed at different points like a movie theater, a space ship, and a new world.7 Duane Lakin-Thomas was taken aback by how loud his clarinet seemed as he went farther out, saying that it “rang in my ears extremely loudly, as though it was . . . almost at the pain threshold. . . . All that sound . . . instead of getting eaten up by the desert—apparently was turned back on

Place and Time

Figure 6.1  David Dunn: Skydrift, performance diagram  David Dunn ©

Figure 6.2  Skydrift performance © David Dunn

229

230

Experimental Music Since 1970

our own ears.”8 Meanwhile, Jack Logan found that the air was absorbing all the usual loudness of his trumpet, making him feel “terribly small in that space.”9 One of the singers offered an explanation for these behaviors from his central vantage point. The sound, he said, “was carried literally by the wind so that different instruments . . . that I wouldn’t normally hear would all of a sudden become very strongly accented.”10 The sense of absence and distance became stronger over the course of the piece for the instrumentalists. They talked about how very alone they felt as they walked away from the other participants, until they were “just beyond the perimeter of audibility.”11 David Dickey commented that he felt a transition as he moved outward from interacting with musicians to interacting with the environment.12 Stephen Chase is another composer who explores traveling sounds. As he puts it, he is “drawn to such things as the relationship between physical action and sound production.”13 His out-of-doors suite (2014–15) is a set of text scores that offers “many examples of pitch deviation with distance.”14 One of these, ringing singing cycling (2014), has a functional similarity to Skydrift, in that there is a central reference point that operates independently of the other aspects of the performance and there is an expanding circumference around it. A group of cyclists gather at a time and place at which bell ringing will begin. When it starts, the cyclists ride around the source, reproducing one or oscillating between two of the bell pitches and gradually moving further outward. Unlike Skydrift, the musicians circle back periodically to retune to the bells and to each other.15 lights out for the territory (2014) is a slower, more contemplative piece that can be performed by almost anyone: walk in silence feeling the ground beneath your feet and listening to the variegated textures of your boots/shoes/feet against floor —careful now16

The line here is a trail, created at the point of contact between foot (or whatever footwear is encasing it) and terrain. BEAMING (2015) uses “strongly directional beams of sound and/or light” to draw lines and ellipses (by spinning) “On hilltops, across plains, through passageways and forest clearings . . .” The space becomes known through the reflections, bends, and diffusion of the beams or pulses.17 Several of the pieces challenge the musicians to coordinate pitches over a significant distance.18 In points on the curve (2014), each of them is stationed at a point along a river, “just out of earshot of the player at the next point,” except for a player who rides downstream in a rowboat, repeating one pitch over and over for the benefit of the stationary musicians. They imitate the pitch

Place and Time

231

that they hear for as long as they can hear it, even as it shifts with distance.19 Spring Waves (2014) places the musicians at least 100 meters apart, and one of them directs their sound to the other, making it easier to replicate as the pulses become louder and slower. The second musician picks up the pitch and pulse, aiming the sound for the midpoint between them. Much like in BEAMING, the task is to use the instrument to draw a line through space, but in that case only the starting point of the line is defined. Here, both ends of the line are clear—one per player—and it has an additional point in the center, which is the point of intersection of the sound. Chase gives the options that another duo can play across this sound line, or that duos can perform the score in parallel lines.20 Michael Parsons’ Echo Piece at Muddusjarvi (1976) is written for two players with woodblocks. Parsons and Howard Skempton played regular pulses as they walked in straight lines on a frozen lake in Finland, determining their locations according to the echoes off the face of the cliff. Parsons explains that the existing score is a description of that performance, but it can be adapted in any number of ways. The essential features of the piece are that the players explore changing relationships between outgoing and reflected sounds as they move in relation to the source of the echo, and that they observe the changing rhythmic relationships between sounds played and heard at different distances as they move in relation to each other.21

The changes in physical relationships are mirrored by changes in sonic relationships, and the piece is developed to reveal those correspondences. Most of the lines that have been traced in this section have been drawn through human decision. Annea Lockwood’s series of river projects trace the sounds of these natural formations over a distance. Through recording these rivers at a great number of points along their length, she has had the feeling of “hearing the process of geological change in real time.” A Sound Map of the Danube (2001–04) includes fifty-nine sites through eight countries, and also wraps in responses by local residents, in their own voices and languages, to these questions: “What does the river mean to you?” and “Could you live without it?” Lockwood has made related pieces on the Hudson and Housatonic rivers. These point-by-point listening experiences reveal qualities of an actual, irreducible geography, one that cannot be taken in at a glance but has to be experienced over time. The river provides a common material running through, but this material is responsive to shifting conditions. The river itself is an active part of that change. “I realised,” she writes, “that the river has agency; it composes itself, shaping its sounds by the way it sculpts its banks.”22

Borders Borders are lines drawn in outdoor space. From an aerial point of view, they are lines that mark geographic, political, and/or property boundaries.

232

Experimental Music Since 1970

In the piece Border Fences (1998), Richard Lerman combined audio samples from fences between Mexico and Arizona with a series of actions to be performed on a metal fence for the audience on the other side. These actions include: -Try to go thru the fence . . . -jump/climb over the fence -play the fence with money -drape razor wire on the fence. . . . -shout through the fence -sing through the fence -cut/saw the fence -bow the fence -heat the fence with a torch -play fence with passport

These sounds are registered not only directly but also through piezo disc microphones which are attached to the fence and various extensions of it. Stephen Cornford’s Attempts to shatter steel with sound (2006–07) is a provocation parallel to Lerman’s, and an action with no hope of success. The unrealisable aim of the piece was to find a frequency which causes the fence to either melt, buckle or ideally, shatter. The project is potentially endless and proposes a means of engaging with the numerous barriers that marcate urban territory, one that is not vandalism but nevertheless refuses to acknowledge the intended purpose of the fence.23

Jon Rose has been heavily engaged in such a refusal, and he and Hollis Taylor have used fences at borders throughout the world as instruments. “The main issue,” for Rose, “is trying to get sound that moves through space. Mostly when we listen to music, it comes from a fixed point, and this is the transmission of sound over huge areas.”24 Rose and Taylor have documented their expeditions in Post Impressions: a travel book for tragic intellectuals (2007) in writing, photography, and with an accompanying CD. Rose recounts his epiphany that “if the wind could play a fence as an aeolian harp, then as a violinist armed with a bow I could also cause these gigantic structures to sing.”25 Rose and Taylor have done many types of bowing on the fences, ranging from sustained long tones to percussive treatments. Their choices seem to be determined in the moment according to the properties of the materials—loose or tense, smooth, wound, or barbed wire.26 As they try to play fences at political boundaries, Rose will typically do the talking with officials and say that he is just a musician. If he is already at the site he will invite officials or other locals to hear what he is hearing by listening through headphones to the fence. But the inclusion in his bio of his apprehension by Israeli forces at Ramallah creates some impression that boundaries are being tested in more ways than one.27 Whether or not this project is motivated by political leanings, violin bows and

Place and Time

233

contact microphones are not effective means of destruction, but rather for conveying information. People who live or work by the fences are fascinated by the sounds they produce when they accept the invitation to listen to them closely. Both Rose and Lerman have also constructed their own fences. For Rose, it provides a new instrument to play. For Lerman, constructing his own wind harps has taught him more about their nature and their acoustics. Like Rose, he compares fences to string instruments. “Rough strings catch more wind, and if a string is very rough, the timbre may change. Positioning a string to get the wind at a certain angle also affects the sound, like up bow/down bow/bowing at angles, etc.”28 Through the use of contact microphones, he has found wind harps in “leaves of palm trees, tops of pine trees, cactus thorns, fields of grass, stems of desert bushes, rocks, salt flats, and [less successfully] spider webs.”29 In outdoor spaces, boundary markers do not affect acoustics in the clear ways that the materials and dimensions of walls affect indoor spaces; but these markers hold sonic information about the activity of the space they traverse.

Acoustic ecology and related practices Although this book is not structured around self-defined groupings of musicians, there are a few named practices that have generated bodies of thought or work that are significant to the field of experimental music and have had echoes (whether deliberate or coincidental) within it. The term “acoustic ecology” was introduced and explained by R. Murray Schafer, who describes it as the “study of sounds in relation to life and society.”30 Acoustic ecology is centered around attention to, assessment of, and improvements to the auditory environment, which Schafer calls “the soundscape.” Schafer goes on to say, The soundscape is any acoustic field of study. We may speak of a musical composition as a soundscape, or a radio program as a soundscape or an acoustic environment as a soundscape. We can isolate an acoustic environment as a field of study just as we can study the characteristics of a given landscape.31

Any sounding environment can be a soundscape, including indoor environments such as those that are discussed in Chapter 3. Indoor workplaces are often noisy and disturbing to the employees who spend eight or more hours a day in them, and could benefit from recommendations from acousticians or other experts to improve daily experience. If such changes were to be made, they would be considered by Schafer to be improvements in terms of acoustic ecology, even if they do not have any apparent impact on the environment in the more common sense of the term. People who identify with this practice share a concern that sight is privileged over sound in how we engage with our environment, and the neglect of our listening faculties has negative consequences over time. The effects of industry, traffic, and the destruction of natural resources, to name a few examples, are familiar. A photograph or a video captures only a small amount of information about what is actually lost through such developments.

234

Experimental Music Since 1970

Schafer is interested in the history of sound in place, and in developing and pursuing methods to enrich these histories, which are generally sparse. The challenge is greater because there is no sonic equivalent to aerial photography. Large areas have not been, and still cannot be, effectively surveyed for their sonic characteristics. Schafer suggests that we need to turn to “earwitness accounts from literature and mythology, as well as to anthropological and historical records” to build such histories.32 He argues in favor of identifying the sounds to “preserve, encourage, multiply,” and establishing from that vantage point what the “boring or destructive” sounds are and why they need to be eliminated. Noise abatement, he writes, is a “negative approach,” a non-solution to noise pollution, which is ultimately the result of a failure to listen. Only through careful listening can the soundscape be improved.33 Among the many organizations associated with acoustic ecology, the first one to be established was the World Soundscape Project. The efforts of this group spread in many directions, including writing books, education of children, recording, mapping, and soundwalking.34 Founded in 1993, the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) is an umbrella organization that has affiliates on four continents and publishes an annual journal. Though there is an active network of people with a direct interest in this field, and a greater number of field recordists, ecologists, and other interested citizens and experts, the challenge of understanding and improving the soundscape is daunting to the point of unattainability. Schafer writes: The true acoustic designer must thoroughly understand the environment he is tackling; he must have training in acoustics, psychology, sociology, music, and a great deal more besides, as the occasion demands. There are no schools where such training is possible, but their creation cannot long be delayed, for as the soundscape slumps into a lo-fi state, the wired background music promoters are already commandeering acoustic design as a bellezza business.35

Not everyone with these concerns is or ever was a member of the WFAE. For musicians, or for anyone with sensitive hearing, it is common to have increasing concerns about the sonic environment. Some people, including the percussionist and sound artist Max Neuhaus, have tried to do something about it. He developed a knowledge of how sound is cognitively mapped to attempt to create a better environment in terms of both sound and safety, turning his attention to what might be the most disruptive sound in city life: the siren. He echoes Schafer when he writes, “Looking at the history of these devices, it becomes clear that the sounds themselves have never actually been designed. They are, instead, the product of whatever could be found to make a loud noise.”36 Old sounds, designed with the technological limitations of the past, were simply copied electronically, rather than being considered for their acoustic characteristics. Neuhaus’s project was not driven by aesthetic concerns, but by very practical ones. Sirens are, for one thing, “almost impossible to locate.”37 While he was working on the project he read a news story about multiple fatalities as two police cars, both with

Place and Time

235

their sirens blaring, collided at a blind corner.38 He also learned about another frequent source of difficulty from emergency vehicle drivers: it is difficult to hear instructions over their radios while their sirens are on. The sirens also frequently cause tension for them—at the source of the noise—as it does for people nearby.39 Neuhaus approached the New York City police with his idea of building a better siren, and after having some difficulty getting any helpful attention finally gloated: Although, while policing New York, they had encountered practically everything else in life, I do not think they had ever come across artistic obsession before. After three hours I walked away from it with two of their police cars.

By this time he had thought long and hard about what features were most needed in a siren. “It is not necessary to frighten people in order to get their attention.”40 He came up with the idea that the speed of the car could be mapped to the speed of the bursts, so that “a faster-moving car would sound more urgent.”41 After some testing he found that the speed indications were effective, but he could not tell whether the car was moving toward him or away from him. His solution was to place a second horn on the rear of the car with a different pattern of sounds. He developed this idea further to make the car sound more urgent when it was approaching than when it was to the side or receding. He created three different patterns to project three different levels of urgency. When he tested the new sirens with emergency vehicle drivers, they were impressed that they could hear each other’s sirens in addition to their own. Neuhaus applied for and was issued a patent on forty-six ideas of how to move emergency vehicles through traffic. The New York City police department asked to test the sirens in one of their precincts. Every problem he encountered was solvable, except for one: No siren manufacturer was willing to manufacture a set of prototypes. He finally concluded: There is no pressure from government for a safer siren because the manufacturers are on the government committees that are supposed to regulate them. There is no civic pressure because the public doesn’t know that a better alternative exists. Although you can lead a horse to water, you cannot make him drink.42

Soundwalks Soundwalking is a practice that is strongly associated with acoustic ecology. Hildegard Westerkamp, one of its strong proponents, describes it in this way: “A soundwalk is any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment.” It is a practice of “uncompromised listening,” giving “ears priority.” A Soundwalk in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver (1974) is a guided sonic tour, a specific text score that anyone in that location can follow. The participant is asked, according to his or her position in the park, to walk, listen, stop, find, explore, experiment, discover, play, or sit. Specific questions are posed along the way. There is a clear narrative, though it is subject to the perception and circumstance of the listener. Specific likely sounds are listed, including footsteps, fountains, a waterwheel, and a creek.43

236

Experimental Music Since 1970

Another of Westerkamp’s walks can be performed in any place, and focuses on shifting from a visual to a sonic orientation. Choose a pitch-black night or thick fog and set yourself a goal you want to reach. Your eyes are of little help. Your ears are your main tools for finding your way around. With your voice or any other sound you produce you will be able to tell where you stand in relation to your environment.

As an alternative within the same score, she suggests going for an orientation walk in any city and navigating by asking people for directions. “Besides not getting lost that way, you will also get to know a little of the character of a city by listening to the way people answer. Listen to the sounds and melodies in their voices, listen for accents.”44 In Westerkamp’s soundwalks, the performer and the listener are one. There is no mediation of technology between the specific sounds of the place and the focused attention of the walker/performer/listener. “In a soundwalk then, listeners and the environment create a unique ‘piece’ together. It occurs only once, during the time of the walk itself.”45 However thoroughly a place may have been researched for its sonic properties, time and circumstance will tend to intervene. The outcome can be far more captivating than whatever was planned in advance. Westerkamp writes: On a soundwalk in Melbourne I had planned to lead a group from a noisy street into a relatively quiet, but reverberant underground space to give the ears some relief. But the moment we descended into this space on the day of the official soundwalk, a very loud street cleaning machine entered! Initially I was shocked. But when we stopped and listened we found ourselves immersed in a reverberant broadband sound room, which shimmered with all manner of frequencies amplified and remixed into a stunningly woven timbral quilt. . . . When we left the space it was as if we had emerged from an intense concert and were re-entering a seemingly quieter urban environment.46

In addition to these pieces designed for the direct experience of the walkers, Westerkamp also produced and hosted a radio show called Soundwalking on Vancouver Co-operative Radio. She used the radio as a medium to convey the sounds of different locations in Vancouver. In her recorded works, the mediation is not limited to the technology (microphone, recorder, radio, etc.). During A Walk Through the City (1981), Norbert Ruebsaat reads his poem by the same name, and that reading “interacts with, comments on, dramatizes, struggles with the sounds and other voices it encounters in the piece,” all of which are recorded in Vancouver’s Skid Row area. Westerkamp lists some of these sounds: “Traffic, carhorns, brakes, sirens, aircraft, construction, pinball machines, the throb of trains, human voices.” In addition to the poem, these recorded sounds operate as instruments, and are used as sound objects that are digitally manipulated in the studio.47 Michael Parsons wrote Walk (1969) for the Scratch Orchestra “for any number of people walking in a large open space.”48 Echo Piece (2009) is presented as a new version

Place and Time

237

of that piece. It is not a soundwalk in the sense of the previous examples, but it is certainly a walking piece, in that both the audience and the musicians are moving through a space. This piece is designed for Canary Wharf, which is ideal for its “series of open spaces surrounded by sound-reflecting surfaces, and being relatively free of traffic noise.” At 5-, 10-, 15-, or 20-minute intervals, the musicians and audience move from one location to another within Canary Wharf. Players with trumpets, horns and trombones will play short single notes, interspersed with silences, evoking echoes from reflective surfaces, in a variable, open-form, sparse and pointillistic texture of discrete sounds. Echo Piece creates a spatial polyphony of multiple echoes, activating the soundreflecting surfaces of buildings at different distances, revealing the elasticity of the surrounding medium.49

In the use of reflective surfaces to define a space, Parsons’ piece is related not only to Westerkamp’s walk in pitch-black or heavy fog conditions, but also to Lucier’s Vespers (1968), in which blindfolded participants use a type of echolocation to navigate from one point to another in a room. In Parsons’ piece, the objective is not navigation, but rather a better understanding of the sonic effect of architecture. Elena Biserna’s Walking from Scores project is a collection of scores by many of the previously mentioned composers and others, all of which were collectively performed. She writes that the notation is “understood as a call to action . . . a privileged mode of interacting with the environment and everyday life.”50 One of the many pieces performed in this event was Francesco Gagliardi’s Alternative Piece (Belfast 2008). The walker is to “identify the source of all the sounds you hear,” while also listing the sounds that cannot be identified. In parallel, “potential sources of sounds you would not expect to be able to hear” are identified and sought out, and the resulting sounds that are heard are listed. By compounding walking not only with listening, but also with identification and transcription, Gagliardi creates a basically impossible set of tasks. In particular, the sourcing of sounds highlights the unknowable aspects of pedestrian activity.51 For the New York-based composer and trombonist Craig Shepard, walking provides an opportunity not only for hearing sounds, but also for imagining them— for composing. In Switzerland, he did much of his composing as he walked from one point to the next. His 2005 On Foot project was a month-long journey across Switzerland. He brought his pocket trumpet, and wrote and performed a piece each day. For the On Foot: Brooklyn project, he changed the timescale, writing a piece each week, sometimes for an ensemble, and walking each weekend to a different destination from his home in Greenpoint. In New York, he traveled everywhere on foot for the three-month duration of the project and used that walking time as composing time. A lot of my best work actually happens while I’m walking. I might have a couple ideas, a couple of notes, maybe a pattern that I’m interested in trying out. Then

238

Experimental Music Since 1970

I go walk, and I kind of forget a lot of stuff. And it opens up a space for me, for the work to manifest itself, so the pieces happen a little bit on their own.52

For Shepard, walking is not only a way of relating to place, but of deepening his creative process. Wherever these walks occur, the effort required and the removal of customized distractions (his walks are typically cell phone free) are part of an opening up of a space in which to think and work.

