Unsayable Music: Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music [1 ed.] 9058679942, 9789058679949

Table of contents :
Foreword
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics
2. Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin
3. Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System
4. The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music
5. Th e Temple of Electronic Music: The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne in the 1990s
6. Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition: The Relationship between Medium and Form
Appendix I: WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000
Appendix II: WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000
Bibliography

Citation preview

Unsayable Music Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music

Unsayable Music Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music

Paulo C. Chagas

LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

© 2014 Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven/Louvain (Belgium) All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated data file or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. ISBN 978 90 5867 994 9 D / 2014 / 1869 / 34 NUR: 663 English language revision: Stacia A. Raymond Cover design: Friedemann Vervoort

Foreword

The role of the composer in society has gone through many transformations over the past 1500 years or so. In his De Institutione Musica, the sixthcentury philosopher Boethius perceived three distinctive types of musician, arranged in descending order of importance: the critic, the composer, and the performer. But composers have seldom been confined to a single category of musical activity. Throughout the Middle Ages, they were often responsible for important breakthroughs in theoretical (i.e., critical) knowledge, e.g., Philippe de Vitry’s seminal advances in rhythmic notation, meter, and isorhythm (talea and color), which laid the foundation for the Ars Nova of the 1300s. Prominent among later composers who contributed greatly to our critical understanding of musical practice was the eighteenth-century theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau. However, it was in the nineteenth century that composers frequently undertook to write about the role of music in society, as well as about themselves. Schumann and Berlioz were renowned as writers about as well as of music, but most notable—and notorious—in this regard was Wagner, who racialized musical thinking and projected his imaginings about stylistic evolution into the future. The phenomenon of the literary composer persisted into the twentieth century, with writings by Schoenberg, Hindemith, Messiaen, and Cage, among many others, dealing not only with their approach to composition but their personal worldview and philosophy as well. Paulo Chagas is one of those remarkable composers well versed not only in the methods and means of musical creation but also in theoretical issues of aesthetics, semiotics, mathematics, and philology. This book displays an exceptional grasp of a wide range of complex theoretical and philosophical issues, all of them nonetheless directly connected to the act of composing music. Indeed, it is precisely because of his passionate intellectual engagement that Chagas’s music always exhibits emotional immediacy as well as technical 5

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sophistication. Both his works and his ideas draw their inspiration from the wellspring of daily life and its frequently harsh realities. Chagas was a victim of political violence when, at age 17, he was arrested and tortured by the military dictatorship in Brazil in 1971 for collaborating with opposition groups fighting for democracy. He has described to me his ordeal in the following way: I was put in the “fridge,” a small room, refrigerated and acoustically isolated, and completely dark and cold. Various noises and sounds— howling oscillators, rumbling generators, distorted radio signals, motorcycles, etc.—shot from loudspeakers hidden behind the walls. Incessantly, the electronic sounds filled the dark space and overwhelmed my body for three long days. After a time, I lost consciousness. This auditory and acoustic torture was then a recent development, partially replacing traditional methods of physical coercion that killed thousands in Latin American prisons between the 1960s and 1990s. Such sounds injure the body without leaving any visible trace of damage. The immersive space of the torture cell, soundproofed and deprived of light, resonates in my memory as the perfect environment for experiencing the power of sound embodiment. He was freed from prison only after the intervention of a military officer who was a friend of his parents. His works continue to explore themes of power, violence, and control, using the latest technology and theoretical approaches. Thus, Chagas’s music emanates from a place within himself that is not only highly personal but also something he shares in common with the rest of us. The human condition and the relationship between music and society are recurring themes in his music. His philosophical writings are not arid speculations written in abstruse academies from the lofty heights of an ivory tower; rather, they exhibit the same immediacy and involvement with the world of ideas that his compositions do with the world of sound. Thus, theoreticians, composers, and lovers of music will all benefit from the insights and wisdom contained within the covers of this book, which is the product of nearly fifty years of asking questions, seeking answers, and creating expressive sound. Walter Aaron Clark Professor of Musicology Director, Center for Iberian and Latin American Music University of California, Riverside 6

Table of Contents

Introduction

9

1. Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

13

2. Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin

43

3. Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System

65

4. The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music

103

5. The Temple of Electronic Music: The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne in the 1990s

159

6. Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition: The Relationship between Medium and Form

203

APPENDIX I WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000

251

APPENDIX II WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000

257

Bibliography

265

7

Introduction

This book presents critical reflections on key topics of contemporary music and aesthetics and represents nearly forty years of study. The six reflections elaborate a myriad of themes emerging from both my artistic experience as a composer and my research on musical semiotics, electroacoustic and digital music, audiovisual and multimedia composition. Different approaches are offered, including from philosophy, sociology, media, and critical studies. In this sense, the reflections can be used as a guide for navigating through today’s complexities and uncertainties while seeking musical understanding. The first chapter investigates musical understanding through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy. What is musical understanding? How can we communicate that we understand a melody? The chapter provides cultural background on Wittgenstein, and analyzes his contribution to logic, ethics and aesthetics. Wittgenstein’s philosophy uses music as a tool for reflecting on the understanding of language and understanding in general. It places ethics at the core of the aesthetics and recognizes the role of a culture in shaping aesthetic understanding. The insight on Wittgenstein’s musical universe leads to questioning the relevance of applying his philosophical method to investigating contemporary music. The second chapter introduces my own theory of spectral semiotics, applying it to the analysis of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1. Spectral semiotics elaborates ideas from Husserl’s phenomenology of time consciousness, Varela’s theory of neurophenomenology and Tarasti’s existential semiotics. It explores digital tools such as sonograms for analyzing Chopin’s music, showing how his composition relates sound to affect by building fractal spectral patterns at different temporal levels, which are connected to different scales of affection. Chapter three develops a view of music as a social system of communication based on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, including his thoughts on art and media. Central notions such as the distinction between system and environment, the concept of form as the calling of a distinction (Spencer9

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Brown), the theory of autopoiesis, and the distinction between medium and form, are discussed. Luhmann’s theory of art as social system provides conceptual tools for studying meaning in contemporary art and music. The chapter also presents other views of music and society by Ruwet, Tarasti, Attali, and Kittler. The fourth chapter provides a critical account of the creativity of electroacoustic music and digital music. It examines the emergence of electroacoustic music from the background of World War II and the aesthetics of of musique concrète and eketronische Musik, which are associated with the studios of Paris and Cologne. Themes of the evolution of electroacoustic music from the 1950s to the present, including timbre composition, acousmatics, analog modulation, digital sound synthesis, and digital music are among the topics discussed. Focusing on critical ideas by authors such as Benjamin, Flusser, McLuhan, and Foerster, we trace the specific creativity that has emerged with the use of apparatuses, the transition from the analog to the digital era, and the role of radio in shaping the experimental creativity of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne. The fifth chapter is a critical documentation of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne between the years 1990 and 1999, when I worked there as Klangregisseur (sound director). The studio is presented from both the artistic and the technical point of view. Electroacoustic works produced during this era which will be discussed include: Jean-Claude Eloy (France), Denys Bouliane (Canada), Luc Ferrari (France), Michel Waisvisz (Netherlands), Jörg Birkenkötter (Germany), Younghi Pagh-Paan (South Korea), York Höller (Germany), Jonathan Harvey (Great Britain), John McGuire (USA), Paulo C. Chagas (Brazil), Marco Stroppa (Italy), Mauricio Sotelo (Spain), and Karlheinz Stockhausen (Germany). A list of the technical equipment and a list of works produced are provided in the two annexes. The sixth and final chapter is dedicated to audiovisual and multimedia composition. On the basis of Luhmann’s theory of medium and form introduced in Chapter Three, theoretical ideas of audiovisual and multimedia composition are investigated and connected with my own works. Myriad forms of audiovisual and multimedia composition are discussed: musical theater, electronic music for dance and performance, chamber opera with multimedia, interactive multimedia theater, music video, audiovisual installation, music laser installation, interactive multimedia composition, and digital oratorio. The title Unsayable Music is a reference to Wittgenstein, to whom I owe the concept of philosophy as a therapeutic activity as well as the philosophical method of observing music from the point of view of its practical use. 10

Introduction

Wittgenstein suggests that sound is only the surface of music and that the musical work conceals something more profound that can hardly be described by philosophical models or scientific theories. The infinite complexity of music can only be understood in the context of its use, which includes the understanding of the cultural and social references that create meaning beyond what is expressed by sound. From this perspective, this work relates to the tradition of the 20th century composers who, in addition to their artistic work, advanced theoretical reflections on music and composition. I would particularly like to acknowledge my gratitude to Henri Pousseur (1929-2009), with whom I studied at the University of Liège, collaborated in many composition projects, and cultivated a personal friendship. His poetical and insightful writings captivated my imagination and accompanied me abroad, first from Brazil to Liège (1980), then from Liège to Cologne (1982), and from Cologne to California (2004). My gratitude is also due to the University of California, Riverside (UCR), for providing me with the research environment for this project. The development of sound and audio technology with its tools for sound analysis, synthesis, composition, and performance has created a sort of sound fetishism that impacts the studies of electroacoustic and digital music. On the other hand, musicological and musical semiotic studies are generally devoted to the music of the past, mostly focusing on the heritage of classical and romantic music, while, at best, touching on works of reference of the 20th century. Therefore, this book aims to bridge the current gap between the technically oriented approaches of electroacoustic and digital music studies and the critical approaches of contemporary music informed by musical semiotics. In contemporary society, music faces a challenging situation. Never in the history of humankind have we had so much music available to our ears, from commercial music to the classical; from the variety of works, genres, and styles created in different parts of the world to the emerging sounds of electroacoustic and digital music. However, while in the 19th century the great musical works were appreciated as artifacts of artistic accomplishment, this is no longer true today. So-called artistic music suffers from a lack of audience and visibility. Technology plays an ambivalent role in this process. On the one hand, it makes music accessible to the masses, opening new possibilities of musical expression; on the other, it stimulates a different consciousness, which is related to the specific qualities of the machine, and tends to eliminate critical thinking, replacing it with automatism and repetition. In contemporary digital society, the interwoven relationships between arts, 11

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technology, science, and economics raises many questions about the future of music and the many ways it will continue to impact our lives. Therefore, these six reflections aim to address the issue of the changing status of music in society by providing conceptual tools for a pluralistic understanding of the diversity of aesthetics related to sound and music. These reflections aim to relate the traditional categories of musical scholarship to the new reality of music shaped by technology, which articulates new functions and domains of artistic and musical creativity. As Wittgenstein says, we have to penetrate deeper below the appearance of things in order to make visible the connections that make something meaningful. Following Wittgenstein’s invitation, we need to understand music by listening to the unsayable.

12

Chapter 1

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood? (Rhees 1981, 94)

1. Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and Music I was first introduced to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) as a graduate student at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, in the late 1970’s. Reading the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was a formative and life-changing experience; not only because of the challenging nature of the work, which requires sophisticated logical-mathematical reasoning, but more so because of the way the book eradicates any certitude a reader may have about themselves and the world. As a young man, the main lesson of this study was that if one has something to say, that it should be said clearly, otherwise it is better for it to pass over in silence. For someone intending to become a composer, this was and remains a prompting to look deeply into oneself and inquire about the real motivation of composing music, to ask what can be said through music, and to investigate how it can be done. There were no obvious answers to these questions, but the seed of curiosity had been planted. Over the years, my interest in Wittgenstein has intensified. I have studied his writings fervently and continue to attempt to connect his ideas with my research on musical meaning. The more insight I have developed, the more fascinated I’ve become by the originality of his thinking and the passionate tone of his writing. The following reflections aim to share this passion by focusing on some issues that represent but one personal interpretation of the countless points of view one might develop by reading him. I am engaged in a process of continuous self-inquiry guided by Wittgenstein’s voice. This text includes a significant amount of quotations, as I believe it is important to acquaint oneself with his unconventional style and relentless search for logical clarity. His ideas on music reveal a kind of conservative attitude that seems at odds with his progressive attempt to remove the veils of confusion caused by the limitations of language. How are we to understand this attitude toward music? Can we interpret his musical world beyond the original context to 13

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project them into a contemporary analysis of music? I undertake no attempt to draw easy conclusions, but rather, extend an invitation such as the one I received upon first reading Wittgenstein, to revisit applying his method in order to learn something new. Wittgenstein is an “intellectual myth” of the 20th century and certainly one of the most original thinkers that Western culture has ever produced.1 His philosophy reflects on issues of logic, mathematics, language, psychology, ethics, aesthetics, and religion. While his method combines the rejection of metaphysics and the scientific spirit with clarity and a simple, colloquial-like language, it is pushed to such a level of logical precision that it stretches the limits of thinking. The unorthodoxy of Wittgenstein emerges as much in his life as in his thought; his writing is almost incomprehensible and his unusual assumptions, views, and inquiries cause surprise, confusion, and discomfort. The growing bibliography on Wittgenstein bears witness to the fascination unleashed by his work and life inside and outside academic circles.2 The archives of his work—an enormous body of manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, notes, drafts, and aphorisms, which only recently became available, turned out to be a treasure chest for scholarship.3 We can expect that the fascination will continue and a profusion of new approaches will appear, seeking to illuminate his legacy through multiple perspectives by way of the connections between his life and philosophy. Wittgenstein characterized his philosophy as a therapeutic activity. He dismissed the idea that philosophy can serve as a theory to explain the world; he had great antipathy to academic life, which he considered an obstacle to promoting philosophy as a serious and productive activity. No honest philosopher, he said, could treat philosophy as a profession. He encouraged his best students to leave academia and pursue careers such as that of a physician, schoolteacher, or gardener. Above all, he abhorred a worldview grounded in science. For him, science and technology have nothing to do with the fundamental problems of the world because “there is no great essential problem in the scientific sense” (CV 10; 20).4 Criticizing the devastating 1

2 3

4

Sloterdijk suggested this mythological view of Wittgenstein taking in account both the still-lasting magic of Wittgenstein’s work—the fascination it causes among readers and scholars—and the kind of mystical aura surrounding his monastic way of life (Sloterdijk 2009, 125-29). A review of the bibliography on Wittgenstein is beyond the scope of this essay. For an overview of the efforts to make available the sources on Wittgenstein, see The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB), http://wab.uib.no [accessed on August 1, 2013]. The works by Wittgenstein are cited according to the usual abbreviations; for Culture and Value (CV ) I include the pages of both the first and the second English edition (1980, 14

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

effect that the scientific method and the cult of science exert on culture as a whole, he took the view that science would have a “theory for everything” and this characterizes for him the decline of civilization in the 20th century: “The whole modern conception of the world is based on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena” (TLP 6.371). Scientific principles are not appropriate for elucidating, for example, aesthetics and religion; rather they generate distortion, superficiality, and confusion. The intensity of his temperament reflects in the way he struggled with the problems of philosophy as well in his personal relationships. Several biographies reveal his strong personality and constant restlessness. He cultivated an attitude of severe criticism towards the values of society and the individual, which led to a kind of self-isolation, both personally and philosophically. Taking refuge from civilization, he often opted for solitude, living in remote places like the Alps of Austria or the fjords of Norway, seeking peace, tranquility, and energy to overcome his own suffering. But the attempt to escape the world resulted often in greater isolation, more sorrow and suffering, thus creating a vicious circle from which he almost never escaped (cf. Monk 1990). Sloterdijk (2009) interprets the isolation as the conscious choice of an eremitic life in order to distance himself from the world in an era when philosophy was dominated by politics and war illusions. What is embodied here is the return of a monastic moment in the moral center of bourgeois culture: “Like no other he witnessed the moral secession of an intellectual elite from the totality of mediocre conditions” (Sloterdijk 2009, 125). In Wittgenstein’s cult of the artistic and philosophical genius that engages the duty of self-transcendence as a minimum condition of existence, Sloterdijk sees a bourgeois version of Nietzsche’s Übermensch (superman). In other words, Wittgenstein is the bourgeois depiction of Zarathustra, operating with logical and philosophical precision, the creator of new values, raising himself above the ambivalence and mediocrity of the world. Carnap observed in 1927 the impact he caused when he visited the positivist philosophers of the Vienna Circle: When he started to formulate his view on some specific philosophical problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at that 1998). For the citations from Wittgenstein I use basically the English translations, which I changed—sometimes significantly—when I considered that the translation didn’t convey correctly the meaning of Wittgenstein’s German text. All emphases are in the original. 15

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very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answer came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views dogmatically […] But the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through a divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment or analysis of it would be a profanation. (Monk 1990, 244) Wittgenstein had a profound interest in music. He grew up in a family of amateur musicians, who were active patrons of Vienna’s musical circles. Ludwig’s father, Karl, was a businessman who amassed one of the largest fortunes in the iron and steel industry in imperial Austria and also played the violin. His mother was Leopoldine Kalmus, an accomplished pianist who had extraordinary sight-reading ability. Ludwig was the youngest of the family. Of their eight children, two dedicated themselves to music: his brother Hans, the eldest son, was a child prodigy who began composing at age four and had intended to follow a career in music, before committing suicide. His brother Paul pursued a career as a concert pianist; he had his right arm amputated during the First World War but managed to continue performing only with his left hand. It was for him that Ravel wrote his Piano Concerto in D Major, the concerto for the left hand. A number of famous artists performed in the salons of the Wittgenstein mansion in Vienna in the beginning of the 20th century, such as the young Pablo Casals, Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler, and the famous violinist Joseph Joachim with his string quartet. Joachim introduced Johannes Brahms to the family; Brahms gave piano lessons to their two daughters and regularly attended concerts in the house. One of the major works of Brahms’s last years, the Clarinet Quintet with op. 115, was premiered at the mansion. Growing up among so many musical talents, the young Ludwig became a great admirer of the repertoire of musical classicism and romanticism. He only learned to play the clarinet when he was thirty years old, while pursuing training as a schoolteacher. He had perfect pitch and showed an exemplary ability to explain music. He was also known for his exceptional talent in whistling; he used to whistle Lieder by Franz Schubert, his favorite composer, accompanied by the piano. Despite his great interest in music, he did not develop any theory or musical aesthetics. However, the references to music, especially the analogies between music and language, pervade his philosophy. A significant body of 16

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

thoughts on music and musical life appears in Culture and Value [Vermischte Bemerkungen], a collection of notes, aphorisms, and fragments covering the period between 1914 and his death in 1951, which was first published in 1977. This work addresses themes of philosophy, art, science, culture, and religion. Some parts are autobiographical and reveal personal beliefs and traits of his personality: artistic preferences, identification with certain traditions, and the continuous struggle with the problems of philosophy and man. The observations of Culture and Value give clear evidence of Wittgenstein’s musical taste and attachment to the music of the 19th century, particularly to the German composers and the Viennese tradition: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Wagner. There are also many references to Josef Labor (1842-1924), a Czech composer, pianist, and organist who became blind at a young age and whose career was sponsored by Wittgenstein’s family. Ludwig greatly appreciated his style of virtuosic interpretation.

2. Saying and Showing The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) was the first and only book Wittgenstein published in his lifetime. It covers a period of seven years: from 1911, when he was a Russell protégé in Cambridge, to 1918, when he was serving as an officer in the Austrian army during World War I. Published in German in 1921 and in English in 1922, the Tractatus reflects on the philosophy of logic and language, metaphysics, and ethics. The text is organized under seven major aphorisms, which are each followed by a hierarchy of propositions that give the impression of being increasingly detailed elucidations [Erläuterungen], but actually function as self-descriptive commentaries [Bemerkungen]. The writing is dense and poetic without traps or provocations, without fear of itself appearing incomplete and fragmented. He does not try to seduce the reader with the illusion of an easy solution or a final interpretation. Contrary to what the title suggests, the Tractatus is far from being a work of logical perfection. In the last two paragraphs, he expresses the surprising paradox of his whole philosophy: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after climbing up it.) 17

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He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. (TLP 6.54) What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. (TLP 7) What does it mean here to “throw away the ladder”? What is the subliminal message of a text that cancels itself? The reader, who is urged in the beginning to climb the arduous rungs of a treatise on dogmatic metaphysics, discovers at the end that he must discard everything he has learned so far in order to continue. The exhortation to throw away the ladder is a challenge to transcend the boundaries of logic and rational thought. Wittgenstein addresses his readers almost like a Zen master that speaks to his disciples by means of paradoxes. The master leaves us perplexed, hurls us into the abyss of doubt, takes the ground from under our feet, and invites us to swirl inside the vortex of the uncertainties of the world. Narrow and winding is the path of knowledge moving upwards from the illusion of metaphysical clarity to the mystical ineffability of existence. He rejects the thesis and philosophical doctrines: “Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations” (TLP 4.112). The central and revolutionary idea of the Tractatus is that any attempt to say something philosophical results in nonsense. The task of philosophy is thus to trace the boundaries between what can be said and what cannot be said but only shown. The relation between saying and showing is not a dualism; they are incompatible, mutually exclusive categories: “What can be shown cannot be said” (TLP 4.1212). The saying is what can be expressed through logical-scientific language using an objective terminology. The showing is what cannot be said within the positivist discourse, what is excluded from the objectivity consistent with logical systems. He is concerned with protecting the positivist discourse against metaphysical absurdity. When he refers to the limits of language, he is not evoking ordinary everyday language but the language of science and philosophy. Towards the end of the Tractatus he affirms: “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (TLP 6.522). For Wittgenstein, the propositions of logic express only imperfectly the aspects of reality. “Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental” (TLP 6.13). We can logically understand even a proposition that makes no sense because it is not consistent with the reality of the world. Such propositions are, for example, the tautology

18

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

and the contradiction:5 “A tautology has no truth-conditions, since it is unconditionally true: and a contradiction is true on no condition. Tautologies and contradictions lack sense” (TLP 4.461). Tautologies and contradictions are the limit of language and thought and therefore the limit of the world. The tautology and the contradiction do not say anything, because they are not located in the space between the true and the false: “A tautology leaves open to reality the whole—the infinite whole—of logical space: a contradiction fills the whole of logical space leaving no point of it for reality. Thus neither of them can determine reality in any way” (TLP 4.463). Wittgenstein considered the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to be primarily a book of ethics. But his conception of ethics is unique. Ethics is a discourse of human existence that transcends the factual world. The principles of ethics cannot be defined or analyzed by external characteristics. The main function of ethics in his view, is to give sense to the world: “The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it happens, in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value” (TLP 6.41). Just as with logic, ethics does not allow itself to be expressed: “Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)” (TLP 6.421). But, in opposition to logic, ethics does not show the structure of the world. The propositions of ethics and aesthetics, as well as of logic, are pseudo-propositions that say nothing of what they want to say, but show something that is not what they give the impression of saying. And unlike logic, ethics and aesthetics are not a “mirror-image” of the world. They do not describe facts, but simply show. Ethics and aesthetics are predicates of the thinking subject and not properties of the world. This conception of ethics is influenced by Schopenhauer’s philosophy in the sense that man, in knowing himself as a thinking subject, is conscious of his will. However, while for Schopenhauer “the thinking subject is in the world which is the manifestation of will”, for Wittgenstein, “the thinking subject is not a part of the world, but its limit: it is now as metaphysical, as real or unreal as the will” (Griffiths 1974, 103; emphasis in the original). This gives a different view of ethics and aesthetics. For Wittgenstein, aesthetics and ethics can be one in a way that was not possible for Schopenhauer: “To view the world sub specie aeternitatis is to view it as a whole—a limited whole.

5

A tautology occurs when the same thing is said twice in different words, a kind of redundancy that is generally considered a figure of rhetoric or the expression of a certain style. Wittgenstein was the first to apply the concept of tautology to the redundancies of propositional logic. 19

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Feeling the world as a limited whole—it is this that is mystical” (TLP 6.45).6 He uses the term sub specie aeternitatis as synonymous with transcendental. It emphasizes the two different ways of accessing reality: the saying and the showing. The form of showing is the sub specie aeternitatis (transcendental) observation, which has the world as its backdrop. It is the domain of ethics and aesthetics: The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis, and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics. The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside. (TB 7.10.16) The aesthetic attitude, as well as ethical experience, belongs to the sphere of transcendental showing. The aesthetic experience is the observation of the world as a limited whole from the “outside” by means of a complete single object: the artwork. To understand the artwork we must first separate it from its environment. Whoever listens to music in a concert hall, at home, or using a digital mobile device must first isolate the music from the ambient noise. After that, the world becomes the world of music, the ambient noise disappears, and the music takes up all the space. The music becomes the world. It is this ability of artwork to see the world as a whole through a limited space of facts—the artwork—that creates the experience of surprise. The artwork is true regardless of its relation to the world. It conveys, at the same time, an experience of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. In his Lecture on Ethics (LE), Wittgenstein links ethics to the existential experience of surprise. This same observation appears in the Notebooks: Aesthetically, the miracle is that the art world exists. That there is what there is. Is it the essence of the artistic way of looking at things, that it looks at the world with a happy eye? (NB 4.11.16) The key to understanding the “mysticism” of this philosophy lies in the attitude toward the world: “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is” (TLP 6.44). Aesthetic contemplation can serve as a logical interpretation of the world—i.e., can help you see the world correctly and can simultaneously 6

For an account of Wittgenstein’s conception of ethics in relation to Schopenhauer, see Griffiths (1974). 20

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

evoke a mystical experience. It helps us to be happy, to live in harmony with the world. But it is also clear that there is unhappiness in the world and that is why art can serve as a remedy, as a therapy to find a good and happy life. When life itself becomes art, then humans live happily. A happy life is the purpose of existence according to this philosophy, and is expressed through artwork. Art is an expression and artwork is the complete expression. The artwork both says about itself and shows itself: “The work of art does not seek to convey something else, just itself” (CV 58; 67). Art has a “mystical” mission, especially music. It has to express what ordinary language cannot express, i.e., the unsayable, according to the last paragraph of the Tractatus.