Multiple journeys along the same route, compounded routes Soundwalking is not necessarily about being in the moment. Anyone who travels a route more than once (and it’s hard to imagine anyone who hasn’t) has a different experience of that route each time. Yolande Harris is an interdisciplinary artist whose Displaced Sound Walks (2010–) involve recording a walk with binaural microphones, listening back to the recording, and then walking the same route again at a different time while listening to the earlier walk on headphones. Harris explains, “The shift in relationship between the location seen and the sounds heard provokes a perceptual awareness of our reliance on sound and its influence on the visual and on our sense of place.”53 One participant commented, “The first walk felt uneventful, yet the second was entirely different and full of surprises.”54 To travel the same route again with the previous recording is to challenge the mundaneness of both walks. What might have seemed perfectly ordinary, “uneventful” in the participant’s words, reveals its unique features by its juxtaposition with the same route at a different time. It no longer matches the visual cues, so the sounds take on a life of their own, causing reactions ranging from notice to interest to alarm as the listener/walker faces the need to continue to orient herself based on false cues. Through this technique of looping back, Harris is underlining the fact that place is not fully identifiable independent of time. “Field recordings often aim to merely audibly ‘represent’ environments that may be otherwise inaccessible to the listener, and in doing so neglect complex layerings of spaces and times inherent in recording and replaying sounds.”55 Viv Corringham is a British composer, sound artist, and vocalist who adds a subjective dimension to a similar type of layering. First, she asks someone to take her on a walk that is “special to them in some way” and records the conversation they have. Then she retraces the walk later and, as she puts it, attempts to “sing the walk.” Finally the two recordings are edited together. The objects she picks up during the second walk are often presented in some form along with the final recording. This process is one of viscerally identifying with the space, both by walking it multiple times and then singing her way through it, as well as collecting objects. Every sense is engaged. It was through Pauline Oliveros’s “Deep Listening” method that Corringham developed this method of active interaction with her environment.56 Another piece, Skywalk (2009) did not begin with a conversation like some of her other residencies, but involved walking through Minneapolis’s skyway system and improvising over several months, incorporating the other conversations and environmental sounds that occurred along her routes.57

Place and Time

239

In The Garden, a piece from Kortrijk Tracks (2013), David Helbich credits Guy Debord’s situationist technique of imposing a map of one place on a different place. This section of the piece is called “dérive versus drive.”58 He uses Louis XIV’s prescriptive maps of how to walk through the gardens of Versailles and projects them onto something that is as little like them as could be imagined: a modern parking lot. Through the use of an audio guide, the users are to navigate the parking lot according to the directions for the garden. But “the situation there will not allow you to do so, at least not exactly. The place is full of cars. So you are forced to make your own decisions.”59

Listening points in the city Akio Suzuki’s oto-date (1996–) has been referred to as both a soundwalk and an installation. Essentially it is a series of points in the city. It consists of a logo of two ears (that also look like footprints) that is spray-painted at chosen locations in the city. Suzuki used his own sketch of John Cage’s left ear as a starting point for the logo.60 The orientation of the logo clearly indicates the direction of listening. Recent hosting cities include Brussels, Athens, Bonn, Kortrijk, Newcastle, Torino, Toronto, and Wakayama. One could also argue that the map of the locations of these logos is the score, or that the logo itself is the score. In either case, the project is a location, an orientation, and a suggestion. Plant your feet here, keep your ears aligned with your

Figure 6.3  Akio Suzuki: oto-date in Torino, 2006 © e/static, Torino

240

Experimental Music Since 1970

feet, and listen to what is going on around you. In its specificity, oto-date highlights several variable aspects: the specific sounds at the exact time of each listening session, and the orientation and hearing of the listener.61 Suzuki chooses these locations deliberately for their sonic attributes. This piece refers indirectly to Max Neuhaus’s LISTEN. In the first version in 1966, the word LISTEN was rubber stamped onto participants’ hands as they walked to specific points in New York. A later version of the piece more closely anticipates oto-date in stamping “LISTEN” in large letters on the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge. Neuhaus explained: It came from a long fascination of mine with sounds of traffic moving across that bridge—the rich sound texture formed from hundreds of tires rolling over the open grating of the roadbed, each with a different speed and tread.62

The final version of the piece is a do-it-yourself version, a postcard “to be placed in locations selected by its recipients.”63 The process of selection is important in both Suzuki’s and Neuhaus’s series. To find an interaction, a particular intersection of sounds, or a diversity of impacts (as in the Brooklyn Bridge example) is to learn to listen to the city. David Helbich is committed to the idea of an “audience as active individuals.”64 Drag & Drop involves multiple “guides” dropping off participants in set locations of Brussels for an interval of time, then picking them up and dropping them off somewhere else. The score “guides all attendees towards a structural experience of this very particular environment: the typical Brussels topography with its very quick rhythm of social and urban changes.”65 Kortrijk Tracks is part of the City Tracks series, which also has versions for Brussels, Riga, Bergen, and Maastricht. All of these scores and sound files can be downloaded and performed, and Helbich invites people to try them out in their own cities as well, defining the spaces by generic characteristics such as “the biggest theatre in town,” “a waiting situation,” and “a long wall.” Each location has been specifically mapped and numbered for each city, and there is a series of tasks to be performed, accompanied at times by the recorded tracks, and heard on open-ear headphones in various configurations. The track will often overlay sounds from the same or similar location at different times. An exception is Holodeck, Please, that uses recordings from Cairo and Nablus to suggest that a very different city is to be found on the other side of the wall.66

Collective sound mapping There are a number of projects that use technology to gather more data about the sounds of a city than could realistically be collected by a single person. The most prominent of these is arguably the Vancouver Soundscape Project (1991–96). Hildegard Westerkamp calls it “one of the first attempts to conduct a comprehensive study of an entire urban soundscape,” culminating in 2 LPs and a book.67 The fact that Vancouver

Place and Time

241

is the city that was so closely studied is no accident, since Simon Fraser University has been a hub of activity for acoustic ecology. More recent sound mapping projects have used smartphone apps to link sounds with geotags or geocaches. James Saunders’ location composites (2011–) places text scores in geocaches, among other means of distribution.68 A research group at Concordia University’s Mobile Media Lab, led by Owen Chapman, has developed a project with an integrated iOS app called AudioMobile that operates as both a tool and a platform for both static and dynamic field recording with integrated photographs and GPS coordinates. An early application of the app was a soundmapping of the Falaise St. Jacques in Montreal.69 The field recordings became the basis for student compositions, and were also integrated into a collective sound map. Other collective urban projects active at various times include the London Sound Survey and the New York Sound Map.70 Chris Watson received contributions from residents for his sound map of Sheffield, Inside the Circle of Fire (2013), which was created as an installation for the Millennium Gallery. These recordings ranged from historical documents to current tram signals to a recording of Buddhist chant, all of which Watson incorporated, along with his own recordings, into a spatialized sound map.71 Locations that are special for their sonic qualities can also be discovered through conversation, tapping into people’s experiences and memories. Jason Kahn has gathered such personal geographies in his Unheard Cities series for radio and installation, and to date has made versions of this project in Zürich, Delhi, Tokyo, and Kyoto. He interviews residents of each city, asking, “What is your favorite sound or sound atmosphere in the city?” The recorded answers serve as the introduction to the recording of the sound that has been described. “As an artist,” he writes, “these works allow me to discover urban spaces through sound, discovering cities through the ears of others.” Kyoto and Tokyo were explored in parallel, especially for the vast differences between these two Japanese cities. I was surprised to discover that the Kyoto residents often referred to the sound of a human voice: a Buddhist priest chanting, a recording of a Buddhist priest giving a lecture in a temple, the sound of one’s mother speaking (as an example of the sound of a Kyoto dialect which is slowly vanishing), a young woman working at the cash register in a convenience store shouting out “thank you!” In Tokyo many of the sounds people chose came closer to sound environments, rather than single sounds. This represented for me the density of Tokyo’s sonic topographies: the idea of a single sound is almost absurd, it is very difficult to experience this, even late at night or very early in the morning. Kyoto, with far fewer residents and nothing of the density of Tokyo, makes it possible to hear singular sounds.72

No one person can carry with them the histories of these cities. By interviewing multiple longtime residents, Kahn uncovered aspects of the places that would otherwise be inaccessible to him.

242

Experimental Music Since 1970

6.2  Site-specific works Site specificity The creation of a sound work for a specific place is likely to involve, first of all, a deep consideration of the attributes of that place. Decisions may then follow about what aspect or aspects of it to engage with and whether that engagement will reveal, obscure, or contradict the apparent or hidden features of the space. Some composers and sound artists have made or found instruments that have the length to visibly stretch through the space. These sound works are not exploring a room or a border, but a site. Alan Lamb has been creating long wire sound structures since the 1970s.73 One of these, the Wogarno Wire Installation (1999–) is made of two parallel steel wires stretched 300 meters from the bottom to the top of Wogarno Hill in the midwest outback of Australia. This installation is not meant to be played, but simply to be heard as it responds to the wind and other factors in its environs. As Lamb describes it, “It is soft enough to be inaudible more than a few meters from the boulders, and loud enough to hear every infinite detail when the ear is held to crevices in the boulders. The ground can be felt to vibrate subtly underfoot.”74 The SPring 8 Wind Organ (1997) was built in a hexagonal form north of Kobe, Japan. After a security vehicle damaged the installation, Lamb constructed a Great Bow, as he called it, out of bamboo and nylon to activate the sound.75 Lamb’s first installation of this kind was a set of abandoned telephone wires he found in the Great Southern outback of Australia that was dubbed The Faraway Wind Organ (1976–84). Recordings of these instruments, both played and recorded without intervention, are available on several CDs (Night Passage [1998], Primal Images [1995], and Journeys on the Winds of Time [1990]), and reveal a staggering array of consonance and dissonance. Lamb explains: The wire starts to vibrate under the influence of the wind. The physics is extremely complex, but basically, it causes the wire to flip back and forth in the windstream, which is the origin of the hum, and it can be up to very high frequency rates. Now once that process is in train, all sorts of things can happen, all sorts of, in mathematical terms, it would be called instabilities, get fed up in that vibration. . . . one ends up with a complex of pitches which form harmonic complexes, some of which are extraordinarily beautiful, others which are very cacophonic.76

Chris Kallmyer describes himself as “an artist that works with sound and spaces.”77 This Distance Makes Us Feel Closer (2013) fills a vast space in a way rather different from Lamb’s, as it “resounds over miles of land surrounding the Magdalena Ridge Observatory at 10,600 ft” in New Mexico. The ensemble is comprised of augmented car horns that are stationed about a mile apart on either side of the Magdalena Ridge, while the audience is gathered for sixty minutes in the center of that space. The video of the event shows the immensity of that desert space, and it seems almost unimaginable that such a large portion of it could be traversed through sound. Kallmyer explains that he chose the site because of its epic perch above the desert and the rigorous landscape that spreads out above and below a variety of listening areas. This offered the listener nearly

Place and Time

243

endless ways to guide their own experience. Once the work was installed on the site, one realizes how sound functions in such a broad vacuum of space—that sound is vitally feeble without something to resonate with . . . there is no land to hold the sound in.78

Kallmyer’s transformation is in finding the distances, positioning, and instrumentation which could most successfully project sound without the aid of resonance. In effect, the mirroring of the horns on either side of the ridge allows them to resonate with each other, rather than with any reflective surfaces. Each horn provides an echo to the other in lieu of a resonant space. Resonance is orchestrated, and the listeners are huddled in the virtual enclosure that results from that construct.79 Eric Laska presents the idea of “site-unspecific works” as pieces that are “not intended for any discrete or particular locations. There are no ideal venues for the works, only the stipulation of certain material conditions.” He offers an example from his own work, Threshold for Magic Pictures (2014), in which he sets up sonic thresholds within a space. Crossing these lines results in unpleasant bursts of white noise. The video shows a series of Pavlovian reactions among a crowd that started out fairly relaxed, and their placement in space becomes more and more awkward as they learn the spatial structure of the work and find themselves disincentivized to transgress these sonic borders. Laska has drawn lines throughout the space that he can reshape or simply transfer to a different space. The attributes of the particular space may become better known, but the real focus is directed to the process, on the artificial, imposed geography, and on the set of social behaviors and various comprehensions that result.80

Changing the perceived character of a place: Industrial and commercial sites When the character of a place seems to be altered through a site-specific work, it can be the result of either revealing something previously unperceived about the site, imposing something unlike it in its place, or both. As comedians point out everyday things that are dimly perceived but not articulated, a site-specific work is a productive setting for fresh perceptions of place. Carolyn Chen’s Supermarket Music (2010/14) project “began with a meditation on the idea of the 24-hour supermarket as a contemporary form of nature.” In twentyfirst-century America, where a view is self-mockingly held by some that nature is what’s between your car and your back door, Chen’s statement is surprisingly valid. The supermarket is open to the public. It is a place where people walk, experience different types of weather (refrigerator, freezer, produce misting), witness different densities of foliage between the large boxes of the cereal section and the densely packed selection of extracts and spices, and even witness plant life in the floral and produce sections. Chen invited other musicians to write scores for the two Supermarket Music events held to date. The first of these took place in Ralphs in La Jolla, CA in 2010, and is documented on video.81 In Aisle Music, the shelves down one aisle are used as a sort of musical staff, and the items on them are musical indications. There is one pusher, and multiple players who are to be reading the aisle from different heights.

244

Experimental Music Since 1970

– Pusher pushes, sitters sing the name of objects passing—pitch beginning in unison, changing according to the height of the objects in view. – Play ends when aisle has been cleared. . . . – Sitters begin pp on unison, changing pitch with the contour of package shapes

To balance out the decisions between the pusher and the players, Chen adds the proviso that “if speed of cart makes reading infeasible, sitters may rest, or turn to face the pusher and sing the pusher’s name in protest.”82 Traveling music for freezers resonates with other environmentally driven works in asking the participants to tune to their surroundings. “As a group, tune to a freezer. Sustaining the chord, walk away, meet another freezer. Interfere. Slowly, retune to the new environment. Repeat.” Optional variations include “Many groups, many freezers” and “Heads inside and out.” This piece is an examination of the characteristics of micro-environments, and underlines the differences in sound between apparently similar spaces. The La Jolla documentation reveals that at times the performance was incompatible with the normal behaviors and uses of a supermarket. Micki Davis and Ash Smith’s Cereal Killer involves filling the aisle with cereal boxes in what appear to be a battle formation. Some bewildered shoppers look on, and one ventures through with difficulty to get an item on her list. This project is not simply a private listening experience, but a public repurposing of the space. Chen recalls, “When prodded about the activity, a clerk responded, ‘I don’t know, but as long as they’re shopping, we’re not going to do anything.’”83 Maybe there is room for art in capitalism after all. More so than a grocery store, a parking lot often seems soulless and functional, a place to get in and out of as quickly as possible. It’s a transitional space, like an airport or an escalator. It would be unusual to hear someone say they wish they had spent more time in the parking lot. All of those generalities are subverted in Music for Parking Garages (2011), a series of performances that took place in the parking garage of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The invitation read: These pieces will create a warm ambient environment for visitors as they park their cars, stop in to listen, or even nap to the music. Come pull up a bean bag chair or backseat, and experience the acoustical charm of the parking structure.

A group of seven musicians played with the acoustics of the building. Members of the vocal group Cantus found a particularly resonant spot to sing and tested out the effects of overtone singing and Renaissance counterpoint. Improvisations involved using the walls as percussive surfaces. Casey Anderson’s piece explored the acoustics of the space with clapping.84 Chris Kallmyer, one of the organizers and participants in this project, wrote an article called “Sonic Cartography and the Perception of Place,” in which he said: Perhaps this is our humble aspiration: to create platforms for potential warm human encounters. When creating places and events for the presentation of sound

Place and Time

245

in space, we can design environments of heightened intimacy and exchange by sonically framing an environment.85

The acoustic is reverberant and responsive to exploration, and the low lighting and lack of competing activity are conducive to both concentration and relaxation. The garage is completely recontextualized as a venue, a desirable place to be in itself. Christian Kesten has created vibrant contexts within subway stations, one of which is called willkommen zu hause (1996). Two violinists were posted on either side of the entrance to the Nordbahnhof in Berlin and played transcriptions of the sounds of the swinging doors.86 This sound, which is utilitarian and familiar to anyone who travels in this station, is given an attentive, artful, and human touch. Kesten writes that his “interest lies in the ‘space in-between’: between music and theatre, music and language, between music and the visual arts.”87 These pieces lie in between music and the transit of everyday life. His nordbahnhof (1996), bahnhof zoo (1997), and hauptbahnhof (2010) are installations that set up acoustic explorations of each of these stations. The wind and brass players are spread throughout the station and sound out long tones, establishing relationships with each other and with the space. Passengers in transit can simply move through these sounds, or they can more consciously engage as listeners in the networked relationships of place and the functional sounds of the station.88 Philip Corner has further subverted the relationship of organized sound-making to place in Listening walk at the Lanificio Bonotto (1995). The site is a fabric factory, and “The regular workers were the conductors of that music made by machines.” Guests are invited to walk through the space and listen, but the workers themselves determine the density of the rhythmic counterpoint through the operation of the machinery that is integral to their daily work. The site is both the acoustic quality of the space and the machinery that is planted in it, and the workers are sounding that site in “a guided tour for ears” through the various locations in the mill.89 Hong-Kai Wang is a Taiwanese interdisciplinary artist whose Music While You Work (2010) is a sound installation based on recordings at industrial sites in Luxembourg. She spent six weeks actively listening at these eight factory sites and subsequently invited visitors to the installation to “ponder how sounds make us live and work together.”90 Her project echoes Corner’s in the type of site that sounds are drawn from, but it is different in several ways. She is a relatively unobtrusive presence, not asking for any alteration to the daily routine of the people working in the factory. They do not perform, but simply go about their work. The project is also different, in that while the factories go unchanged, it is a museum space that is transformed, through her twentychannel installation, into a work site.

Sounding out the character of a place Lasse-Marc Riek, in addition to his wildlife recordings, has made several series of field recordings capturing sounds of multiple places that have particular functions. Listening Room (2003–07) is a series of 100 recordings from the interiors of churches in Europe. Of the examples he has posted, two include music, which takes over a narrative but also

246

Experimental Music Since 1970

reveals something about the acoustic. The “Neue Kirche” recording in Wismar seems almost silent, but with acclimation a listener can start to learn something about the space. In both the “Frauenkirche” and “Trierer Dom” recordings, the space itself has an audible quality, the specific character of which becomes more apparent by comparing the two recordings. Harbours (1999–2007) is a collection of recordings from harbors in Germany and Finland, exploring the sounds of gangways, tunnels, and docks.91 Lawrence English, a media artist and composer based in Australia, recorded Antarctica (2010) at the Marambio and Esperanza bases. Even listening to the recording from a sheltered space in comfortable weather, the relentlessness of the recorded condition becomes successively more terrifying over the course of the track. There is no respite, and the listener is out there in the wind and snow and cold with English, “A small speck of organic dust in a howling storm.” In this recording, there is hardly any other context heard than the storm. Patagonia (2010), on the other hand, was recorded in relation to man-made objects that are clearly discernible: “Abandoned buildings . . . quivering road signs, wailing fences and other objects brought into relief with the wind.” These objects are the instruments, and the wind is their tireless and terrifying player—even adversary.92 The French-Italian composer Luc Ferrari’s Presque rien ou le lever du jour au bord de la mer (1967–70) was a historic and hugely influential step away from musique concrète, in that there is no disguising of the original source material. Instead, it is edited to clearly present the sounds heard in one day in the summer of 1968 in the town of Vela Luka, located in what is now Croatia.93 The recording is edited, but its strands are intact, and it sounds like a single active morning. Ferrari’s notes on the piece call it a “Most faithful possible realistic restitution of a village of fishermen awakening.”94 Ferrari explains the thought and the title of the series: These things, which I call “The Presque Riens” because they are lacking development and completely static, because really almost nothing happens musically, are more reproductions than productions: electroacoustic nature photographs—a beach landscape in the morning mists, a winter day in the mountaintops.95

The series continued to preoccupy Ferrari for the rest of his life, and he consciously drew in variables of subjectivity and memory in the later pieces in the series. But these pieces are fundamentally focused on constructing narratives of place. Cévennes (2013) is a double CD of field recordings made in the Cévennes mountain range and the Parc National des Cévennes in France. These sounds were collected by Marc and Olivier Namblard, two brothers who are both sound recordists and call themselves “audio-naturalists and listening wanderers.” The Cévennes is the area they would visit every summer throughout their childhood, and the sense of intimacy with this territory is palpable. The individual tracks are identified by place, time of year, time of day, and any species of animal or plant life that is audible. The listener is immersed in whatever event has been described, whether it be the feeding of vultures (a track that will stop most listeners in their tracks), burning off the weeds, the resonance of water dripping into a cave, beetles gnawing into a cabin, or the “caress of tiny notes” of

Place and Time

247

Figure 6.4  Part of the recording process of Cévennes © Marc Namblard Common Midwife Toads. Another track is described as “A downpour playing sporadic scales on the schistous slate (the ‘lauzes’), all of irregular form and thickness in a farmhouse in the midst of restoration.” Thousands of sheep form a great cloud of dust as they move through the landscape together. “On the Causses, battered by a powerful wind . . . electric wires and livestock fences play aeolian music.” These descriptions and their corresponding tracks are vivid in and of themselves. Taken collectively and as part of the whole release, they are specific locations and events within a territory, and they invite the listener to gage something of its character over different times of the year and over its more than 300 square miles.96 Malcolm Goldstein’s The Seasons: Vermont (1980–82) is also an exploration of a home region over time, but uses a very different set of materials than Cévennes, in that it involves both a magnetic tape collage and a score for structured improvisation. Goldstein kept a journal leading up to this piece in which he speculated about how to create “a ‘new harmony’ of pitch and non-pitch elements; how to orchestrate, live!”97

248

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 6.5  The sheep of the Cévennes © Marc Namblard The tape part is comprised of field recordings made in Vermont, “edited to create a structure appropriate to each season.” The durations are set up in proportions to match the durations of those seasons in Vermont, with a 6:5:10:3 ratio between summer, fall, winter, and spring. This ratio gets at the reality of what happens, and also of what residents feel as they live through the seasons, year after year. “Summer” consists of cycles of sound textures (of air, water metal and earth) repeating in abundant variety. “Autumn” consists of sounds that are transformed gradually and whose qualities are expressed as timbre modulations. “Winter” focuses upon the experience of time/duration in long, sustained sounds and silences. “Spring” is expressed as a release of energy, through interaction of rhythmic patterns.98

These characterizations are brilliantly suited to both a New England weather cycle and a musical treatment. The four seasons in the score are laid out distinctly, each using a different interplay of text, graphics, and traditional notation, and they do not suggest an imitation of the recorded material, but an abstraction of its activity. The cycles and interplays of textures of Goldstein’s conception of summer are apparent in both the tape and instrumental parts of the recording. It is full of life. “Autumn” has a completely different character, with the many transformations taking place in a single direction. Leaves change color, turn to brown, fall off the tree. There is no reversal of this motion. So too, the loudness of a passage goes from forte to piano, and there is no return to loudness. The vibrato also goes from wide to normal. The musicians take precedence over the tape in this section, enacting this decline.

Place and Time

249

Before making the score, in speculating about this section Goldstein journaled, “This is what can be given to the instrumentalists and vocalists: things of such presence that cannot be recorded on tape and various silences and nuances, of beginnings and yieldings in between.”99 The performance instructions for “Winter” include the line, “sustained as varieties of sound masses and silences.” Again, there is very little audible contribution from the recorded material, with the exception of some long passages of aggressive wind and quick footsteps in the snow. Winter is a long duration, filled with other long expanses: ponds covered with ice, white skies, walkways and roads filled with snow and slush. “Spring” is a proliferation of activity within a short space of time, developing complex material from very simple material. The focus of Spring is upon the energy of rhythm and the interplay of the performers improvising rhythmic patterns and developing a more and more extensive pitch gamut.100

Figure 6.6  Malcolm Goldstein: The Seasons: Vermont, “Spring” © Malcolm Goldstein

250

Experimental Music Since 1970

The image of the brooks, taken from a map of the brooks in and around Sheffield, Vermont forms most of the score and seems at least abstractly parallel in its significance with the harmonic lattice.101 The brooks themselves are recorded, “Each brook its own singing with nuances of density, texture, pitch levels, dynamic, etc.”102

A site over time The Seasons: Vermont is not just about the sonic characteristics of an area. It is also about how those characteristics transform according to the season. Among the considerations about how a site changes over time are the location itself, how it is heard (from what perspective, using what technology, with what instructions), the intervals (duration, regularity, amount of time between visits) at which the site is heard, and the subjectivity of the listener. The first example in this section is a speculation about historical sound. The second is a methodical record of the sounds of a place at regular intervals. The third set of examples invite the listener to experience the same site, at any interval and for any duration. The greater part of Indian media artist Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s notes about Decomposing Landscape (2015) are on the subject of the history of a borderland plateau in India called Tumbani. Before the Second World War, it was a calm, rural, and isolated area occupied by members of the Santhal tribe. During the war, British colonists set up an air base at its outskirts that was later abandoned. In the 1960s, a school for “tribal development” was opened, attracting government support, residential hostels, and “A parallel community of elite culture.”103 Following this, machinery and dynamite were used to extract granite and other stones, introducing new sounds, sights, and smoke to the community and exposing the workers, many of them Santhal, to tuberculosis. The ecological and social impact of these changes was evidenced by a move out of these residential hostels to a nearby community. Decomposing Landscape compresses this complex narrative into thirty-five minutes, “To capture the essence, if not the historical particulars, of the regions on the decay.”104 The gradual swell and a sudden fade of the track are made up of a wealth of field recordings Chattopadhyay made in Tumbani between 2009 and 2011. A video excerpt makes the audio components of the installation even more clear.105 This piece is a reconstruction of the effect of historical developments on the soundscape, in what he calls a “meditative observation.”106 Chattopadhyay deals with similar issues in an urban context in Elegy for Bangalore (2011).107 Manfred Werder’s realization of his own score, 20051, from September 1st to 30th, 2009, on the shores of the Limmat River in Zürich inspired Jason Kahn to work with it further. The score reads: place time ( sounds )108

Werder prefers variants of the term “actualize” to those of “perform” for his work. “A word like ‘actualization’ would allude more to a practice of working on situations

Place and Time

251

that are occurring to some extent by themselves, and where the ‘performer’ finds herself intrinsically as part of a situation (and not as its creator).”109 He actualized this piece every day throughout the month of September, 2009, from 8:55 p.m. until about 9:25  p.m.110 In this way he could diminish some variables, such as light, amount of activity, and traffic. But for Werder, an actualization is not ultimately about the specific activity of the place itself. “I’m not so much interested in discovering certain identities of a place, but more in sensing that I actually interact in its infinity.” Kahn chose a very different site in Zürich: the train station. He made a recording at 10 a.m. on each day of March, 2010. These recordings all carry the consistent sound of the space, a noisy hum that seems monolithic, at least to an unaided ear. It is made up of numerous components, but these are out of focus from Kahn’s vantage point. This hum has waves of greater presence and sometimes recedes. What we hear specifically are the sounds that project more clearly and the sounds that are close. People walk by, sometimes in high heels; traces of conversation are heard, teenage girls laugh, dogs are walked, toddlers’ voices and babies’ cries cut across the distance. The same child seems to make several appearances, which is likely with a daily routine. Routines are patterns, and these patterns have an audible effect. The March 6, 2010 track seems oddly quiet, which makes sense on learning that it is a Saturday. A conversation starts nearby, and the activity level seems to pick up in general. That background hum is also much lessened on the Sunday. More sound can be heard in the distance. How far one hears is not simply linked to location, but also to the amount of sonic interference. Werder writes this of the compositional questions that preoccupied him at the time of writing 20051: How could I work the performance space in the score—the performance space which had become so important, so present by the mere fact of a certain absence of produced sounds by the performers? And, I was looking for something like a “structural matter of fact” rather than a “prescription for action.” Something that could be just there and occurring regardless of any performance approach.

The subjectivity of the actualizer is not something that is to be projected. In fact, Kahn is making no deliberate noise, but his presence in the space is the unavoidable impact of following through on the instructions of the score, in order to experience an “intake of sound and situation.” Kahn found that the recording of the piece had three functions, which covered only a small portion of the experience he had: “The sound experienced, the action of ‘being there,’ a sense of the time passing.” Werder comments that “the score and the performance seem to have two different reaches, each with its own potentials.” The effects of this project for Kahn stretched far beyond the recorded sounds. He speculated that “this piece was beyond documentation, was purely about the experience of me being in a place for a certain period of time; and of others . . . sharing this time and space with me.” For Werder, a narrow focus on a particular time and a particular place, whether it is repeated every day in a month or takes place only once, is a way of forming a relation

252

Experimental Music Since 1970

to the world that has true immediacy. It is taken on its own terms, without the effort to influence or shape it. Each place is intrinsic multiplicity and doesn’t need any intervention of ours. So, I try to approach a place regarding a performance almost unnoticeably, unimposingly. I think when performing I’m looking for a situation where for a certain time something like “the world” would appear. Not one to look at or listen to. Not one to project concepts onto. One to be part of, where in a chaotic and infinite becoming something like a real sense of meeting and sharing would merge. I remember having been so overwhelmed and moved by the mere fact of finding myself in this great abundance of life on the shores of the Limmat River.

A diverse series of actualizations of this 20051 score was made as a project for the Another Timbre website. All of the recordings and accompanying statements are available there, and come from many different places—in fact, all over the world. Goh Lee Kwang’s brief realization is almost silent, except for a short interval of typing in the middle. Taku Unami’s is a single click in the midst of four otherwise silent seconds.111 Stefan Thut writes, The bracketed word in the score [Klänge] led me to question whether there is a possibility of “bracketing out sounds” in a given situation. . . . I started by leaving my hometown and going to a place one kilometre away in order to establish a distance from the sounds of the afternoon’s parade. Then to further bracket out the sounds of the day I applied equalizing around predominant frequencies to let them intermingle with the surroundings.112

This fresh take on the score invites a broader question about bracketing and its functions in daily life. What are the brackets or buffers we set up in our own experiences? A night’s sleep and the quality of it can affect the following morning and the rest of the day. Having a certain time set aside, like Werder’s daily actualizations in September 2009 or Kahn’s in March 2010, provides another type of bracket. The time spent in transit, thinking about listening, or thinking about the place and its qualities, sets up and protects that listening experience. Max Neuhaus writes about his Place series as “removing sound from time and setting it, instead, in place.”113 But his permanent installations set up complex dynamics with time and memory, from a micro scale of perception during a single visit to the macro scale of how the installation shifts based on changes in its setting over the decades of its existence. These pieces use sounds so subtle that they go unnoticed until they disappear. Neuhaus compares this experience to that of people conversing in a noisy café when the coffee grinder is shut off, and “the space is suddenly enveloped in an aural vacuum. What seems like a moment of complete silence occupies the café.”114 It is important that the sound be made “almost plausible within the space,” so that it only is noticed with attention.115

Place and Time

253

The play of time, memory, and space is more complicated in Three to One (1992). A different sound color is projected into each of the three stories of the installation. Passing up the stairway for the first time, the differences between the floors are subtle but distinct. Returning down the stairs, aural memories begin to fuse the distinctions into one differentiated whole.

Neuhaus further explains that each of these sounds mixes with outside sound in a different way. As the city of Kassel develops, these outside sounds will change. The listener is set in a shifting relationship with these three sound colors, which are in turn shifting in relation to the life of the city.116 They are designed to be experienced more than once. Neuhaus writes: These moment works depend on a long term relationship in order to function; they need to be lived in—a small shift on a regular basis throughout the day, that you forget about, and then encounter again. They cannot be visited like an exhibition.117

City pieces A surprising number of sound artists have drawn new pathways or created discernible zones within a city that are themselves made of sound. Llorenç Barber is a Spanish composer and sound artist whose City Concerts (1988–) are eruptions of sound that emanate from its most broadly audible fixed instruments: church bells. “All of a sudden, the city sounds, the city itself,” Barber explains. “The center of the event is transferred from an idol or a star, to a physical fact . . . a fact of the memory.”118 Videos of these events show residents of the city suddenly looking up, stopped in their tracks by this profusion of metallic harmony. These are composed pieces, with ebbs and flows, climaxes and silences, usually lasting about an hour and involving over 100 musicians. They have taken place in over seventy European and American cities.119 In berliner bahn bells (2011), Hans W. Koch broadcasts live environmental sounds from the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (central railway station) at the base of a carillon tower and generates a real-time carillon score based on their pitch content. As he sums it up, “the carillon plays a ‘piano reduction’ of berlin central’s sonic reality.”120 The carillon tower and the Hauptbahnhof are close to one another, and Koch has used technology to draw a sonic line between them, so the sounds of one are concurrently played by the other.121 To create the Tate Harmonic Bridge (2006) installation, the American sound sculptor Bill Fontana installed accelerometers (vibration sensors) on the Millennium Foot Bridge in London and spatialized these sounds throughout Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern, as well as the main concourse of the nearby Southwark Tube station. Fontana explains: This bridge is alive with vibrations caused by the bridge’s responses to the collective energy of footsteps, load and wind. This sonic world is inaudible to the ear when walking over this bridge.

254

Experimental Music Since 1970

Fontana’s conception of this work was that it would form a link between the footbridge (and therefore also the other side of the Thames), the Tate Modern, and Southwark Station. These sounds are incredibly beautiful, all the more so because they are inaudible without such an intervention and they are not altered or enhanced in any way except to tune to these other spaces.122 Other pieces in this Acoustical Visions series include soundings of a steel factory in Linz, a historic tunnel in Rome, sand dunes near Abu Dhabi, and an unrealized project with the Eiffel Tower. Fontana is equally at home with using sound materials from either urban or natural sounds. In fact, Fontana’s body of work so far seems focused on building bridges of sound between natural and man-made, indoor and outdoor, old and new, distant and near (“hearing as far as you can see”), mundane and artful. SOUND SCULPTURES THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE (1987) is a duet between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which are 32 miles apart. These types of projects are prevalent throughout his career. He writes: There is something compelling about the hearing the simultaneity of sounds in a natural landscape, a city, a structure such as a bridge, a train station, a harbor or a long stretch of beach. What is so compelling is the natural completeness of the live flows of musical events and patterns. That the live ambient sound constellations present such seemingly perfect relationships makes this art form actualize an awareness of what is already present.

Fontana’s work is a sustained examination of sounding bodies, giving the public an opportunity to hear them resonate directly. In LJUDSKULPTUR i STOCKHOLM (1986), sounds from throughout the city of Stockholm resonate in a fjord in front of the Town Hall. “Sounds were sent to both sides of this waterway, and produced many interesting echoes.”123 Max Neuhaus’s Time Piece Graz (2003–) is part of his series of moment pieces, which he describes as “communal sound signals.” The effect he enacts is a “disappearance of sound” around the Kunsthaus Graz. During the day, once per hour at ten minutes before the hour, a sound starts and grows imperceptibly. It suddenly stops five minutes later, and creates “a moment of stillness.”124 The Times Square installation in the heart of New York City operates as a constant. It has been continuously in operation from 1977 to 1992, and then since its permanent reinstatement in 2002. The sound world that emanates from under the subway grate envelops the person who stops long enough to hear it, like a wall-less but nonetheless completely sheltering pocket park. It looks like a nondescript traffic island in the midst of neon lights, in close proximity to busloads of tourists and (last time I went there) dancing cartoon characters. Neuhaus’s sounds both blend with and powerfully mask the commotion that surrounds them. If it is possible to find such a haven in the midst of Times Square, almost anything else suddenly seems possible too.125 Fontana’s sense of connectedness between points in the city, as well as Neuhaus’s use of projection from underground spaces, are present in Philip Blackburn’s Sewer Pipe

Place and Time

255

Organ (2011) in St. Paul, Minnesota. Blackburn, a British composer and environmental sound artist now based in the Twin Cities, writes: There is a parallel city beneath our feet, connected by pipes and caverns, carrying rainwater, electricity, (un-)sanitary waste, and utilities. In St. Paul, It has been carved into the limestone rock for over a hundred years and extends for many miles.