3. Logic and Representation: Sound and Melody as States of Affairs Early in the Tractatus, an example from sound is introduced to illustrate the properties of the objects that constitute a state of affairs [Sachverhalt]: “Notes must have some pitch” (TLP 2.0131). Things do not exist as isolated entities: “It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs” (TLP 2.011). The objects are combined to constitute a state of affairs and the internal properties of the objects constitute all the possibilities of combining into states of things; the possibility of its occurring in states of affairs is the form of an object (TLP 2.0123; 2.01231; 2.014-2.0141). Anything that exists in the world can only exist in a space that determines the possibilities of all its internal properties. The statement that “notes must have some pitch” is an analogy. What makes a sound a musical sound is its logical space, i.e., the possibilities of establishing a state of affairs. Pitch is an internal property of the sound, a logical condition of its existence. The sound needs to be heard, i.e., it has to be distinguished from the sounds of the world, needs to have a “pitch”, which sets it apart from other sounds. The pitch, which is determined by the frequency of the sound vibrations, is an external property that distinguishes, for example, the sound of a flute from the sound of a contrabass. The musical scale consists of tones of different pitches—the musical notes. The musical tone with a pitch—the musical note— is therefore a state of affairs. But, besides the pitch, the musical tone has other properties such as timbre, intensity, and duration. The sounds of each instrument have different timbres and the same instrument can produce tones with varying timbres and intensities. The sine wave oscillator can generate “pure” electronic sounds with precise frequencies (pitches). The sinusoidal sound is a logical abstraction that serves to isolate specific properties of sound vibrations. The musical tones 21

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are complex phenomena, formed by the sum of vibrating constituents called partials (or overtones), which determines the quality of the sound spectrum. An instrumental or vocal sound can be interpreted as a sum of partials evolving in time. The sound spectrum can be analyzed or synthesized through mathematical operations and also visually represented. The mathematical calculations that allow us to analyze or synthesize sounds, as well as the systems of visual representation (e.g., sonogram), are analogies of sound, which serve to display states of affairs. Even when it comes to a “pure” sinusoidal sound generated electronically, it exists within a given logical space. A musical tone never exists alone. We always listen to various sounds, a simultaneity of sounds. In music, successive sounds make up the melody and the simultaneous sounds that constitute chords. A melody or chord is a complex state of affairs, which can be resolved (analyzed) into a statement about their constituents (TLP 2.0201). For instance, the melody can be seen as a sequence of pitches, intervals, movements, etc.; a chord can be analyzed according to the intervals of its notes, the relation of the root-tone to a scale degree, the harmonic functionality etc. The individual tones that constitute a melody or a chord are “independent in so far as they can occur in all possible situations, but this form of independence is a form of connection with states of affairs, a form of dependence” (TLP 2.0122). These forms of dependence and independence, the possibility of occurring in states of affairs, are the form of a sound object (TLP 2.0141). This form is logical and internal. It cannot be expressed, it shows itself. The pitch, timbre, and intensity are not external to the sound, but they are essential characteristics of sound. Electroacoustic music can be composed of sounds with specific properties that cannot be translated into the traditional parameters of sound—pitch, timbre, and intensity. For example, it can be made of “noise” recorded from the acoustic environment and electronically processed until the original source becomes unrecognizable; but it can also be made of “noise” generated by electronic processes of sound synthesis. The noise may have different characteristics of which the electronic music composition takes advantage. In this case, the noises constitute the sound objects of the music and the musical logic is the result of the connections of these objects in their possible states of affairs. From an external point of view, the noise can be described as a sound that is much more complex than any instrumental or vocal sound, and therefore much more difficult to put into words that are commonly used to describe musical notes. The concept of pitch may not apply because one of the characteristics of noise is to be formed of non-periodic sound vibrations that do not have a clear pitch. However, the spectral complexity of noise is an external property; what matters is to know its internal properties, the possible 22

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

states of affairs that determine its form. The logic of these states of affairs can be related to different types of knowledge and practices, for example, to the knowledge of the apparatuses and programs for creating and manipulating electronic sounds; the space of the states of affairs may reflect the mode of operation of these devices, as Flusser shows (cf. Flusser 2000; 2011). A concern of the Tractatus is the relationship of a representation to what is represented. This relationship is investigated through the concept of image [Bild]. The image consists of several elements and has in common with reality the logical form, which is the form of the reality. Wittgenstein makes an analogy to music to explain the relationship between image and reality: A gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, sound-waves, all stand to one another in the same internal relation of depicting that holds between language and the world. They are all constructed according to a common logical pattern. (TLP 4.014) The expressions “musical idea”, “musical thought”, and “musical theme” are synonymous for melody. They share the same logical construction of musical notation, which, in turn, has in common the same logical construction of the gramophone, of the record’s grooves, and of the digital representation of sound. All these forms of representation share an internal relationship that is similar to the relationship between language and the world. There is a logical rule that allows us to reconstruct the symphony from the score or from the grooves of the vinyl record or from the numerical combinations of the computer. It is precisely this rule that makes for the similarity of these internal settings that seem to be so different in nature. This rule, according to Wittgenstein, is the “law of projection”, which relates to the translation of an idea or a thought, from one context to another. “In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses” (TLP 3.1). In analogy to that, we can say that in a melody, a thought is expressed in a way perceptible to the senses. And for Wittgenstein, just as it is clear that a phrase is not a blend of words, the theme in music is not a blend of notes (TLP 3.141). What constitutes a phrase or melody is that its elements (the words or the notes) stand in a determinate relation to one another. Both the phrase and the melody are “articulated”. Whoever does not understand the meaning of a melody does not understand the music. However, the melody is not a meaningful proposition; it says nothing: “A melody is a kind of tautology, it is complete in itself; it satisfies itself” (NB 4.3.15). The only thing one can perceive in the melody is its logical structure. 23

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A melody is just a melody as music is just music. The melody—and thus the music—shows what cannot be said. That is why the melody is a privileged instrument to capture reality in its structure, as different melodies point to the diversity of what cannot be said.

4. Philosophy as Therapy: Understanding the Melody The second philosophy presented in Philosophical Investigations is a collection of fragments, notes, aphorisms, and reflections that covers the period 1930-1948. The focus of these reflections makes the shift from logic to grammar and is an incomplete book, aiming to show the impossibility of giving a description of the world as a whole. This work is in a style very different from the Tractatus; no more logical propositions but a disconnected discourse focused on ordinary language and operating with comparisons and analogies. Wittgenstein explores the complex nature of the mind, the restlessness of simultaneous thoughts that characterizes our experience. He proposes a therapeutic exercise of reflection for releasing us from the compulsivity of language; he points to the obsessions and traps of our language, as if language would conspire against us: “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language” (PI §109). Language produces illusions that are deeply rooted in us because of the limitations of our language. He wants to point to these illusions, which are the source of our misunderstanding. “Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us” (PI §126). For him, “The problems of life are insoluble on the surface and can only be solved in depth.” (CV 74; 84). Music shows that we have to dive into the depths, beyond the surface of the sounds, to understand its complexity: Music, with its few notes and rhythms, seems to some people a primitive art. But only its surface is simple, while the body which makes possible the interpretation of this manifest content has all the infinite complexity that is suggested in the external forms of other arts and which music conceals. In a certain sense it is the most sophisticated art of all. (CV 8; 11) Music is the most refined of all art because it hides its complexity in a simple surface. The surface of music gives access to a complexity that we try to understand by using language. Wittgenstein’s ideas on music influence the way he reflects on language, exploring the connections that may exist between 24

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the linguistic phrase and the musical phrase. What does it mean to understand a spoken phrase? What does it mean to understand a melody? He articulates these thoughts in the Brown Book, a series of lectures dictated in 1934-35, which is considered a preparatory work for Philosophical Investigations. Observing the strange illusion that possesses us when “repeating a melody to ourselves and letting it make its full impression on us, we say ‘This melody says something’, and it is as though I had to find what it says” (BrB II §17), he claims that the melody doesn’t say anything that we can express in words or pictures. And if we recognize that, we should say that, “It just expresses a musical thought.” In other words, he emphasizes the idea of melody as a tautology, a phrase that expresses itself and nothing more. Everything that is said, is said by the melody itself, and not by something outside it. How does, in such a view of music, individual perception and subjectivity come into play? Wittgenstein is not concerned with providing a subjective explanation of music. Rather, he puts himself in the position of a musician, reflecting on the different ways to play a melody: “But surely when you play it you don’t play it anyhow, you play it in this particular way, making a crescendo here, a diminuendo there, a caesura in this place, etc.” (BrB II §17). How do we justify playing the melody in this manner and not differently? He says that we can explain the specific performance by comparing the melody to a phrase: “At this point of the theme, there is, as it were, a colon” (BrB II §17). He considers the “right” tempo of the melody. As we know, playing a melody in a different tempo can create a completely new meaning. He asks: “What it is like to know the tempo in which a piece of music should be played?” And the idea suggests itself that there must be a paradigm somewhere in our mind, and that we have adjusted the tempo to conform to that paradigm. But in most cases if someone asks me, “How do you think this melody should be played?”, I will, as an answer, just whistle it in a particular way, and nothing will have been present to my mind but the tune actually whistled (not an image of that). (BrB II §17) There are two interesting things to observe here in Wittgenstein’s rhetoric: First, the idea that it should be a paradigm in our mind telling us how to play the melody, what the correct tempo is, the dynamics, the punctuations, etc. Secondly, the view that the melody can be represented through something; for example, I can whistle the melody to show someone the correct tempo of the melody. But both assumptions turn out to be wrong, as he explains: What is present in my mind is the whistled melody and nothing else. Wittgenstein does not deny that understanding a musical theme may consist in finding a 25

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form of verbal expression that is thought of as equivalent to the theme. The same applies for the understanding of a facial expression: We can say, “Now I understand the expression of this face” (BrB II §17), and what happened is that we found a word that conveys the expression. However—and this is the crucial point—the verbal expression we associate with the musical theme or the words we use to describe the face are not the understanding itself. “Consider also this expression: ‘Tell yourself that it’s a waltz, and you will play it correctly’” (BrB II §17). Here, the word correct indicates that the musician knows what a waltz is, because he has learned the rules for a successful performance and the verbal image of the word waltz triggers this implicit knowledge. He invokes the understanding of a musical phrase as an analogy of understanding language because he wants to say that, in music, understanding comes from within, from doing the performance, and not from a reference to something outside projected onto it: What we call “understanding a sentence” has, in many cases, a much greater similarity to understanding a musical theme than we are inclined to think. But I don’t mean that understanding a musical theme is more like the picture one tends to make oneself of understanding a sentence; but rather that this picture is wrong, and that understanding a sentence is much more like what really happens when we understand a melody than at first sight appears. For understanding a sentence, we say, point to a reality outside the sentence. Whereas one might say “Understanding a sentence means getting hold of its content; and the content of the sentence is in the sentence”. (BrB II §17) The concept of philosophy as a therapy (PI §254) conveys the idea that our concern with building models of elucidation is an obstacle to our progress, something that binds us and prevents us from developing our thinking. The goal is not to produce new stable conclusions, but lead us to change our way of thinking and approaching problems. McGuinn suggests that Wittgenstein’s philosophy, “aims to engage the reader in an active process of working on himself; it also underlines the fact that the reader’s acknowledgment of Wittgenstein’s diagnoses of philosophical error is a vital part of his method” (McGuinn 1996, 22). This therapeutic approach is essentially a slow process: “My sentences are all to be read slowly” (CV 57; 65); the patient is gradually led to a new understanding of the nature of the problems that were disturbing him; this understanding allows him to recognize that he was seeking pleasure in the wrong way, and this should bring him peace. 26

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Wittgenstein’s writing style is complex and distinctive. He shapes the philosophical process as an internal dialog using the voice of an interlocutor. The voice is introduced either indirectly through observations or directly through the use of quotations marks. The dialog presents the situation in which someone succumbs to the traps of language while the therapeutic voice examines concrete examples of how to seek clarity and understanding. Due to these multiple voices, his style has often been compared to music and particularly to polyphony. We can say that the different voices with their specific timbres play individual roles in the thematic development; they appear and disappear, join other voices in new contexts and connections. Wittgenstein introduces the concept of Übersicht, which is translated in English as “perspicuity”, to define a philosophical attitude that seeks to understand things by making visible their connections. This is a significant difference from an understanding produced by a theory of explanation, which is the common case in metaphysics and science. An Übersicht is the kind of understanding produced, for instance, by a work of music, a poem, or other work of art. Our language lacks Übersicht, because of the grammar, which obscures our capacity to see the connections between things: A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words. Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Here the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases. The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?). (PI §122)7 Polyphony is but one of many musical metaphors that have been proposed for interpreting Wittgenstein. Eggers, for example, analyzes this method as a “musical” elaboration of material that can be viewed in different ways. Wittgenstein operates with figures emerging from an unspeakable background; he develops a technique of changing points of view [Blickwechsel], moving from one figure to another or detaching figures from a noisy, unutterable background (cf. Egger 2011, 232). This unspeakable background is what 7

“Weltanschauung” It is a fundamental concept of German 19th century philosophy. It indicates a comprehensive conception of the world of an individual or a particular community inside geographic borders or sharing values such as linguistic, political, cultural, etc. 27

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allows music to develop audible meanings. When we listen to a musical work, we are necessarily recognizing figures that are formed on a background, which, at the same time, is not openly manifest. In a musical work one cannot simultaneously realize all layers of expression. There is no fixed point functioning as a stable state of affairs for interpreting music. In the field of music there are states of affairs, but these are intentional, i.e., they are objectifications of subjects. The listener is an integral part of the process of musical meaning. For Wittgenstein, there is no prototype of understanding. We apply the word understand according to each situation. The aesthetic understanding, especially the musical understanding, is a paradigm of the hermeneutic understanding of language. With this the musical analogy, he guides us through the labyrinths of understanding: “Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about” (PI §203). Music has a more transparent grammar and therefore can help to elucidate the grammar of language, which is more opaque. Nevertheless, he does not transform the musical phrase into a paradigm of understanding; he is not concerned with developing a general model of comprehension based on musical understanding. For Chauviré (1986), Wittgenstein uses the analogy between the melody and the phrase in order to achieve an Übersicht [overview] of the different applications the word understanding can have. He uses the analogy as a bilateral tool, going back and forth between music, language, and other kinds of representation such as pictures, faces, gestures, etc. The analogy creates a reciprocal relationship that serves to illuminate both terms of the comparison. He doesn’t want us to think that music is the model of understanding; he suggests exploring some internal similarities that may exist between relative cases. The analogy points to the similarities but also to the differences between different cases of understanding. Instead of paradigms to explain everything, his philosophy has to operate with partial models that are instruments of making analogies. These instruments are called objects of comparison [Vergleichsobjekte]. According to Chauviré, Wittgenstein rejects the dogmatic—even perverse— use of paradigms in all research including philosophy, psychoanalysis (Freud), ethnology, physics, and mathematics (cf. Chauviré 1986, 1161).

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5. Language Games: Musical Understanding Wittgenstein’s theory of language games became one of the most powerful arguments of modern and postmodern pluralism (Sloterdijk 2011, 128). What is a language game? It is an object of comparison for exploring similarities and differences that help to clarify some aspects of the language: Our clear and simple language-games are not preparatory studies for a future regimentation of language—as it were first approximations, ignoring friction and air-resistance. The language-games are rather set up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities. (PI §130) The analogy between the melody and the sentence is an example of a language game. Chauviré distinguishes some strategic functions of this specific language game: (1) there is a similarity of family between the musical phrase and the verbal phrase; (2) there is no prototype of understanding; (3) musical understanding emphasizes important aspects of understanding. What is the understanding of a musical theme? How can we say that we understand a melody? Similarly, as he wrote in the Brown Book, he asks himself: Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a sentence lies nearer than one thinks to what is ordinarily called understanding a musical theme. Why is just this the pattern of variation in loudness and tempo: One would like to say “Because I know what it’s all about.” But what is it all about? I should not be able to say. In order to ‘explain’ I could only compare it with something else which has the same rhythm (I mean the same pattern). (One says “Don’t you see, this is as if a conclusion were being drawn” or “This is as if it were a parenthesis”, etc. How does one justify such comparisons?—There are very different kinds of justification here.) (PI §527) By saying that music conveys nothing but itself, Wittgenstein rejects the causal approach according to which music has the essential function of producing affects and emotions, the meaning of which is intentionally incorporated into musical signs. The belief that music expresses nothing but itself is in line with the idea of musical autonomy. 29

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It has sometimes being said that what music conveys to us are feelings of joyfulness, melancholy, triumph, etc. etc. and what repels us in this account is that it seems to say that music is an instrument for producing in us sequences of feelings. And from this one might gather that any other means of producing such feeling would do for us instead of music.—To such an account we are tempted to reply “Music conveys to us itself !” (BrB II §22) This notion of musical autonomy can be easily mistaken for self-sufficiency, as if music had the capability to speak about itself. The crucial idea is that the understanding of music cannot be explained causally. Although, if there could be something through which we could express our understanding of music—such as a word we utter, or a facial expression or gesture, these expressions can demonstrate understanding, they say nothing about the essence of the understanding. The understanding is embedded in music, in a melody, a phrase, a theme, etc. Wittgenstein asks how one can recognize that another person understands a musical thought. He makes an analogy between someone listening to music, drawing a face, or playing an instrument with understanding; he asks how this understanding is to be communicated: What does it consist in: following a musical phrase with understanding? Observing a face with a feeling for its expression? Drinking in the expression on the face? Think of the demeanor of someone who draws the face with understanding for its expression. Think of the sketcher’s face, his movements;—what shows that every stroke he makes is dictated by the face, that nothing in his sketch is arbitrary, that he is a delicate instrument? It is really an experience? I mean: can we say that this expresses an experience? Once again: what does it consist in, following a musical phrase with understanding, or, playing it with understanding? Don’t look inside yourself. Ask yourself rather, what makes you say that’s what someone else is doing. And what prompts you to say that he has a particular experience? Indeed, do we ever actually say that? Wouldn’t I be more likely to say of someone else that he’s having a whole host of experiences? I would perhaps say, “He is experiencing the theme intensely”; but ask yourself, what is the expression of this? (CV 51; 58) 30

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What emerges here is the issue of internal experience, which is recurrent in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Understanding is not caused by an external factor, but is internal. The understanding of a musical phrase (or a work of music) is like the sudden emergence of an acoustic configuration for which we give an interpretation. We understand music like we recognize the expression of a face or a drawing. Understanding arises out of an impulse; it happens like a “click” in our mind (Chauviré 1986, 1165), an explosion of meaning that leads us to connect things and through which we experience the unity: “I want to remember a melody and it escapes me; suddenly I say ‘Now I know it’ and I sing it. What was it like to suddenly know it? Surely it can’t have occurred to me in its entirety in that moment!” (PI §184) Wittgenstein refers frequently to gesticulations [Gebärde] and gestures [Geste] to illustrate the problem of understanding. The metaphor of gestures is a recurrent one in Culture and Value and Philosophical Investigations: This musical phrase is a gesture for me. It creeps into my life. I make it my own (CV 73; 83). I should like to say: “These notes say something glorious, but I do not know what.” “These notes are a powerful gesture, but I cannot put anything side by side with it that will serve as an explanation.” (PI §610) What is being emphasized here is the notion that musical understanding does not consist in the gestures and movements you can make while listening to music. Gesture is only a reaction in line with the sensations we may have, the movement we may make, or even the words that can accompany our understanding. Wittgenstein disassociates everything exterior that points to the understanding from the understanding itself: Understanding and explaining a musical phrase. – The simplest explanation is sometimes a gesture; another might be a dance step, or words describing a dance.—But isn’t our understanding of the phrase an experience we have while hearing it? And what function, in that case, has the explanation? Are we supposed to think of it while we hear the music? Are we supposed to imagine the dance, or whatever it may be, as we listen? And supposing we do,—why should that be called hearing the music with understanding?? If seeing the dance is what matters, it would be better that, rather than the music, were performed. But that is all a misunderstanding. (CV 69; 79) 31

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Understanding of music is expressed in a certain way, both in the course of hearing and playing and at other times too. This expression sometimes includes movements, but sometimes only the way the one who understands plays, or hums, occasionally too parallels he draws and images, which, at it were, illustrate the music. Someone who understands music will listen differently (with a different facial expression, e.g.), play differently, hum differently, talk differently about the piece that someone who does not understand. His appreciation of a theme will not however be shown only in phenomena that accompany the hearing of playing of the theme, but also in an understanding of music in general. (CV 70; 80) Gestures and gesticulations appear as primitive language games with aesthetic value. Although gestures are not articulated like language, they say more than a thousand words compared to traditional aesthetic discourse. The gesture as the first and last image of a silent understanding appears as a primitive and ultimate manifestation of an aesthetic appreciation, which it is impossible to formulate orally with accuracy. The gesture may be considered an external index pointing to a specific understanding, but understanding itself is internal. If it were external there would be a rule whereby a certain gesture would be correlated with a certain understanding. Gestures do not belong to listening with understanding, but are part of the music in the same way that music can trigger emotions and emotions can be associated with the way we listen to music. For Wittgenstein, the gesture realizes the impossibility of describing what we feel and therefore the inadequacy of logical and scientific theories for clarifying music.

6. Rules and Forms of Life If music expresses nothing but itself, how do we make aesthetic judgments? How can we set standards to compare works of art? How can we communicate about art using language? Wittgenstein repeatedly emphasizes that words such as “beautiful” and the like can be used as interjections, but play no real role in discussions of art. In the notes of his lectures in Cambridge taken by his students, he says: It is remarkable that in real life, when aesthetic judgments are made, aesthetic adjectives as ‘beautiful’, ‘fine’, etc., play hardly any role at all. Are aesthetic adjectives used in a musical criticism? You say: “Look at this transition”, or “The passage is incoherent”. Or you say, in a poetical 32

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criticism: “His use of images is precise”. The words you use are more akin to ‘right’ and ‘correct’ (as these words you use are ordinary speech) than to ‘beautiful’ and ‘lovely’. (L&C §8) This seems exaggerated, since it is common sense to use such adjectives to qualify our feelings towards works of art. However, Wittgenstein is not concerned about ordinary conversations. He reflects on the use of language when it comes to discussions between experts—such as scholars—about the rightness or wrongness of works of art, in the sense that it can be debated, accepted, or denied. As Schulte claims, the idea of aesthetic standards to judge the value of works of art seems to be in contradiction with the “more common view that aesthetic judgments ultimately depend on personal taste, on education and culture” (Schulte 1990, 77). It seems that we learn to appreciate art by following rules, or we are drilled to learn rules—“as in music you are drilled in harmony and counterpoint” (L&C §15)—and artistic judgments are made according to rules, including those of the artists themselves: The rules of harmony, you can say, expressed the way people wanted chords to follow—their wishes crystallized in these rules (the word ‘wishes’ is much too vague.) All the greatest composers wrote in accordance with them. (You can say that every composer changed the rules, but the variation was very slight; not all the rules were changed. The music was still good by a great many of the old rules.—This thought shouldn’t come in here.) (L&C § 16) The issue of rules seems, however, not to apply to extraordinary works of art, the so-called “masterpieces”. When we talk of a Symphony of Beethoven we don’t talk of correctness. Entirely different things enter. One wouldn’t talk of appreciating the tremendous things in Arts. In certain styles in Architecture a door is correct, and the thing is you appreciate it. But in the case of a Gothic Cathedral what we do is not at all to find it correct—it plays an entirely different role with us. The entire game is different. It is as different as to judge a human being and on the one hand to say ‘He behaves well’ and on the other hand ‘He made a great impression on me’. (L&C §23) The problem here is that the concept of rule as a standard for judging the correctness of a work of art has both a positive and a negative value. On the 33

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one hand, there are the “normal” works that are supposed to follow the rules (of harmony, or of counterpoint); if they break the rules they are considered flawed or imperfect. On the other hand, there are the “masterpieces”, where, if they break the rules, this can be considered as an intentional act that gives the work a special meaning. However, as Schulte notes, if a masterpiece sets its own standards, as in the case of Beethoven’s symphony, how can we consider that it breaks rules? And when we exclude the possibility that a correct work breaks rules, then it doesn’t make sense to talk about “correctness” (cf. Schulte 1990, 80). Pointing to the same problem, Gmür asks if there is a rule that determines when the rules must be broken in order to indicate that a work of art has to be considered a masterpiece. For him the answer is no (Gmür 2000, 167). Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro is an example of how rules are broken and the composition still seems “correct”. The ‘necessity’ with which the second idea succeeds the first. (Overture to Figaro). Nothing could be more idiotic than to say it’s ‘pleasing’ to hear the second after the first!—But the paradigm according to which everything there is right is certainly obscure. “It is the natural development.” You gesture with your hand, would like to say: “of course!”—You could too compare the transition to a transition (the entry of a new character) in a story, e.g. or a poem. That is how this piece fits into the world of our thoughts and feelings. (CV 57; 65) The paradigm of “correctness” here would be explicit if a second idea would follow the first one. But Mozart gives only a hint at the paradigm; he indirectly calls for the rule and, at the same time, causes surprise by not following it. The rule functions as an object of comparison [Vergleichsobjekt]: Following the rule would be a logical consequence, a musical construction in the domain of “saying”. Breaking the rule unfolds a meaning that cannot be explained through crystalline logic, pointing to something that is external and cannot be expressed, only indicated; it is the domain of “showing”. As Schulte claims, only when one develops a “feeling” for the rules and learns to “indicate” it, is one able to interpret the rules in a broad sense, determining cases that are left open by the rules. Wittgenstein’s philosophical method is not focused on building new and astonishing theories or elucidations, but on the examination of language. Since he considers the problems of philosophy to be rooted in the “misunderstanding of the logic of language” (PI §93), the remedy he presents asks us to look closely at the structure of the practice of our language, to study specific cases. We 34

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are always in a rush to build models that seem appropriate but, when applied to concrete examples, reveal themselves as useless. Wittgenstein’s therapeutic method leads us to investigate individual cases in order to see clearly what is at stake; we begin to recognize not only the emptiness of our models, but also that all we need to understand how a given language functions is already there before our eyes. The concept of understanding is not related to the idea of something “going on in our minds”, but suggests the ideas of readiness, willingness, and ability. Understanding is therefore linked, in a complex and multifaceted way, to our participation in a particular form of life. So the answer to Wittgenstein’s question, “What is musical understanding?”, can only be given by means of an investigation of the concrete practices of music in society, the language games that connect music with culture and life. Musical understanding implies not only understanding what music is in general, but also the variety of its uses—activities, expressions, gestures, images—that imply knowledge of other aspects of culture: Understanding music is a manifestation of human life. How could it be described to someone? Well, above all I suppose we should have to describe music. Then we could describe how human beings react to it. But is that all that is necessary, or is it also part of the process to teach him to understand it for himself? Now, teaching him to understand would be teaching him what understanding is in another sense than a theory that does not do this. And again, teaching him to understand poetry or painting can be part of an explanation of what understanding music is. (CV 70; 80-81) Music is part of our very particular form of life and we recognize in it the same repertoire of gestures through which we understand each other. Therefore we can consider that music is a language. Understanding music and understanding language is embedded in a network of language games. Understanding is not possible without a musical environment; outside it music does not have game partners and loses its meaning. If a work of music ceases to be performed, it loses its meaning as a game; if it comes to be played again, it acquires a new meaning related to the new era. An example of this is the rediscovery of Bach’s music in the 19th century; another example is the “authentic Baroque music” played on historical instruments in the 20th century. If we fail to listen to a work of music, it is because we think that it no longer works for our form of life. It was not the music that changed, but our culture. Music is rooted in the practice of life. 35