He describes the musical content as an electronic version of a sixty-cycle hum, in which both melody and rhythm correlate to harmonic proportions, played through speakers suspended at the bottom of two manholes. It was crucial for Blackburn’s purposes to fill the storm drain network with this resonance, so that they could be “amplified and colored” by each of the drains.126 Blackburn also created a shorter, eight-minute piece for the Duluth Superior Pride Festival called Duluth Harbor Serenade (2011), involving precise coordination between bells and carillons, bridges, boats, a train, and what is described as “a flash mob maritime symphony orchestra.”127 These city pieces offer ways to experience sound as a community—not just for the people who have chosen to enter a venue, but for any resident of the city within hearing range. They infiltrate daily life, sounding across blocks and turning the city itself into a venue.

6.3 Histories Experimentalism is normally associated with the present and the future. But in the sense in which it is being used in this book, it is not necessarily about edginess or being in the vanguard, but about a relation, however speculative, to reality. That reality can just as easily be placed in the past, especially when there are documents, recordings, information, or artifacts that serve as reference points from which to reconstruct such a history. Histories can be drawn, implied, imagined, or reimagined through sound.

Historical objects and technologies A history can be suggested through objects found within it. Christina Kubisch has used archival recordings, as well as her own recordings of old buildings, in her “searches for lost sound” that “focuses on acoustic climate.”128 In Nostalgico (1999), the “squeaking, creaking, and groaning, as well as the delicate, quiet ‘moaning’ of opening and closing doors” inform the sonic gestures of the accordion.129 Old Sounds Archive (1999) “consists exclusively of bell tones sought, found, and brought together in the archive of SFB, the Free Berlin Broadcasting Station.”130 These bell sounds are not arranged in any sort of spectrum or clear order, but juxtaposed to reveal the vast diversity of sound, character, and signification. Among the sources, Kubisch lists “Alarm bells, ship’s bells,

256

Experimental Music Since 1970

door bells, death bells, church bells, bicycle bells, sleigh bells, railway crossing signals, mine bells, school bells, cow bells.”131 The use of outmoded sound technologies can be effective in creating an audible bridge to a previous era. Aleksander Kolkowski is a British violinist and sound artist who has found a powerful way of evoking the past by using wax cylinder recording technology, which was popular in the early years of the twentieth century, to record performances in the early twenty-first century. The Phonographies Archive includes fifty-eight recordings of about two minutes each, many of which are made by musicians featured in this book.132 The most ironic of these recordings is of Jonathan Sterne reading an excerpt from his book, MP3: The Meaning of a Format (2012). The recorded voice is heard as inhabiting the past, rather than the relatively recent time of the recording in June of 2012.133 The effect of these recording technologies on the music is a strange one. Even though it is clearly illusory, there is a certain kind of validation that stems from the idea that these recordings have “stood the test of time.” Someone decided to record and preserve this performance. It’s not a cheap, digital form of documentation, but an antique technology. The technology is at least as present a factor as the acoustics, and transforms the type of attention paid to the performance. Paul DeMarinis picks up on both the use of the phonograph and the study of old objects in his series called The Edison Effect (1989–93), using laser beams to play “ancient phonograph records.”134 The most speculative of these phonographs is Fragments of Jericho, an “authentic recreation of what is probably the world’s most ancient audio recording.”135 This information is said to be held in the grooves on the surface of the vessel. Most of the other installations involve classic and favorite tunes on phonographs, and are mediated in some way. In Al and Mary do the Waltz, Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz issues from a wax cylinder, played by a laser beam that shines through a bowl of goldfish. The goldfish “occasionally interrupt the beam to produce uncomposed musical pauses.”136 A laser that emanates from a hypodermic syringe plays Rhapsody in Blue. The score of Hitchcock’s Vertigo is inscribed on dinner plates. Like Kolkowski, it is not DeMarinis’s intention to give the best possible rendition. He is far more interested in the aspects of distortion inherent both in the original documents and in their means of reproduction. Each Edison Effect player is a meditation on some aspect of the relations among music, memory and the passage of time. Our sense of time, memory, and belonging have all been changed by the exact repetition implicit in mechanical recording. The needle in the groove, no less than the needle in the vein, is one symbolic emblem on our quixotic quest for the perfect moment of fulfillment. . . . The raw and raucous noises of the record surface commingle with the sounds inscribed in the groove, creating a havoc of misinterpreted intentions and benign accidents.137

Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Clayton Mills (known as the duo Partial) were participants in a set of installations at a second-hand store in Chicago. During their residency, they mined the basement for sounding objects. The three tracks of LL (2010–11) are presented in order from most to least interference with these sounds. The final track, “a Single screw

Place and Time

257

of Flesh is all that pins the Soul,” is simply a recording of a nineteenth-century music box that they found, “here allowed to speak with its own voice.” In this recording, the music box mechanism is as audible as the melody, and seems perhaps more beautiful. The second track, “Paul,” is a series of explorations of the objects found in the space. These recordings were made in situ during our initial investigations of the acoustics of the space, chiefly performed using materials that we discovered there. We spent several nights improvising, uncovering sounds, experimenting with different combinations and juxtapositions of timbres.

They write about the objects as if they have human qualities. They tried to “create a kind of conversation between the different timbres and textures of the objects and to draw out their ‘voices.’”138 Though not all of these objects were designed to sound in the first place, they are invested with voices through these investigations. Like the work of Kolkowski, DeMarinis, and Kubisch, Cuéllar and Mills have found ways to give voice to the objects of the past.

The history of a place Recording technology is not the only avenue for the degradation and distortion of sound. Instruments are sometimes more valuable for their age, but the changes they experience over time when they are not kept in good conditions create a whole other situation. The Czech composer and pianist Eliška Cílková searched for abandoned pianos in Pripyat, a ghost town of the Chernobyl disaster, and with great effort found nine of them, which she presents in Pripyat Piano (The Zone Of Chernobyl) (2013). She writes: I realized that the piano has a great ability to maintain its sound for a long time, even if the surrounding walls collapse, or if it is in a damp environment. . . . Most of them were in a dilapidated condition, but some of them still played. When I saw the large concert grand in an abandoned auditorium, I was sure that the ravages of time, and 27 years’ worth of water dripping on [an] instrument with an open keyboard and no upper plate, would have claimed the piano for their own. To my amazement the piano still played. . . . I found it interesting to gradually work around all the instruments that I found and record each piano in each place. . . . none of the recorded sounds have been modified, as I wanted to preserve as much as possible of their reality.139

Cílková’s pieces are responsive to the specific historical locations, and not just to their general conditions. Echoes of nursery remain inside me takes place in an abandoned nursery school, and she uses diatonic melodies and occasional clusters that toddlers might have reached up to play on the keys. In Piano in Apartment I, played on the best preserved of the pianos, the sound of abandonment carries, both in the tuning and in the uneven textures of the chords. “The hammers were soaked with water and catching between the strings, because someone had left the window open.”140 In House

258

Experimental Music Since 1970

of Art she plays only the strings, since the hammers were all removed, and in Torsos of non-playing pianos she searches for sounds from pianos that no longer function at all as intended. As one of the longest tracks, this piece has a richness of texture despite the handicaps of the instrument. Jakob Kirkegaard has taken a different approach to the Chernobyl Zone of Exclusion with his AION project. Referencing Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1970), he recorded the silence within each of four spaces, playing it back into the room and letting the overtones build up. Where Lucier’s piece used the sound of his spoken voice as material, Kirkegaard’s uses the silence (or at least lack of human sound) of each space—a church, an auditorium, a pool, a gym. That silence is all the more significant because these spaces were highly populated public places that were immediately evacuated on April 26, 1986, when the nuclear accident occurred. “By listening to the silence of four radiating spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone.”141 For those who were there, it may tap into a memory. For those who were not, the video of this project creates a powerful document of a historical disaster and its aftermath. The construction of Kirkegaard’s piece refers to Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1969), but his attention is directed very differently. While Lucier’s piece deals with the effect of acoustics on recorded speech, AION interrogates the effect of a historical event and its aftermath on the sound of a space. Initially, there is the silence of abandonment. These are no longer occupied spaces. At one time these spaces were built and then used, and have particular properties and acoustics as a result. The swimming pool is partially filled with water, and water is dripping into it at the time of the recording. This activity grows with each iteration as the water keeps on dripping, and the accumulation of drops reverberates, sounding out the space. The video image is treated similarly to the sound, and the sunlight gradually whitens every part of the room it hits, until the image is almost completely white. The mirroring of sonic and visual processes also mirrors the gradual decay of these spaces. Chris Watson’s historical approach is more overtly speculative, drawing on multidisciplinary scholarship but ultimately imagining and realizing entire scenes for each of the seasons. The place is Holy Island, in Northumberland in the United Kingdom, and these scenes are imagined, as the album title states, as taking place In St. Cuthbert’s Time: A 7th Century Soundscape of Lindisfarne (2013). More particularly, the focus is on the setting in which Eadfrith created his masterpiece, the Lindisfarne Gospels. This production aims to reflect upon the daily and seasonal aspects of the evolving variety of ambient sounds that accompanied life and work during that period of exceptional thought and creativity.142

The research for this sound work was done in collaboration with archaeologists, medieval scholars, and anthropologists who were in residence with Watson at Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study. The information they relayed to Watson factors into his reconstruction of the sonic life of the island around 700 A.D., season by season. The concentration of natural sounds is reflective of a time in which natural

Place and Time

259

sound and activity were unimpeded by human technology. There are no planes overhead, sirens, or traffic. Though the recording only engages the sense of hearing, it excites the imagination of all the senses. The listener is placed in that island landscape, tasting the salt air and feeling the cool wind off the water in the company of cows, birds, insects, seals, and the occasional human bell-ringer.143 While the previous examples are efforts to capture aspects of the past, Mazen Kerbaj recorded Starry Night in Beirut during an actual wartime situation, improvising on his trumpet as Israeli bombs were exploding nearby. From the difficult technical conditions of the wartime situation, he enlisted help from the readers of his blog to make an excerpt of the sound recording available.144 Kerbaj is a cartoonist as well as an improviser, and around this time was actively posting drawings and cartoons in response to the wartime situation. He replied in this way to some of the feedback he got: I was asked twice so far: “don’t you think that your piece of music and bombs is of a bad taste? i answered twice: “do you think that it is of a good taste to throw a bomb on a bus with civilians escaping their village?” it is incredible that some people, listening to this piece in their living room in london or in paris, ask themselves if they like it or not.145

Kerbaj engaged with the sounds of the bombs as harsh and familiar realities of life. The night of July 16–17, 2006 was one of many consecutive virtually sleepless nights. On that night he chose to face the present reality of his experience as a musician.146

Personal histories: Resonance of place Aki Onda is a Japanese sound and visual artist who has kept a sort of audio journal by making field recordings on his travels. These recordings become strongly linked with his past. “I consider these recordings to be personal memories, and not just sounds.” He performs by playing these recordings back in a different setting that has its own historical significance. It is a compounding process of one set of memories with another: I have found from past experience that my music is the strongest when I perform in a space which has its own memories—at a historic building, abandoned factory, old theater, even a street corner. It’s a strange ritual. I am trying to both extract and abstract the essence of memory by playing my own field recordings, so to speak my personal memories, at a location that is saturated with its own memories. The result is invisible but one can feel live memories awaking sleeping memories.147

The energy of a place with a rich history offers a new perspective on the resonance of his own history, as documented in the sounds of places he has been. He talks about his search for performance locations as “an archaeological dig for the memory spots of a city,”148 and finds these scouted locations far more interesting than any traditional venue.

260

Experimental Music Since 1970

Mendi and Keith Obadike’s BIG HOUSE/DISCLOSURE (2007) is a multifaceted sound installation, one element of which is a series of text scores. They write that these “actions are about changing one’s experiences of materials, spaces, and people,” and suggest that the context for performance be as familiar as possible.149 The piece is in part a meditation on “house music”—in the sense of a type of electronic dance music originating in Chicago, but also because it is literally music to be performed in one’s home. The scores take place in rooms and areas of the house such as the porch, dining room, office, kitchen, and nursery. In its explorations of the legacy of slavery, another part of the work includes an interview question asking people to describe a southern plantation mansion.150 The invitation is extended to “find your own resonances” in reading, listening to, or participating in the work, and the setting in a home space makes it conducive to such resonance.151 HOME: HANDOVER (2010) is a structured series of questions and activities that was devised by French sound artists Jean-Luc Guionnet and Éric La Casa and given to four residents of Glasgow, Scotland. “Based on predefined rules, including the singlesequence shot as a recording method, these people became the actors in a story about their everyday life.” The listener becomes aware of the unique relationship of each participant with his or her home, especially when a favorite musical selection is played, but also through the responses about how they relate to the space in terms of sound. The recording equipment is eventually handed over to the resident to complete the activity. A surprising sense of intimacy develops as the listener enters into a stranger’s personal space and stays long enough that the person ceases to be heard as a stranger.152 Jacob Kreutzfeldt and Brandon Labelle did a postcard survey of multiple residents of apartment buildings in Copenhagen about the sounds they heard and associated with home. Their aim was to create “an alternative Copenhagen sound map focusing not on sonic properties but on sonic experience.” The questions included, “What sounds make you feel at home?”/“What is the sound of the city that bothers you the most?”/“What is the sound of the city that you enjoy the most?” They organized responses by location, and made sure to get multiple responses from close neighbors. Some of the contrasts among responses within a small area are fascinating, revealing differences in both observation and personality.153 The focus on indoor or outdoor sounds, annoyances or pleasurable sounds, sounds made by strangers or by family, are reflective of the nature of a person’s sense of place, home, and attention.

Treatments of musical material While experimental music typically involves a break with musical tradition, it is demonstrably possible to deal with existing musical material in an experimental way. Nicolas Collins’ Still Lives project has three distinct iterations. The first is a twentyfour-second clip from the opening of Giuseppe Guami’s “Canzon La Accorta a Quatrro” (1601). In Still Lives (1993), “A modified CD player suspends, re-articulates and draws out short ‘skipping loops’ of a recording” of the twenty-four-second opening, overlaying them with notated material for instrumental accompaniment and a narration in the second half of the piece. In Still (After) Lives (1997), the CD player part is removed, and

Place and Time

261

what remains is the performed material that fits over this original notated scaffold of the Guami clip. Each instrumental category (strings, winds, vibraphone, voice) is given unique instructions on how to interact with the score. The sustained tones and the smoothing of the glitches and loops of the CD part bring a return to lyricism, opening up the harmonies of the original clip.154 In Broken Light (1991–92), the recorded material (string music of Corelli, Locatelli, and Torelli) is treated in two ways. Collins manipulates the CD player, “isolating and freezing short loops of recorded music. As it slowly steps from one ‘skipping groove’ to the next, the lush contrapuntal texture of the concerto grosso is suspended in harmonic blocks.” The second overlay is a guided improvisation of the string quartet. Much of this guidance is a description of what is occurring in the recorded part. Beyond that, the musicians are given suggestions of variations, avoiding any literal attempt to match the recording. The string parts are separate, painted on the surface of the material emitted by the malfunctioning CD.155 Paul Whitty has an interest in “re-organisation and re-categorisation of found materials.”156 stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before (2015) relates repertoire to the particular history of each of the keyboard instruments that are gathered for its performance. Associations could be related to the date of manufacture of the instrument; the repertoire of previous owners of the instrument; scores that are known to have been performed on that particular instrument; the location of manufacture; repertoire specifically designed for the instrument or most likely to have been performed on it.

Each performance task is related to a single page of one of these scores. One such event is to “Perform every event on the page using one of the following methods”: Begin with the highest pitch and end with the lowest pitch. Begin with the lowest pitch and end with the highest pitch. Begin with the pitch with the highest number of incidences on the page and end with the pitch—or pitches with the lowest number of incidences on the page. Begin with the pitch—or pitches—with the longest duration and end with the pitch—or pitches—with the shortest duration.157

Musical tradition and indeterminacy overlap at every turn in this piece. The selection of instruments relates to a history, as does the selection of scores that are aligned with that instrument. But the choice of page is spontaneous, and the ordering of events is given without regard to the musical material, since its choice is made without the prior knowledge of the composer. Nevertheless, these musical events are, in their independent forms, related to an existing, scored musical work. But with this re-ordering and exposure to chance, they only exist as fragments. The American violinist and composer Erik Carlson has made a series of derived pieces, each of which treats a different composer’s work in a unique way. In Alphabetized

262

Experimental Music Since 1970

Winterreise (2013), Schubert’s entire Winterreise cycle is alphabetized, word by word and chord by chord, with the repetitions of each word filling a measure. Aacccino (2012) is “an ordered arrangement of the sonorities of Bach’s Ciaccona.” Two symphonic surveys are done, one being A Chronological Survey of Haydn’s Symphonic Opening Sonorities (2013). The timpani parts of all of the movements of all of Bruckner’s symphonies are played simultaneously by thirty-five players in Bruckner’s Symphonic Timpani (2013). Other pieces include certain elements based on identifiable properties. At C (2015) is “Every Middle C from Tristan und Isolde.” The second example is the All Tetrads in The Art of the Fugue (2013). Then there is an apparently simple (yet consequential) act of erasure in Beethoven op. 131 mvt 1 Without Rests (2014). The instruments quickly go out of their intended alignment. These works are treated methodically, but their results are completely unintended by their original composers.158 The Russian composer Sergei Zagny went through the entire score of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake with the goal of maximally preserving it “while stripping out all the excessive emotion and overblown sentimentality we now find so embarrassing.” Some sections of Fragments from Swan Lake (2003) are intact, apart from the reduction of the instrumental forces from orchestra to chamber ensemble. “The absence of modifications renders particularly acute the problem of authorship and the associated problem of novelty, both of which are of fundamental importance in relation to the present work.”159 The removal of sentimentality seems ironic, especially on the reflection that the desire to preserve or “fix” the piece might be an act of sentimentality in itself. This music is so familiar that an experienced listener can remember its excesses even as they are omitted. The question of judgment lurks during the listening process. Did that entire section need to come out? Isn’t this part I’m hearing a little syrupy too? Where Zagny tries to erase such special moments, the Canadian composer Cassandra Miller seeks them out and dives into them. “Her work,” writes James Weeks, “is about the way we make these objects our own, about how we love things and thereby change both ourselves and them.”160 Miller explains: I suppose I’m curious about things that move me, and the process in my brain of then identifying personally with these things, as if my very personhood is built out of the things that have touched me in my life. . . . I’m moved by something I hear, and then I think, hot damn, gotta make me a piece about that. And usually there’s something about the fact of identification that I don’t understand, something in there that doesn’t sit right, or that piques my curiosity.161

Her material is not written music, but recorded performances derived from a wide range of sources, among which are 1990s American popular culture, traditional music of Mozambique, bird song, and Italian bel canto opera. There is no traceable logic or pattern among these sources other than the sheer range of diffusion. The understanding of what moves any of us and why it moves us is elusive, and Miller’s project is an ongoing investigation of that mystery. Her solo violin work called For Mira (2012) is an exploration of the instabilities of Kurt Cobain’s characteristic vocal delivery in the last track of Nirvana’s MTV

Place and Time

263

Unplugged performance of November 18, 1993 that has been called a “hot-tempered, quick-burning little jewel of a composition”162 The violin takes on the twists and turns of the voice, always falling back on itself as if every advance takes many attempts— hitting the wall of a maze many times and in many different ways before finding a way to the next corridor. Miller was “drawn to and comforted by”163 a sound clip of an mbira player from Mozambique that she had heard two decades earlier and rediscovered.164 In the process of making Philip the wanderer (2012), she transcribed the clip and focused in particular on the specific deviations of rhythm. One minute and eighteen seconds of recorded material becomes an abundant three-movement work that lasts sixteen minutes. Miller says of the piece, “I amplified some things, thinned other sections etc., and I found I was carving out the shape of some kind of imaginary story.” This story is even narrated through comments in the score, and the musical figures themselves become characters: The descending scales begin to understand themselves the inevitable fullness of the resonance begins to carry us away to a dream with a lustier dynamic . . . . . . and yet the sighing line above continues to disappear softly as it descends the lower right-hand voice is the protagonist here; the upper-most voice just floats unsuspectingly; the lowest voice of all continues to overwhelm.

She presents the music in personified form because that is how she experienced it, and her compositional process is an extrapolation of that experience. Her task, as she discovered it, was “to root around until I found myself somewhere in the material that already existed.”165

A piece makes a history The works in this section create actual histories of their own. Many of them take place over durations or distances too vast to be taken in as a single event. The most prominent example is John Cage’s Organ2/ASLSP (1987), which is being realized at a church in Halberstadt, Germany in a single performance from 2001 to 2640.166 This realization was developed after Cage’s death, taking the “as slow as possible” instruction and the indeterminate scale of duration into account.167 Manfred Werder has ten pieces that each are 4,000 pages long, each of which is to last for 533 hours and 20 minutes. There is no expectation of a performance of any of these pieces that will last for 22 24-hour days. They are to be played successively, one or two or more pages at a time. The first of these is stuck 1998, which can be played by any single instrument or group of instruments. The documentation of this piece is a list of the successive actualizations, which eventually may complete the piece. Each new event picks up where the last one left off, sometimes with a single page, sometimes many pages, depending on the time constraints and decision of the performers. A single page has a duration of six minutes, and is broken down into components of six

264

Experimental Music Since 1970

seconds of sound followed by six seconds of silence. Performances have taken place in various parts of Europe, as well as the United States, Australia, Latin America, and Asia. To date, Werder has listed performances up through page 800 of the score.168 When I heard pages 647–52 in New York, I had the sense that I was embedded in something with vast dimensions. There is no stated ideology, but there is a continuity. Michael Pisaro, who has participated in dozens of performances over the years, reflects: The piece gathers momentum and context when one hears performances by different people in different locations at different times. It is modular, and ongoing in structure and so (for the time being) any one performance is always somewhat incomplete.169

In a review of a recorded version, Brian Olewnick thinks of it almost spatially, as one of thousands of performances of the piece, occurring spread out over space and time. This is one small nodule, one matrix of notepoints, which can be imagined in a 3 & 4 dimensional array of such nodules, the white pages flitting out from the imposing stack, wafting to this or that ensemble or individual, being read and played, then migrating back to its home.”170

The performer series (1999–) follows a similar model, but each version has a stated number of performers, ranging from one to nine.171 Marcus Kaiser is a composer, cellist, and visual artist who is, like Werder, part of the Wandelweiser collective. In his interdisciplinary Unterholtz (2006–) series (part of the overarching opernfraktal project), each previous version of the piece is embedded in the new version, both visually and aurally. In what Kaiser calls a “jungle thicket,” the senses are flooded with accumulation on many planes. The audio and video recordings of the previous versions of the work are processed into sequences that play concurrently with each new performance.172 As he explains it: I try to work with “background/foreground” a bit like in evolution: “evolution/ coevolution” so the piece for example “unterholz” (now foreground) is changing in the and is changing the (background) installation “feindtönung” (and the whole is “opernfraktal”), so the “development” of the composition/work happens only in the whole environment (like a ecosystem)/the same happens also in the piece “unterholz” during the performance: the video is the “background” now and the live performance the foreground (but [it’s] not possible to separate the things/both [are] necessary for the piece), “composition” is for me something like creating a garden/situation where [these] things can happen and the “sounds” are not necessary in the foreground.173

Other factors are equally important in establishing the internal histories of Unterholtz. It has been an ongoing project for nearly ten years so far. There are fourteen documented

Place and Time

265

Figure 6.7  Marcus Kaiser: opernfraktal/unterholz #12 © Marcus Kaiser instances of the work, each building on the last. The scores are “a growing part of the whole,” to be played only in part, and they are supplemented by other scores that Kaiser calls “ways through the whole thing.”174 In addition to these layers within the live performance, there are correspondences at certain times with the previous versions that are present in the space. These layers of activity at a given moment within the work speak to each other. The score is played with a stopwatch, in part, so that these moments can be overlaid. Unterholtz is usually performed within the context of an installation. It is difficult to tease this project apart from many of his other projects. Spinozawucherung (2015) is a part of Unterholtz and vice versa. Kaiser lived in this installation for the month of February 2015, and exhibited several other pieces too. In Opernfraktal 21 Tage (2003), areas were set up for various purposes. Visitors were invited to make tea in the kitchen, work at a table, or rest in one of the cubes. The musical performances occur on a cyclical basis within these installations, incorporating material from previous concerts. By living in the space, and by inviting others to inhabit it for periods of time beyond that of a formal musical performance, Kaiser embeds a sense of real life into the installation that sits differently in the memory. The sense of place established through the architecture of the installation sets this experience apart from the everyday, while presenting a viable alternative to the everyday through the provision of basic comforts.175 As with the Werder projects, someone who experiences Kaiser’s work in person is likely to feel like part of a larger project—all the more so since the sounds and images of the time and place are being captured and will likely include their presence in the next iteration. Jakob Ullmann’s voice books and FIRE 3 (2004–05) is different from Kaiser’s and Werder’s projects in that it does not require an accumulation of performances across time. Instead, it constructs a history in a single performance that spans vast distances

266

Experimental Music Since 1970

Figure 6.8  Marcus Kaiser: opernfraktal/feindtönung © Marcus Kaiser of time, space, and experience. Multiple ancient religious texts are brought together in a single performance and made to understand each other through sound. Voice, books and FIRE is the result of my reflections about the relationships between music and language: language as sound and language as text, the numerous relationships between texts of different cultural and religious traditions, between the work of the human spirit in the present and in the past and the questions arising from the problem of understanding these different traditions, languages and texts and representing them in a present, which has lost knowledge about substantial parts, even of its own tradition and history. 176

The score is made up of fourteen separate pages that can be presented in any order. Each page is a collage of manuscripts drawn from many religious traditions. The preparation process for the singers is lengthy, in that it involves learning how to pronounce texts from numerous alphabets and languages, including Aramaic, Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Greek, Latin, and Russian.177 Once this preparation is done, however, the interpretation is fairly free. The thrust behind the work is that these texts should speak to one another. As they are overlaid on the page, each with its own distinct alphabet, text, and overall appearance, the singers overlay their voices in what Ullmann calls “a situation of living polyphony.” These texts are reproduced as faithfully as possible, both as image and as sound, and they are enlivened and combined without violence or dissent. Though much of the source material is ancient, the entire Voice, Books and FIRE series is a utopian reimagining of the twentieth century on a foundation of mutual respect—something that has historically been elusive among religious traditions from ancient times through to the present. The piece itself is a history in which these things coexist.

Place and Time

267

Figure 6.9  Jakob Ullmann: voice, books and FIRE 3, material for the voices, graphic page 10-d3 © Jakob Ullmann

Figure 6.10  Jakob Ullmann: voice, books and FIRE 3, material for the voices, graphic page 11-ot © Jakob Ullmann

268

Experimental Music Since 1970

Ullmann’s sense of social obligation is a driving force in this project. He writes: Last but not least, the piece is the result of the impression that I—as an East-German artist—have a special obligation to remember not only my numerous colleagues who are victims of the horrors of the last century, the “century of wolves,” but also all the cultural, spiritual and religious traditions of Eastern and South-eastern Europe which have been alienated and suppressed, persecuted and even destroyed in the so-called “Christian occident,” not only for decades but for centuries. So this piece is dedicated to the memory of all the victims who have been upholders and witnesses of these forgotten and dismissed traditions and to these traditions themselves.178

Ullmann’s project also draws from a different tradition, and one of which he is fully a part: the experimental tradition, in particular “greater freedoms in the interpretation of scores and liberated relationships between composers and musicians.”179 Ullmann’s focus is on the ancient, on respect among peoples, and on the allowance of freedom to the thoughtful performer. His use of the freedoms of experimental practice in this work is a suggested solution to an age-old problem. The discipline and focus required in the preparation of the piece, in combination with the evocations of coexistence in each page of the score, creates a situation that draws on the strengths of tradition without their limitations, and suggests a path out of historical and ongoing conflicts.

Imagined histories and cultures Where Ullmann, Werder, Kaiser, and Cage have constructed pieces that can be understood, to varying degrees, as histories in and of themselves, this next grouping of composers invents histories, either through the use of archetypes (Meredith Monk, Maria de Alvear) or through creating constructs around fictional composers, each complete with a history, influencers, a legacy, and a body of work. It is plausible that the drive behind Jennifer Walshe’s Grúpat and Irish avant-garde projects is that she has searched for an experimental or avant-garde musical tradition within her home country of Ireland and found it lacking. She has conjured her own precursors, inventing organizations such as the highly political, obscene, and violent Kilkenny Engagists; a “fugitive women’s improv singing group” called Keening Women’s Alliance; and the Guinness Dadaists.180 While the Grúpat collective is entirely linked to Walshe’s imagination, research, and compositional work, Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde is a project involving figments of several other (actual) people’s imaginations. This project is described as: Communal thought experiment, a revisionist exercise in “what if?,” a huge effort by many people to create an alternative history of avant-garde music in Ireland, to write our ancestors into being and shape their stories with care.181

One of these imagined sound artists is Zaftig Giolla, an ethnomusicological collector presented by Stephen Graham as a precursor of Chris Watson and Hildegard

Place and Time

269

Westerkamp who made “occasional diversions into the ether of the avant-garde for unsuspecting, strange-starved Irish audiences.”182 Nick Roth writes a brief biography of Ultan O’Farrell, a Uilleann piper who was a purported influence on Pauline Oliveros. His drones were so long that the recordist ran out of wax cylinders in trying to document a performance.183 Walshe is active not only as a composer but also as a vocalist, and this interest is betrayed in the character of Róisín Madigan O’Reilly, who created an Irish translation of Kurt Schwitters’ seminal sound poem, Ursonate (1922–32).184 Quite a patriot, O’Reilly sustained two different projects that related Irish vowel sounds to the sounds of the wind, the sea, and radio waves.185 Billie Hennessy’s “meandering tonal sing-voice” Scripts are compared to the work of Satie for their “lack of standard compositional concerns.”186 Other composers in this collective (retroactively) anticipate further musical developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including binaural beats and small intervals (Eyleif Mullen-White), free improvisation and automatic musicmaking (Andrew Hunt), and experimental musical instrument building (the Ó Laoire twins).187 Cage’s chance procedures, especially as manifested in the Freeman Etudes, are anticipated by Caoimhín Breathnach’s scores that are made of tracings of constellations and crystallographic forms.188 These pieces operate as a series of speculations. What would it be like to have had such a tradition? What conditions would have been optimal for these sound explorations? What might have occurred that has gone undocumented? Equally importantly, how do these speculations play out as sound? The implementation of scores and performances of these works has been rigorous, and is a central component of Walshe’s creative work. Anthropologies imaginaires (2014) is a mockumentary created primarily by composer and vocalist Gabriel Dharmoo that alternately invents and reimagines vocal traditions. Even the most Western of traditions, such as twelve-tone music and conducted choral singing (“hypnotized choirs”), are presented by Dharmoo with primitivistic flair, and discussed by fictional experts through a lens of otherness as strange cultural artifacts. It is a lively performance that is fascinating and ridiculous, cringeworthy and compelling all at once, taking up numerous issues, among which Dharmoo lists “post-colonialism, post-exoticism, cultural extinction, globalization, normalized racism and cultural appropriation in an ambiguous, humorous and disturbing way.”189 Sr Anselme O’Ceallaig is another exponent of Jennifer Walshe’s invented Irish tradition, and her biography connects with Hildegard von Bingen, while her musical preoccupations draw a connection of sorts between the sustained works of Éliane Radigue and Eva-Maria Houben. She thought of her organ compositions as contemplative prayers. These Virtues are comprised of drones, and “focus on incremental changes in organ stops.”190 These small, gradual shifts are anticipated by another fictional composer: the Wandelweiser antecedent Viola Torros. Created by Johnny Chang and Catherine Lamb, she was surrounded by philosophers and poets, and traveled vast distances in search of the “unknown.” This word “unknown” recurs throughout her biography, in reference to her birth year, the meaning of syllables found in one of her fragments,191 and the makers of the bowed instruments for which she composed. An air of mystery

270

Experimental Music Since 1970

surrounds her life as well as her work. She “must have had a very exciting life, but she never seemed to find interest in creating a narrative to describe any of the events she experienced or witnessed.” The work itself has been discovered and reconstructed from fragments and remnants. One belief is that these “fragments” are actually purposeful and to be left as they are. Other theories are that she intended . . . the fragments to be installed (performed) across large distances. Still other theories are that the fragments should be interpreted as audible shadings between parts.

The recorded reconstructions are highly speculative in nature: tentative and simultaneous melodies, resonant tones in search of one another, and unison melodies with inflections of pitch and timbre identified as “shadings.”192 The unknown qualities of Torros’s work give it, in addition to that air of mystery, a sense of universality. By not pinning down the specifics of her earthly existence, Lamb and Chang have allowed it to infiltrate the reader-listener’s vague, broad sense of an entire musical antiquity. Tom Johnson comments that the composer and vocalist Meredith Monk has evolved her own language.193 Rarely in her works are words from English or other languages present. The vocal mechanism seems to be driving the language, rather than the more usual language-driven song. But this is not a simple language of convenient vowels. It has lived and developed in the mouth as vocal expression. By avoiding particular languages, Monk makes this work more widely accessible. Lanny Harrison, one of Monk’s core ensemble members, reflects that in their performances around the world, the pieces are understood without a need for translation.194 This sense of universality is a hallmark of Monk’s vocal and theatrical works. She is interested in the depths and breadths of the human condition and experience. She states one of her goals as: “An art that is inclusive, rather than exclusive; that is expansive, whole, human, multidimensional.”195 She does this in part through the use of archetypes. A rabbi in one viewer’s eyes is a fifteenth-century monk in another’s. “Little touches of costume—heavy boots or an apron—place the character, not specifically but according to type. The pioneers could be crossing the American plains or medieval Europe.”196 In terms of sound, the human voice carries such a sense of universality. Every voice is different, but changes in the overall quality of the human voice over the centuries are not part of any repository of knowledge. The songs and languages are certainly different, but our ancient ancestors’ voices can only be imagined as being much like our own. Blondell Cummings spoke of how she and Monk developed her character in The Education of the Girlchild (1972): I tried to find a way of representing an archetypal character that I would understand from a deep, personal, subconscious point of view that at the same time would be strong enough to overlap several black cultures.

The singers in Monk’s work draw from their own personalities and experiences in shaping their characters. Each voice and each character is unique, and every

Place and Time

271

characterization is separately developed for the opera and changes through successive performances. “The performers are the life of the script. They inhabit the work. Ideally, the play is being written as though it were alive.”197 In her non-theatrical work, this emphasis on the uniqueness of individual voices holds equally true. She says: I think the voice is a wonderful instrument for dealing with emotion that we don’t have words for. It can get between the emotions that we can catalogue. It has so much nuance and yet a very direct connection to the center of each person.198

In relation to Dolmen Music (1980–81) she writes, “My main concerns in the group music have been to work with the unique quality of each voice and to play with the ensemble possibilities of unison, texture, counterpoint, weaving, etc.”199 The voice is the most human of instruments, and for Monk it is crucial that the specific nature of each performer is manifested, so that very humanity is maximally present. Even focusing on Dolmen Music album alone, the range of emotion and technique in these vocal performances is staggering, from the ritualistic chanting of “Overture and Men’s Conclave” to the reckless abandon and ululations of “Travelling,” to the rich and dark tones of “Biography” that seem to evoke a greater depth of experience with every repetition. At the end of Atlas (1991), the main character, Alexandra Daniels, has traveled the world and found that her entire expedition has been “the inner journey of a soul.”200 In the penultimate scene, “Earth Seen From Above,” she experiences both timelessness and placelessness. In “Madwoman’s Vision” in Book of Days (1988), Monk travels through an astonishing range of vocal expression as the madwoman herself travels from medieval to modern times and back and reels under the intensity of her visions. “Book of Days,” writes Monk, “is very much about the transparency and relativity of time—the sense that you can see one period through another and the sensation that everything could be happening concurrently. That history is a thought, eternity is now.”201 That sense of now-ness is related to presence, feeling, and emotion. Monk has listed another of her goals, to create An art that reaches toward emotion we have no words for, that we barely remember—an art that affirms the world of feeling in a time and society where feelings are in danger of being eliminated.202

It is not so much the particular vocal techniques as it is her approach to creating and performing the work that keys into this level of emotional depth. Free of language but full of multiple experiences and individualities—those of all of the artists involved— she employs the voice as a means of expression that is both primordial and up to date because of its essential timelessness. Monk writes of the voice as “a tool for discovering, activating, remembering, uncovering, demonstrating primordial/prelogical consciousness.”203 Why is it necessary to reimagine history, to evoke archetypes and universalities in order to arrive at such a place? Monk says, “I think we’re living in a society that is not

272

Experimental Music Since 1970

really that interested in emotion. . . . So in a way you have to go outside it a bit to have the human memory of feeling.”204 Another composer who is interested in the productive recovery of memory is Maria de Alvear. Her long stays with aboriginal people on several continents have been part of her attempt to grasp elusive histories, and she cites the area her family came from near Frankfurt, Germany, as an important influence, in that many prehistoric fossils have been found there. She creates her music through automatic writing processes, having found a “non-thinking state” distant from constraint, society, and emotion that enables her to write “for pure love.” Her first piece written in this way is for solo piano, and is named accordingly: En amor duro (1991). As Raoul Mörchen writes: Large, white sheets of paper in oblong format, staves that end nowhere and have no dividing bar lines. On the sheets are dots and lines, a few notes, obviously written down in a hurry. “They look so helpless you could almost think a fiveyear-old had written them, someone who can’t write music,” Maria de Alvear says of these scores. “But, of course, I did know how to write music. I just made a clean sweep.”205

This clean sweep of formalities and presentation was made to enable something else to come forth. She has continued in this line. World (1996) is a “ceremony for two pianists and orchestra” based on open musical structures that de Alvear says is about “the recovery of ancient knowledge.”206 Like most of her works, it has ritualistic qualities, and provides a wide swath of time and musical space for contemplation of these subjects. Reinier van Houdt writes, “To me, MARIA DE ALVEAR composes like a natural phenomenon: guided not as much by the coming and going of ideas and emotions, nor addressing them, but like a law of nature impassively displaying a sort of automatic writing that moves the body and courses through the psyche, ultimately damanding [sic] full awareness.”207 Her project has been a continual exploration of approaches to sound that provide a venue for this awareness. To these composers, the recovery of lost histories is not solely brought about through knowledge; it is also an act of imagination. Whether or not the stories and images made by these composers connect to objective historical truths, they are reflections on what is felt to be missing, and to an appreciable degree they succeed in filling that void.