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7. Musical Melancholy “Schubert is irreligious and melancholy.” (CV 47; 53) Melody is the primary focus of Wittgenstein’s reflections on music. There is also a focus on theme, reinforcing the analogy between a musical theme and a phrase in language. He says: “The theme interacts with the language” (CV 52; 60). Wittgenstein formulated thoughts on many composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, and also Joseph Labor (1842-1924). He discusses things he likes and dislikes in both a given composer’s music and life. He appreciated the music of the first half of the 19th century; Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms were his favorite composers. Labor’s performance impressed him; in 1947 he wrote on Labor’s playing: “He is speaking. How curious!” (CV 62; 71). Wittgenstein reflects on the relationship between music and language when he analyses Labor’s performance: “What was it about this playing that was so reminiscent of speaking?” (CV 62; 71). He argues that the similarity between music and language is not a secondary thing but something “important” and “big”. There is some music that describes itself as language; however, there are other ones that don’t want to become a language at all. He notes that the differences he sees in music should not be taken as a “judgment of value” (CV 62; 71). In other words: there is no paradigm for defining what music is, we can have different understandings of music. Wittgenstein appreciates Schubert’s melody deeply. Gmür suggests that Schubert was his favorite composer, mainly because of his identification with Austrian culture (Gmür 2000, 186). Wittgenstein believes Schubert’s melody to be full of moments that he calls Pointen (cf. CV 47; 53). The French word pointe, which conveys ideas such as “head”, “tip”, “peak”, etc., has been imported into the German language (Pointe) with the meaning of “punch line”. He uses also another German word from ordinary language in connection with Schubert’s melody: Witz. This word means short story in German, or a smart and creative language game. But Witz can also mean a joke, something told for the purpose of causing a laugh. Witz is thus a synthesis of many meanings, a word that opens up an ambivalent analogy. He is not suggesting that Schubert’s music functions like a joke, yet he is suggesting that there are moments of climax—Pointen—that transform our expectations like the punch lines of jokes. The Pointen are “thoughts” he admires, along with Schubert’s capacity for transforming conventions into 36

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

some deeper expression.8 He briefly analyzes the last two bars of Schubert’s song Der Tod und das Mädchen [Death and the Maiden]: we first listen to a figure that seems conventional and ordinary until we understand that “here the ordinary is filled with significance” (CV 52; 60). Wittgenstein makes many critical remarks on Mendelssohn, characterizing the essence of his music by saying that “there is perhaps no music by Mendelssohn that is hard to understand” (CV 23; 27). He calls Mendelssohn a “reproductive” artist (CV 38; 43) and asks: “What does Mendelssohn’s music lack? A ‘courageous’ melody?” (CV 35; 40). Wittgenstein uses the analogy of surface/depth once again, this time, referring to the music as primitive on the surface and meaningful in its depth—to criticize Mendelssohn: Within all great art there is a WILD animal: tamed. Not, e.g. in Mendelssohn. All great art has primitive human instincts as its ground bass. They are not the melody (as they are, perhaps, in Wagner), but they are what gives the melody depth and power. (CV 37-38; 43)9 In contrast, Wittgenstein admires the “strength of the musical thinking in Brahms” (CV 23; 27), and “Brahms’s overwhelming skills” (CV 25; 29). He saw a kinship between Brahms and Mendelssohn; they composed similar music but the difference is that “Brahms does with complete rigor what Mendelssohn did half-rigorously. Or: Brahms is often Mendelssohn without the flaws” (CV 21; 18). Brahms is a boundary for Wittgenstein’s thoughts on music. In 1930 he said to his friend Drury: “Music came to a full stop with Brahms; and even in Brahms I can begin to hear the sound of machinery” (Rhees 1981, 127). In other words, he thinks that music comes to an end when the sound of machinery starts to shape musical creativity. What would he had said about electroacoustic music? Wittgenstein’s conception of music, like his conception of language, is contextual. The understanding of music is determined by the culture. The work of art must be understood and judged in the cultural context in which it is created. Music refers to itself, and to the specific culture—the time and space in which it emerges. It includes the totality of “forms of life”—all manifestations of culture of that time, including architecture, film, religion, 8

9

Hatten’s analysis of Schubert, focused on gestures, brings also this idea that Schubert’s music operates with a synthetic element that articulates simultaneously different meanings; this synthesis is accomplished by gestures (cf. Hatten 2004). The word “depth” is here used to express the “complexity” that lies below the surface of music, to which the melody is associated (See Wittgenstein’s definition of music (CV 8; 11) quoted above. 37

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etc. For him, art has an intimate relationship with ethics because it is both a commitment to a happy life and the revelation that makes happy life visible. Artists have something to teach the world both through their work and life. The artist and his work are one. Beethoven was an ideal figure to Wittgenstein. Beethoven “talked and wrestled” with problems that “no philosopher has ever confronted”, and “perhaps they are lost”. Beethoven experienced and described the development of Western culture as an “epic”, and he did it with precision (CV 9; 12). What is the epic of a culture? For Wittgenstein, the epic of a whole culture is to be sought in the works of its greatest figures, and in a time when these works foresee the end of this culture, “for later there is no one there any more to describe it” (CV 9; 12). As pointed out by Gmür (2001), Beethoven embodies the qualities of passion, willpower, dedication, and persistence in a time of adversity, which impressed Wittgenstein. Beethoven showed through his art that one can overcome suffering and adversity; he shaped his artistic creativity and production in the perspective of the eternal and transcendental that achieves the unity of work and life.

8. Summary Wittgenstein’s philosophy doesn’t provide any musical theory or aesthetics. Rather, music is a tool for reflecting on the understanding of language and understanding in general. He uses the analogy between music and language as an object of comparison for illuminating different aspects of the investigation. There is no prototype of understanding. There is a similarity between understanding language and music but music has a more transparent “grammar” than language and therefore can make things that are hidden by language appear more clearly. However, he proposed no philosophy of understanding. Any attempt to develop a comprehensive account of musical understanding based on Wittgenstein’s ideas would lead to nothing but a fallacious misunderstanding. Wittgenstein formulated with intensity and precision a close relationship between ethics and aesthetics—“(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)” (TLP 6.421). Both are part of the ineffable; the ethical and aesthetical attitude towards the world is the one that shows the “good life”. The artist’s attitudes and decisions are a matter of both ethics and aesthetics. It doesn’t matter how the world is, how much misery there is in the world, the work of art has to show the possibility of seeing the world as it is, as something transcendental. The idea that we are not able to explain the world in a logical sense, together 38

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics

with the attitude of acceptance, leads to a “mystical” view: “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical” (PI §6.53). Wittgenstein emphasizes the autonomy of music: music doesn’t say anything but itself. On the other hand, he recognizes that aesthetic understanding is only possible within a culture through the contextual references to the “forms of life”. To describe an ensemble of aesthetic rules means to describe a specific culture. Musical understanding cannot be reduced to the mechanical application of explicit rules; the expressive game of musical rules obeys a tradition that is mostly implicit, which determines the choices. The rules allow us to recognize the full expression of music. His reflection on music is focused on the music of the 19th century that belonged to his particular Austrian cultural context. He gave no thoughts to the music of his own time, for example the atonal and serial music of Arnold Schoenberg, with whom he shares similar points of view.10 This leads us to question whether Wittgenstein’s ideas on music apply only to the music he reflects on or to other kinds of music. Are his thoughts useful but limited to the music of the past? Or can he help us understand music no longer rooted in the European tradition or music that seeks formal models outside melodic and harmonic structures of tonality, such as atonal music, electroacoustic music, or digital music? On the other hand, should we consider the possibility that a shift has occurred in which music became a different kind of language with a different grammar? Or even that music itself lost the ability to articulate a language that can be understood by a large community? In opposition to the narrow focus of his musical universe, Wittgenstein’s philosophical method opens new perspectives for understanding music in a broad sense, including listening, composing, performing, analyzing, and teaching. He develops a concept of “grammar” that is not focused on language considered as a system of signs, but on the practice of using language. This concept invokes the idea that language is a spatial and temporal phenomenon (PI §108) that has to be understood as a language-in-use with its distinctive patterns of use that constitute what he calls the “grammar of our concepts” (cf. McGinn 1996, 13). His therapeutic voice tells us to look carefully into the detailed structure of our practice of using language in order to cure ourselves of the temptations of misunderstanding. For Wittgenstein, understanding is not a process of going inwards but of looking at the complexity of patterns that characterize our form of life. Music—similar to language—is not an abstract system of signs conveying 10

For a comparison between Wittgenstein and Schoenberg, see Eggers (2011). 39

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some kind of meaning, but a particular form of life that displays structures that are constituted by the activity of making music. He invites us to look at the way we determine musical concepts, how in our musical practice we constitute regular patterns by following rules, how we choose to follow some rules and dismiss others and how we apply words like “correct” or “incorrect” to make aesthetic judgments about music. Understanding music cannot be reduced to the mechanical decoding of a system of signs. For instance, although we learn to play a musical instrument through “ostensive teaching”—by establishing an association between names, gestures and repeated movements performed with the instrument—, this kind of ostensive training can lead to quite different understanding of music. In the same way, while listening to music we can use some words or make gestures that accompany or manifest our feelings, but they don’t constitute the musical understanding itself. For Wittgenstein, aesthetic appreciation consists of assessing the significance of an artwork or performance without comparing it to a pre-existent model or reality. The aesthetic pleasure emerges from the sense of “correctness”, similar when a musician finds the correct expression for performing a certain work of music; for instance, the correct expression of a particular raga in Indian classical music, or the appropriate interpretation of a piano sonata by Beethoven. Music is autonomous in the sense that it doesn’t need to express anything external. Music is complete in itself. Everything that can be said is said through the music. This idea of artistic autonomy can help us to understand meaning in the ordinary language as an internal process—the particular way signs are being used to say something. For Wittgenstein art, and especially music, is capable of expressing what ordinary language cannot convey with words. Art can place us outside the world and give us the opportunity to observe the world from the exterior, the experience of transcendence. This is the mystical mission of art. The relevant message of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is a double-sided one. On the one hand, he sparks intellectual passions by pushing us to investigate the limits of what can be logically explained. On the other hand, by placing ethics at the core of the aesthetic experience, he urges us to work on ourselves and for humanity. The ethical attitude is at the same time a way of action and knowledge, an encouragement to dispel ignorance through clarity, transparence, and profound commitment. The mystical mission of art emerges through these ethical values. It requires, at the same time, a struggle with the roots of our confusion—which lies in the “misunderstanding of the logic of language” (PI § 93), in order to establish the clarity and transparence, 40

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and a pragmatic approach to creativity in order to make visible what language passes over in silence—the unsayable.

41

Chapter 2

Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin

1. Spectrum as Existential Metaphor The concept of spectrum emerges as an existential metaphor of sound and music in the digital era. A simple definition of spectrum is the representation of sound energy as a function of frequency. The conversion of acoustic vibrations into digital signals (Digital Signal Processing) allows the direct numerical calculation of the frequency content of sound. For that, the most widely used algorithm is the Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT). It emerges from the scientific knowledge of waveforms in general, specifically periodic vibrations. Any sound, no matter as complex it seems, can be described as a system of periodic vibrations that are multiple of a fundamental frequency. The FFT algorithm, proposed by the French mathematician Joseph Fourier in the late 18th century has been successfully implemented in computers as Discrete Fourier Transformation (DFT), a digital signal processing algorithm allowing very fast calculations of samples of digital signals.1 Digital signals may be processed in either the time domain or the frequency domain. DFT can convert signals from the time domain to the frequency domain and vice-versa. This allows different representations of sound: the waveform representation is interesting for visualizing time and the spectral representation for frequency content. A waveform can then be transformed into a corresponding spectrum and vice-versa. The sonogram (or spectrogram) is a spectral representation of the sound. Figure 1 shows the sonogram of a female voice saying the phrase: “My father works in a mysterious place”. On the top, we see the waveform, on the bottom the sonogram. On the sonogram 1

For a short overview of digital audio processing see Rossing et al. (2002, 634-51); for an introduction to the digital signal processing and applications in computer music see Moore (1990), Steiglitz (1995), and Loy (2007); the articles on Strawn (1985) provide a useful introduction to the development of musical signal processing with computers. 43

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the horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis the frequencies; there is a third dimension given by the variation of the black color, which represents the amplitudes. The more intense the color, the stronger sounds the frequency. For example, the black lines on the bottom indicate the voice’s frequency energy is concentrated in the lower register of the spectrum. The sonogram provides a clear visualization of how the sound evolves in time in terms of frequency and amplitude.

Figure 1: Sonogram of the phrase: “My father works in a mysterious place”

One of the great advantages of digital spectral representation is that it reveals the micro-structure of sound. In Figure 2, the sonogram displays the beginning of the previous phrase, the word “my”, which has a very short duration of only 270 milliseconds. We can visualize its spectrum in a window of the same size as the one representing the phrase. By comparing the two sonograms, we recognize two different forms of sound. In the first sonogram we see that the sequence of events, corresponding to the individual words of the phrase, form a certain rhythm. In the second sonogram we see a single event stretched over the whole duration of the window, displaying the spectral micro-structure of the word “my”. If, instead of speech, these two sonograms were representing music, we would have two different musical forms, the first one consisting of a sequence of segments and the second one of a single segment. However, as we see here, the formal distinctions we can make on a spectrum depend on the temporal level we choose to represent it. With the sonogram we are able to visualize sound at different scales of time, which gives us the opportunity to analyze music from different temporal perspectives. 44

Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin

Figure 2: Sonogram of the word “My”

Spectral representation has become a tool for analysis, synthesis and manipulation of musical sounds. It provides an understanding of the sound material that benefits not only electroacoustic and digital music composition, but also musical analysis and semiotics. My theory of spectral semiotics (Chagas 2010) proposes a phenomenological approach to investigate sound and music using sonograms and other digital tools. The research on spectral semiotics, which is informed by the compositional practice with digital tools, aims to develop analysis techniques that can be applied to any kind of music, as well as to experiences related to sound and music ranging from consciousness, perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, affect, and performance, to the level of meaningful social and cultural interactions. As an interdisciplinary field of studies, spectral semiotics interfaces with disciplines such as composition, music theory, musical analysis/synthesis, musicology, acoustics, psychoacoustics, computer science, cognitive science, semiotics, and cultural studies. My investigation on spectral semiotics focuses on the relation between sound, music and temporality. Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness (Husserl 1966; 1990) and Varela’s neurophenomenology of time-consciousness (Varela 1991) provides the theoretical framework for associating time-consciousness to sound-and-music-consciousness. I am particularly interested in studying the role of affect in the constitution of temporality in sound and music. Listening to music is not a passive experience, but an active process of perception and action that creates both meaning and affect. How does sound relate to affect? What kind of emotions does music trigger in us? How do we understand the different kinds of affect? These are but a few of the questions that have instigated my research. 45

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In the following, I propose an application of the spectral semiotics approach to the analysis of Chopins’ Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1. By focusing on the constitutive role of temporality and affection in the sound and music composition, I intend to demonstrate how spectral analysis can expand the understanding of Chopin’s music. The references to existential semiotics emphasize the convergence between spectral analysis and musical semiotics in the investigation of musical meaning and affect.

2. Polyphony and Transcendence in Chopin The radical inventiveness of Chopin’s compositions represents a striking paradox to the romantic stereotypes that characterize the wide reception of his music. Chopin’s significant body of work, mostly written for the piano, contains a broad palette of musical innovations that makes it a paradigm for scholarship and composition studies, while it is at the same time highly accessible to a wide range of listeners. My hypothesis is that Chopin’s music unfolds a sound poetics of affects that resonates at the most basic level of human experience and consequently achieves in the listeners the readiness for accepting the high level of complexity and inventiveness of his music. Charles Rosen, in his brilliant study on the music of the Romantic generation (Rosen 1990), demonstrates how the poetic force of Chopin is related to his ability to create a consistent and diversified polyphony that integrates compositional features by articulating meaning at different levels of temporality and signification. Chopin’s music achieves the “transformation of the vulgar into something aristocratic. Its power depends in part on our unconscious sense of how commonplace the material originally was before it reappears in an aura of iridescent sonority” (Rosen 1990, 395). Chopin’s polyphonic language embraces contradictory elements such as salon music and the operatic bel canto, conventional ternary forms (ABA) and unconventional narratives, periodic phrasings and shifts of phases, harmonic commonplaces as well as radical variations of texture and sonority. According to Tarasti, Chopin lived at the center of the literarymusical culture of Romanticism, “in an age that perceived the narrative content as an essential level of signification” (Tarasti 1994, 138).2 One of his 2

Tarasti proposes an analysis of musical narrative articulated as categories of temporality (temporal organization), spatiality (organization of tonal space), and actoriality (thematic or actorial elements). For a semiotic investigation of narrativity in Chopin see Tarasti (1994, 138-80), particularly the extensive analysis of Chopin’s Ballade in G minor Op. 23. 46

Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin

most remarkable achievements is the reinvention of counterpoint. Chopin transforms the baroque and classical melodic line into a vector of narrativity. The long sustained melody—a major characteristic of his music—is, according to Rosen, an influence of Bellini’s opera that Chopin translated for the piano. Chopin’s writing for this instrument is charged with the affect of the human voice. The dramatic gestures of the music express the transformation of the vocal apparatus into the mechanical medium of the piano as if the piano could embody the ego and bring human existence to a level of transcendence. In terms of Tarasti’s existential theory, the music of Chopin accomplishes the semiotic operations of negation and affirmation through which transcendence is realized (Tarasti 2000, 21). The piano first negates the biological foundation of the human self by transforming the body into machine, but the composition transmutes the machine into a kind of living system and reaffirms the organism. Chopin’s musical approach intentionally assigns an existence to commonplace objects and transcends it by subjectively changing them. For example, he introduces melodies that seem conventional, devoid of any freshness or originality, but that reveal an inexhaustible potential of imagination, musical creativity and emotional fullness. The composition achieves musical transcendence using both traditional techniques and radical innovations. It transforms banality into sublimity by deploying a network of motives that rhythmically change their appearance and constantly shift between voice lines. Chopin’s polyphony makes transparent the dynamic of permanence/change that connects the embodied ego aware of emotional change (Varela 1999, 304). The creation of individual lines in the inner parts (Rosen 1990, 302) is an example of change within permanence. It transforms the virtual, abstract structure of polyphonic lines into an “exquisite spacing” of “vibrant inner voices” filled with subtle shifts of phase and “astonishing experiments in harmony” (Rosen 1990, 471). Chopin’s music unfolds both the permanence of the self-identified ego and the stream of change characterizing the dimension of the living present in the sense of Husserl’s phenomenology (Held 2003, 47). Tarasti analyzes transcendence as a dynamic shift between two Daseins3 that appear as transference of signs. The transcendental transfer is a sixstep process oscillating between affirmation and negation. It starts with the 3

The concept of Dasein refers to the human experience of being. It is a core concept of Heidegger’s existential philosophy, which inspired Tarasti’s theory of existential semiotics. See discussion of existential semiotics in “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein. 47

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negation of the original Dasein followed by the affirmation of Nothingness, to the negation of Nothingness, to the partial affirmation of Dasein, to the negation toward affirmation, and then finally to the return from negation, which constitutes at the same time a new affirmation that possibly creates a new Dasein (Tarasti 1990, 31). The transfer can also been seen as an interaction between pre-signs, act-signs, and post-signs. In Chopin for example, we may consider as pre-signs popular and classical music genres such as waltzes, polonaises, preludes, études, nocturnes, ballades, sonatas, and fantasies; as act-signs the semiotic processes activated by the composition; and as post-signs the new meanings achieved through the metamorphose of these signs. In the third Ballade, for instance, the sonata style and the ternary form function as pre-signs of conformity and stability (permanence), which are transformed “not by harmonic events or by thematic contrast but by fluctuations of sentiment, by variations of intensity” (Rosen 1990, 322). Such changes belong to the domain of post-signs (interpretants) and are activated by ambiguities and disruptions in the narrative flow that accomplish the remarkable concretization of pre-signs into act-signs in Chopin’s music.

3. Time Consciousness and Affect Husserl considered temporality a fundamental substrate of the phenomenological research. Time accounts for the way we experience things in the world and build consciousness. The structures of consciousness are what make it possible to perceive the unity of any object as a manifestation of time consciousness. In Husserl’s Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness (Husserl 1991), time is a proto-level of perception, the emergent process that occurs when we become aware of the sensations and feelings that create the experience of the living present. Time provides consciousness with formal continuity at the most fundamental level.4 Inner time-consciousness constitutes an ultimate “substrate of consciousness where no further reduction can be accomplished” (Varela 1999, 268). Time-consciousness is a process of individuation emerging from the unity of the ego and is equal to selfconsciousness. The temporal experience is a paradox oscillating between the present as unity and as flow of consciousness. They are mediated through acts of consciousness or what Husserl calls “experiences” [Erlebnisse]. Therefore, phenomenology distinguishes three levels of the constitution of temporality: 4

Cf. Held (2003) for an account of Husserl’s time-consciousness as a phenomenology of living experience. 48

Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin

1. The first level of temporal objects—the perceived unities of the consciousness. 2. The second level of immanent acts of the consciousness. 3. The third level of the absolute self-constituting and time-constituting flow of consciousness. With this tripartite definition, the phenomenological method acknowledges that inner-consciousness shares the same temporal features as physical objects; that the perception of time cannot be disassociated from the mental acts; and also that it occurs in an extended horizon including the past, present and future. Husserl explains inner-time-consciousness through a significant number of musical metaphors. Listening to a melody is a recurrent one. He correlates the tones of a melody with the first level of temporal objects. “The tone in its durations” is a temporal object (Husserl 1991, 24). Further, the melody is an example of how the present is experienced as an extended frame of simultaneity. When a melody sounds, says Husserl, the individual tones do not disappear without leaving a trace. They reverberate in the flux of innertime consciousness. The objective time flows as a straight line in which every point is a now, an extended present surrounded by past and future nows. Listening to a melody is an example of how time-consciousness refers to distant intentional experience that occurs both in the past and in the future. Past and future are part of the intentional stream of consciousness through retention (memory) and protention (expectation). One hears every tone of a melody as a now and hears the whole melody as a now. “At any given time I hear only the actually present phase of the tone, and the objectivity of the whole enduring tone is constituted in an act-continuum that is part memory, in smallest punctual part perception, and in further part expectation” (Husserl 1991, 25). Husserl’s melody metaphor emerges from the notion that music is a temporal experience. Spectral semiotics distinguishes music-sound temporality at different levels, from sound-objects, to intentional music-objects, to the absolute musical flow. Since time does not detach from temporal objects-events, sound does not detach from temporal sound objects-events and music does not detach from temporal music objects-events. According to Husserl, temporal objects-events have a double aspect: duration, which correlates to intentional direction, and unity, which correlates to individuality. Translating these ideas in terms of sound and music objects-events we can say: • The duration of sound and music objects-events depends on intentional directions such as an envelope, a crescendo or a diminuendo, an ascending or descending scale, the profile of a melody, or musical structure. 49

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• The unity of sound and music objects-events depends on the fact that they stand out as distinct wholes against the background of other events. Varela’s approach to time, at the crossroad of neuroscience and phenomenology (Varela 1999), emphasizes the crucial role of affection in the constitution of time. In opposition to Husserl, Varela considers the experience of time as a dynamic, recurrent constitution. This idea supports my own account that listening to music is a multi-stable auditory perception, an experience of simultaneity (polyphony) as the listener must separate musical sounds from the environment (Cf. Chagas 2005). The listener is an active agent in the constitution of meaning for both sound and music. Addressing the question of how something can show up as present but also reach a temporal horizon, Varela proposes a non-linear account of time based on the cognitive integration of three scales of duration: 1. The 1/10-second scale (between 10 and 100 milliseconds): the level of basic identification of elementary events perceived as non-simultaneous; the minimum distance needed for two stimuli to be perceived as nonsimultaneous. 2. The 1-second scale: the level of relaxation time for large-scale integration, which corresponds to the time of completing neuronal interconnections; the time it takes for a cognitive act to be completed. 3. The 10-second scale: the level of descriptive-narrative assessments; it is linked to our linguistic capacities, which constitutes the flow of time as related to personal identity. In terms of music, these three temporal levels can correlated with: 1. Identification of elementary sound objects: perception of pitches, timbres, dynamics, chords, and intervals. 2. Relaxation time for integration of sound objects: perception of motives, melodies, gestures, harmonies, and textures. 3. Descriptive-narrative assessments for large-scale integration: perception of phrases, cadences, and formal structures. Varela assumes that consciousness is based on neural activity and embodied agents, a process “involving multiple levels of interconnected, sensorimotor activity (Varela, Thompson and Rosh 1991, 206). The neuronal activity is described as an assemblage of nonlinear oscillators. The single oscillators are coupled and synchronized in the neuronal process and a percept of multi-stability emerges as a cognitive act. According to his dynamicalcognitive approach, the constitution of time is related to the perception and 50

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identification of patterns occurring at different levels of temporality. This happens for example, when auditory perception distinguishes a sound in the acoustic environment. An auditory pattern of multi-stability emerges as sound qualities such as pitch, loudness, or timbre. The perception of percussion sounds, for instance, is shaped by the transient aggregates that briefly occur at the attack phase. Other sounds such as voice and strings require more time to be identified. Such an approach discloses a non-linear, dynamic conception of time, which presents itself as having a complex texture. Varela accounts for the role of affection in the constitution of time in the context of active involvement in the world. He uses the word transparency to indicate an unreflective absorption that can interrupt the flow of experience. Transparency is a “readiness or dispositional tendency for action” in the large horizon of our lives, an “expectation about the way things in general will turn out” (Varela 1991, 299). It is not limited to individual action, but extends to the historical and social human experience. Varela relates the constitution of affect to a loss of transparency. A panoply of “affective tonalities” correlates to different degrees of breakdown in transparence and the multiple ways it happens. Following this concept, he proposes three categories of affect: emotion, the tonality of the affect that accompanies a shift in transparency; aff ection, a broader dispositional orientation; and mood, an affective background. These three categories can be distinguished as three scales of affect homologous but not necessarily isomorphic to the three scales of temporality (Varela 1999, 300): 1. Emotion: the awareness of a tonal shift that is constitutive of the living present. 2. Aff ect: a dispositional trend proper to a coherent sequence of embodied actions. 3. Mood: which exists at the scale of narrative description over time.

4. Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1 in C-Sharp Minor: Temporal Levels The following observations constitute an application of spectral semiotics theory. By exploring digital tools for sound analysis, one may gain insights into the relationship between sound, temporality, and affect in Chopin’s Nocturne op. 27 no. 1 in C-sharp minor, composed in 1835. Chopin’s music develops sound objects and music objects unfolding textures of simultaneity perceived at different levels of temporality. These structures then build 51

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interdependent spectral patterns connecting the perception of temporal levels to three scales of affection: emotion, affect, and mood. The sonogram of Figure 3 shows the spectral information of the C-sharp nocturne. The gray and black lines represent the structure of partials given by the FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) analysis in terms of frequency, amplitude, and phase.5 It is relatively easy to visualize the patterns of sound energy. By inserting marks on the sonogram, we can distinguish sound objects and music objects constituting textures of simultaneity at different temporal levels. The digital tools give us access to the different scales of time, from the level of sonic vibrations to the levels represented by single notes, melodies, harmonies, larger sections and finally the overall form of the piece.

Figure 3: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1

Figure 4 consists of three sonograms showing three different levels of time segmentation. The number of segments decreases from top to bottom. The top sonogram represents the first temporal level of short unities. The first segment corresponds to measures 1-2, the second to measures 3-6, and the third to measures 7-10, and so on. The second temporal level is shown on the middle sonogram with the first segment extending from measures 1-10, the second from measures 11-19, the third from measures 19-28, and so on. The bottom sonogram shows the large ABA form of the piece defined by measures 1-28, 29-83, and 84-101. 5

I used the software AudioSculpt version 2.9.4v3 by IRCAM, Paris, to analyze a recording of the nocturne by the pianist Ivan Moravec (CD Elektra Nonesuch 9 79233-2, 1991). 52

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Figure 4: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1. Th ree levels of temporal segmentation

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The sound objects and musical objects defined by the segments share three temporal levels with a similar spectral pattern in a bell-like, symmetrical shape in three phrases: it begins with low spectral energy, grows smoothly, building a peak of energy in the center, then fades away towards the end. Since the bell-like pattern is also reflected in the piece as a whole, we can say that the overall form of the C-sharp minor nocturne reproduces itself recursively, creating temporal unities that are fractals of the main sound structure. As each time-segment is a reduced spectral-temporal instance of the whole, the result is that Chopin’s nocturne develops an organic spectraltemporal structure unified through self-similarity.

5. Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1 in C-Sharp Minor: Analysis A brief description of Nocturne op. 27 no. 1 in C-sharp minor will show the relationship between sound, temporality, and affect. Figure 5 presents the complete score of the piece. At the beginning (section A), we hear an arpeggio figure on the left hand spread over 1 ½ octaves The combination of the intervals of fifth and octave—c#2, g#2, c#3, g#36 —gives a sense of emptiness, a negation of Dasein. The music seems to emerge from nothing. Then in measure 3, the melody completes the harmony with the minor third e5 immediately followed by the major third e#5, so that the minor chord is first accepted and then abandoned. In addition to the shift to major, the harmony introduces the interval of minor 7th—b3—on the left hand, a move that completely changes the sonority. This represents a new movement away from the Dasein, by which, according to Zielinski, Chopin creates “a wonderful effect in regard to the sound and expression, which almost sends a shiver down one’s spine” (Zielinski 2008, 495). Both harmony and melody affirm, since the very beginning of the music, the dark and gloomy mood of the nocturne, mysterious and filled with a certain sense of the tragic (Zielinski 2008, 494). The hesitant melody is sparely shaped; it emerges from the harmony, rises chromatically at a slow pace, draws a clear descending motive for a short moment, and fades away. At measure 11 it develops a strong outline but at the same time, acquires an emotional tone of distress, as if each attempt at 6

I use the MIDI note system for distinguishing the octaves. The middle “c” of the piano (261.63 Hz) is notated as c4, the octave below as c3, the octave above as c5, and so on. I use small caps for indicating notes and capital letters for tonalities. 54

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Figure 5: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, complete score © 1980 by G. Henle Verlag, Munich, printed by permission

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Figure 5: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, complete score © 1980 by G. Henle Verlag, Munich, printed by permission

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Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin

Figure 5: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, complete score © 1980 by G. Henle Verlag, Munich, printed by permission

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Figure 5: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, complete score © 1980 by G. Henle Verlag, Munich, printed by permission

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Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin

Figure 5: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, complete score © 1980 by G. Henle Verlag, Munich, printed by permission

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Figure 5: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, complete score © 1980 by G. Henle Verlag, Munich, printed by permission

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“doing” (a negative modality) would drop back into the sufferance of “being” (an affirmative modality.) The Phrygian cadence—d4 to c#4—at the end of the phrase (measure 18) re-affirms the acceptance of this mood. The harmony of the arpeggios is elaborated in great detail while the leaps of large intervals and the constant harmonic changes create an anxious and uneasy affect. A tonal ambiguity dominates the beginning of the piece as no cadence in the key of C-sharp appears in the first ten bars; then, as soon as the tonal center is affirmed, Chopin creates a texture of colorful dissonances by superposing different harmonic functions; for instance, the dominant is built upon the bass note c#2, which is the virtual root of the tonic. The repetition of the theme (measures 19-26) is marked by the addition of a second voice filling the empty space between the upper melody and the lower arpeggio. As pointed out above, this kind of internal line is a typical feature of Chopin’s polyphony. Here, it oscillates between the negation of emptiness, through increasing density and then, to the affirmation of the basic feeling of strangeness through the utterance of the new voice as a mirror of the self. Section A concludes with the emptiness of the transfigured arpeggio figure (measures 27-28). Section B, Più mosso, measures 29-83, begins with a very animated mood, a significant contrast to the introspective mood of the beginning. The temporal flux is given by the figure in triplets rushing through chromatic ornamentations. On the right hand, a short motive of two bars with an ostinato character is repeated, ascending and with increasing volume. The rhythm becomes compelling and sharper through the introduction of shorter durations (measure 37) and obsessive repetitions (sempre più stretto, measures 41-43). The evolving progression leads to a passionate explosion of energy (appassionato, measure 45), which is marked by fuller harmonic chords and wider arpeggio figures (measures 45-48), culminating in an abrupt and unexpected hard changing of tonality from E major to A-flat major (measure 49) followed by a melodic and harmonic release (measures 51-52). The dotted figure on the fourth beat of measure 51 produces the memory of the melancholic mood of section A. After the first explosion, the music starts a new progressive increase (measure 53) with a more refined sound and an uncanny mood filled with “strange unrest and terrifying affect” (Zielinski 2008, 495). The interlocking of static and moving elements provokes disturbing changes. For example, the arpeggio is transformed into a bass ostinato figure modulating between the a-flat tonic and the chromatic ascending notes; the melody moves both upwards in half-tone steps and downwards in fourths and fifths; the harmonic sound affirms the virtual tonality (A-flat major) by repeating the 61

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fundamental tone and simultaneously negates through modulation (E-flat minor, F minor, etc.). The dissonant harmony aggravates the emotional retention that culminates in a new phase of successive explosions (measures 65-80). The music progresses quickly through the flow of abundant chords, developing a whirlpool of emotions through continuous and abrupt changes of dynamics, harmony, tempo, rhythmic density and character (con anima, m. 63; tenuto, measure 64) It releases both affirmative affects such as the “energetic, heroic and victorious”, as suggested by Zielinski (2008, 496), and negative affects such as fragility, fear, and loss. The accumulation of chromatic material leads to the most dramatic moment of the piece (measures 82-83): First, the inflated repetition of the dominant diminished chord (b#, d#, f#, a) in ff f and crescendo expresses extreme emotions such as pain, passion, ecstasy, and rage. (cf. Zielinski 2008, 496). Second, the concluding recitativo in parallel octaves sweeping through the low spectrum (measure 83) reinforces the intentional retention of temporal experience—the expansion of the now—producing the affect of achieving transcendence. The reprise of the A section is abbreviated to 10 bars (measures 84-93). The coda in C-sharp major (measures 94-101) brings a new affect, marked by a consistent harmonic color. The polyphony of two interleaved voices— an external and an internal one—introduces a motive in parallel thirds that includes the figure of dotted eight-note and sixteen-note (fourth beat of measures 94, 95, 97), which is a memory of the melancholic mood of the beginning of the piece. The interval of fifth (c#2/g#2) on the bottom of the arpeggio figure of the left hand (measures 94-97) is what achieves a grounded affect; on the right hand, the two falling internal melodies moving parallel and delayed—c#4, b#3, a#3, g#3 and e#3, d#3, c#3, b#2—shape this affect with unmistakable emotional tones such as peace and calm. The music slows down as the motive in parallel thirds (measures 96-98) is repeated with double duration. The major third c#3/e#3 of the right hand (measure 96) affirming the tonality of C-sharp major introduces the affect of transcendental achievement; at the same time, the arpeggio figure of the left hand (the superposition of two intervals of fifth c#/g#) introduces the affect of emptiness, a reminder of the very beginning of the piece. These two complementary affects flow in the last three bars into a mood of peaceful acceptance, which is emphasized by the slow pace of the Adagio. The piece activates a gentle movement towards non-attachment: first the harmony migrates through the spacious, luminous region of the subdominant (measure 98); then it ascends from the low spheres of the sound spectrum to crystallize into the chord of C-sharp major at the middle register (measure 99); finally, bypassing the dominant cadence, it 62

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returns to the deep spectrum, falling into the soft, warm chord of C-sharp major (measure 100). One way to interpret this is that the concluding affect is one of reduced fear and a deeper acceptance of death.

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Chapter 3

III – Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System

Niklas Luhmann’s theory for analyzing contemporary society is characterized as a “transition towards a radically anti-humanistic, a radically anti-regionalist, and a radically constructivist conception of society (Luhmann 1997, 35).1 This system theory breaks with the Western philosophical tradition that assigns a central role to the subject as a frame of reference in accounting for the dimension of the social. It is a radical move away from humanism and towards a model of a society based on the concept of communication. The focus of analysis is not the human behavior and the social institutions, but the communications that occur within systems. Luhmann’s reflections on art, which include a significant number of essays (Luhmann 2008) and the book Art as a Social System (Luhmann 1995; 2000) develop a complex and precise understanding of the differentiation of modern art correlated with the differentiation of modern society. In this theory we find robust concepts for dealing with issues in contemporary art. The following investigations will explore some aspects of this theory in order to develop a reflection on music as a social system focused on communication and meaning. The first part discusses key concepts of the theory of social system and presents a preliminary account of contemporary music within this framework. The second part examines different views of sound, music, and society. The method employed confronts Luhmann’s theory with other approaches, 1

Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) was until recently practically unknown for English readers. The first volume of translation of his magum opus Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft [The Society of Society] was published in 2012 (Luhmann 2012). Luhmann’s thinking is complex and his writing style is difficult to translate. This affects the receptivity of his work. The Introduction to Systems Theory (Luhmann 2013) presents the transcription of series of lectures in which Luhmann explains the theory for a larger public. The oral style makes it more accessible. For a comprehensive and critical reflection on Luhmann’s theory cf. Radical Luhmann (Moeller 2012). 65

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including some in opposition, that function as objects of comparison for assessment in the hopes of bringing to light more concealed aspects. By seeking to create dissonance and heterogeneity, a deeper and more insightful understanding of music in the contemporary world may open new paths for future exploration. I

1. System and Environment Luhmann’s theory of social system, as Knodt observes, challenges the humanistic tradition at the level of its most fundamental presuppositions: (1) The principle of a unified, autonomous subject; (2) the idea of the social as a derivative sphere of intersubjectivity; (3), the corollary of communication as an interaction between subjects; (4) the notion of communication as a transmission of mental contents between separate consciousnesses; (5) the corresponding idea of language as a representation of such contents. (Knodt 1995, xxiv) System theory begins not with unity, but with the difference between system and environment. The difference is both a self-reference and an observation. There is no difference between self-reference and observation, for the one who observes something must distinguish himself from that which he observes. This concept of difference is inspired by George Spencer-Brown’s mathematical logic of calculus, which is expounded in Laws of Form (SpencerBrown 1969), a book that influenced second-order cybernetics.2 SpencerBrown defines form as a call to draw a boundary that marks a difference. In other words, one draws a distinction that creates a difference between system and environment. By creating this distinction, one is referring to oneself and, at the same time, observing the distinction. Spencer-Brown’s logic of form 2

Norbert Wiener introduced the term “cybernetics” in the scientific discourse as “the theory of communication and control in the machine and in the living organism” (Wiener 1956, 269). Second-order cybernetics develops a more consistent epistemology by including the observer as part of the system. It reshapes the cybernetic concept of circularity by focusing on the circular dynamic of reflexivity. Heinz von Foerster postulates the idea that we experience the world by constructing a reality. The fundamental cognitive operation performed by an observer it a distinction that separates reality into an inside and an outside (cf. Foerster 2003c). 66

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tells us to draw a distinction; otherwise nothing will happen at all. “Creation is the imposition of a mode of distinction” (Luhmann 2013, 49). For example, visualize an empty sheet of paper on which a circle is drawn. We can say that the form is the boundary that marks the difference between the circle and the empty space of the paper. Or if we listen to someone singing the first note of a melody, we can say that the form is the boundary that marks the difference between the note and silence. What is the next step? Will something else be drawn on the paper? Will a second note follow? And, if so, how is the form of the connective operation to be described? Every distinction, whether it is the drawing of a circle or the singing of a note, is a boundary that makes the distinction between two sides: the system and the environment. This concept of form then has three consequences: 1) the system is a form with two sides, 2) the system needs only one operation, and 3) the system’s operation re-enters in itself. The notion of form with two sides can be expressed through the opposition between a marked and an unmarked space. The form is the distinction that marks this difference between the marked space (the system) and the unmarked space (the environment.) The system has one operation, which is the distinction. This operation possesses connectivity as it is copied into itself and is the re-entry of the form into the form, or the re-entry of the distinction into the distinction. The recursive process, through which the same operation reproduces itself, creates the network of differences that structures the system. This structuring is a process of self-organization and it is related to two other concepts. The first one is autopoiesis—a term first introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, used to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells. The second is self-referentiality.3 Based on these concepts, Luhmann distinguishes between three kinds of selfreferential, autopoietic systems: living systems (cells, brains and organisms), psychic systems (consciousness), and social systems (societies, organizations, and social interactions.) (cf. Luhmann 1990d, 2). Social systems are based on communication and emerge when communication develops. Communication is not a living unity, a conscious unity, or an action. It is the only distinction and the only operation of social systems. Each communication is a connective operation and a social system that operates with communication always includes re-entry, 3

The concept of self-reference applies to a system that refers to itself. Baraldi, Corsi and Esposito give the following definition: “Self-reference occurs when the operation of the observation is included in what is described, when it describes something to which it belongs itself ” (Baraldi, Corsi, and Esposito 1997, 163). 67

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i.e., the communications that shape the system are recursively produced. Communication needs time in order to connect. This operation leads to a temporal decoupling of system and environment so that the system develops structures to articulate temporality at different levels. Communication develops connectivity and temporality by processing a synthesis of 1) Information: a selection from a repertoire of referential possibilities. 2) Utterance: a selection from a repertoire of intentional acts. 3) Observation: the distinction between utterance and information. (cf. Knodt xxvii). This synthesis of information, utterance, and understanding is the elementary unit of a social system. A communication has to transmit that it is a communication and, at the same time, mark what was articulated in order to maintain the autopoiesis. This is the paradox of the re-entry or of the difference between system and environment into the system. The distinction that re-enters itself is the same and, simultaneously, not the same. The observer can appear as an external observer or a self-observer and can either see that another system is observing itself or see himself as somebody who observes himself. In this way, the observer has to resolve the paradox using the distinction between observers. The system uses the distinction between information, utterance, and understanding for self-observation. A system develops in complexity when the observations of operations are turned into observations of observations and eventually into observations of the system itself. Observations are based on the fundamental distinction between system and environment, or the difference between inside and outside as system constructions: Given the impossibility to behold the fullness of being, and to make the system transparent to itself, the system develops a complex structure of distinctions by directing the process of observations inward or outward depending on which side is referred: the “inside” or the “outside”. (Luhmann 1997, 87) The notion of communication as a process of observations that articulate temporality relates the theory of social systems with the phenomenological tradition. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology studies how objects are experienced in consciousness. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, which phenomenology approaches from the point of view of a subject. Phenomenology of time-consciousness accounts for the way we experience time. It investigates the structures of consciousness that make possible the perception of an object across successive moments. Husserl (1966; 1991) analyses how consciousness simultaneously operates in different 68

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scales of time, for instance by developing anticipations and projections, creating short-term and long-term memory. The perception of time occurs by means of temporal objects and events that are not only unities in time but also contain temporal extension in themselves. Husserl uses melody as a metaphor of time consciousness. When we listen to a melody, we observe each tone of it but also the entire melody as a communication system. When a tone sounds, we experience its duration and hear only the single present tone but the elapsed part of the melody is present to us both as a memory and as expectation. For Husserl, the perception of temporal objects correlates with the intentional acts of consciousness, so that everything happens in relation to an observing subject.4 The fundamental distinction between system and environment (or inside and outside) can also be explained through the difference between self-reference and hetero-reference. Putting in simple terms, self-reference is subjectivity while hetero-reference is objectivity. The distinction between self-reference and hetero-reference reveals the influence of semiotics on the theory of social systems. In Saussure’s linguistics, this distinction enforces the simultaneous processing of signifier [signifiant] and signified [signifié]. Luhmann argues that “only language forces consciousness to keep signifier and signified—and, in this sense, self-reference and hetero-reference—as permanently separated while nonetheless processing them simultaneously” (Luhmann 2000, 9). In contrast to conscious systems (human beings), communication (social systems) combines self-reference and hetero-reference by continually reproducing the distinction between utterance (self-reference) and information (hetero-reference) under conditions that generate the possibility of understanding (Luhmann 2000, 11). For Luhmann, conscious systems (human beings) cannot communicate, while communication systems (social systems) cannot perceive. Compared to consciousness, communication executes an extremely slow, time-consuming sequence of transformations. System theory separates conscious and social systems and thus eliminates any subjective interpretation of the process of communication.

4

See Husserl’s On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917) (Husserl 1991; German original Husserl 1966); the text can sometimes be read almost like a treatise on musical composition. See also my essay “Spectral Semiotics: Sound as Enacted Experience. A Phenomenological Approach to Temporality in Sound and Music” (Chagas 2010), in which I introduce a new field of musical semiotic studies based on Husserl’s phenomenology. 69

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2. Operational Closure and Autopoiesis Conceiving the unity of difference poses a challenge for system theory. The distinction between system and environment is produced by the system itself. The system cannot get in touch with the environment through its own operations. The relation between system and environment is something that does not simply exist, but rather is connected to the system concept itself. This is what is expressed by the concept of operational closure, which, according to Luhmann, “is linked with a rupture of the epistemology of the ontological tradition” (Luhmann 2013, 80). Operational closure is the key concept for describing system in terms of self-organization and autopoiesis. The system doesn’t import anything from the environment. It has nothing but its own operations; all system structures must be created through it’s own operations. The system must be in operation to create its own structures. The view of society as an autopoeitic system constitutes a radical application of the theory of autopoeisis that emerged in the second wave of cybernetics with the neurophysiologists Maturana and Varela. The starting point for autopoiesis is the idea that the structures and operations of a living organism are connected in a kind of circular network. It combines the notions of distinction (Spencer-Brown) and observer with the cybernetic principles of autonomy, circularity, and self-organization to describe living organisms as systems operating with operational closure: “Living systems operate within the boundaries of an organization that closes in on itself and leaves the world on the outside (Hayles 1999, 136).5 Such systems constitute “networks of productions of components that recursively, through their interactions, continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes that produced them and constitute, in the space in which they exist, the boundaries of the network as components that participate in the realization of the network” (Maturana and Varela 1980, 78-79).6 Autopoietic systems

5

6

For an historical overview of the theory of autopoiesis see the chapter “The Second Wave of Cybernetics: From Reflexivity to Self-Organization” in Hayles (1999, 13159). For a musical application of the theory of autopoiesis see my essay “Polyphony and Embodiment: A Critical Approach to the Theory of Autopoiesis” (Chagas 1995). The complete definition: “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network” (Maturana and Varela 1973, 78-79). 70

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constitute different domains of interactions from the molecular domain of biochemical interactions to the cognitive and linguistic domains of society. Operational closure is what distinguishes autopoietic systems from machines. They “not only produce and eventually change their own structures […] but everything that is used as a unit by the system is produced as a unit by the system itself” (Luhmann 1990d, 3; emphasis in the original). Luhmann’s radical move was to rethink the social so that it meets the requirement of operational closure of autopoietic systems. Social systems are operationally closed and operate by distinguishing and reproducing communication as the sole operation: “Communication is autopoietic in that it can only be generated in the recursive relation to other communications, so only in a network in whose reproduction every single communication itself participates” (Luhmann 1997, 83). Communication remains an internal operation of the social system, which introduces a temporal dimension to the autopoiesis. Communication is not just a one-time event, but an ongoing operation that continually reproduces itself. From the point of view of autopoiesis, communication distinguishes itself from biological processes through the capability of self-observation. The original meaning of the Greek word “poiesis” is production in the sense of “making of a work.” Maturana explains it “as something that produces something else outside itself—namely a word” (Luhmann 2013, 78). Poiesis indicates the possibility of production without having control over the causes, in opposition to creation in the context of things that are already given. In combination with “auto” it means that the system is its own work. Maturana and Varela are strongly opposed to the application of the theory of autopoiesis to social systems and Maturana specifically, refuses to accept communication as a social system.7 Addressing this criticism, Luhmann argues that the theory of autopoietic systems is both underestimated and overestimated. What is underestimated is the theory of operational closure, which represents a radical rupture with the humanistic tradition of epistemology and ontology. What is overestimated is the explanatory capability of the concept itself. 7

Varela affirms that the term autopoiesis “should be restricted to systems, whether natural or artificial, that are characterized by a network that is, or resembles very closely, a chemical network” (Varela 1979, 15). Maturana argues against Luhmann that his application of autopoiesis to explaining the social “does not illuminate the social phenomena and processes, but rather hides them” (Maturana 2002, 106). Maturana’s emotional rejection is rooted in his humanistic approach to society. He claims that Luhmann “excludes” human beings from society and—even worse—reduces them to merely their function. According to Maturana, humans become “slaves” in Luhmann’s social system, which cannot be a social system at all, but a “tyranny” (Maturana 2002, 107). 71

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Luhmann considers the theory of autopoiesis as a metaphorical meta-theory, an approach that answers questions such as “What is life” and “What is a social system of communication”?

3. Art and Communication According to Luhmann, communication can no longer be understood as a “transmission of information from a living being or conscious system to any other such system” (Luhmann 2000, 9). Communication is a distinction that creates a form in the medium of meaning and executes a time-consuming sequence of transformations recalling and anticipating further communication within the network of self-created communications by combining self-reference and hetero-reference (Luhmann 2000, 11). Art makes perception available outside the standardized form of language. Communication through art extends the possibilities of language, supplementing writing and verbal exchange. Art intensifies the awareness of communication: “Music, for instance, intensifies the experience of simultaneity by blocking any meaningful hetero-reference, any kind of representation” (Luhmann 2000, 21). Art has the ability to bypass language by coupling consciousness with communication differently. The work of art “is produced exclusively for the purpose of communication; […] art communicates by using perceptions contrary to their primary purpose” (Luhmann 2000, 22; emphasis in the original). This is the key concept for understanding the specific communication of art. It creates a different kind of relationship between perception and communication: “one that is irritating and defies normality—and just this is communicated” (Luhmann 2000, 23; emphasis in the original). Art must always present something artistically new; otherwise its communication breaks down or turns into general social (linguistic) communication. Artistic communication occurs through works of art, and more precisely by means of distinctions located within the work or by means of forms that the work of art makes available for communication. Art cannot communicate without form, otherwise nothing could be observed. The individual work of art is a compact object of communication, a “condensation of communications” (Luhmann 2000, 51). However, an isolated work of art doesn’t make the communication system of art; it must be integrated into the reproductive network of art. The autopoiesis of art goes in two directions: On the one hand, the work of art is available for observations that are subsequently integrated into the work’s form; one can imagine new variants of certain ideas, new ways to put things together and 72

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reshape what is being done. On the other hand, the work of art becomes a topic for conversation through language. The differentiation of the art system allows manifold ways to articulate the relationship between selfreference and hetero-reference. Self-reference emphasizes the internal reality of the artwork; hetero-reference the external references. However, there is no self-reference without hetero-reference; rather, the formal combinations of the artwork have to construct internally the distinction between the two. The function of art, Luhmann argues, is to make the external world appear within the internal world of the artwork. Art gives visibility to an ambivalent situation in which every time something is shown in the world, something else is concealed; art makes observable the unobservable. This is the paradox of art (cf. Luhmann 2000, 149). Art is therefore an autopoietic social system as well as an autopoietic subsystem of society. From this point of view, music is simultaneously an autopoietic social system and an autopoietic subsystem of the system of art. Within music we can distinguish multiple autonomous systems; for example, we can distinguish musical systems on the basis of sound materials (acoustic, electroacoustic, etc.) or on the basis of functional categories (performance, reproduction, etc.) that music makes available for communication. The purpose of art, as viewed by Luhmann (and also by Wittgenstein), is to introduce surprise into the world. Art explores possibilities to relate perception to communication by creating objects that cause surprise and admiration. If we translate the concept of surprise with creativity, we can say that art produces and reproduces creativity as a form of communication. Artistic creativity unfolds a process of observation through the perception and communication of objects and events. The autonomy of art means that art defines itself according to its own standards, or to put it in terms of Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form, by drawing its own distinctions. The work of art is a chain of recursive operations that constructs its own reality. A work of music, for instance, begins with an arbitrary distinction, a sound, which is followed by other sounds; each new sound introduces possibilities for subsequent distinctions while restraining some choices. The dynamics of artistic creativity can be compared to a process of establishing order from chaos or necessity from contingency. The structure of modern society makes it possible for art to be an operationally closed and therefore self-referential system. In opposition to Adorno, Luhmann claims that artistic autonomy is not achieved vis-à-vis society, but within society: “The autonomy of art attained in modern society is not something that excludes social dependence; on the contrary: art shares the fate of modern 73

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society precisely because it seeks to find its way as an autonomous system” (Luhmann 1990c, 193).