Notes 1 Emeka Ogboh, “Verbal Maps_Obalende,” SoundCloud track, 2:14, posted by “Lagos Soundscape,” 2012, https://soundcloud.com/lagos-soundscape/verbalmaps_obalende, and “Verbal Maps_Ojuelegba,” SoundCloud track, 2:21, posted by “Lagos Soundscape,” 2012, https://soundcloud.com/lagos-soundscape/verbal-maps_ ojuelegba. Ogboh’s main site is http://www.14thmay.com. 2 Ogboh, “Lagos by Bus III,” SoundCloud track, 8:10, posted by “Lagos Soundscape,” 2014, https://soundcloud.com/lagos-soundscape/lagos-by-bus-iii.

Place and Time

273

3 Ogboh, “Dogaman,” SoundCloud track, 4:39, posted by “Lagos Soundscape,” 2010, https://soundcloud.com/lagos-soundscape/dogaman. 4 Chris Watson, El Tren Fantasma, Touch Records TO:42, 2011, compact disc, http:// www.touchmusic.org.uk/catalogue/to42_chris_watson_el_tren_fant.html. 5 David Dunn, Music, Language, and Environment, Innova 508, 1996, 2 compact discs. Liner notes. 6 Dunn, Skydrift (unpublished score, 1976–78), 1. 7 Ibid., 21. 8 Ibid., 56. 9 Ibid., 71. 10 Ibid., 79. 11 Ibid., 1. 12 Ibid., 11. 13 “WHO?,” https://stephenchase.wordpress.com/about. 14 Stephen Chase, “out-of-doors suite,” https://outofdoorssuite.wordpress.com. 15 Chase, “ringing singing cycling,” https://outofdoorssuite.files.wordpress. com/2014/08/ringing-singing-cycling.pdf. 16 Chase, “lights out for the territory,” https://outofdoorssuite.files.wordpress. com/2014/05/lights-out-for-the-territory1.pdf. 17 Chase, “BEAMING,” https://outofdoorssuite.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/ beaming.pdf. 18 Chase, “the drifters,” https://outofdoorssuite.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/thedrifters1.pdf. 19 Chase, “points on the curve,” https://outofdoorssuite.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ points-on-the-curve.pdf. 20 Chase, “Spring Waves,” https://outofdoorssuite.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/springwaves.pdf. 21 John Lely and James Saunders, eds., Word Events: Perspectives on Notation (New York: Continuum, 2012), 51. 22 Annea Lockwood, A Sound Map of the Danube, Lovely Music, CD 2083, 2008, compact disc. Liner notes, http://www.lovely.com/albumnotes/notes2083.html. 23 Stephen Cornford, “Attempts to shatter steel with sound (2006–07),” http://www. scrawn.co.uk/1.html. 24 The Reach of Resonance (Monoduo Films, 2013), Vimeo video, 101 minutes, https:// vimeo.com/ondemand/resonance. 25 Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose, Post Impressions (Springwood, N.S.W.: Taylor and Rose, 2007), 2. 26 “Jon Rose & Hollis Taylor—Great Fences,” Vimeo video, 5:18, posted by ANAT, https://vimeo.com/7809333. Other examples are at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=_1V5zFGZnGo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-BAqDGtQPY. 27 Taylor and Rose, Post Impressions, 62. 28 Richard Lerman, “Windharps,” http://www.sonicjourneys.com/PDF%20Files/ Windharp%20Article%20only.pdf, 5. 29 Lerman, “Windharps,” 7 30 R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994), 205. 31 Ibid., 7. 32 Ibid., 7–8.

274

Experimental Music Since 1970

33 Ibid., 4, 205. 34 David Dunn, “Acoustic Ecology and the Experimental Music Tradition,” http:// www.newmusicbox.org/articles/Acoustic-Ecology-and-the-Experimental-MusicTradition. 35 Schafer, Soundscape, 206. 36 Max Neuhaus, “Sirens,” 1993, http://www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/vectors/ invention/sirens/Sirens.pdf, 1. 37 Ibid., 1. 38 Ibid., 4. 39 Ibid., 8. 40 Ibid., 2. 41 Ibid., 6. 42 Ibid., 10. 43 Hildegard Westerkamp, “Soundwalking,” http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/writings%20 page/articles%20pages/soundwalking.html. 44 Ibid. 45 Westerkamp, “Soundwalking as Ecological Practice,” http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/ writings%20page/articles%20pages/soundasecology2.html. 46 Ibid. 47 Westerkamp, Transformations, Empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 1031, compact disc, http://www.electrocd.com/en/cat/imed_1031. 48 Saunders and Lely, Word Events, 305. 49 “‘Echo Piece’ by Michael Parsons, Curated by Mathieu Copeland in Canary Wharf,” June 21, 2009, http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/2009/06/echopiece-by-michael-parsons-curated.html. Images of the walk are shown at http:// meredithgunderson.com/michael-parsons-%E2%80%94%C2%A0echo-piece. 50 Elena Biserna, “Walking from Scores,” http://www.xing.it/opera/803/walking_from_ scores. 51 Francesco Gagliardi, Alternative Piece (Belfast 2008), http://www.gdouglasbarrett. com/performing_the_city/Alternative_Piece_(Belfast_2008).pdf. 52 Jennie Gottschalk, “Craig Shepard interview—On Foot: Brooklyn,” http://www. soundexpanse.com/craig-shepard-interview-on-foot-brooklyn. 53 Yolande Harris, “Displaced Sound Walks,” http://yolandeharris.net/?nk_ work=displaced-sound-walks. 54 “Displaced Sound Walks,” on project wiki, accessed January 19, 2015, http://wiki. dxarts.washington.edu/groups/general/wiki/2a9c1/Displaced_Sound_Walks_.html, site discontinued. 55 Harris, “Displaced Sound Walks.” 56 Viv Corringham, “Shadow-walks,” http://vivcorringham.org/shadow-walks. 57 Corringham, “audio,” http://vivcorringham.org/audio. 58 David Helbich, Scores Kortrijk Tracks: An Experimental Audio Guide for the City of Kortrijk, 2013, https://docs.google.com/file/ d/0B9MqpNDDFli0R09PbjVCSmR5YTQ/edit. 59 “Playing with your ears,” May 11, 2013, https://resonancenetwork.wordpress. com/2013/05/11/playing-with-your-ears. 60 Chris Kennedy, “Akio Suzuki: Stop and Listen to the World,” Musicworks 115, Spring 2013, https://www.musicworks.ca/featured-article/featured-article/akio-suzuki.

Place and Time

275

61 See http://www.akiosuzuki.com/web/index-en.html for recent locations, and http:// www.festivalkortrijk.be/uploads/files/16/2014_plan_otodate_eng.pdf for a specific example of an installation. 62 Max Neuhas, LISTEN, http://www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/vectors/walks/ LISTEN/LISTEN.pdf. 63 Ibid. 64 David Helbich, “CV,” http://davidhelbich.blogspot.be/p/cv.html. 65 Helbich, “Drag & Drop—Guided Urban Contemplation,” http://davidhelbich. blogspot.be/2013/10/drag-drop.html. 66 Helbich, “Scores: Kortrijk Tracks: An Experimental Audio Guide for the City of Kortrijk,” https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9MqpNDDFli0R09PbjVCSmR5YTQ. 67 “Ear Room: Hildegard Westerkamp,” July 6, 2011, http://www.soundandmusic.org/ features/ear-room/hildegard-westerkamp. “Soundscape Vancouver,” http://www.sfu. ca/~truax/vanscape.html. 68 James Saunders, “Location Composites,” http://www.james-saunders.com/locationcomposites. 69 Owen Chapman, “Ecotones, Eco-territories and the Sonic Relationality of Space: An Audio Investigation of Montreal’s ‘Falaise St. Jacques’,” March 31, 2015, http://wi.mobilities.ca/owen-chapman-ecotones-eco-territories-and-the-sonicrelationality-of-space-an-audio-investigation-of-montreals-falaise-st-jacques-2. Also see http://audio-mobile.org. 70 See http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk and http://nysoundmap.org. 71 Daniel Dylan Wray, “Sheffield’s Sound Map Helps Reveal the City’s Aural Character,” The Guardian, October 25, 2013. Also see http://museums-sheffield.org.uk/ whats-on/events/2012/11/inside-the-circle-of-fire-%E2%80%93-creating-a-soundmap-of-sheffield-by-chris-watson. 72 Jason Kahn, “Unheard Kyoto (2013),” http://jasonkahn.net/radio/unheard_kyoto. html. 73 Alan Lamb, “Biographical Entry,” http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/web/ biogs/P000277b.htm. 74 Lamb, “Wogarno Wire Installation (1999–),” http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu. au/web/biogs/P000278b.htm. 75 Lamb, “SPring 8 Wind Organ (1997),” http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/ web/biogs/P000279b.htm. 76 “Alan Lamb & Chris Watson—BBC4 Interview,” YouTube video, 14:21, posted by “Dronemf S,” May 7, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smnbq25q5gw. 77 “About,” http://www.chriskallmyer.com/about-chris. 78 Chris Kallmyer, “This Distance Makes Us Feel Closer,” http://www.chriskallmyer. com/works/this-distance-doc. 79 Kallmyer, “This Distance Makes Us Feel Closer,” Vimeo video, 2:45, February 26, 2014, https://vimeo.com/87725295. 80 Eric Laska, “Notes on Site Unspecificity,” http://earwaveevent.org/article/notes-onsite-unspecificity. 81 “Supermarket Music,” YouTube video, 9:59, posted by “Carolyn Chen,” February 20, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3MdPIOnuW8. 82 Carolyn Chen, “Aisle Music,” in Supermarket Music (unpublished score, 2014), https://walkingmango.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/supermarket-scores.pdf.

276

Experimental Music Since 1970

83 “Supermarket Music—Econofoods, Northfield,” posted on January 12, 2015, https:// walkingmango.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/supermarket-music-econofoodsnorthfield. Scores at https://walkingmango.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/ supermarket-scores.pdf. 84 Chris Kallmyer, “Music for Parking Garages,” July 2011, http://www.chriskallmyer. com/works/music-for-parking-garages. 85 Kallmyer, “Sonic Cartography and the Perception of Place,” New Music Box, February 8, 2012, http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/sonic-cartography-and-theperception-of-place. 86 Christian Kesten, “willkommen zu hause,” 1996, http://www.christiankesten.de/ compositions_willkommen.htm. 87 Kesten, “Biography,” http://www.christiankesten.de/biography_e.htm. 88 Kesten, “nordbahnhof,” http://www.christiankesten.de/compositions_nordbahnhof. htm; “bahnhof zoo,” http://www.christiankesten.de/compositions_bahnhofzoo.htm; “hauptbahnhof [main station],” http://www.christiankesten.de/compositions_e_ hbf.htm. 89 Philip Corner, Pieces of (Acoustic) Reality and Ideality, Alga Marghen, C 2NMN.013, 1997, CD-R. Liner notes. 90 Hong-Kai Wang, “Music While You Work,” 2010, http://www.w-h-k.net/mwyw.html. 91 See http://lasse-marc-riek.de/fieldreports and Lasse-Marie Riek, Harbour, Herbal 1002, 2010, compact disc, http://herbalinternational.blogspot.com/2009/04/blogpost.html. 92 Lawrence English, Viento, Room 40, Taiga29, 2015, digital download, http:// emporium.room40.org/products/540303-lawrence-english-viento. 93 Eric Drott, “The Politics of ‘Presque Rien’,” in Sound Commitments, ed. Robert Adlington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 153. 94 “Presque rien ou Le lever du jour au bord de la mer (1967–70),” (catalogue/1970), http://www.lucferrari.org. 95 Quoted Drott, “The Politics of ‘Presque Rien’,” 153. 96 Mark and Olivier Namblard, Cévennes, Kalerne, KAL04, 2013, 2 compact discs. Liner notes. Also see http://www.kalerne.net/main/index.php/editions/cevennes2cd-by-marc-olivier-namblard. 97 Malcolm Goldstein, The Seasons: Vermont, Experimental Intermedia, XI 120, 1998, compact disc. Liner notes, 7. 98 Ibid., 1. 99 Ibid., 8–9. 100 Ibid., 5. 101 See Chapter 2, Harmonic Relations. 102 Ibid., 12. 103 Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Decomposing Landscape, Touch, TOUCHLINE1, 2015, digital download. Liner notes, 3. 104 Ibid., 2. 105 “Decomposing Landscape Trailer,” Vimeo video, 3:00, posted by “Audioidea,” March 4, 2014, https://vimeo.com/88149046. 106 Decomposing Landscape. Liner notes, 1. 107 “Elegy for Bangalore,” http://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=9517. 108 Manfred Werder, 20051 (Haan: Edition Wandelweiser, 2005).

Place and Time

277

109 Werder, 20051, Winds Measure, wm28, 2012, 8 compact discs. Liner notes. 110 Werder, “2005/1,” http://placetime.blogspot.com. 111 “‘2005/1’ by Manfred Werder,” May 2013, http://www.anothertimbre.com/ werder2005(1).html. 112 “2005/1: Stefan Thut,” http://www.anothertimbre.com/thut2005.html. 113 Max Neuhaus, “Place,” http://www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/vectors/place. 114 Neuhaus, “Timepieces,” http://www.max-neuhaus.info/openforms/timepieces. 115 Neuhaus, “Notes on Place and Moment,” http://www.max-neuhaus.info/ soundworks/vectors/place/notes. 116 Neuhaus, “Three To One,” http://www.max-neuhaus.info/images/ThreeToOne.gif. 117 Neuhaus, “Notes on Place and Moment.” 118 “The Music of the Elements—Llorenç Barber,” YouTube video, 3:09, posted by “sonoraestudios,” May 20, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8J_iBA_YBA. 119 For more details about Llorenç’s projects, see http://www.furious.com/perfect/ llorencbarber.html. Some excerpts of the city concerts are at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=TgZF6KBiBcQ [Liverpool] and https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=N8J_iBA_YBA (Strasbourg), and a full concert in Alba de Tormes (near Salamanca, Spain) is currently available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fTrMRsdtuGo. Also see Constructing Urban Space with Sounds and Music (Surrey: Ashgate, 2014). 120 hans w. koch, “Berlin Bahn Bells,” July 2011, http://www.hans-w-koch.net/ performances/bbb.html. 121 See “View (Carillon),” YouTube video, 7:10, posted by “Johnnyecho,” July 10, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJYhpKht6N4 for an excerpt of this performance. 122 See Bill Fontana, “Acoustical Visions,” http://www.resoundings.org/Pages/ Acoustical_Visions_Portfolio.html and http://resoundings.org/Pages/Harmonic_ Bridge1.htm. 123 See Fontana, “The Environment as a Musical Resource,” http://resoundings.org/ Pages/musical%20resource.html for much more detail on all a vast array of relevant works. 124 “Max Neuhaus: Time Piece Graz,” http://www.museum-joanneum.at/en/kunsthausgraz/about-us/architecture/time-piece-graz. 125 “Sound Works,” http://www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/list and “Drawing: Times Square, 1992,” http://www.max-neuhaus.info/images/TimesSquare.gif. See also Max Neuhaus, Times Square, Time Piece Beacon (New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2009). 126 “Philip Blackburn’s Sewer Pipe Organ,” YouTube video, 6:22, posted by “Philip Blackburn, September 24, 2011, https://youtu.be/5o7WHeo9fVU. See also “SewerOrgan Mvt1,” Soundcloud track, 17:43, posted by “Innova Recordings,” 2011, https://soundcloud.com/innovadotmu/sewerorgan-mvt1/s-Uc5wI, to compare this sound quality to the sound of the first movement before it is sent through the drain network. 127 “Philip Blackburn’s Duluth Harbor Serenade,” YouTube video, 8:35, posted by “Philip Blackburn,” September 6, 2011, https://youtu.be/gTBhM5bnIKU. 128 Christina Kubisch, KlangRaumLichtZeit: Arbeiten von 1980 bis 2000 (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2000), 26.