4. Medium and Form The theory of the social system draws a sharp distinction between consciousness and society: consciousness perceives and society communicates. That means a subject can only perceive but cannot communicate. This consideration can be perplexing: How do we define meaning without referring to a subject or without a subjective reference? How do we trace the distinction between the production and reception of the work of art? Taking this into account, Luhmann introduced the distinction of medium and form. The difference between medium and form exceeds the self-imposed limits of system theory and opens up the spaces beyond communication. Medium is designed as a loose coupling and form as a tight coupling of elements. A medium for example, can be light or air. We don’t see the light or hear the air; we see objects and hear sounds. In the media the elements are disconnected, in the form they are connected. Language can also be viewed through the distinction of medium and form. Luhmann (2013, 165) makes two considerations: (1) The medium is always reproduced by means of creating forms; for example, language has elements such as phonemes, words, and sentences, but it is reproduced by means of speech, writing, or reading. Music has sounds, intervals, scales, and chords, but it is reproduced by means of scores, performances, or recordings. (2) The loose coupling of medium is more stable than the forms; the tight coupling of form gains temporary stability—a sound fades away, an object may disappear. The form cannot capture the possibilities of a medium. Meaning is defined as a difference between medium and form, a continuous request to create specific forms, and can also be described in terms of reducing complexity. Complexity is a multiplicity of disconnected elements; meaning reduces complexity by selecting elements. Music depends on the primary medium of acoustics to produce form. A work of music creates a specific reservoir of selections, a medium of compositional possibilities that are recognized as form but are not restricted to this specific composition. As Luhmann affirms: “Any tone can follow any other or be combined with any other, unless the form of the musical work decides otherwise” (Luhmann 1990b, 218). A body of rules for connecting and organizing pitches, such as modality and tonality, can be seen as medium for building forms. Notation is a medium that emerges through the 74

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differentiation between composition and performance. Sound reproduction is a medium that emerges with the technical apparatus. Whatever medium music uses for communication, it can only be understood if one follows the difference between medium and form. From the point of view of Spencer-Brown’s logic, the distinction of form and meaning comes into being as a difference that leads from an unmarked to a marked space and creates a boundary. Every crossing of boundary produces meaning and the work of art “forces both the artist and the observer to advance from one form to the next in order to return eventually to the form from which they began, which is now the other side of another form” (Luhmann 2000, 118). Whatever material art uses as a medium for developing forms, it has to participate in the recursive process of crossing boundaries and dividing the form in two sides. The evolution of the art system can be described as an increase of the capacity for dissolution and recombination of media and forms through which a media becomes a form, that subsequently becomes a media and so on (Luhmann 1990b, 221).

5. Meaning, Code, Program and Style The problems of society are related to the structure of meaning. Meaning is created in the autopoeitic network of the operations of the system. It exists only as a product of these operations (Luhmann 1998, 44). The difference system/environment emerges both as a difference produced by the system and a difference observed in the system. This is what characterizes the concept of “re-entry” in Spencer-Brown’s terms. This recursive process that introduces the difference inside the difference makes the system incalculable; the system reaches a state of indetermination caused by itself. It needs a “memory function” that makes available the result of previous selections as actual state. The medium of meaning refers to the selective process that produces a distinction between actuality and potentiality. Meaning actualizes selections that refer to further selections. The distinction between actuality and potentiality re-enters itself on the side of actuality, which is the internal side of the form. For the system theory, the world is not a gigantic mechanism but an immeasurable potential for surprise, a virtual information that needs a system to create information. Luhmann distinguishes two kinds of structures in functional systems: the code and the program. The code is the rule of duplication that allows correlating the observations with the unities in the system. It is based on a binary scheme that offers only two values, a positive and a negative one. A 75

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binary code is a drastic reduction of complexity as the infinite number of possibilities is limited to only two options. Each functional system operates on the basis of its own code. For example, the code of the economic system is have/have-not, the scientific system is true/false, and the law system is right/ wrong. In traditional aesthetics, the code values of art are labeled “beautiful” (positive) and “ugly” (negative). Luhmann recognizes that it has become increasingly difficult to insist on these labels, due to the evolution of the art system. In accordance with the differentiation of modern society, art develops the capability of auto-description by referring to itself. Since the 19th century, art has constituted society as a medium and develops forms to appropriate social data to use for its own purpose. In the second half of the 19th century, technology became a topic. In the 20th century, art began to attempt to cancel the difference between real and virtual by making itself indistinguishable from real objects. The ready-made art objects by Marcel Duchamp and John Cage’s emblematic piece 4’33” provoke a reflection on the limits of the art system. However, since the art system does not consist of artworks but of the communications about their form, art has the capacity to continuously redefine itself. In modern society, the art system opens the possibility to media combinations and hybrid forms.. Programs are the operations that direct the choice of a value. A binary code determines how each operation that creates form is integrated into the system or not. The code facilitates the connection of operations in the recursive network of formal distinctions. Code and program separated in the 18th century, when a new sense of novelty emerged that led to the development of self-organization. Novelty became a marketing strategy, a condition for causing surprise. Every work of art had to offer its own programs. Art developed the capacity of self-programming, which means the capacity for observing itself. The concept of self-programming, Luhmann argues, “does not mean that the individual work is an autopoetic, self-generating system”, but that “the work constitutes the conditions of possibility for its own decisions, that it observes itself, or, more accurately, that it can be observed only as a selfobserver” (Luhmann 2000, 204). Self-programming is a radical rupture with the idea that art can have an essence or a goal, the notion that the art system’s operations are structured according to certain rules permitting judgments about what should be considered” beautiful” or “ugly”, what can please or not. In opposition, “the ‘essence’ of art is the self-programming of the artwork” (Luhmann 2000, 204). The concept of style distinguishes works of art in terms of a period of time. Style does not affect the autonomy of the work, as a multiplicity of styles is 76

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possible. Style is a functional definition that accounts for the diversity of works of art, and at the same time, for the network through which the art system can establish itself. Luhmann points out that contemporary society has developed an impressive diversity of functional systems and media that facilitate formations. As art becomes part of society, it participates in the process of differentiation both in relation to other media such as the technological or visual medium as well as in relation to other systems such as art and economy, art and education, or art and politics.

6. Self-Reference and Hetero-Reference Art becomes autonomous in the Renaissance, when it constitutes a subsystem of society, setting its own standards and following its own criteria. In the Middle Ages, artwork had the function of emphasizing the meaning of religious or social practices, ensuring that they could be experienced repeatedly. In the Renaissance, the artist ceased to work in the service of God. This evolutionary change affects the uniqueness of the artwork as it begins to articulate its own self-reference by producing forms that can be observed as internal distinctions. The autonomy of the art system reflects the functional process of social differentiation that occurs in modern society; the work of art elaborates forms that replicate this differentiation. Modern art is autonomous in the sense that it presents itself as an operative closure that provides society with the form of differentiation. The work of art, as Luhmann emphasizes, comes into being through a recursive network, with verbal and written communication, with electronic and digital reproduction, and with such entities as museums, concerts, theaters, and publishers. The work of art is thus a connective object bridging artists with the public and the experts. Art criticism is integrated into the system as a medium of reflection that completes the artist’s work. When the art system becomes autonomous, it produces a surplus of communication possibilities and therefore requires self-limitation. Romanticism was the first style to fully embrace autonomy by focusing on subjective reflection and “searching for a goal displaced to infinity […] This situation seems to have remained unchanged for the past two hundred years” (Luhmann 2000, 167). It has only been intensified. In the 19th century, the debate on musical autonomy centered on the idea of absolute music, which became the aesthetic paradigm of German music culture (Dahlhaus 1988, 15). The polemic opposing the music critic Eduard Hanslick to the composer Richard Wagner demonstrates how German 77

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Romanticism articulated the paradigm of autonomy. Hanslick advocated the primacy of absolute music [absolute Tonkunst] represented by instrumental music, for instance Beethoven’s symphonies, which were considered a paradigm of the genre; Wagner proclaimed the superiority of music that creates a synthesis between sounds, words, and theatrical resources. The concept of Gesamtkunstwerk [the total artwork] that Wagner elaborates in Der Ring des Nibelungen articulates the vision of an audiovisual work of art, which, to a certain extent, anticipates cinematographic art and the mass media of the 20th century. This opposition between absolute and program music points to the issue of how music articulates self-reference and hetero-reference. Modern music tends to experiment with formal means; the complexity a work is capable of achieving becomes a crucial issue in the composition. Both Beethoven’s and Wagner’s composition styles develop formal complexity, but their music displays a different relationship of self-reference and hetero-reference. Interpreting Beethoven as absolute music suggests the primacy of selfreference, as the music turns its attention to the techniques and combinatory structures that generate sound forms. However, as Hatten shows in his semiotic study of Beethoven’s style (Hatten 1994), the linkage between sound and meaning produces correlations and interpretations that are stylistically encoded. Musical meaning is interpretable as asymmetrical opposition marked within a cultural style and correlated with marked oppositions (formal, expressive, dramatic, and narratalogical) and further interpretable according to the context at all levels of complexity, “from the most simplest oppositions of sound (duration, frequency, amplitude, timbre) to the most complex interactive network of a late Beethoven quartet” (Hatten 1994, 276). For example, in the Diabelli Variations Op. 120, Beethoven uses parody as a means to articulate “a complex existence between two modes of being—literal [self-referential], and referential [hetero-referential]” (Kinderman 1989, 69; my brackets). Wagner’s emphasis on hetero-reference is obviously related to the concept the Gesamtkunstwerk, based on the leitmotif technique that “served both as the structural principle that bound together various art forms and as the unifying force of the music” (Tarasti 2012, 215). In Wagner’s compositional system, the leitmotivs operate as mini-narratives connecting two poles: at one end the primary structures (motives and archetypes) and at the other end, independent melodies (themes and narratives). Tarasti compares the functionality of leitmotivs with the role of raga in Indian music, which connects scales to melodies (cf. Tarasti 2012, 227-28). 78

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From the perspective of self-reference, music resembles mathematics and the algorithmic logic of computer programs. Such a conception of music could be interpreted as a model of creativity in the digital era. But is the apprehension of the internal formal context of music (melody, harmony, sound shaping, formal structures, etc.) a sufficient condition for understanding the broader scope of musical experience? Digital technology doesn’t limit itself to the combinatory game of the programs of the apparatuses; it creates new external contexts as it integrates music into other artistic forms. In other words, the music of the digital era develops its own structures to articulate the distinction between self-reference and hetero-reference and constructs this distinction internally through its combinations. The autonomy of art is traditionally expressed through the notion of freedom: Creating a work of art—according to one’s capabilities and one’s imagination—generates the freedom to make decisions on the basis of which on can continue one’s work. The freedoms and necessities one encounters are entirely the products of art itself; they are consequences of decisions made within the work. (Luhmann 2000, 203-4; my emphasis) The concept of self-programming relates the traditional notion of freedom to self-generated cognitive models. Self-programming has to distinguish between self-reference or hetero-reference and between the positive and negative values of the code. It indicates that the artwork has to exclude the world “as a source of directives” for elaborating and evaluating itself (Luhmann 2000, 206). The work of art has to be understood as a frame of observations at many levels.

7. Complexity and Polyphony A comprehensive reflection on music today must take into account that while we have a great variety of works and styles produced in different parts of the world, we also have a continuous process of differentiation through self-programming that cross the boundaries of music as a social system. Contemporary music presents itself as a complex of simultaneous, multiple, contrasting, and even paradoxical forms. Is there a basic medium of today’s music, some sort of materiality that underlies every form that can be related to the artistic system of music? Let’s assume that there is such a medium and that this medium is sound. In that way, all music can be defined as the tight coupling of forms in the medium of sound. 79

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From an evolutionary perspective, we can interpret the differentiation process of music as a process of variation and selection, which increases freedom and produces memory. In the history of music, we observe how new forms are created through the transformation of previous forms. The technology of sound recording and reproduction, invented in the second half of the 19th century and improved in the 20th century, intensified this process; the popularization of computers and the distribution of music through digital networks have accelerated the evolution. For a long time, the tradition of European classical music was the sole reference of musical studies. Today we listen not only to the vast repertoire of works created over many centuries, but also to the music of different cultures and societies, accessed through the internet. This repertoire is mixed with and transformed by sounds of the emerging electronic and digital media. Understanding the complexity of musical forms that emerge in contemporary society represents a challenge: Shall we seek common ground for examining the different musical forms, trying to discover the unity in diversity? Or shall we value the quality of the diversity by considering different musical manifestations as independent things, which require different ways of looking at them? We listen to different kinds of music in different situations; we communicate through music in different ways. The music of contemporary society appears to us as a complex system of forms and events that occur simultaneously. The complexity prevents us from observing completely that which is happening in the world in terms of music. As Luhmann says, “complexity enforces selection” (Luhmann 1990e, 81). We must simulate complexity in order to understand it. From this perspective, the concept of meaning emerges as the way to experience enforced selectivity, as the recursive operation that produces the difference between the actual and the possible: “meaning is a representation of complexity, […] a new and powerful form of coping with complexity under the unavoidable condition of enforced selectivity” (Luhmann 1990e, 84). Meaning is the last medium that cannot be transcended, since we cannot leave the meaningful world; even if we negate meaning we are still operating with meaning. The phenomenological method offers a way to approach simultaneity by focusing on the complexity of references that surround sound phenomena. The existence of music is related to our ability to perceive a complexity of sounds. Music emerges as enforced selectivity of environmental complexity, through operations that assign meaning to sounds by actualizing their potential. Primarily, musical meaning is coupled with the medium of the human body and the medium of instruments. The human body generates sound through the voice or by operating instruments. In both cases the body resonates, 80

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either to amplify the sound produced by the vocal chords or sympathetically through instruments. Someone singing or playing an instrument makes selections of how to produce individual sounds (defined in terms of pitch, duration, amplitude, timbre, etc.) and how to connect those sounds; she has to constantly modify the sound according to certain criteria—for example, adjusting the intonation of the voice to match the pitch—that depend on contextual references of the music. We can see how musical meaning emerges through the selection of the environmental complexity, as there is a constant actualization of the potential of producing sounds. Any meaningful sound, however abstract and disconnected it may be from a living organism, is always a manifestation of a physical presence. Even the sounds produced electronically need the vibration of objects—the membranes of the loudspeakers—to be perceived by the ear. Listening to and creating sounds are two inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon, which consists of distinguishing sound vibrations by crossing the boundaries between potentiality and actuality, thereby selecting meaning. Music is just the operation of consciousness that differentiates between musical sounds and the noise produced by the acoustic environment. Listening to music is a mode of operation of consciousness by which we selectively recognize certain sounds, to which we attribute musical meaning. This capability of simultaneous and selective auditory perception—the ability to recognize multiple and simultaneous events and exclude others— is directly associated with the construction of polyphony. Polyphony is a fundamental medium of music and particularly of Western music. Distinguishing sounds and polyphony as musical organization are similar cognitive operations that demonstrate our competence to create meaning in the acoustic media. In the essay “Polyphony and Embodiment: A Critical Approach to the Theory of Autopoiesis”, (Chagas 2005) I propose both of the following definitions of polyphony: as “the specific mode of operation of auditory perception that distinguishes multiple and independent events and creates a musical difference between sound and environment” and as “the distinction that creates a boundary between system and environment by distinguishing simultaneity and making it available for artistic communication”. The system of polyphony, invented in Europe in the Middle Ages, was a major factor in musical evolution. The polyphonic composition, exploring the principles of multiplicity and individuality, drove the development of vocal and instrumental music; polyphonic music techniques such as counterpoint and harmony are still the basics of musical training and education. Modality and tonality are fundamental for the formal shaping of polyphony. The 81

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medium of tonality especially, played a key role in increasing the variety of polyphonic composition as music achieved functional autonomy as a social system. Classical and Romantic music extended the self-programming capability of polyphony to the domain of orchestration. From the second half of 19th century, musical styles such as impressionism, expressionism, atonality, twelve-tone music and serialism increased the diversity of polyphonic forms. The recording, reproduction, and synthesis of sound through electronic media introduced new possibilities and the medium of technology unleashed a process of differentiation within the medium of sound. The aesthetics of musique concrète and Elektronische Musik, which emerged in the second half of 20th century, connects polyphonic composition with analog and digital electronic media and in this way, produces diversity and differentiation in the social system of art. A significant aspect of this evolution is the emergence of artistic forms in the medium of sound that question the boundary of the social system of music and its autonomy. Besides the forms traditionally recognized as music, we see the emergence of more or less autonomous communication systems— artistic, meta-artistic, and hybrid systems—which uses sound as primary media, while detaching themselves from the musical system. Examples of such systems reach from sound art to background music. Musical autonomy is challenged by the explosion of mass culture, which has transformed music into a consumption object and connects music with information and communication technology, establishing new interdisciplinary relations between sound, image, body, and space. The development of cinema has had a strong impact on the status of music in society. In the 19th century, the musical masterworks, such as the symphonies by Beethoven and the operas by Wagner, constituted the reference for both audio and visual artistic creation. Today the relation between sound and image has shifted: the film celebrates the power of visual imagination and pushes music into a subordinated role. In the contemporary world dominated by images, sound resonates as an environmental background; the visual impression predominates, for instance, in the audiovisual spectacles of international pop music, which have become a kind of live cinema inspired by different kinds of narratives. Images disengage criticism as they fix attention on the surface of things and literally expose consciousness to superficiality. The magical fascination “can be observed all over the place: The way in which they put a magic spell on life, the way in which we experience, know, evaluate and act as function of these images” (Flusser 2000, 16). The function of images is to replace “historical consciousness with a second-order magical consciousness” and to replace “the ability to think conceptually with a second-order imagination” 82

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(2000, 17). Flusser critically analyzes the interwoven relationships between art, technology, science, design, and economics, which cast doubt on the very concept of music as an art system (cf. Flusser 1985; 2011). What makes analyzing the differentiation of musical forms especially difficult is the breakneck speed at which art operates in coupling and decoupling forms in the digital media—sound, image, space, computer, and social media. This forces us to constantly reconsider the structures of the social system of art as a whole and redraw the boundaries of the subsystems that constitute themselves as temporary or permanent. Absorbed in this whirlwind, we must question whether the investigation is able to follow the processes of differentiation or if we are not predestined to disappear ourselves in the high-speed vectors of post-industrial capitalist society that tend to eliminate the space of reflection and criticism (cf. Virilio 1988; 1990). Reflecting on music as a social system of communication asks us reconsider the boundaries of music itself. How are we to understand the different types of musical expression, the different experiences associated with music? What is the difference between a work of classical music and a work of popular music, or the difference between music performed live and the music of film? What about between a work of music and a work of sound art? II

8. Language, Music, and Signification The fundamental distinction between music and language can be approached through the voice, which is a common element of both systems. From the evolutionary point of view, the voice is uniquely human. Although many animals emit sounds, only humans produce that form of sound organization that we recognize as language. The first significant sound produced by the voice is the cry. The analysis of a baby’s cry demonstrates that it shares characteristics of acoustic stimuli that have the capacity to arouse, to alert, and to direct the listener and also have certain informative properties that “cause listeners to recognize a situation of need and alarm” (Ostwald 1963, 48). The acquisition of language is an unconscious process, through which the child begins to talk by imitating sounds and continues with the recognition of linguistic rules that organize sounds into words and sentences. Subsequently, the process of language learning will be influenced and shaped by social and individual experiences over the course of a lifetime. 83

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Tarasti’s theory of existential semiotics is a significant epistemological shift in semiotic studies, from the classical communication model inspired by linguistics and information theory towards a philosophical account influenced by phenomenology and existentialism. It reinterprets Heidegger’s fundamental concept of Dasein—which refers to the human experience of being—under the lens of semiotic processes of meaning. From the standpoint of existential semiotics, voice manifests our desire and will to express something, “the movement from the immanent towards the manifest”, (Tarasti 2002, 157). Every vocal act, as Tarasti points out, implies the effort of the projection of a sign through which “one shifts gradually from the worldorientation of Dasein towards the inner transcendence of Dasein” (Tarasti 2000, 30; emphasis in the original). The voice emanating from a subject is an escape from the world of the individual Dasein and an effort to connect with the social (Tarasti 2002, 157). In other words, a voice draws a distinction that creates a boundary and a marked space. Moreover, every vocal act of communication is also a physical effort. This becomes evident when we see a singer performing before an audience. According to Tarasti, the muscular tensions and gesticulations of singing emphasize the synthesis between the physical and intellectual effort, which is implicit in the conception of any language (cf. Tarasti 2002, 160). Language that uses voice to produce speech is the main communication system of society. Language uses a very small number of sounds—phonemes— that have no value in themselves, but acquire value in relation to each other. It means that the operational mode of the phoneme is strictly differential and connective. The phonological oppositions that organize the sound material are the distinctive elements of speech. The binary code of language provides the paradigm for articulating the functional codes of communication vis-àvis Luhmann. Linguistic binary coding structures all operations of the system as a choice between a positive and a negative value. The elements form a set of contrasting options: “On one phonological level we may speak of speech sounds as units, on another level we may recognize syllables as units and on yet another, phonological, words or phrases” (Clark and Yallop 1995, 57). The analogies between music and language are driven by the fact that they are both symbolic systems of communication that elaborate forms in the medium of sound. Music semiotics emerges in the traditions of Saussure’s linguistics and structuralism. Semiotic accounts of music inspired by linguistics interpret music on the basis of Saussure’s theory, namely, the distinction between language [langue] and speech [parole]. In Saussure’s linguistics, language is the system of values organized through the distinctive oppositions, grammatical rules, and standards, which function as an abstract 84

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infrastructure. Speech is the act of using the language, which is linked to several factors—not necessarily linguistic—such as situation, personality, social and cultural environment. Language is primarily a concept, a repertoire of possibilities viewed from the outside. Speech is associated with the acoustic image as a whole—not just the physical materiality of sound but also the muscular effort and psychic imprint. Language is the realm of the virtual where nothing is yet said, and speech represents the embodiment of the individuation process bringing the personal and collective unconscious into the realm of the conscious. Using Tarasti’s terminology, the distinction between language and speech represents the movement from the immanent to the manifest through which meaning emerges. We can see in this model a prototype of the fundamental difference between system and environment, even though focused on the subject and not on the operations of observations of the system. The linguistic sign of Saussure represents the synthesis of this fundamental opposition between the concept (language) and the acoustic image (speech). In the definition of the sign, the notions of concept and acoustic image are associated respectively with the terms signifier [signifiant] and signified [signifié] (Saussure 1972, 99). Saussure thus develops a conception of language as a system of diff erences articulating two distinct spaces and forming a unit. The idea that music can also be considered as an articulated system unifying concepts and acoustic images is the starting point for comparisons between music and language. In the essay entitled “Contradictions du langage sériel” [Contradictions of the Serial Language], Ruwet (1972) criticizes the composers of serial music (Boulez, Pousseur, Stockhausen, etc.) for creating music that is supposed to generate complexity through the combining of elements and operations, which however appears “simplistic” to the listener. He blames Boulez and others for not having developed sufficient awareness of the possibilities of music as a language: Music is language. That is to say, it is, among other things, one of the systems of communication by which people exchange meanings and values. In order to exist, to have efficacy, it must therefore obey the rules that make it possible, in general, for a communication system to function. (Ruwet 1972, 26) Ruwet distinguishes between two different categories of human communication. On the one hand, there are modes of communication that are not articulated as language, such as a cry, a look, or a touch. These 85

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constitute infinite possibilities, which can be confusing, undifferentiated, and ineffable. These are examples of noise, which is an undifferentiated category of information that has to be brought into a system to become meaningful. On the other hand, Ruwet identifies systems that are articulated and differentiated such as myths, rituals, languages, and economic systems, which have the capability to develop complexity, but need constraints and rules. Music, of course, falls under this second category. Ruwet poses the question of what the rules that organize the music system are (cf. Ruwet 1972, 26) and believes that the semiology proposed by Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and others is the key to developing a general science of communication systems. He considers that music, in order to constitute meaning, needs a reference system—such as a langue in Saussure’s sense of the term—constituted by a limited number of elements and articulated as a system of oppositions, such as the phonological system. The tonal system accomplishes this function as a system of oppositions and functional relationships between pitches. Serial music as well as electroacoustic music, increases the complexity as it eliminates the reference of the tonal system and extends the material to all kinds of noise. For Ruwet, the structural possibilities of the serial system—and also of electroacoustic music—are limited and lack the capability to articulate meaning. Lévi-Strauss makes the same criticism, questioning whether serial and electroacoustic music would be able to overcome the traditional gap between the composer and listener. By removing the ability to unconsciously refer to a system of reference, serial music forces the listener to play the individual act of creation himself if he wants to understand the music: Through the power of an ever new, internal logic, each work will rouse the listener from his state of passivity and make him share in its impulse, so that there will no longer be a difference of kind, but only of degree, between inventing music and listening to it. (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 26) The criticism by Ruwet and Lévi-Strauss is emblematic of the difficulty in understanding contemporary music through models inspired by linguistics. The linguistic and structuralist approaches, which persist in various forms in musical semiotics, operate through the combination of two fundamental levels of meaning that ultimately can be reduced to the opposition between culture and nature. It evolves from the idea that culture is a separation—man is alienated from nature—and that it is impossible to have direct access to reality. Culture introduces into the very essence of being an unbridgeable gap: “the real is always on the edge of experience” (Lacan, qtd. in Ruwet 1972, 68). 86

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Tarasti proposes a semiotic theory of music that can be considered a work in progress, moving from the background of French semiotics, especially Lévi-Strauss and Greimas, to existential interpretations of meaning. Tarasti’s Theory of Musical Semiotics (1994) introduces a semiotic model of music that reconstructs the central opposition of language as a distinction between the manifest and the immanent. Each level articulates an internal opposition: inside the manifest level there is the opposition between technological and ideological models; inside the immanent level the distinction between the structures of signification and the structures of communication (Tarasti 1994, 16-20). The ideological models are, for instance, concepts and aesthetic theories that shape the symbolic meaning of music in relation to cultural and social contexts; the technological models are constituted by rules such as the techniques of harmony, counterpoint, and other musical mechanisms. In this category we include also the techniques of electroacoustic and digital composition. A musical style emerges as a synthesis of ideological and technological models. The structures of communication and signification that occupy the immanent level determine the operations of the musical communication, such as the selections a composer or a performer makes for creating or interpreting a work of music. The difference between the structures of communication and signification is that they represent different ways of dealing with individual freedom. The structures of communication are directly impacted by the manifest level—the stylistic shaped by the ideological and technological models, which represent models of decision that are experienced, such as “possible”, “permitted”, “recommended”, or “necessary”. By contrast, structures of signification represent the possibility to disconnect from the stylistic and make individual decisions—selections that are experienced as “surprise”, “improbability”, “breaking with norms”, or “strangeness”. This is what makes music progress. The concept of modalization is an important contribution to the analysis of music as a dynamic process of signification evolving in time and space and requiring a performer to actualize the meaning of what has been created by a composer. Tarasti imports the idea of modalization from the generativetransformational grammar by Greimas, which whom he studied in Paris.8 Modalization is the process that transforms the abstract, deep structures of 8

Greimas’s contribution to semiotics encompasses a complex body of theories and models that carefully articulates the interactions between syntactic and semantics structures regulating our patterns of thought, action and communication. His seminal work is Sémantique Structurale (1966) translated into English as Structural Semantics (1983). Other important books are Du Sens (1970) and Du Sens II (1983). 87

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music into perceptive surface structures. “The basic modalities are “being” (être): state of rest, stability, consonance; and “doing” (faire): musical action, event, dynamism, dissonance. In addition one can distinguish “becoming” (devenir), which refers to the “normal” temporal process of music (Tarasti 1994, 48-9). Other modalities include “will”, “can”, “know”, “must”, and “believe”. Tarasti proposes a semantic analysis of music by identifying the presence and intensity of modalities manifesting themselves as actorial, spatial and temporal articulations (cf. Tarasti 1994, 27, 38-43) From the concept of modality, Tarasti’s semiotics project evolves into the model of existential semiotics (Tarasti 2000), which studies signs as movements crossing over the boundaries between Dasein as subjective and objective categories of reality. Existential semiotics introduces the subject as a frame of signification, through which it distinguishes the fundamental difference between reality and transcendence. The transcendent is simply defined as anything that is absent but actually presented in the subject’s mind. In his most recent account of musical semiotics, Tarasti (2012) moves towards a synthesis of modalities and existential categories, which he designates as transcendental analysis. Focusing on the concept of being, and drawing on Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Fontanille, he proposes a model of “metamodalities” consisting of four dynamic categories that are combined in a semiotic square.9 The categories are the following: (1) Beingin-myself represents bodily ego, which appears as kinetic energy, desire, gestures, intonations, or the immediateness of being; the principal modality is “will”. (2) Being-for-myself corresponds to the observing subject becoming aware of himself and of the transcendent; the ego discovers its identity; the principal modality is “can”. (3) Being-in-itself refers to abstract categories such as norms, ideas, and values, which are potentialities that can be actualized by the subject; the principal modality is “must”. (4) Being-for-itself indicates the realization of the ideas and values by the subject in his Dasein, through which the abstract categories are realized as distinctions, applied values, selections and choices; the principal modality is “know” (cf. Tarasti 2012, 25-7, 83). There are similarities and differences between the theory of social system and such semiotic models. The similarities result from the operational distinctions that mark boundaries between marked and unmarked spaces, in which the distinction between actuality and potentiality creates meaning. 9

The semiotic square is a tool for structural analysis developed by Greimas with the purpose of displaying structures of meaning, which are related by binary relations with positive and negative values. The semiotic square has been used to analyze many things, including music; cf. Tarasti (1994). 88

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The crucial difference lies in the role attributed to the subject as a frame of signification (meaning). The semiotic project operates in the tradition of metaphysics and hermeneutics that emphasizes the subjective approach. The theory of social system shifts the emphasis in regard to observation and description from the subject to the self-organizing (autopoietic) system that observes itself. Another crucial difference is the concept of operational closure. The system remains operationally closed to information from the environment; there is no transfer of information between different domains of operations. Consequently, the system must organize itself and develop selfreference.

9. Music and Noise Critical studies have attracted the attention of academic research and teaching on music, particularly in universities in the United States. Jacques Attali’s book Bruits: Essay sur l’economie politique de la musique (Attali 2001) became a reference in this field. The English translation Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Attali 1985)10 appeared with an afterword by Susan McClary, who is considered a leading scholar of the so-called “new musicology”.11 McClary claims that Attali’s reflections literally introduce “noise” into the silent atmosphere of the music educational institutions, which had so far ignored controversial issues such gender, identity, race, and social conflicts. The traditional disciplines of music theory and history, with emphasis on acoustics, mathematics, and pseudoscientific constructions, have “encouraged theorists repeatedly to ignore or even deny the social foundations of music” (McClary 1985, 150). The subjective observations of Attali’s book are a refusal to interpret music as an autonomous game with harmonic and formal structures aiming to create nothing but “pretty, orderly sound”; rather they are an invitation to understand music in the context of the “imperfect material, social word we inhabit” (McClary 1985, 150). McClary’s observations seem, however, to overestimate Attali’s intentions, who claims that he is not providing a theory about music, but a theory through music. The issues he raises regarding the

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The original French edition from 1977 is the one translated into English. The second French edition (Attali 2000) is a significant update as it includes reflections on the development of digital music and media that occurred after the first edition. McClary’s book Feminine Endings (McClary 2002), originally published in 1991, has become a classical work on cultural criticism of music, especially from the point of view of “gender studies”. 89

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different social functions of music throughout history are aimed to illuminate the musical creativity and practices of the digital era. Attali proposes a fundamental distinction between noise and music. In terms of theory of systems, noise represents the medium and music the form; noise is the excess of connective possibilities that are actualized by music. However, he provides the opposition between noise and music with a political content that he considers crucial for understanding the social meaning of music: “With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music is born power and its opposite: subversion” (Attali 1985, 6; 2000, 15). When noise is transformed into music it becomes a “source of purpose and freedom, transcendence and dream, demand and revolt” (Attali 2000, 15). Music represents the power over noise—and power in general—but also the possibility to undermine power in order to reshape and expand the space of freedom. Attali argues that there is no power without a code for analyzing, marking, restraining, or training the sounds of language or of the body, tools, objects, of relations to self and others: All music, any organization of sounds is then a tool for the creation or consolidation of a community, of a totality. It is what links a power center to its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in all of its forms. Therefore, any theory of power today must include a theory of the localization of noise and its endowment with form. (Attali 1985, 6) In this distinction between music and noise we see the conception of music as “organized sound”, which is supposed to have been invented by Edgard Varèse and is frequently applied to electroacoustic music. This distinction would thus be a case of how things are shaped in the medium of noise, music being the marked space (form) and noise the unmarked space (medium). The organized sound is ambivalent: on the one hand, it connects people, strengthens social ties, and reinforces the mechanisms of control; on the other hand, it breaks rules, crosses borders, and transcends individual and collective boundaries. The opposition between music and noise reproduces itself inside the music, so that it operates as a recursive chain. The re-entry of noise into music determines, according to Attali, the politics of society. Music organizes noise and insofar controls power and violence, but at the same time it dissolves this organization again and again by re-introducing noise, which is controlled and transformed into new music. Every time the boundary is crossed, the potential of noise is actualized and it creates meaning. For example, the interval of third, which was considered a “dissonance” in early 90

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polyphony, becomes a meaningful tool in the music of the Renaissance; 20th century music explores noise in a variety of ways, including the noise of percussion instruments and electronic devices. On the basis of the distinction between noise and music, Attali develops a model of musical subjectivity with four categories—sacrificing, representing, repeating and composing—that account for the historical evolution of music. In this model, music is not primarily understood from the perspective of communication, but from its representational potential. The origin of music should not be sought in linguistic communication, but in the context of ritual and sacrifice: “Noise is a weapon and music, primordially, is the formation, domestication and ritualization of that weapon as a simulacrum of ritual murder” (Attali 1985, 24). The domestication of noise through the simulacrum of the sacrifice, as experienced in primitive society, aims to create social order and political integration. Attali argues that music has the ability to anticipate changes in society. Each time a change occurs, music makes itself present as a way to prevent the emergence of violence. Modern music rituals, such as electronic dance music and DJ parties, echoes the sacrificial channelization of violence of earlier rituals. In this conception of music as sacrifice, we observe the influence of LéviStrauss’ structural anthropology, particularly the relation between music and myth as formulated in Le Cru et le Cuit [The Raw and the Cooked] (Lévi-Strauss 1964; 1969). According to Lévi-Strauss, myth and music are temporal languages that transcend articulated speech. However, their relation to time is of a special nature: it is as if music and myth need time only in order to deny it. In Lévi-Strauss’ words, both are considered “machines for the obliteration of time” (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 16).12 Under the surface of the sounds, music explores the physiological time of the listener, which is primarily an irreversible time but which music transforms into a unity of time, synchronous and closed in itself. So music overcomes the irreversibility of historical time, creating works that are compact and permanent structures of temporal experience. Lévi-Strauss affirms that listening to music inspired him to develop the structural analysis of myths. He mentions especially listening to operas by Wagner, the opera Pelléas et Melissande by Debussy, and Stravinsky’s ballet Les Noces, which brought him into a state of time suspension:

12

The English translation “instruments for the obliteration of time” misses the crucial meaning of Lévi-Strauss metaphor: “machines à supprimer le temps’ (Lévi-Strauss 1964, 24). 91

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Because of the internal organization of the musical work, the act of listening to it immobilizes passing time; it catches and enfolds it as one catches and enfolds a cloth flapping in the wind. It follows that by listening to music, and while we are listening to it, we enter into a kind of immortality. (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 16) Attali’s appropriation of noise as a musical category is also influenced by Pierre Schaeffer’s conception of musique concrète, especially the notion of sound object as an intentional shaping of environmental noise. Considering the three prototype apparatuses that we propose for analyzing the musique concrète— the microphone, the tape recorder, and the loudspeaker13 —we can say that Attali listens to, records, and reproduces the noises of an imaginary world. He explores a virtual territory of sound and music events that reverberates mainly in his imagination. He listens to the relations of power and violence in an imaginary soundscape; the rituals and sacrifices that he brings in relation to the origin of music are actually shaped by his observations of the present. From the category of sacrificing—the simulacrum of ritual death— the music went over to the category of representing—the simulacrum of exchange and harmony. Representing is based on the logic of the market and money. Music becomes a form of representation of the economic order, the “affirmation of a possible harmony in exchange” (Attali 2001, 109). The code of representation requires a system of measurement for the organization of harmonious exchanges. The tonal system accomplishes this, articulating an abstract system of harmonic functions to create and resolve conflicts. Binary codes based on oppositions such as consonance/dissonance or tension/relaxation, articulate not only differences in notes and chords, but narratives that represent conflict in the social reality. Music accomplishes a double function: on the one hand, it has to create harmony in society through consonance—for example, to simulate suffering; on the other hand, music has to excite and seduce and thus to produce dissonant noise. It is a recursive process: music produces noise in the form of dissonance that is transformed into consonance, which is in turn converted into dissonance, and so on. Harmonic combinatorics and exacerbation of individualism led to the rupture in the process of representation. The extreme dissonances that were introduced into the tonal systems by Wagner and Schoenberg broke the foundations of the tonal system and announced the advent of power based on a technocratic language, a code of cybernetic repetition. Music turned its attention to the sound matter; a model of creativity based on probabilistic and 13

See “The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. 103-158 herein. 92

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combinatorial codes versus the codes of consonance and dissonance. Music enters the probabilistic universe of atonality, serial music, and electroacoustic music. Sound recording is the keyword for the third category—repeating. Recorded music that reproduces itself as an object of consumption organizes the individual’s relation to it. Through recording, music becomes a private simulacrum of individuality: “the gramophone becomes like the altar of a personalized sacrifice” (Attali 2001, 180). Music reproduction creates uniformity in a diversity of media, “repetition in a society that talks so much about change, silence in the midst of so much noise, death in the heart of life” (Attali 1985, 120).14 In contemporary society, music is accumulated in the form of digital information organized as commercial databases such as iTunes. The files are transmitted and decoded as sounds by mobile apparatuses, which reconstruct the structures for individual listening. Headphones shut out the environment, which is one form of suppressing ambient noise. On the other hand, amplified music becomes background noise in spaces such as cars, airplanes, offices, elevators, and many other public spaces. Background has become an environment factor in shaping commercial environments. As Sterne notes, musical listening “designates a whole range of heterogeneous activities involving the perception of sound” (Sterne 2003, 319). Listening has become an ambiguous oscillating between active listening—for instance aesthetic contemplation in a concert hall—and passive listening—such as shopping in a mall while being exposed to programmed music. Better known by one of its brand names, ‘Muzak’, is one of the most widely disseminated forms of music in the world” (Sterne 2003, 317). In his study of the programmed music in the Mall of America, Stern argues that the focus on the social, cultural, political, and economic can obscure the understanding of the reflexive character of mass media; he claims that we should turn our attention to the processes of actualization of meaning related to the media technology itself. In a society saturated with mass media, the reification of experience is a pervasive social phenomenon through which “the outside social world of recorded songs, mass-mediated images, and programmed spaces and schedules is folded into that which is most inside and private: the substance of affect and experience” (Sterne 2003, 341). 14

In his controversial criticism of Stravinsky’s music, Adorno compares the persistence of rhythmic repetitions to the schema of a catatonic condition: “In certain schizophrenics, the autonomization of the motoric apparatus, after the collapse of the ego, leads to an endless repletion of gestures and words” (Adorno 2006, 132). 93

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From another perspective, repetition has become the foundation of a musical creativity that explores the reproducibility and connectivity of sound—in the form of rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and sound objects. This creativity is reflected in divergent aesthetics such as minimalism (Reich, Adams, Glass, etc.) and hip-hop. Digital technology improves and expands the techniques of musical composition grounded on repetition. The technique of the “loop”, which emerged with the turntables of the earlier days of the musique concrète15 and became popular with apparatuses such as the drummachine and the sequencer, is an example of how the integration of automaticity and repetition in analog and digital machines impacts musical ideas. Musical repetition also manifests itself as a symbolic processing of the accumulation of musical objects, such as a repertoire of songs. Karaoke, for example, is a new kind of musical practice that calls upon the collective musical memory. Composing is the fourth category in Attali’s account of musical subjectivity and the most important, because it expresses his optimistic vision of the future: Today a new era begins that could be neither predicted nor imagined with the old tools of thinking. It will not be a return to ritual, or a return of the spectacle, both of which have been crushed by the phase of repetition, but, on the contrary, the emergence of a radically new form of political economy. (Attali 2001, 225) Attali suggests that music plays a leading role in unleashing the creativity of the digital era, which is dominated by composition. We will compose “for the pleasure of listening to ourselves playing, for the enjoyment of improvising and sharing the composition outside the market” (Attali 2001, 226). Composition is a form of insurgence against the repletion in society. Attali mentions free jazz, reggae, and rap as examples of musical movements that rebel against repetition in society by invoking the right to improvisation. In today’s capitalistic society, the market value of information depends on its ability to connect the people who use it. Attali expresses the hope that music can bring forth new forms of organization devoted to the pleasure of making music. Music consumers are simultaneously creators, manipulating databases, transforming sounds, and composing music as virtual DJs, the exchanges taking place in non-commercial structures. Attali endorses Cage’s vision that the composer has “to give up the desire to control sound, clear his mind of music, and set about discovering means to let sounds be themselves 15

See “The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. 103-158 herein. 94

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rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expressions of human sentiments” (Cage 1961, 10). This vision implies that the sound must have an autonomous existence rather than being a vehicle for theories or feelings. It also conveys the primacy of improvisation over composition. The opposite view, championed by Pierre Boulez, conveys the logocentric and absolutist conviction that composition is an acquired knowledge and inaccessible to the masses. Attali views this standpoint critically, believing that composition correlates with the concentration of power and that digital technology will decentralize power and accelerate the tendencies of improvisation, finally eliminating the distinction between composition and improvisation. Many others consider this to be an overly simplistic interpretation of musical creativity. Flusser elaborates a similar view of musical creativity in his phenomenological utopia of the telematic16 society. He describes a communication model inspired by chamber music, in which the performers develop a sophisticated subjective dialog based on the exchange of musical information. In postindustrial society, the composers of the telematic dialog are both human beings and intelligent devices; they improvise simultaneously in different times and spaces, according to specific rules, which form a consensus, even though constantly changing.17 Attali’s utopia of composition, even though it is based on subjective assumptions that differ substantially from Flusser, shares a similar existential quality: Composition announces a social system that goes beyond the realm of music: the joy of making music and giving it freely to others to listen to sketches a society in which everyone would fulfill himself in creation and the exchange of creations. A society in which everyone would learn to discover himself, to love himself, in order to find pleasure in being discovered by the other and then in giving without expecting anything in return. (Attali 2001, 279-80)

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The concept of telematics characterizes the communicative complexity that emerges from the convergence of telecommunications and information processing. The telematics society embodies Flusser’s utopia of freedom, a society in which man and machine acting as partners generate information through the telematic dialogue. See discussion on telematic dialogue in “The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. 103-158 herein. Flusser elaborates his model of telematic communication in the book Into the Universe of Technical Images (Flusser 2001); the last chapter introduces the comparison with chamber music (Flusser 2001, 159-67). For an account of Flusser’s model of telematic communication in relation to music see Chagas (2008) and “The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. - herein. 95

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10.

Signal-to-Noise Ratio: The Twilight of the Gods

A work of music begins with something that we identify as noise and concludes by returning to noise. We can call this musical pattern emergence from noise and disappearance into noise. How often works of contemporary music follow this pattern? How oft have we heard acoustic or electroacoustic pieces begining with some kind of rumor—rumbling, whispering, buzz, mumbling, drone, sound clouds, etc.—from which the music builds up, and after some time, dwindles, shrinks, or fades into some indiscernible or nebulous noisy state? Or, which is the same in effect, how many works of music fade in from silence and fade out into silence? Why does this form seem to be so attractive for today’s composers? Kittler reflects on the meaning of this musical pattern in his essay “SignalRausch-Abstand” [Signal Noise Ratio] (Kittler 1993). He takes as an example Der Ring der Nibelungen [The Ring of the Nibelung], Richard Wagner’s opera tetralogy. The opening of the cycle, the prelude of Das Rheingold [The Rhine Gold], is a vigorous process of sound emerging from noise. It begins with an E-flat major chord in the extreme low register, a note that seems to have a timbre between sound and noise. Then the eight French horns of Wagner’s orchestra develop a polyphonic sound structure unfolding the first eight overtones of the fundamental note Eb (the 7th overtone is missing) as melodic motives, which build up in intensity over a couple of minutes until the action of the opera begins. In the third act of the Götterdämmerung [Twilight of the Gods], after Brünnhilde sings the lullaby that marks the acceptance of Wotan’s patterns of controlling the world (“Ruhe, ruhe, du Gott” [Rest, rest, you god]), she lights the pyre, sends Wotan’s ravens home, and immolates herself: “Bright flames flare up in the hall of the gods”.18 The tragic destiny of Valhalla is thus accomplished; the tetralogy comes to a finale with the orchestral music resting on a kind of “sublime” D-flat major chord. In this way, the music collapses back into a different kind of noise. For Kittler, the beginning of the Ring, the building up of an overtone structure from the visceral low fundamental, is the musical celebration of the Fourier analysis, the method developed by the mathematician Jean-Baptiste Fourier for quantifying physical signals. The Fourier analysis made it possible to calculate the spectrum of any sound heard by humans, even the non18

Last phrases of the libretto in Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner: “Helle Flammen scheinen in dem Saal der Götter aufzuschlagen. Als die Götter von den Flammen gänzlich verhüllt sind, fällt der Vorhang.” [Bright flames flare up in the hall of the gods. As the gods become completely hidden from view by the flames, the curtain falls.] 96

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periodic sounds that are perceived as not having a clear pitch. It paved the way for the digital treatment of signals, which is the basis of sound analysis, sound synthesis, and spectral applications of computer music.19 Kittler argues that the Fourier method is just as important for our culture as the invention of the alphabet. On the other hand, Kittler interprets the end of the Götterdämmerung, the return to a similar pattern as that with which the Ring began—from the shimmering overtones to pure noise as the metaphor of the new kind of communication that eliminates human participation. When the two ravens (messengers) are sent back to Wotan and his unconscious desire comes true, what is actually destroyed is the “materiality of communication” together with the subjectivity of art: That which ends with the fading of a god in Valhalla’s inferno is European art itself. For the two ravens, dark messengers or angels of media technology, do not speak and do not sing; with their flight transmission and emission of the message, and even “message” and “noise”, concur. Twilight of the Gods means the materiality of communication and the communication of matter. (Kittler 1993, 175) Kittler examines the paradigm shift to the networking society, which affects the way we see the world and how we define ourselves as human beings; we have moved from interpreting meaning through philosophy, poetry, and hermeneutics to thinking in terms of cybernetics, information theory, and stochastic systems. For Kittler, we have removed ourselves from the central position of human subjectivity to become a sort of machine-object, operating independently from human agency. Kittler asks: What is the material of communication? For, he claims, there is no meaning without physical support and no matter can produce communication itself. The phenomenon of noise is crucial for understanding this connection in the terms of information theory and cybernetics. For Claude Shannon, the founder of the Mathematical Theory of Information (Shannon 1948), “communication in the presence of noise”, not only because there is no channel of communication that is not perturbed by noise but also because information is generated through selection or filtering of noise. For Norbert Wiener, the impulse for developing cybernetics came from his effort in developing an anti-aircraft control apparatus in World War II. The basic idea was to develop a new method for extracting messages from a disturbing background on the basis of the simultaneous statistics of the noise 19

For a description of Fourier analysis in computer music see Roads (1996, 1073-1112). 97

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and the message with the goal of predicting the future, i.e., the position of an enemy aircraft in order to shoot it down. Both the irregular motion of an airplane in flight and the unpredictable reactions of the pilots and gunners are considered noise. Therefore, the human links have to be included in the control chain of the system. “The anti-aircraft control apparatus was in essence a feedback loop and contained in its construction many subsidiary feedback loops, we had to find out something of the characteristics of these loops” (Wiener 1956, 254). The revolutionary idea was thus to connect the fire-control machine to the human nervous system. The term feedback was an appropriate way of describing phenomena in the living organism as well as in the machine. This is the birth of the idea of the new science of cybernetics. Wiener’s mathematical studies in the 1920s on probability theory and Brownian motion paved the way to a cybernetic conception of the world, in which the tendency to chaos and disorganization leads to the reduction of everything to a state of equilibrium. In reference to Kierkegaard’s philosophy, Wiener affirms that we live in a chaotic moral universe. There is a sense of tragedy in the world as we face, on the one hand, the inevitable disappearance of differentiation and, on the other hand, nature’s overwhelming tendency to disorder. He considers the effort to build an enclave of organization as insolence against the gods. The cybernetic project, born as an attempt to predict the behavior of weapon machinery in order to achieve military advantage, seems to strongly resonate with the path of tragedy and glory announced by Wagner’s tetralogy. It conveys the existential belief that renouncing the fruits of the action is the ethical principle of being in the world: To me, logic and learning and all mental activity have always been incomprehensible as a complete and closed picture and have been understandable only as a process by which man puts himself en rapport with his environment. It is the battle for learning which is significant, and not the victory. Every victory that is absolute is followed at node by the Twilight of the gods, in which the very concept of victory is dissolved in the moment of its attainment. (Wiener 1956, 324; my emphasis) We are not fighting for a definitive victory in the indefinite future. It is the greatest possible victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been. No defeat can deprive us of the success of having existed for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us. (Wiener 1956, 325) The key issue of communication in the age of technical systems, according to Kittler, is the systematic interconnection of a signal-source and a noise98

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source. This is what he means with the metaphor of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The SNR is a measure to compare the level of a signal to that of background noise in order to define the bandwidth of the communication channel or device. The SNR, which is listed in the manual of any consumer audio device, determines the noise level of a communication system and ultimately manipulates communication itself. Kittler notes that traditional poetry is not allowed to have noise. The communication system of poetry, since its beginnings in Ancient Greece, is based on the coupling of voice with writing. Poetry excludes any sound that is not meaningful, thus any noise; there is only the transmission of a signal. In the same manner, the written score of music represents only acoustic signals, pitched musical tones that can be decoded by voices and instruments. There is no place in the score for non-harmonic sounds, for sound mixtures that are not in line with the Fourier method.20 In contrast, technical media “suspends poetry and music and promotes the return of the old chaos” (Kittler 1993, 171). In maybe the most important part of his essay, Kittler interprets Shannon’s mathematics of signal and Wiener’s mathematics of noise through Lacan’s tripartite model of structural psychoanalysis. Lacan’s concept of real, according to Kittler, is anything but white noise; the concept of symbolic is a probabilistic law for interpreting the noise of the real, in other words a sort of filter for reducing noise (like the filters of analog synthesizers that generate “colorful” noise) and so disclosing the third dimension of Lacan’s triptych, the imaginary. The unconscious noise stimulates the imaginary to function as a pattern recognition device for processing encrypted information: “The psychoanalysts have to intercept the virtual probabilities of secret messages that are encoded as cryptograms of apparent noises” (Kittler 1993, 179). In Kittler’s interpretation of the unconscious, psychoanalysis turns into a calculated game for recognizing strategic opportunities of a subject, which are presented to his unconsciousness as an encrypted message and must be decoded. Kittler’s metaphor of signal-to-noise ratio reveals the focus of his philosophical reflection on the transformation of our communication from discursive media into networking media, which reintroduces noise in the communication and creates self-referential systems replacing the 20

This description is not quite accurate, as music notation can represent the rhythm of percussion instruments or the time structure of electroacoustic music. However, the traditional score cannot represent timbre; it doesn’t provide information on the spectral characteristics of any sound, which in case of vocal and instrumental music is not necessary but becomes an issue with electroacoustic sounds. That is what Kittler actually means. 99

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human subject. For him, networking media technology has neutralized the interpretative power of poetry and hermeneutics as communication tools. Originally, poetry served to reduce the sonic chaos through articulated speech and writing, and hermeneutics served to reduce semantic complexity by attributing an interpretative function to a poetic subject called author. Kittler argues, in reference to the origin of cybernetics in World War II, that the technical media emerges no longer from the desire to interpret the world but from the need to intercept enemy signals. The operations of mathematical, probabilistic communication technology usurp the responsibility of decision maker. We no longer act as independent subjects but as pieces of war machinery. Kittler detects here a new kind of freedom, symbolized by the existence of noise beyond any possible event, that may sound as an apocalyptic apology of military technology but in fact conveys rather the acceptance of life’s impermanence and unpredictability. For automatic weapons are subjects themselves. A free space is created in which it would be feasible to interchange reception theory with the practice of interception, hermeneutics with polemics and cybernetic hermeneutics—with the steersman’s knowledge of the messages, whether they originate from gods, machines, or sources of noise. (Kittler 1993, 181)21

11.