278 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

Experimental Music Since 1970 Ibid., 130. Ibid., 129. Ibid., 128. Phonographies, http://www.phonographies.org. “Jonathan Sterne Cylinder,” Soundcloud track, 2:23, posted by “phonographies,” 2012, https://soundcloud.com/phonographies/jonathan-sterne-cylinder. Paul DeMarinis, Paul DeMarinis: Buried in Noise (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2010), 127. Ibid., 128. Ibid., 129. Ibid., 126–39. Video excerpts at http://web.stanford.edu/~demarini/Edisoneffect.mp4. Partial, LL, Another Timbre, at70, 2014, compact disc. Liner notes. “Pripyat Piano,” http://pripyatpiano.com/enen. Eliška Cílková, Pripyat Piano (The Zone Of Chernobyl), Mathka, MTHK015, 2013, compact disc. Liner notes, 9. Jakob Kirkegaard, 4 Rooms, Touch, Tone 26DL, 2006, compact disc, http:// touchshop.org/product_info.php?cPath=2&products_id=133. Chris Watson, In St Cuthbert’s Time, Touch, TO:89, 2013, compact disc. Liner notes, http://touchshop.org/product_info.php?cPath=9&products_id=622. Ibid. (War’s Kerblog), http://warkerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/sounds-from-beirutlooking-for-room_19.html. “I Am Sorry to Decline Your Proposition,” July 26, 2006, http://warkerblog.blogspot. co.uk/2006/07/am-sorry-to-decline-your-proposition_26.html. “Mazen Kerbaj—Starry Night (excerpt),” YouTube video, 6:32, posted by “Postmeback,” January 1, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIo4dh884hE. Aki Onda, “Cassette Memories,” http://akionda.net/cassette.html. “Aki Onda Interview with Daniele Balit,” http://www.akionda.net/cassetteperfor.html. Mendi and Keith Obadike, Big House/Diclosure (Berkeley: 1913 Press, 2014), 80. Ibid., 84. Ibid., 9. Jean-Luc Guionnet and Éric La Casa, HOME:HANDOVER, Potlatch, P314, 2014, 4 compact discs. Liner notes. Brandon Labelle and Claudia Martinho, eds., Site of Sound 2: Of Architecture and the Ear, vol. 2 (Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, 2011), 67–79. Nicolas Collins, Sound Without Picture, Periplum, P0060, 1999, compact disc, http:// www.nicolascollins.com/soundwithoutpicturetracks.htm. Still (After) Lives score at http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/stillafterlivesscore.pdf. Collins, Broken Light (unpublished score, 1992), http://www.nicolascollins.com/ texts/brokenlightscore.pdf. “Profile,” http://arts.brookes.ac.uk/staff/paulwhitty.html. Paul Whitty, Stop me if You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before, in The Set Ensemble Partial (West Sussex: BORE publishing, 2015). All of these scores are available at http://midnightsledding.com/carlson/derived.html. Sergei Zagny, Fragments From Swan Lake by Piotr Tchaikovsky (unpublished score, 2003), http://conceptualism.letov.ru/sergei-zagny/Scores/022-Fragments-fromSwan-Lake.pdf. Release and description at http://fancymusic.ru/sergei-zagnyfragments-from-swan-lake-by-pyotr-tchaikovsky.

Place and Time

279

160 James Weeks, “Along the Grain: The Music of Cassandra Miller,” Tempo 68, no. 269 (2014): 53. 161 Ibid., 59–60. 162 Mira Benjamin, “Documentation//Cassandra Miller: For Mira,” October 18, 2013, http://nunord.net/wp/cassandra-miller-for-mira. 163 Weeks, “Along the Grain,” 59. 164 “Mandowa II,” Southern Mozambique: Portuguese East Africa 1943, '49, '54, '55, '57, '63, SWP Records, SWP021, 2003, compact disc. 165 Cassandra Miller, “Philip the Wanderer,” 2013, https://cassandramiller.wordpress. com/2013/08/06/philip-the-wanderer. Miller, Philip the Wanderer (unpublished score, 2012). 166 “Klangjahre,” http://www.aslsp.org/de/klangjahre.html. 167 ORGAN2ASLSP, http://www.aslsp.org/de. Also see Daniel J. Wakin, “John Cage’s Long Music Composition in Germany Changes a Note,” New York Times, May 6, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/06/arts/music/06chor.html?_r=0. 168 Stück 1998, http://stuck1998.blogspot.com. 169 Michael Pisaro, comment on “Manfred Werder—Stück 1998 Seiten 624–626 (Skiti),” January 31, 2011, http://olewnick.blogspot.com/2011/01/manfred-werder-stuck1998-seiten-624.html. 170 Brian Olewnick, “Manfred Werder—Stück 1998,” http://olewnick.blogspot. com/2011/01/manfred-werder-stuck-1998-seiten-624.html. 171 Performer Series (1999-), http://performerseries.blogspot.com. 172 Marcus Kaiser, “projektbeschreibung, ‘UNTERHOLZ’,” http://www.opernfraktal. de/_unterholz/text.html. Also see http://www.opernfraktal.de/_unterholz/video. html. 173 Kaiser, e-mail to author, October 2015. 174 Kaiser, e-mail to author, February 2015. 175 Burkhard Schlothauer, “MUSIK—ZEIT—LEBEN—RAUM,” http://www. wandelweiser.de/_burkhard-schlothauer/texts.html#Burkh. 176 Ibid. 177 Jakob Ullmann, Voice, Books and Fire 3, Edition RZ Ed. RZ 2005, 2008, compact disc. Liner notes. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Jennifer Walshe, ed., Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde (Dublin: Aisteach Foundation, 2015), 15, 121–22, 124–25. Also see https://soundcloud. com/migro/08-historical-documents-of-the for four very different examples of the Guinness Dadaists’ aural documentations. 181 Walshe, Historical Documents, xi. 182 Ibid., 3–5. 183 Ibid., 131. 184 Ibid. Translation is documented on p. 57. 185 Ibid., 44–45. 186 Ibid., 103. 187 Ibid., 102, 110–11, 134. See two versions of “The Death Of King Ri Ra,” at https:// soundcloud.com/migro/03-the-death-of-king-ri-ra-1 and https://soundcloud.com/ migro/03-the-death-of-king-ri-ra.

280

Experimental Music Since 1970

188 Walshe, Historical Documents, 105–09 and “Song Roll 5,” https://soundcloud.com/ migro/05-song-roll-5-1?in=migro/sets/historical-documents-of-the-irish-avantgarde-album-sampler. 189 Gabriel Dharmoo, “Anthropologies Imaginary (Excerpts),” Vimeo video, 7:23, https://vimeo.com/105009513. 190 Walshe, Historical Documents, 116. 191 See “Viola Torros: Vocal Fragments (1),” https://soundcloud.com/johnnychchang/ viola-torros-vocal-fragments1?in=johnnychchang/sets/viola-torros. 192 See “Viola Torros,” https://soundcloud.com/johnnychchang/sets/viola-torros and “The Music of Torros,” http://www.wandelweiser.de/_viola-torros/index.html#THE_ MUSIC_OF_TORROS. 193 Ibid., 63. 194 Babeth Vanloo and Meredith Monk, Meredith Monk: Inner Voice (New York: First Run Features, 2010). 195 Deborah Jowitt, ed., Meredith Monk (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 17. 196 Ibid., 39. 197 Ibid., 50. 198 Ibid., 145. 199 Meredith Monk, Dolmen Music, ECM 1197, 1994, compact disc. Liner notes. 200 Monk, Atlas, ECM New Series 1491/92, 1993, 2 compact discs. Liner notes. 201 Monk, Book of Days, ECM New Series 1399, 1990, compact disc. Liner notes. 202 Jowitt, Meredith Monk, 17. 203 Ibid., 56. 204 Ibid., 145. 205 Raoul Mörchen, “For Pure Love: About the German-Spanish Composer Maria de Alvear, http://www.mariadealvear.com/pages/tx_about_en.html. 206 Maria de Alvear, World, World Edition #0002, 1999, compact disc. Liner notes. 207 “Llena,” http://www.world-edition.com/pages/english/archiv/cd/cd_0005.html. See also Raoul Mörchen, “For Pure Love,” http://www.mariadealvear.com/pages/ tx_about_en.html.

7

Advocates The support networks, discussions, and encouragement of an active community quite often make the difference between writing and not writing, action and stagnation. Experimental scenes are always marginal in some way, but Berlin, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Mexico City, New York, Santiago, Seoul, and Tokyo, among other cities, have active communities and regular events that provide opportunities for this type of work. These scenes relate to each other in varying degrees, and other networks are not localized but international in character. Here are just a few examples of the initiatives, both local and international, that have fostered the continuation of experimental music in recent years. I’ll begin with two that I have experienced directly. Every summer, a dedicated group of listeners gather in London for a concert series called Music We’d Like to Hear. I wrote about the event in 2013: The “we” of music we’d like to hear is not just the curators or the performers, but the audience that has developed and grown over its nine years. . . . The performers are genuinely committed to the work. The audience is happy to be there, and is wonderfully attentive.1

The series has become a central hub of a community that centers in London but overlaps with other near and distant localities, both in programming and in the visitors drawn to it. In Miami, a series of initiatives has been masterminded by the Venezuelan composer and sound artist Gustavo Matamoros. In addition to the biannual Subtropics festival, a listening club frequently meets at the Audiotheque performance space. Listening Gallery: Under the Awnings was a curated sound installation heard by passers-by outside the ArtCenter/South Florida. At this intersection—the southwest corner of Lincoln and Meridian—it literally had a place in the community.2 Other groups have had various functions (including publishing and presenting), sizes, and degrees of longevity and formality. In addition to the groups discussed in Chapter 5, a partial list could also include the Sonic Arts Union, Fluxus, Plainsound, Tone Roads, Kalerne, Experimental Sound Studio, Nonsequitur, Frog Peak, Zeitvertrieb, Echtzeitmusik, EarPort, Experimental Intermedia, Experimental Music Catalogue, Al Maslakh, Roulette, Composers Inside Electronics, Sacred Realism, Q-02, Material Press, 23five, Touch, Wandelweiser, and the wulf. Without the support

282

Experimental Music Since 1970

that has developed in the context of such groups, much of the work discussed in this book would never have been made. The same can be said of performing musicians, many of whom provide the direct inspiration and opportunity, as well as the necessary dialogue and testing ground, to bring a work into being. The works throughout this book and this constellation of practices are riddled with questions, and the contributions of the musicians at every stage of the creation and presentation of a work are invaluable. The distribution of these activities across countries and continents makes it both physically and financially impossible to experience all of the most promising music first-hand. Fortunately there are record labels that have brought focus and initiative to the dissemination of this work. Since Mimi Johnson began it in 1978, Lovely Music has been the go-to source, not only for the works of members of the Sonic Arts Union, but for dozens of other artists. Jon Abbey began Erstwhile Records in 1999 with a focus on electroacoustic improvisation. Abbey has an active interest both in ongoing collaborations and in promising first meetings of improvisers. Live events produced by Erstwhile include the AMPLIFY festival, a multiday event held every two or three years since 2002. The youngest of this cross-section of labels is Simon Reynell’s Another Timbre, founded in 2007 in Sheffield, UK. Reynell’s active interests span across composition and improvisation, up-and-coming artists and established composers. The website is a useful companion to the label, including in-depth interviews and richly documented online projects involving multiple collaborators. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of active musicians and organizations in this field. From my own experience, I would recommend finding the work and the artists that you care about and moving outward from there. That is how this book was written.

Notes 1 Jennie Gottschalk, “Music We’d Like to Hear 2013 (III)—Cello and Piano,” http:// www.soundexpanse.com/mwlth2013iii. 2 This installation space was closed in May 2015 when the building was handed over to new owners.

Appendix Selective bibliography Collections and overviews Cox, Christoph, and Daniel Warner, eds., Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (New York: Continuum, 2004). Crispin, Darla, and Bob Gilmore, eds., Artistic Experimentation in Music: An Anthology (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014). Lucier, Alvin, Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2012). Lely, John, and James Saunders, eds., Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation (New York: Continuum, 2012). Nyman, Michael, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Piekut, Benjamin, ed., Tomorrow Is the Question: New Directions in Experimental Music Studies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014). Saunders, James, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). Zorn, John, ed., Arcana: Musicians on Music, vols I–VII (New York: Hips Road, 2000–14).

Topical books Beins, Burkhard, Christian Kesten, Gisela Nauck, and Andrea Neumann, eds., Echtzeitmusik Berlin: Selbstbestimmung einer Szene = self-defining a scene (Hofheim: Wolke, 2011). Collins, Nicolas, Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (New York: Routledge, 2009). Labelle, Brandon, Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (New York: Continuum, 2006). Labelle, Brandon, and Steve Roden, Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear (Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2009). Lewis, George, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Marley, Brian, Mark Wastell, and Damien Beaton, Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum (London: Sound 323, 2005). Prévost, Eddie, No Sound is Innocent (Matching Tye: Copula, 1995). Cassidy, Aaron, and Aaron Einbond, Noise in and as Music (Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield Press, 2013). Dworkin, Craig, No Medium (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015). Houben, Eva-Maria, and Burkhard Schlothauer, MusikDenken: Texte der Waldelweiser Komponisten (Zürich: Edition Howeg, 2008).

284

Appendix

Kelly, Caleb, Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009). Schafer, R. Murray, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994). Stevens, John, Search and Reflect: A Music Workshop Handbook (Twickenham: Rockschool, 2007).

Individual composers Ashley, Robert, and Ralf Dietrich, eds., Outside of Time: Ideas About Music (Köln: MusikTexte, 2009). Blomberg, Katja, Chico Mello, Christian Scheib, Trond Olav Reinholdtsen, and Peter Ablinger, Peter Ablinger: Hören hören (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2008). Cage, John, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961). DeMarinis, Paul, Paul DeMarinis: Buried in Noise (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2010). Johnson, Tom, Self-Similar Melodies (Paris: Editions 75, 1995). Johnston, Ben, and Bob Gilmore, eds., “Maximum Clarity” and Other Writings on Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006). Lucier, Alvin, Gisela Gronemeyer, and Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings (Köln: MusikTexte, 1995). Monahan, Gordon, Seeing Sound: Sound Art, Performance and Music, 1978–2011: Gordon Monahan (Scarborough: Doris McCarthy Gallery, 2011). Mumma, Gordon, and Michelle Fillion, Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015). Niblock, Phill, and Yvan Étienne, eds., Phill Niblock, Working Title (Dijon: les Presses du Réel Editions, 2012). Oliveros, Pauline, Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (New York: iUniverse, 2005). Panzner, Joe, The Process that is the World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performance (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Pritchett, James, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Tenney, James, Larry Polansky, Lauren Pratt, Robert Wannamaker, and Michael Winter, From Scratch: Writings in Music Theory (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015). Thomas, Philip, and Stephen Chase, Changing the System: The Music of Christian Wolff (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Wolff, Christian, Gisela Gronemeyer, and Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Cues: Writings & Conversations (Köln: MusikTexte, 1998).

Journals, series, blogs Compost and Height and Wolf Notes, wolfnotes.wordpress.com. Reductive Journal, journal.reductivemusic.com. The Experimental Music Yearbook, www.experimentalmusicyearbook.com. Surround, surround.noquam.com. Lateral Addition, lateraladdition.org. Tacet Experimental Music Review, www.tacet.eu. Sound Expanse, soundexpanse.com. Just Outside, olewnick.blogspot.com.

Appendix The Watchful Ear, www.thewatchfulear.com. Leonardo Music Journal, www.leonardo.info/lmj/index.html. KunstMusik, kunstmusik.org.

Labels and publishers Al Maslakh, almaslakh.org. Another Timbre, anothertimbre.com. Earth Ear, earthear.com. Edition Wandelweiser, www.wandelweiser.de/edition-w-w.html. Erstwhile Records, erstwhilerecords.com. Frog Peak, frogpeak.org. Gruenrekorder, gruenrekorder.de. Lovely Music, www.lovely.com. Material Press, materialpress.com. Winds Measure Recordings, windsmeasurerecordings.net. World Edition, world-edition.com. Zeitvertrieb, zeitvertrieb.mur.at.

285

Index A. Typist  173–4 Abbey, Jon  282 Ablinger, Peter  86, 112–13, 124–6, 155–60, 161–3, 177–8 Abrams, Muhal Richard  192 Aceto, Melanie  79–80 acoustic ecology  233–5, 241 actualization  9, 161, 250–2, 254, 263 Adachi, Tomomi  181 advocates 281–2 agency  10, 12–13, 27, 62, 186–7, 189, 197–203, 231 Akama, Ryoko  188 Amacher, Maryanne  128–30 Amirkhanian, Charles  178 AMM 190–3 Anderson, Casey  244 Anderson, Laurie  62 animals 166–72 Another Timbre  252, 282 architecture  31, 32, 85–9, 95, 108–10, 115, 129, 237, 265 Arias, Ricardo  94 Arnold, Martin (composer)  43–4 Arnold, Martin (filmmaker)  141 Art Ensemble of Chicago  206 Ashley, Robert  3, 5, 178–80 Ashley, Sam  22 Astro Twin  196 attention  1, 4, 23–5, 27–8, 44, 56, 78, 85, 86, 107–20, 130, 139, 142–4, 147, 158, 206, 235, 236, 252 audience  1–2, 13–14, 23, 28, 78–9, 83, 86, 113, 116, 119, 122, 129, 165, 169, 207–10, 212, 237, 240, 242, 281 Austin, Larry  3 automation 140–4 avant-garde  2, 268–9 Baghdassarians, Serge  96 Bailie, Joanna  163–4

Barber, Llorenç  253 Barge, René  26 Barlow, Clarence  185 Barrett, G. Douglas  28 Basanta, Adam  14 Battistelli, Giorgio  92 Battus, Pascal  116–17 beating patterns  15, 98, 100, 114–15, 119 Beckett, Samuel  186–7 Behrman, David  59–61, 102, 178, 211–12 Beins, Burkhard  194–5 Benjamin, Mira  216–17 Berndt, John  137 Berthet, Pierre  96 Beuger, Antoine  31–2, 136 Beugger, Megan  79–80 biophony 169–72 Biserna, Elena  237 Blackburn, Philip  254–5 Blonk, Jaap  181–5 body  29, 68, 77–85, 129–30, 164–6 borders  231–3, 243 Bosetti, Alessandro  175, 186 Bozzini Quartet  15, 44, 108 Braxton, Anthony  189, 200–1 Brecht, George  188 Brewster, Michael  120–1 Bullitt, John  69–70 Burt, Warren  102 Butcher, John  86, 196 Cage, John  1–2, 4–6, 9–10, 12, 17, 21, 27, 30, 34 n. 1, 59, 69, 90, 97–8, 135, 142, 159, 189, 193, 213, 263 4’33”  1, 5, 21, 27 Capece, Lucio  122, 196–7 Cardew, Cornelius  55, 190–1 Carlson, Erik  261–2 Carter, Kabir  88 Cassidy, Aaron  79–82, 165 Cazan, Scott  14

Index Chadabe, Joel  209–10 Chamy, Diego  197 Chang, Johnny  31, 269–70 change 2–3 chaos  12–13, 47, 171, 252 Chapman, Owen  241 Chartier, Richard  118 Chase, Stephen  230–1 Chattopadhyay, Budhaditya  250 Chauveau, Sylvain  188 Chavez, Maria  10–11 Chen, Carolyn  243–4 Chen, Jonathan  188 Chowning, John  116 Ciciliani, Marko  160 Cílková, Eliška  257–8 cities  234–6, 239–41, 253–5, 260, 281 Clementi, Aldo  134, 136–9, 142–3 Cluett, Seth  7 collage  19, 20, 64–5, 171, 178, 247, 266 Collins, Nicolas  12, 62–3, 260–1 commercial spaces  243–5 communities  146, 194, 206–7, 255, 281 control. See indeterminacy Corner, Philip  47, 100, 189, 245 Cornford, Stephen  122, 232 Corringham, Viv  238 Crane, Laurence  41–4 Cuéllar, Noé  256–7 cues  15, 203–5 Cummings, Blondell  270 Cunningham, Merce  198 Cupples, Ric  167 Curran, Alvin  193–4 Curtis, Charles  214–15 Cusack, Peter  66 Dahinden, Roland  98 dance  20, 79, 94, 119 data  70, 98, 145, 163, 184 Dauby, Yannick  169 Davies, Angharad  98 Davies, Hugh  62 Davies, Rhodri  23, 32, 194–5, 216 Davis, Micki  244 de Alvear, Maria  272 Debord, Guy  239 decisions  10, 16–17, 189, 197–203, 206