Conclusion

Unsterbliche [Immortals] (Kittler 2004) is a sort of intellectual autobiography, in which Kittler evokes the legacy of ten of his mentors, including Leibniz, Wiener, Turing, Shannon, Luhmann, Lacan, and Foucault. Kittler approaches each one from a different perspective; he is looking for the specific qualities that make these thinkers immortal. The text has a personal, almost sentimental tone, while reflecting on the topics of Kittler’s own focus: cybernetics, cryptology, and war. The essay on Luhmann, written in 1999 after his death, shows the 21

Original quote: “Denn automatische Waffensysteme sind selber Subjekte. Ein Freiraum entsteht, in dem es machbar wäre, Rezeptionstheorie mit Interzeptionspraxis, Hermeneutik mit Polemik und Hermenautik zu vertauschen—mit einer Steuermannskenntnis der Botschaften, ob sie nun Göttern, Maschinen oder Rauschquellen entstammen.” The word “Hermenautik”, which I have translated as “cybernetic hermeneutics”, is a neologism invented by Kittler that brings a sailor metaphor into play. It refers to the origin of the word “cybernetics”, which means steersman in Greek. Kittler projects the concept of “Hermeneutik” into a nautical context in order to emphasize that our processes of understanding are likely to navigate through cybernetic networks. 100

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great respect Kittler had for him. The narrative brings out memories of their friendship and encounters that occurred at different places and times such as at conferences, along with some main qualities of Luhmann’s personality—for example modesty—that made him cheerful and appreciated as an individual. The outstanding memory Kittler has of Luhmann is, however, a story he heard from somebody else: “Mr. Luhmann, since when do you think in terms of contingency?” a friend who was fond of contingency asked him. Luhmann, who was a gentleman, is said to have replied: “Mr. X, our high school class was drafted in 1945 to serve in the Germany army. I was standing with a classmate who shared my bench in school next to the bridge Y, two bazookas in four hands. Then I heard a hiss, I turned around—there was no friend and no body, there was nothing. Since then, Mr. X, I think in terms of contingency.” (Kittler 2004, 94) Kittler’s conclusion is no less interesting: “Only because the hit rate of the American tank grenades was not 100% could there be the accident named Luhmann” (Kittler 2004, 94). This episode brings the awareness that life is contingent and death is the absolute possibility of Dasein. Life means contingency and death means necessity. The boundary distinguishing life from death is the only one for which there is no connectivity. The living system stops operating. The re-entry of life into death doesn’t occur, unless one leaves the territory of logic and recognizes the unity of the distinction in spiritual terms. But this is another issue, which would bring us into the domain of the “mystic” in Wittgenstein’s terms.22 Towards the end of Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Luhmann (1997) reflects on mass media. He observes an increasing discrepancy between reality and semantics. In other words, a discrepancy between what happens in society and how society describes it. Luhmann observes, on the one hand, the effort of recycling ideas by giving them marketing-like labels such as “neo” and “post”; on the other hand, he observes how social communication reacts intensively and quickly to sensitive issues of technology, environment protection, globalization, risks in making decisions, internationalization of financial markets, politics, terrorism, and war (cf. Luhmann 1997, 1096). Luhmann notes that in modern society self-description “is no longer transmitted orally in form of teachings and wisdoms, and also no longer

22

See “Musical Understating: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics”, pp. 13-41 herein. 101

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articulates lofty ultimate thoughts in the form of philosophy. It rather follows the particular rules of the mass media” (Moeller 2012, 32). Music also shows this discrepancy. This is the paradox of music in the beginning of the 21st century: on the one hand, music as a social system of art is believed to embody the highest humanistic standards; on the other hand, music as mass media shapes the general understanding of music in society. As a composer trained in the tradition of Western classical music and committed to the development of new artistic forms in the acoustic, electroacoustic and digital media, I am confronted with the need to construct self-descriptions to formalize artistic pretensions connected to the accomplishments of music history. Self-descriptions are primarily works of art. However, by pursuing an academic career I engage with self-descriptions of music as a medium of the education system, which operates with a different code than the art system. In this case self-descriptions are labeled as research or scholarly production. Mass media and art communicate differently, on the basis of different codes and programs. The overabundance of communicative possibilities, which we can observe in social media, presents the problem of the distinction between art and non-art (Luhmann 2000, 314). The art system can resolve this paradoxical unity (between art and non-art) in the art system itself, as long as it keeps its autonomy. Luhmann argues that the growing freedom brings uncertainty concerning artistic criteria; it will be more difficult to distinguish between success and failure (Luhmann 2000, 315). However, art demonstrates the capability of overcoming difficulties, by integrating these difficulties in the work of art. The work displays the difficulties and the difficulties make the work significant. The artistic forms shape the boundaries of art by factually excluding the world and the observer and temporally generating a randomness that transcends the form. Art is always dealing with “the arbitrary generation of non-arbitrariness or the emergence of order from chance” (Luhmann 2000, 315).

102

Chapter 4

The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music

1. From Electroacoustic to Digital Composition On a historical level, what we call electroacoustic1 music today emerged in the early 1950s when composers began to use electric and electronic instruments for storing, reproducing, transforming, and synthesizing sound.2 The systematic use of electricity and electronic equipment distinguishes electroacoustic music from acoustic music, whether vocal or instrumental. However, such a distinction is problematic in light of the growing influence of technology on all aspects of music including composition, production, distribution, and listening. The first electroacoustic compositions were created in studios in Paris, Cologne, and New York. The Paris and Cologne studios, both affiliated with state-owned radio broadcasters, became important for the aesthetic tendencies that marked the beginnings of electroacoustic music. The affiliation with public broadcasting placed the European studios at the center of intense activity of production and performance. The medium of radio gave visibility to electroacoustic music and contributed to its enormous impact on 20th century music. The New York studio, like many other studios founded later in the USA, was affiliated with universities and linked to research projects on computer audio technology that emerged in the early 1950s. The foundations of computer music lie in the research on digital sound synthesis, synthesizer hardware engineering, software systems for music, and digital signal processing.3 1

2

3

Both the forms “electroacoustic” and “electro-acoustic” are used in English; I prefer the former. For a short overview of the beginnings of electroacoustic music, see Bennet (1970) and Ungeheuer (2002). For a history of electroacoustic and computer music including the period before World War II, see Holmes (2012) and Manning (2013). For an overview of different aspects of the beginnings of digital audio and computer music, see Roads (1985). For a concise introduction to the digital audio concept, see 103

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While the term “electroacoustic music” has an artistic connotation, evoking the activities of composition and performance, the term “computer music” emphasizes the convergence of art, science, and technology. The computer became a multifunctional tool that replaced analog technology as a medium of production, composition, and performance. Digital technology improved and expanded the possibilities of electroacoustic music and opened new fields of interdisciplinary creativity such as algorithmic composition, humanmachine interactivity, music cognition, psychoacoustics, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Besides the concepts of electroacoustic and computer music, the term digital music is becoming increasingly popular thanks to the mass distribution of music over the internet in combination with the use of digital mobile devices for listening. Digital music represents new markets and opportunities; the commercialization of digital music is taking over the old structures of the phonograph and recording industry. On the other hand, diverse and varied connotations of the adjective digital in the contexts of music and art correlate with new structures of creativity that are emerging in society. Kerckhove (2001) describes it as a new architecture of connectivity linking the physical world with virtual networks of information and communication. The music of the digital age is no longer restricted to the bodies that produce sound and manipulate instruments, but acquires a fluid character through the multiplicity of connections and contexts in which it can be inserted and expressed (Chagas 2003b). The digital connectivity of music accelerates the differentiation process occurring in art and in society as a whole (cf. Luhmann 1997; 2000).4 Digital networks support the development of new artistic fields by exploring sound as a meaningful technical and cultural object—for example with sound design, sound art, and soundscape—and also by shaping new interdisciplinary connections between music and visual media, body, and space. The history of electroacoustic music is helpful in gaining an understanding of how analog and digital technology transforms perception and consciousness. The ability to generate sounds and images by manipulating machines has developed a new kind of creativity, which Flusser calls the power to imagine [Einbildungskraft] (cf. Flusser 1985, 39-45; 2011, 33-39). The hegemony of alphanumerical and linear codes of writing, which have constituted the

4

Roads (1996, 5-47) and Dodge and Jerse (1997, 62-71); for an introduction to digital sound synthesis, see Roads (1996, 85-116) and Dodge and Jerse (1997, 72-114). See discussion on Luhmann’s theory of social systems in “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein. 104

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basis of historical thinking and scientific knowledge since the Renaissance, has been replaced by the new codes of the universe of technical images and sounds, which have become vectors of creativity in the information society. The concept of telematics characterizes the communicative complexity that emerges from the convergence of telecommunications and information processing. Flusser believes that telematics has the potential to radically transform the way we communicate. He is concerned with the natural tendency of entropy, a state of randomness in which information is unpredictable and therefore impossible. However, the universe of technical images and sounds can reverse this tendency by converting historical and discursive thinking into dialog. Flusser idealized the telematic dialog as a playful creative game between man and machine acting as partners, devoting themselves to the systematic generation of information. The telematic dialog is conceived as a struggle against entropy, which emancipates man from the controlling functionality of the machine. Telematic society embodies Flusser’s utopia of freedom. The electronic music studio can be seen as a model of such a telematic dialog that emerged in the analog era. The paradigm of the electronic music studio is characterized by the systematic exchange of information between different kinds of partners such as composers, performers, engineers, technicians, and listeners using apparatuses for creating musical works (Chagas 2002; 2006a). The musical works produced by the studio crystallize the flow of information, which, at the same time, re-enters the studio, causing the recursive feedback loop that forges the telematic dialog. Creativity has evolved in the postindustrial society from centralizing to networking structures. Networked and programmable machines such as mobile devices, tablets, and social media are not only tools for accessing the flux of ideas circulating through digital networks in the form of texts, images, and sounds, but also play a central role in shaping artistic creativity. Music scholarship has been reluctant to penetrate the modalities intrinsic to digital creativity. Research on electroacoustic and computer music has focused either on historical content or technological description. In classical music research, the analysis of complex musical works of individual composers as aesthetic references predominates. In popular music research, the inquiry into social and cultural themes such as post-colonialism, globalization, race, gender, and identity prevails. There is a need to establish links that may open the door to new accounts of electroacoustic and digital music, to move from historical and technological accounts to a broader framework of interactions with a number of scholars that have engaged with digital media, art, and technology combining philosophy, social science, phenomenology, 105

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and critical studies. Having witnessed and participated in the transitional period between the analog and digital eras as Klangregisseur [sound director] of the Electronic Music Studio in Cologne, it is clear that practical insights into the collaborative environment of the studio, including the activities of composition, production, and performance of electroacoustic music will help open the door for deeper investigations. On a pedagogical level, the development of critical tools for unleashing the creative potential of digital music is in opposition to the tendencies of uncritical automation that drive the digital music business. The concept of “Digital Composition”, recently implemented at the University of California, Riverside under my direction, points to this. The focus on digital is a broad reading of musical creativity in the global context of cultural and social diversity. From a practical point of view, it emphasizes the creative manipulation of digital technology and the integration of acoustic and electroacoustic music into multimedia and interdisciplinary, cultural, and social contexts. Digital Composition embraces different kinds of musical traditions, both classical and popular. It also takes into account the new fields of creativity that are emerging through the convergence of sound, image, and the development of new architectures of collaboration. Digital Composition is a mode for creatively addressing the resources, approaches, and strategies of musical composition in an environment where information is embodied in complex heterogenic and polyphonic structures of subjectivity. As pointed out by Guattari (1992; 1993), subjectivity is no longer restricted to human consciousness, but incorporates the body of technology through what he defines as “machinic assemblages”. Creativity no longer depends on personal identity and subjectivity but on the particular assemblage that happens in connection with technological bodies that extend the framework of cognition and meaning. The structure of the “machinic assemblages” can be defined as polyphonic, as it articulates a multiplicity of human and non-human subjects bringing several simultaneous and independent levels of perception and meaning.

2. Musique concrète, Elektronische Musik, and Digital Synthesis The Paris studio from which musique concrète emerged, was founded in the late 1940s by Pierre Schaeffer in the Club d’Essai, a center of musical activities that in 1951 became the “Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète”, belonging to Radiodiff usion Télévision Française (RTF). Musique concrète began with experiments involving recording techniques for capturing natural sounds 106

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of the acoustic environment. The preliminary investigations, accomplished with very limited recording equipment, consisted of isolating sounds and exploring their properties. Schaeffer’s first composition, Cinq études de bruits, was presented to the public in a broadcast event in 1948. The introduction of the tape recorder in the early 1950s provided the technical medium for the development of processing and editing techniques that enhanced the possibilities of composition with recorded sounds. From the very beginning, musique concrète engaged the persistent myth of listening to the sound of the world as a source of music creativity. The sound phenomenon is isolated from the physical environment, decoupled from its material source and released from its cultural references in order to become a self-referential medium for composing new audible forms. The aesthetics of musique concrète develops notions such as sound object or sound event, which are at the same time analytic and synthetic categories defined through the interaction of sound material with the technical apparatuses. Pierre Schaeffer drafts the ambitious project of musique concrète in his book Traité des Object Musicaux (Schaeffer 1966); it includes a solfège of sound objects on the basis of a detailed morphology of their phenomenological qualities. The creative process of musique concrète appears primarily as an amalgam of found objects or a bricolage of materials, so that the attempt to develop a comprehensive solfège of sound objects did not provide the solution for the problems of developing a coherent large scale musical form (cf. Manning 2013, 19-38). By contrast, the Cologne studio brought to life at the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk in 1951, resulted from the collaborative effort of individuals with different musical and technical backgrounds pursuing the pragmatic goal of developing a specific musical form suitable for the medium of radio. The aesthetics of elektronische Musik, associated with the musical production of the Cologne studio, is focused on electronic sounds generated by devices that are part of the technical equipment of the radio. The first electronic pieces were made with apparatuses such as the wave generator, noise generator, pulse generator, filter, and other modules that were not originally designed for making music. While musique concrète catered to the myth of listening to the sound of the world, elektronische Musik concerned itself with the creation of synthetic sounds, whose models are neither found in nature nor possess the qualities of instrumental and vocal sounds. The perspective adopted by the composers of elektronische Musik, particularly Karlheinz Stockhausen, was to invent new sounds constructed from simple elements. The sine wave oscillator and the noise generator were the main apparatuses. A mathematical construct that symbolizes the purity of a single harmonic motion, the sine wave’s smooth oscillation can be thought of as a pendulum continuously swinging 107

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in air. White noise is also a mathematical construct, but in opposition to the sine wave, it symbolizes the statistical richness of all possible vibrations occurring randomly in the audible sound spectrum. From the very beginning elektronische Musik drew attention to the processes of controlling sound material as a key to developing coherent systems of timbres. The analytical principles of Fourier—according to which any periodic sound can be analyzed through a compound of sinusoidal constituents defined by the individual frequencies, amplitudes, and phases— were applied to synthesize new types of timbres made of combinations of sine tones. The sound elements were generated individually and assembled in complex structures. Many intermediate stages were necessary to build up timbres. For example, the first two sound components were recorded on two separate monophonic tape machines then played back together (the tape machines were manually synchronized) and the mixing was recorded on a third tape machine. Then a third sound was added to the mixture by repeating the same playback and recording operation, and so on until the desired number of sound components was reached. Stockhausen’s first electronic pieces Studie I and Studie II (1953-54) illustrated this composition method, which turned out to be a time-consuming process, as the building of complex timbres required more and more steps. By creating combinations of sound waves based on non-harmonic ratios (Stockhausen calls them “tonemixtures”), the electronic music composition crosses the boundaries of the harmonic spectra produced by voices and instruments (cf. Stockhausen 1958). The first pieces of the Cologne studio proved that electronic apparatuses constitute a powerful tool for inventing timbres never heard before. The search for a systematic constructive approach to the sound material, which was made possible by the application of mathematical principles and audio mixing techniques to the processes of sound synthesis and composition, remains a principle of electroacoustic music creativity. The fundamental distinction underlying the approaches of the studios of Paris and Cologne was accompanied by disagreements opposing their composers and advocates. The controversy, which dominated the musical aesthetics of the 1950s and 60s, can be expressed as follows: On the one hand, the musique concrète of the Paris studio develops a poetics of detachment from the music and attachment to the sound; it disengages sound consciousness from the models of traditional vocal and instrumental music and, at the same time, moves toward interactions focused on sound identities, cultural and social references. On the other hand, elektronische Musik develops a poetics of detachment from the sound and attachment to the music; it disentangles consciousness from the representative background of sound as a meaningful 108

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artifact and focuses on the musical relevance of sound phenomenon by exploring its vibratory nature.5 The methods of timbre composition concentrated on parametrical and combinatorial thinking link elektronische Musik to the polyphony of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and to the experimental music of the beginning of the 20th century, particularly the aesthetics of atonalism, twelve-tone music, and serialism. The fundamental divergences opposing the studios of Paris and Cologne proved to be a barrier to achieving a thorough consolidation of the ideas underlying their aesthetics. In spite of the different approaches to the generation of sound material, both studios developed similar methods of sound manipulation, mainly due to the use of common apparatuses. The tape recorder was the primary tool for both production and composition. Indeed, the history of electroacoustic music is closely related to the functions and programs of the tape recorder. Conceived originally as a medium for storing and retrieving sound information, the tape recorder was converted into a tool for experimenting and composing with sound and for producing and performing a new type of music. Different techniques of recording and montage were used for material preparation and formal shaping: for example, cut-and-stick techniques (cutting the tape in fragments and recombining the fragments in a different order), playback techniques (reverse playback, variable-speed playback), loop techniques, tape speed manipulations and play-erase-record-techniques with feedback control.6 The unusual use of the tape recorder was a milestone in the artistic development of the studio as a composition environment and tool. A new kind of creativity emerged when the tape recorder was transformed into a composition apparatus by exploring procedures that displaced its original mode of operation. This subversive use of the recording apparatus freed the tape recorder from its purely reproductive function. On a conceptual level, it questions the legitimacy of the very concept of sound reproduction. We move from the assumption that recording technology reproduces sound to the knowledge that any kind of sound reproduction is already a process of transformation shaped by the functions and programs of the apparatuses. 5

6

Cf. Karel Goeyvaerts’ article “The Sound Material of Electronic Music” (Goeyvaerts 1958) and Henri Pousseur’s seminal essay “Naissance et développement de la musique électronique” [Birth and Development of Electronic Music] (Pousseur 1970), which is still not available in English. Goeyvaerts was the first composer of the Cologne studio to experiment with sine waves as sound material for electronic music composition even before Stockhausen, although the latter claims to be at the origin of this innovation; cf. Stockhausen (1958). For a survey of techniques of tape composition see Holmes (2012, 153-74); for tape composition in Electronic Music Studio of Cologne see Manning (2013, 39-67). 109

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The aesthetics of electroacoustic music develops the awareness that sound reproduction does not reflect the reality of the acoustic phenomenon, but is primarily a symbolic process of alienation that generates new patterns of perception and consciousness. The illusion of a homogenous material as an aesthetic foundation, recorded sounds for musique concrète and electronic sounds for elektronische Musik, was very soon dissipated by the inclusion of other kinds of sounds, particularly recordings of voices and instruments. Although we find recordings of vocal and instrumental sounds in the first compositions by Pierre Schaeffer, their use has more or less an illustrative character related to the conception of sound objects. The significant shift from the aesthetics of sound purity towards a heterogeneous attitude concerning sound material was achieved by Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge [Song of the Youths] (1955-56), a piece that proved to be a turning point not only in the development of the Cologne studio but also in the history of electroacoustic music (Manning 2014, 65). By integrating the recording of a boy’s voice into the composition with electronic sounds, Gesang der Jünglinge develops an aesthetics of hybridism that integrates different kinds of sound material. Inspired by Meyer-Eppler’s research on phonetics, Stockhausen explores the living quality of voice to create electronic imitations of phonemes and other elements of spoken speech and language such as formants, articulation and intonation. The phonetic metaphor inspired a new approach to electroacoustic material that shared the acoustics characteristics of speech; for instance, vowels are associated with harmonic sounds constructed from sine tones; the fricative and sibilant consonants are related to filtered noises and the plosive consonants to impulses; the formants that shape the color of different vowels are associated with bands of frequency and timbres. Stockhausen applied serial principles of composition to the generalization of this material as well to other sound dimensions and to the organization of the formal levels of the composition.7 The relationship between creativity and technology remains an important research field of electroacoustic music. Does technology impact creativity and influence the way composers develop their compositional aesthetics, or is it creative engagement that shapes the technological development? Manning analyzes this issue in “The Significance of techné in Understanding the Art and Practice of Electroacoustic Composition” (Manning 2006), focusing on the relation between sound imaging and the techniques for projecting sound 7

Stockhausen provides his own description of the serial background and concepts of Gesang der Jünglinge in Stockhausen (1960). For an extensive and detailed analysis of the compositional techniques of Gesang der Jünglinge, cf. Decroupet and Ungeheur (1998). 110

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in the space with loudspeakers. The evolution of sound space composition is closely related to the technical evolution of playback capabilities, for example from independent monophonic playback systems to multi-track tape recorders. With monophonic playback systems, such as the one used by Pierre Schaeffer in the performance of Symphonie pour un homme seul in 1950, it was possible to distribute the sound in the space by mapping the individual outputs of playback sources to different loudspeakers. The multi-track tape recorder, which had already been invented in the 1950s but became widely available only in the 60s, was a major turning point in the development of spatialization techniques. It provided the capability of synchronization not only for manipulating and mixing electroacoustic materials, but also for spatial projection by combining fixed-point techniques with the spatial movement of sounds. The Cologne studio was a pioneer in the use of multi-track technology. A four-track recorder was purchased in 1953 and used by Stockhausen in Gesang der Jünglinge. This work is an emblematic composition not only for the use of hybrid material as mentioned above, but also for a new approach to electroacoustic composition integrating composition of timbre and spatial articulation. Instead of creating fixed spectra by accumulating partial tones in vertical structures, as in the previous Studie I and Studie II, Stockhausen shifts towards a plastic conception of timbre that takes into account the spectral movements—the transitions between different timbres—and the spatial moments. The piece elaborates temporal processes of transformation, dynamically evolving from the different kinds of materials and exploring the “directional tendencies of movement: the change from one state to another, with or without returning motion, as opposed to a fixed state” (Decroupet and Ungeheuer 1998, 99). The revolutionary accomplishment of Gesang der Jünglinge is to provide the first example of the integration of the composition of timbres with spatial articulation. Spatialization here is not treated as an ornament of the electroacoustic composition for enhancing the listening experience, but as a structural principle of the composition that “intervenes to clarify the composition of timbres” (Decroupet and Ungeheuer 1998, 128). In this sense, this approach to spatialization can be considered an extension of polyphonic thinking, as it applies the principles of independence and control of musical elements to the spatial domain of the composition. In contrast to the tape recorder, the synthesizer allows electroacoustic music to evolve in a different way. The idea of the synthesizer is older than tape music; in 1896 the American inventor Thaddeus Cahill (1867-1934) used the term synthesizer for a musical instrument capable of generating musical tones by using electricity. Cahill’s Telharmonium was a massive instrument 111

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weighing about 200 tons, requiring an enormous space and played using a keyboard. It became operational in New York in 1906 and inspired the first subscription service of electronic music distribution (Holmes 2012, 8-12). In his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (Busoni 1962) Busoni noticed the relevance of the Telharmonium as an apparatus capable of transforming electric current into musical tones.8 However, the motivation behind this Telharmonium, as with virtually all other synthesizers invented later, was to imitate acoustic instruments and ultimately replicate familiar sounds as an ersatz for the orchestra. The goal was not to create new music, but to produce the same kind of music heard before with different sonorities. As Holmes points out, technology was used as a “shortcut to musicianship” with a clear business motivation (Homes 2012, 11). Although Cahill’s invention was a failure as a business concept, it succeeded as an inspiration for subsequent synthesizer design and commercialization models. Two tendencies are related to the idea of the synthesizer. One of which is the need for developing new instruments for performing music, which is not necessarily related to the impulse of creating new music, although any new instrument has an impact on musical aesthetics. A recent example is the Hammond organ, which became very popular as a keyboard instrument of jazz and pop music in the 1960s and 70s. Secondly, the synthesizer articulates the desire of building comprehensive machines for music composition, integrating different kinds of functions and providing systems of sound generation and control that can be manipulated. The analog synthesizer uses fundamentally the same principle to build sounds as Cahill’s Telharmonium, namely, a combination of tone-generating and modulating devices. The use of voltage control, a technology that became available during the 1960s, brought the most significant transformation in the conception of the analog synthesizer and was responsible for its popularization in the 1960s and 70s. The Moog synthesizer delivered the commercial breakthrough. Voltage control is based on the principle of applying small amounts of current to electronic components; the voltage source can be used to generate both audio and control signals. The audio signal is what is converted into audible sound and the control signal is the inaudible electric flow that affects and controls the audible signal. Thus the voltage controlled elements of the analog synthesizer can be connected and combined in different ways for generating, modifying, or controlling sounds. The modular principles of voltage control have been implemented in the algorithms of current digital synthesizers and 8

Busoni was one of the first composers to detect the transforming potential of technology for the future of music; nevertheless, he never pursued any work on electronic music. 112

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software synthesizers. They remain the most widespread method of sound synthesis and control.9 2.1. Analog Modulation: Pousseur’s Aesthetics of Generalized Periodicity Henri Pousseur’s essay “Pour une periodicité generalisée” [Toward a Generalized Periodicity] (Pousseur 1970, 242-90), written in 1964, elaborates an original reflection on modular thinking focused on voltage control technique and its aesthetic implications. Belonging to the pioneer generation of electronic music composers, Pousseur worked in the studios of Cologne and Milan and also in the “Siemens Studio für Elektronische Musik” in Munich.10 The Siemens studio, which functioned for a short period of time (1960-66), became famous for its ambitious analog synthesizer, whose modular design was inspired by the pioneer RCA synthesizer of the ColumbiaPrinceton Electronic Music Center. The Siemens synthesizer featured what was advanced technology for the time, consisting of voltage control modules and automation capabilities for controlling and modulating sound in real time. Pousseur worked in the Munich studio from 1961 to 1963 as part of a research and educational project exploring the musical potential of sound modulation. He was concerned with developing a pluralistic and humanistic interpretation of technology, which, in contrast to the experimental music of the 60s, aimed to unify “poetics” and “ideology” (Pousseur 1970, 10). As with many composers of his generation, Pousseur’s musical aesthetics were rooted in the music of Webern and European post-war serialism. However, in the beginning of the 1960s, he embarked on a critical disengagement from the formalistic tendency of serialism; his aesthetics shifted from the postWebern heritage toward a pluralistic conception of musical composition and practice.11 Pousseur’s opera Votre Faust (1961-68; libretto by Michel Butor) is an emblematic example of this displacement. The piece is conceived as experimental music theater for singers, actors, instrumental and electroacoustic 9