287

Deep Listening. See Oliveros, Pauline DeMarinis, Paul  114–15, 176–7, 256 Dempster, Stuart  86, 115 density  16, 29, 32, 120, 140, 144–5, 156, 158, 163, 170, 195, 241, 250 derived music  260–3 destruction  22, 67, 126 Dharmoo, Gabriel  269 Di Scipio, Agostino  26 dialogue 167–8 Diamond, Bob  102 Dietz, Bill  121–2 digitization 161–2 Diomede, James  122 discovery  17, 19, 22, 41–5, 55, 60, 61, 62, 64, 87, 93, 112, 119, 128–9, 135–6, 176, 189, 214–15, 241, 271 distance  28, 50, 68, 116–18, 156, 215, 230–1, 237, 242–3, 270 DIY. See making Drummond, Bill  123–4 Drury, Stephen  199 Duch, Michael Francis  86 Dunaway, Judy  94 Dunn, David  3, 12–13, 27–8, 64–5, 167, 169, 171, 228–30 Duplant, Bruno  23 Durrant, Phil  23 Eastman, Julius  47–8 Echtzeitmusik  28, 194 electromagnetic 68–9 ELISION ensemble  139 English, Lawrence  246 environmental sound  17, 26, 28, 30, 228, 233–4, 236–8, 244–5, 253 Epstein, Nomi  205 equal temperament  46, 49, 54 eRikm 160–1 Erstwhile Records  282 Escher, M. C.  127, 137–8, 143 Eubanks, Bryan  23 everyday  18–19, 59, 62, 89, 92–3, 155, 165, 176, 178–9, 189, 237, 243, 245, 260, 265 EXAUDI vocal ensemble  82, 174 experimental music  1–8 extended just intonation  45–54

288

Index

Fages, Ferran  208 Farina, Casey  122 Farmer, Patrick  168–9, 188, 202 feedback  13–14, 26–8, 122, 128, 166, 215–16 Feldman, Morton  27–8, 134–7, 139–40, 142–4, 146, 178 Ferrari, Luc  246 field recording  26, 65–9, 115–16, 130–2, 141, 163, 202, 227–8, 238, 241, 245–8, 250, 259 Flynt, Henry  147 Fontana, Bill  253–4 Frey, Jürg  108–10 Fullman, Ellen  61, 87 Gaburo, Kenneth  14–15, 175–6 Gagliardi, Francesco  125–6, 237 games 206–7 Gann, Kyle  121 Geissinger, Kate  213–14 Ghazala, Reed  62 Gilmore, Bob  3–4 Glass, Philip  42, 178 Glover, Richard  56 Goedhart, Johan  87 Goldstein, Malcolm  100–2, 247–50 Gordon, Douglas  164 Graham, Stephen  268–9 grids  99, 138–40, 145, 162–4, 177 groups  31, 59, 94, 189–95, 197–203, 205, 210–11, 234, 281–2 Grzinich, John  65 Guionnet, Jean-Luc  260 Günter, Bernhard  24–5 Haco 68 Hafif, Marcia  32 harmonic lattice  50–3, 250 harmonic series  46–50, 119 harmony  16–17, 45–54, 57–8, 212, 242, 247, 255 Harris, Yolande  238 Harrison, Bryn  134, 136–7, 139, 143, 145 Harrison, Lanny  270 Harrison, Lou  46, 49 Hartman, Hanna  93–4

Hastings, John P.  49 Hayward, Robin  51–4, 208 Helbich, David  239, 240 Hennix, Catherine Christer  137 hidden  64–71, 118, 158, 191 hierarchy  10, 57, 191, 193, 197–201, 207, 209, 212 history  196, 234, 250, 255–72 preservation  216, 234 Hobbs, Christopher  55–6 Holterbach, Emmanuel  68, 130, 167 home  93, 121–2, 260 house  121, 260 Hopkin, Bart  61 Houben, Eva-Maria  33–4, 269 Hughes, Sarah  188 Hugonin, James  139–40 human sound  118, 164–6. See voice Ikeda, Ryoji  97 imaginary sound  123–7 immersion  67–8, 95, 110–16, 121, 129, 134–6, 236 improvisation  13–14, 18, 61, 62, 69, 82–3, 86, 94–6, 98, 167, 175, 188–97, 206–10, 213, 238, 247–9, 257, 259, 261, 282 indeterminacy  1–2, 8–21, 85, 188–9, 201, 213, 261. See also instability accident  10–11, 81, 256 chance  10–12, 17, 85, 185, 269 surprise  14, 26, 62, 238 information  64, 110, 116, 126, 155–64 Inge, Leif  161 instability  10, 15–16, 23–24, 32, 56, 62, 79, 100, 109, 157, 192–3, 204, 214–15, 242 installations 129–30 indoor  14, 22, 26, 61, 69, 88, 90, 94–5, 96, 111–12, 121, 175–6, 212, 241, 245, 253, 256–7, 260, 264–5 outdoor  69, 86–9, 93, 110–11, 239, 242–3, 254, 281 instruments construction 59–63 found  232–3, 242 objects as  89–96

Index interaction 188–217 interviews  19–20, 175, 178–9, 241, 260 Isaacs, Ben  84 Ives, Charles  159 Jackson, John Shenoy  192 JLIAT 161–2 Johansson, Sven-Åke  91–2 Johnson, Evan  83–4 Johnson, Mimi  282 Johnson, Tom  55, 57–8, 126 Johnston, Ben  45–6, 49–51 Jones, Bonnie  173 Julian, Phil  111 Julius, Rolf  88 Kahn, Jason  207–8, 241, 250–2 Kaiser, Marcus  264–6 Kallmyer, Chris  242–5 Kanno, Mieko  81 Karassikov, Vadim  28–9 Kawasaki, Utah  196 Kelly, Caleb  11 Kendall, Craig  185 Kerbaj, Mazen  259 Kesten, Christian  245 Kim, Jiyeon  130 Kirkegaard, Jacob  130, 258 Kleeb, Hildegard  98 Knowles, Alison  93 Koch, Hans W.  253 Kolkowski, Aleksander  256 Kourliandski, Dmitri  118 Krause, Bernie  170–1 Kreutzfeldt, Jacob  260 Kubisch, Christina  68–9, 255–6 Kudirka, Joseph  203 Kuivila, Ron  120 Kumpf, Kenn  15 Kwang, Goh Lee  252 La Barbara, Joan  165–6 La Casa, Éric  260 Labelle, Brandon  260 Lamb, Alan  242 Lamb, Catherine  23, 48–9, 269–70 landscape  130–3, 172–3, 250

289

Lang, Bernhard  134, 141 Lang, Klaus  44–5 language  172–88, 266 invented languages  181, 185, 270 Lansky, Paul  178 Laporte, Jean-François  94 Lash, Dominic  34, 203–4 Laska, Eric  243 Le Junter, Frédéric  61–2 Leach, Mary Jane  119–20 Lely, John  56–7 Leonard, Cheryl  93 Lê Quan, Ninh  195 Lerman, Richard  64, 232–3 Leslie, Bill  122 Lewis, George  189, 192, 209–10, 212 Lewitt, Sol  98 Limbrick, Simon  90 listening  21–34, 43–5, 54, 64–71, 88, 93, 94, 100, 107–33, 138, 143–7, 158–61, 164–5, 182–3, 194, 196–7, 200, 204–5, 208–9, 216, 234–6, 239–40 Lockwood, Annea  70, 231 logic  14, 47, 200, 203, 214–15 London Musicians’ Collective  190 loops  12, 13–14, 26, 28, 141–3, 160–1, 177, 202, 238, 260–1 López, Francisco  115–16 Lovely Music  282 Lucier, Alvin  4, 12, 17–18, 23, 42–3, 70, 85–8, 98, 102, 119, 139, 178–9, 237, 258 Luck, Neil  77 M, Sachiko  208–9 machine  10–12, 13–14, 61–2, 68, 94–5, 173–4, 177, 185, 245 making 59–63 Malfatti, Radu  32 Mann, Chris  181 maps  49, 51, 53, 55, 97–8, 162, 227–41, 249–50, 260 Marclay, Christian  11–12 Martin, Agnes  42–3, 137–8, 146 Masaoka, Miya  69, 169 Mason, Benedict  127

290

Index

Matamoros, Gustavo  281 mathematics  45, 54, 163 combinatoriality  57–8, 81 numbers  34, 48–9, 55–8, 161, 188, 209 Matthews, Kaffe  116 McLaughlin, Scott  15–16 mediation  130–3, 236, 256 melody  42–4, 46, 56, 86, 131, 166, 176–8, 196, 199, 255, 257 memory  32, 108, 112, 123–4, 127–8, 144–5, 252–3, 256, 258–9, 265, 271–2 method. See technique Mercer, Chris  166–8 Miller, Cassandra  262–3 Mills, Joseph Clayton  188, 256–7 minimalism 42–3 Minton, Phil  82–3 Mitchell, Roscoe  206–7 Molitor, Claudia  118 Möller, André O.  48 Monahan, Gordon  122–3 Monk, Meredith  213–14, 270–2 motion  68, 78–9, 119–23 Mumma, Gordon  59–60, 178–9 Music we’d like to hear  281 Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV)  193–4 Nakajima, Rie  94–6 Nakamura, Toshimaru  26–8, 196, 208 Namblard, Marc  66, 246–8 Namblard, Olivier  246–8 nature  12–14, 64–71, 102, 115–16, 134, 163, 167–72, 231, 243, 246, 254, 272 Neuhaus, Max  111–12, 234–5, 240, 252–4 Neumann, Andrea  94 New Silence, The  31 Newman, Chris  187 Niblock, Phill  113–15 Nickel, Luke  216–17 Nicolai, Carsten  97 Nicols, Maggie  207 noise  18, 26, 31, 109, 118, 126, 155–64, 168, 176, 201, 211, 234–5, 243 non-selectiveness 16–18

non-subjectivity 3 Norment, Camille  110–11 Nuova Consonanza  193 Nyman, Michael  6–7, 60 Obadike, Mendi and Keith  179, 260 objects  20, 61–2, 64, 67, 85, 89–96, 98, 130, 210, 238, 255–7 Oesterle, Michael  174–5 Ogboh, Emeka  227–8 Oliveros, Pauline  70, 107–8, 127, 178–9, 238 Onda, Aki  259 otoacoustic emissions  127–30 Otomo, Yoshihide  64, 208–9 Panhuysen, Paul  3, 86–9 Panzner, Joe  25, 34 n. 1, 157–8, 202 Parkinson, Tim  18–21, 89–90 Parsons, Michael  55–6, 190, 231, 236–7 Partch, Harry  5, 49–50 Patterson, Lee  66–7 Payne, Maggi  211 perception  3, 22–5, 27–8, 65, 88, 107–47, 160, 216, 228, 244–5, 252 performance  14–16, 18, 28–9, 77–85, 121, 124–5, 165, 173, 181–3, 191, 199–200, 204, 251–2, 261–5 Peters, Steve  26 phonetics  172–4, 185 physicality 77–102 Pisaro, Michael  4, 16–17, 29, 125–6, 135–6, 138–40, 144, 146–7, 157–8, 187, 188, 201–3 pixelation 161–4 place 227–55 Polansky, Larry  46 position  28, 68, 107–33 power  196 –7 prescription  82, 101, 103 n. 12, 189, 239, 251 Prime, Michael  69 Pritchard, Alwynne  90–1 process  56–8, 185, 204, 209–10 chance procedures. See indeterminacy linear  23, 100, 112

Index proportion canon 163 formal  135, 140, 248 pitch/frequency/harmonic  15, 46, 49–50, 255 rhythmic  45, 255 spatial 87 psychoacoustics 127–8 questions  2–7, 17, 19–23, 25, 26, 31, 41, 45, 58, 70–1, 107, 127, 175–6, 202, 204, 231, 235, 251–2, 260 Radigue, Éliane  23–4, 213–16 radio  18, 31, 62, 122, 156–7, 159, 186, 233, 236, 241, 269 Radittya, Lintang  63 realism  19, 162, 171, 246 recording  9, 25, 26, 64–71, 85, 86, 115–18, 130–3, 155–64, 166–72, 176–8, 227–8, 231, 234, 236, 238, 241, 245–55, 255–61, 264 refuge 24 rehearsal  17, 199–200, 206 Reich, Steve  42, 177 Reinecke, Frank  54 Reinhart, Ad  42, 44 rejection 195–6 repetition  42, 45, 56, 138, 140–4, 145, 178, 193, 262 research  3–4, 97, 128, 167–8, 189, 258–9 resolution 161–4 resonance  16, 26, 60, 85–9, 110, 120, 129, 166, 207, 210, 214–15, 243, 255, 259–60 Reynell, Simon  282 Riek, Lasse-Marc  245–6 Riley, Bridget  137, 143–4 Rogalsky, Matt  12–13, 31 Rose, Jodi  130 Rose, Jon  232–3 Rosman, Carl  83 Rothko, Mark  42, 135, 146 Rowe, Keith  18, 191, 196 Rowe, Robert  209 Ryu, Hankil  173–4

291

Sabat, Marc  51, 54 Sargent, Matt  14 Sato, Minoru  14 saturation  26, 86, 88, 114, 136, 138, 143, 144–5, 159–60 Saunders, James  89–90, 157, 201, 203, 241 scales  41, 45, 47, 49, 58, 86, 127, 158–9, 160, 163, 176, 247, 263 Schaeffer, Pierre  228 Schafer, R. Murray  233–4 Schiemer, Greg  122 Schlothauer, Burkhard  23 Schmickler, Marcus  127–8 science  41–71, 128, 172 Scratch Orchestra  55, 190, 197, 236 Sdraulig, Charlie  204 Sealed Knot, The  194–5 Sfirri, Sam  186–7 shape  96–102, 173, 184–5 Shepard, Craig  237–8 Shepard tone  127 Shim, Kunsu  84–5 Shrapnel, Hugh  77 silence  21–34, 144, 191–2, 249, 258 site specificity  26, 86, 242–55 Skempton, Howard  42–3, 55–6, 137, 231 Smith, Ash  244 Smith, Linda Catlin  45 Smith, Wadada Leo  28, 192 Solomon, Bill  14 Sonami, Laetitia  116–17 Sonderberg, Adam  188 Sonic Arts Union  59, 85, 282 soundwalks 234–9 space  26, 28, 33, 53, 85–9, 95–6, 108–15, 119–21, 168–9, 207–9. See environmental sound spectral freeze  160, 163 speech 175–83 Spiegel, Laurie  110 Stäbler, Gerhard  165 stasis  45, 127, 134, 136, 137–9, 141, 143, 160 Steen-Andersen, Simon  77–9 Stevens, John  207

292

Index

Stiebler, Ernstalbrecht  44 Stuart, Greg  2, 157–8, 202 Subtropics festival  281 Sugimoto, Taku  29–31 Susam, Taylan  34 Suzuki, Akio  21–2, 62, 239–40 systems  12–14, 26–7, 47, 55–8, 60, 143–4, 174, 200, 209–13 Szlavnics, Chiyoko  42–3, 98–100, 102 Takasugi, Steven Kazuo  117–18 taste  3, 17–18, 259, 262 Taylor, Hollis  232 technique  3, 7, 11, 55–8, 61–2, 82, 94, 109, 112, 116, 127–8, 141, 155–64, 206, 214–15, 261–2 technology  10–14, 26–7, 59–63, 64–71, 131, 166, 209–13, 240–1, 253, 255–7 Teitelbaum, Richard  193, 213 Tenney, James  3–4, 23, 46–7, 50–1, 54, 119, 139 tension  28–9, 77–85 Thomas, Philip  199–200 threshold  22–5, 31, 77, 121–2, 198, 243 Thut, Stefan  10, 252 Tilbury, John  191 time  133–47, 250–3, 255–72 timing  14, 47, 65, 86, 138–40, 201, 265 Tone, Yasunao  11–12, 185 Torros, Viola  269–70 trance 22 translation  55, 58, 78, 96–102, 163, 173–5, 182, 184–8, 270 Tsunoda, Toshiya  68, 130–3, 141–2, 202 Tudor, David  12–13, 59–60, 210–11 tuning  45–54, 122, 215 turntable  10–11, 35 n. 29, 209 Ullmann, Jakob  24, 265–8 Unami, Taku  252 Vancouver Soundscape Project  240–1 Veliotis, Nikos  208 venue  23, 28, 31, 127, 242–5, 253–5, 259–60 home environment (see home) outdoor (see installations)

verticalization  112, 159–61 visual metaphors  133–47, 155–64 translation to sound  96–102, 162–3, 185 video  65, 78–9, 97, 102, 113–14, 173, 175–6, 178–80, 258, 264–5 visualization  51–3, 212 voice  14–15, 48–9, 82–3, 118–20, 124–5, 164–6, 173, 175–83, 186, 227, 231, 236, 241, 262–3, 265–8, 269–71 von Schweinitz, Wolfgang  54 Vriezen, Samuel  57–8 Wada, Yoshi  86 Waisvisz, Michel  63 Walshe, Jennifer  100, 102, 172–3, 268–9 Wandelweiser  16, 31, 39 n. 131, 42–43, 135–6, 146–7 Wang, Hong-Kai  245 Warthman, Forrest  211 Wastell, Mark  194–5 Watson, Chris  169–70, 228, 241, 258–9 Watts, Robert  102 Werder, Manfred  9, 250–2, 263–4 Westerkamp, Hildegard  235–7, 240 Whitehead, James. See JLIAT Whitty, Paul  261 Winderen, Jana  66, 172 Winter, Michael  54, 88 Wolff, Christian  2–3, 10, 14, 17, 197–200, 204–5 Wolman, Amnon  126 Wooley, Nate  173 World Forum for Acoustic Ecology  234 World Soundscape Project  234 Yan, Jun  13–14 Yoshida, Ami  14, 165–6, 196 Young, La Monte  50, 121 Yudo, Luiz Henrique  174 Yusa, Koichi  132–3 Z, Pamela  166, 177 Zagny, Sergei  174, 262 Zazeela, Marian  121 Zimmermann, Walter  49 Zorn, John  206

293

294