10

11

For a comprehensive account of the principles of analog synthesis and voltage control, see Holmes (2012, 205-68). Pousseur wrote a large number of books, articles, and essays on music theory, analysis, aesthetics, and related topics. His early writings on music theory from 1954 to 1967 include a very detailed reflection on the beginnings of electronic music (cf. Pousseur 2004; in French, assembled and presented by Pascal Decroupet). Only a few of these articles have been translated into English, for example “Formal Elements in a New Compositional Material” (Pousseur 1958). The article “Music, Form and Practice” (Pousseur 1964; originally written in 1959) is an early witness to Pousseur’s “attempt to reconcile some contradictions” in serial music language. 113

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music; it unfolds a patchwork of musical and literary references to the myth of Faust which are projected into the contemporary world. The composition moves across a wide range of genres and styles, deconstructing and remixing pieces by composers such as Monteverdi, Bach, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven and Weil. It extends beyond the boundaries of serial language by reintroducing tonal harmony and functionality into the musical narrative. Votre Faust also makes an attempt to apply the concept of variable and interactive form to the musical theater; the audience is requested to decide the course that the opera takes. The coexistence of genres and their mutual nourishment expressed in Votre Faust and many other works composed afterwards by Pousseur, particularly in the pieces composed in collaboration with Michel Butor, remain a constructive example of musical pluralism in the tradition of European 20th century avantgarde. It accounts also for Pousseur’s cosmopolitan vision of society, allowing the existence of autonomous and interdependent groups having distinctive ethnic origins, cultural identities, and forms.12 In “Pour une periodicité generalisée”, Pousseur develops a phenomenology of sound and modulation emerging from a comprehensive critique of serialism and a reflection on the fundamentals of analog electronic music. It focuses on the overall concept of generalized periodicity as a contrast to the serial principle of non-periodicity, the origin of which, according to Pousseur, can be found in Schoenberg’s idea of developing variation and the tendency of eliminating repetition from the musical discourse.13 Non-periodicity, associated with asymmetry, concerns primarily the construction of harmony and rhythm. The atonal and serial organization of pitch material neutralizes tonal functionality and introduces harmonic discontinuity, as we see already in Schoenberg’s music and more intensively in Webern’s. The avoidance of rhythmic and formal symmetries also characterizes the music by composers related to the tradition of Debussy like Stravinsky, Bartok, and Messiaen. Projected onto the level of formal organization, the principle of non-periodicity leads to the complex sound textures of the serial works of the 1950s, which, according to Pousseur, engage an aesthetics of absolute musical flow, free from repetitions and aiming 12

13

Pousseur generated a large number of independent works based on whole scenes, fragments, or material from Votre Faust. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Pousseur in the composition of one of these satellite pieces: La Passion selon Guignol for amplified vocal quartet and orchestra, premiered in 1981 by the English vocal quartet Electric Phoenix and the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Pierre Bartholomée. I orchestrated some excerpts from Votre Faust and composed a significant amount of new music that I combined with the material from Votre Faust. See also the essay “Opéra, recherche, théâtre musical” in Pousseur (1997). Cf. Arnold Schoenberg’s “Composition with Twelve-Tones (1)” (1941) in Schoenberg (1975, 214-45). 114

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to explore the whole range of possible variations. Pousseur criticizes Boulez’s idea of the non-reversibility of time, which he considers the most radical musical application of this principle.14 Furthermore, he sees in the aesthetics of non-periodicity the danger of bringing music into a state of entropy, resulting from the scattered and almost statistic distribution of elements, incapable of articulating differentiation and ultimately, causing monotony and boredom in the listener (Pousser 1970, 241-42). The theory of generalized periodicity interprets traditional parameters of musical discourse through the concepts and functions of analog electronic music. It relates musical to technological thinking; it shows how traditional musical categories can be related to electronic music. For example, concepts such as melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm, density, texture and form can then be translated into relations of frequency, amplitude, and phase generated by electronic modules such as the wave generator (sinus, square, triangle and saw-toot), the impulse generator, and the white noise generator. The theory also relates formal processes in music to modulation processes such as amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, phase modulation, and their manifold combinations. In the oscillatory and modulating nature of sound phenomenon, Pousseur finds evidence that non-periodicity cannot be taken as a constructive principle of musical organization. Sound is an oscillatory event, organized as a complex of periodic forms, which, according to Fourier’s mathematical theory, can be analyzed as a system of periodic oscillations. Therefore, sound structure can be observed as the interaction of wave phenomena in a network of relationships, which constitutes its system of reference. In the system of sound waves, we can distinguish, on the one hand, the form of the individual components—the waves observed in terms of relations of frequency, amplitude, phase, spectrum, etc.—and, on the other hand, the form of the modulations then produce interferences between the components. These two forms can be reduced to the same principle, for the individual components of the system can be analyzed themselves as modulations. Pousseur argues that there is neither a low nor a high limit for observing sound as a system of modulating waves: any 14

Cf. Boulez’s “Technique Musicale” in Penser la musique d’aujourd’ hui (Boulez 1963, 35-167). The principle of the non-reversibility of time can be observed in many early works by Pierre Boulez such as Structures I (1952) and Structures II (1961), two related works for two pianos. Boulez remains one of the most influential and controversial composers of the 20th century. Boulez’s essay “Stravinsky Demeure” (Boulez 1966, 75-145) celebrates Stravinsky’s rhythmic invention; the essay “Schönberg est Mort” (Boulez 1966, 265-72) is a provocative manifest against Schoenberg, whose music Boulez criticizes as conservative (Boulez later revised his negative opinion of Schoenberg’s music). 115

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single wave phenomenon, even the most elementary and microscopic one, can be seen as a modulation of even more reduced waves; and any complex wave phenomenon, such as a macroscopic system of modulating waves, can be seen as a more or less organic member of a higher form (Pousseur 1970, 271). Some oscillations may be too slow or too fast to be perceived as audible sounds; nevertheless, they play a role in building formal structures. Low frequency oscillators (LFO), for instance, are frequencies below the audible limit used for modulating audible signals. In 1972 Pousseur produced 8 Études Paraboliques [Eight Parabolic Studies] in the WDR Studio, which represents a systematic and self-asserting application of the possibilities of the generalized technique of voltage control. The total length of the eight studies is 3 hours and 47 minutes; the composition and production have been thoroughly documented.15 This electronic music work was almost entirely created with four voltage-controlled generators made by the corporation Philips, which feature a remarkable frequency range from 0.1 Hz to 100,000 Hz. In addition to the main generator, each generator includes a secondary one called a “sweep” that can produce very low frequencies (a single period can have a duration of up to 100 seconds). Pousseur used one or two main generators as sound sources and the other two or three main generators and the four “sweeps” as modulation sources. The generators where connected serial or parallel. The serial connection produced complex forms of modulations through the variation of frequencies; the parallel connection produced interferences that could create complex and unpredictable rhythms. Pousseur explored different combinations of serial and parallel connections, in which the generators run automatically or were manually controlled, to compose complex and heterogeneous systems of modulations and interferences.

15

Cf. “Périodicité généralisée et synthèse sonore analogique” [Generalized Periodicity and Analogical Sound Synthesis] (Pousseur 1997, 191-211) and “Die Zeit der Parabeln” [The Time of Parables] (Misch and Blumröder 2002, 70-205). The former text from 1982/83 brings forward some ideas presented in the early work “Pour une periodicité generalisée” [For a Generalized Periodicity] (Pousseur 1970, 241-90). The latter article is a revision (from 2000) of the original documentation (from 1972/73) of the production of 8 Études Paraboliques in the WDR Studio of Electronic Music in the summer of 1972. It presents the conception of the piece, the background of the commissioning of the work, the analytical chronicle of the entire production of the eight studies in the WDR studio right to the final steps. Many diagrams illustrate the technical aspects of the production. As part of the same project in the WDR studio in 1972, Pousseur produced also the Paraboles-Mix, a piece of approximately 80 minutes in length consisting of the mixing and transformation of several fragments of the eight studies. Th is piece has six parts that can be performed in any order. It was conceived as a radiophonic version of the studies. 116

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8 Études Paraboliques represents a very important case in the history of electronic music. Normally, composers produce a series of sound materials that are progressively assembled in large structures and sections. The final work thus results from processes of “montage” at different levels. In contrast, the entire production of Parabolic Studies was accomplished without any cut, collage, or conventional montage. The modulation processes generated by the oscillators were recorded directly on tape without interruption (Misch and Blumröder 2002, 105). The generator was programmed to run automatically for long periods of time. Additionally, Pousseur and two assistants varied the processes by manually adjusting or changing the parameters of the signal sources. The modulations can be interpreted as self-referential processes coupling the automatic flow of the machine with human action. In the essay “Périodicité généralisée et synthèse sonore analogique” [Generalized Periodicity and Analogical Sound Synthesis] (Pousseur 1997, 191-211), Pousseur argues that he is pursuing a different approach to electronic music composition based on the idea that sound is a potential actualized through modulation. The discrete elements that build a work of music can be seen as particles artificially isolated from the flux of acoustic material. In acoustic music, these discrete elements are notes, defined by the relations of pitch, loudness, timbre, and duration; in electroacoustic music, the notion of note has been translated into the notions of sound objects and sound events, which can be applied to different structural levels of the composition. The notions of note and object, according to Pousseur, are associated with a punctual perception of the sound, which gives birth to more complex musical figures such as chords, melodic themes, and rhythmic models. By contrast, and according to the theory of generalized periodicity, electronic music composition is to be seen as a multi-layered network of distinctions between potential and modulation. The electronic music is thus a flux of oscillations and periodicities in which the discrete elements emerge as localized and instantaneous knots; they can be created and dissolved anytime. This dynamic form is “the most appropriate to meet the demands of aesthetic sensibility that regained consciousness of the phenomena of instability or impermanence, of the fundamental mutabilities of the matter” (Pousseur 1997, 207; emphasis in the original). In the concluding remarks of this essay from 1982, Pousseur argues that the notions of note, timbre, and instrument, which shape our traditional conception of musical sound, constitute an obstacle for exploring the promising creativity of electronic music composition. He suggests a new theory for generalizing the notion of sound and music as a continuous and dynamic matter. Pousseur’s idea of sound and music as a constant state of flux cultivates 117

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an awareness that impermanence is the true nature of reality. By integrating different levels of observation—including different levels of temporality—in a virtual periodic structure of sounds and modulations, the electronic music of 8 Études Paraboliques embodies the freedom of non-attachment that makes us aware of the ephemeral mutability of the world. This point of view conforms to the one expounded in the earlier essay from 1964: Music is incapable of producing something materially solid, of creating lasting objects. Its material, sound, is also very fleeting, a sort of shadow of more resilient realities (e.g., the vibrating bodies in the sound sources), and unable to survive without their support. It seems therefore logical that larger ensembles, composed of such ephemeral material, are given up to transitivity. But if we think about it, everything in the world, be it in a less extreme measure, is perishable; between the different realities there is only a difference of degree. Even the most solid and most enduring things are, as we know, composed of time, movement, and the transformation of subordinate elements. They are therefore subject to time and fundamental mutability. Only for an observer who synthesizes and integrates their totality, or for an observer unable to perceive processes that are too slow for him, it is thus from different levels of observation from those where their specific movements occur, that things seem to keep their unchanging identity. (Pousseur 1964, 285) 2.2 Digital Simulation: The Myths of Post-Industrial Society The microprocessor revolution and development of digital signal processing (DSP) was a turning point in technological evolution. In the middle of the 1980s, digital technology—digital tape recorders, synthesizers, and processing devices— began to replace analog technology in both commercial recording studios and electronic music studios. In 1984, the makers of commercial synthesizers agreed to introduce the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), a digital communication protocol for linking synthesizers and computers. The MIDI standard testifies to the increasing convergence of interests of industry and musicians. It was designed for a musician playing a MIDI keyboard and using a MIDI sequencer to play sounds stored in different sound synthesis modules. The MIDI keyboard and MIDI sequencer are emblematic apparatuses for the popularization of digital music driven by MIDI technology.16 16

For an overview of the technical and aesthetical possibilities of MIDI, see “Le MIDI et la musique électronique: Quelques remarques esthétiques et techniques” (Chagas 1992). 118

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The Yamaha DX-7 introduced in 1983, was the first commercial digital synthesizer produced on a mass scale. Its sound generation is based on the frequency modulation (FM) synthesis technology developed by John Chowning at Stanford University in the beginning of the 1970s, whose patent was purchased by Yamaha and made available for commercial use (Chowning 1985). As Dodge and Jerse claim, audio synthesis by means of frequency modulation is perhaps the single greatest advancement in improving the accessibility of high-quality computer-synthesized sound. Frequency modulation can be thought of as the alteration or distortion of the frequency of an oscillator in accordance with the amplitude of a modulating signal. (Dodge and Jerse 1997, 115) The vibrato, which is largely practiced in vocal and instrumental music, is an example of frequency modulation with a low frequency modulator. Chowning’s frequency modulation algorithm is very cost effective because it requires less calculation power than traditional techniques such as additive synthesis or sampling. It is particularly suitable for simulating sounds whose temporal evolution occurs in a very short period of time during the attack, for example, brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments such as piano and bells. The DX-7 became particularly appreciated for these sounds; it was a commercial success that influenced the sound of the pop music synthesizer for many years.17 Chowning’s research on frequency modulation is an insightful example of the evolution and mutation of the ideas of electroacoustic analog music through digital technology. The desire of producing complex spectra of natural sounds such as the timbres of musical instruments motivated the research on computer sound synthesis. The computer simulates natural sounds based on the analytical description. The analysis of the temporal evolution of the spectral components over time is translated into a set of instructions for the computer for the purpose of sound synthesis. Jean-Claude Risset, who collaborated with Mathews in the Bell Laboratories between 1964 and 1969, compares the principle of digital synthesis based on computer analysis and

17

The capabilities of frequency modulation technology reach far beyond the commercial applications. The DX-7 and other FM synthesizers built by Yamaha were also used in experimental electroacoustic music. My electronic music Ellipse (1986) is an example. See a description of this piece in “Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition: The Relationship between Medium and Form”, pp. 203-249 herein. 119

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synthesis of natural sounds to the traditional work of a composer producing a score of acoustic music: The composer asks the computer to calculate the sound wave directly, somewhat as if it engraves the record groove directly. One can in principle produce any sound in this way, without a priori restrictions or limitations. This requires providing the computer with a complete description of this structure: the user can compose it at will as he would compose a chord or an instrumental passage—the recipe of synthesis plays the role of a sound score. (Risset 1990, 108)18 We can see here the ambiguity that dwells at the very core of digital thinking. Digital systems operate as calculation machines with a much higher precision and control factor than analog systems; the calculating power introduces a new kind of creativity based on the possibilities of combination and mutation. Yet digital systems operate as simulating machines attracting tendencies of imitation and superficiality. The development of computer and digital music articulates this ambiguity in the following way: on the one hand, it provides new constructive principles for generating sound and music, for instance through the development of sound synthesis technology and musical programming languages that become more expressive tools for composition and performance; on the other hand, digital tools promote a culture of simulation that eliminates experimentalism and promotes reproduction. Two examples of this tendency are sound synthesis for the purpose of imitating instruments and program languages that operate on the basis of the traditional categories of orchestra and a score.19 Besides MIDI equipment—synthesizers, keyboards, controllers—the digital sampler contributed to the popularization of digital music in the 1980s.20 The processes of generating sound material and composing music such as sound recording, sound synthesis, sound manipulation, and montage began to be performed at low cost with the personal computer and peripheral 18

19

20

See also “An Introductory Catalogue of Computer Synthesized Sounds” (Risset 1995 [1969]) for a documentation of Risset’s research, including the sound examples. The catalog of instrumental sounds shows possibilities of digital sound synthesis that have been used in many compositions, including his own. The first programming language was MUSIC I, created by Max Mathews in 1957. It was followed by many improved versions. The MUSIC series is the predecessor of csound (http://www.csounds.com) and many other computer music languages; see Holmes (2012, 273-95), and Roads (1996, 49-84). The first commercial digital sampler was the Fairlight CMI (1978), a very expensive machine built in Australia. In the 1980s the Fairlight competed with the Synclavier. 120

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equipment. The so-called home studio—personal equipment installed in garages or in living rooms, turned into an affordable production platform for composers. New channels of distribution of music content became available in the 1990s with the development of digital networks. The production studio inspired by the models of the studios of Paris, Cologne, and New York lost its hegemony as the unique center of creation, production, and distribution of electroacoustic music. 2.3. The Post-History of Electroacoustic Music The term “electroacoustic music” has been used here loosely, for designating aesthetic tendencies related to the principles of musique concrète and elektronische Musik. In fact, it was only at the end of the 20th century that the term electroacoustic music came into play. But it happened less because of the convergence of the two aesthetics apparently opposed to each other that emerged in the 1950s and more due to the necessity of drawing ideological boundaries between classical and popular electronic music. The distinction between classical and popular is even more significant than the quarrel opposing the composers of the studios of Paris and Cologne because it concerns the historical understanding of music as a whole. By the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 70s, the works of musique concrète by Pierre Henry (b. 1927) and the works of elektronische Musik by Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), associated respectively with the studios of Paris and Cologne, achieved significant popularity. Both composers enjoyed the fame of being “techno-gurus” of a musical revolution that captured the imagination of young audiences. Stockhausen’s face depicted on the cover of the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) speaks for his popularity among progressive pop musicians. In the late 70s, experimental electronic music lost its novelty and the fascination faded away. The very concept of electronic music moved away from the introverted environment of serious contemporary music to the effervescent environment of entertaining popular music. With the proliferation of digital technology, electronic sound found a fruitful ground in international pop music. Electronics shaped the creativity of new genres and subgenres, cultures and subcultures of popular music that emerged in the 1980s, such as hip-hop, house, ambient, drum and bass, techno, etc. Henceforth, the term electronic music has typically been applied to different kinds of popular music that predominantly use electronic apparatuses for developing different aesthetics that distinguish themselves from popular music with electric instruments (for instance rock), while the term electroacoustic 121

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music is marked by the attachment to the tradition of Western classical music. Certainly, the distinction between electronic and electroacoustic is arbitrary, socially constructed, and historically contingent. It is often considered from the perspective of the relations of power and the practices that contextualize and decontextualize sound and music. The focus on electroacoustic, which we have chosen here, can provide the basis for complex and subtle contextualizations, but we need to be aware that arbitrary aesthetic categories can be equivocal and become an obstacle to grasping complex relationships. Recent scholarship on music and technology has attempted to investigate different kinds of situations that give a broader view of the semiotic processes involved with the categories of electroacoustic music. Demers, for example, accounts for three meta-genres that are associated today with electronic sound: “institutional electroacoustic music, which aspires toward high modernist autonomy and rigor; electronica, an umbrella for a number of ambient and dance-related genres; and some electronic forms of sound art, or organized sound that in some way relates to the space in which it is heard” (Demers 2010, 167; my emphasis). Another perspective emerges through Tarasti’s concept of situation introduced in Signs of Music (Tarasti 2002, 63-87). Tarasti defines situation “as a continuous intermingling of happenings that represent various modes of being in the real context in which they occur” (Tarasti 2002, 72). He considers three mutually dependent aspects of situation: the world itself (Dasein), the organic process, and the consciousness. All these aspects are already presented in sound waves; any sound is at the “same time an organic process, consciousness and facticity of being in history, culture and the objective world” (Tarasti 2002, 72). The concept of situation leads to a tripartite model of semiotic analysis: (1) situation as communication and signification, (2) situation as act and event, (3) situation as intertextuality. The first category includes the codes, channels, context, and their corresponding function; the second the actions of various individual and collective subjects that produce acts and events such as works, techniques, and aesthetics; and the third, the constant recycling of previously used musical materials, and genres that produce intertextual references. In “Spiel und Dialog” (Chagas 2002) and “Game and Dialog” (Chagas 2006a) the claim is made that the critical investigation of the machinery,21 including the evolution from analog to digital technology, is crucial for understanding the musical creativity that emerged with electronic sound. The acoustic sound of voice and instruments represents an alienation from natural 21

The words “machinery” and “apparatuses” are used as synonyms. 122

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situations; they signify concrete, complex situations, which are translated into a musical code of communication. With electronic sound, the concept of composition moves from a quantitative and qualitative process of arranging abstract sounds—sound experiences, sound layers, and sound structures— to the symbolic function of the machinery that produces sound. From the perspective of semiotics, electronic sounds can be examined as situations emerging from the use of machinery; it involves the media channels of the technology, the strategies and identities adopted by the agents, and the totality of references in the intertextual space. The machinery disconnects the sound from its natural models and opens the space for a synthesis of new sounds. Electronic sound is always created through a dialog between man and machinery acting as partners and exchanging information in a networking structure. The exchange takes place in the form of a game in which new models are conceived and practiced in a playful way. The more the dialog is shaped by the network structure, the more the figure of the individual creator loses its subjective meaning. With the development of digital apparatuses, the creative game takes on a social dimension. Social media such as YouTube and Facebook articulate this playful attitude. But the central issue here, which arises from the game with machinery, is how to shape the structure of dialog. Machines are actually conceived to perform automated processes. They liberate man from certain repetitive tasks, but, at the same time, their reproductive function creates a kind of magical fascination that impacts human consciousness. Are we then driven to reproduce the magical fascination of the apparatuses? The artist who symbolizes this fascination with the magic of electronic sound machinery is not the institutional composer (generally decorated with an academic degree), who produces and performs his works mostly in universities and music institutions, but the DJ who emerged in the 1980s as a new kind of performing musician manipulating electronics as expressive tools for entertaining broad audiences. The symbolic space of the electronic sound performance is not the concert hall but the club. While in the concert situation the bodies remain seated and quiet, focused on an invisible music coming out of the loudspeakers, in the clubs the bodies can dance, talk, and move in the space, typically immersed in a multisensory choreographic environment of sounds, lights, gestures, and movements. The DJ, who activates the magic fascination of electronic sound, accomplishes a mystic, ritualistic function that evokes the role of the shamans in tribal societies. He is both singer and storyteller activating the sound narratives of the electronic global village (cf. McLuhan 1994). However, the modern magic of the DJ (and other similar artists of the electronic era) is of a different kind than 123

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the magic of the ancient shamans. As Flusser affirms, “the ancient magic is prehistoric, it is older than historical consciousness; the new magic is ‘post-historic’, it follows on after historical consciousness” (Flusser 2000, 17). Inquiring about the magical fascination of technical images in our current society, Flusser developed a critical phenomenology of photography and the photographic apparatus that can be extended to the electronic music apparatus. The prehistoric magic, according to Flusser, activates a ritualization of models in form of myths, which are communicated orally; in contrast, the current magic activates a ritualization of models in form of programs. The programs are basically features and functions of technical apparatuses, such as the ones that allow a camera to take pictures or DJ equipment to play music. The programmatic magic of technical apparatuses tends to eliminate critical thinking, replacing historical consciousness with a second-order magical consciousness that reduces culture to the lowest denominator. With the apparatus the relations of power move from the level of objects and material to the symbolic level of programs and their operators. In Flusser’s words, this is what characterizes the “information society” and “post-industrial imperialism” (Flusser 2000, 30).

3. Sound Aesthetics and Composition in Electroacoustic Music 3.1. Elektronische Musik: Serial Technique and Timbre Composition The first compositions of elektronische Musik from the 1950s surprised the audience with a new universe of sounds. The reactions ran from enthusiasm to rejection and everything in between. At the time, people disagreed about how or whether the sound projected by loudspeakers should be considered music. In “Ästhetische Probleme der elektronischen Musik” [Aesthetic Problems of Electronic Music] Dahlhaus (1970) states that the arguments against electronic music were of two kinds: either it should be called “noise art” because it raises noise to the category of musical sound, or—what seems more radical—it does not deserve to be called music. The strong disapproval according to this thinking, shows how emerging electronic music challenged the predominant understanding of music of the last two centuries. Music was defined as “tone art”, which implied that it could only consist of specific types of sounds—pitched sounds—rather than noise.22 Dahlhaus considers this 22

The term “tone art” is related to the German word Tonkunst. The German language makes a difference between Klang and Ton; Klang indicates any sound in general; Ton 124

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definition problematic because it grants a hegemonic role to the aesthetics of harmony and timbre of European classical music. That would mean that the majority of non-European music such as African or Indonesian, where harmony and timbre does not play a fundamental role—could not be called music. He concluded that electronic music undermines the traditional understanding of music by promoting what had previously been regarded as noise to the expressive category of music material and consequently destroying the supremacy of the traditional European concept of musical tone. Electronic music has shown in a drastic way that music is a historic phenomenon—maybe even a “post-historical” one in Flusser’s sense of the term—that defies fixed and permanent definitions. Although descriptions of music vary depending on the culture and society, it is clear that musical understanding is only possible in a historical context: “A definition of the music that ignores history would be either empty or arbitrarily empty if it includes everything but says nothing; arbitrarily when it draws solid boundaries where there is flowing transitions” (Dahlhaus 1970, 82).23 What decides whether a sound phenomenon can be considered music or not is the historical continuity or discontinuity, i.e., the “connection to the tradition or the lack of relationship to the past” (Dahlhaus 1970, 82). Assuming this premise, he inquires if electronic music has come into being from inside or outside music history. In other words, is electronic music an evolution of the composition techniques of acoustic music or does it emerge from other contexts that have been incorporated into the music? For Dahlhaus it comes unmistakably from within, because electronic music continued the trends of serial music, especially the method of timbre composition of the composers of the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, and particularly Webern). Serial music was the fundamental and crucial condition for the development of electronic music; it is the historical and internal context of serial music that allows us to describe electronic music as music in the broadest sense of the word. Indeed, the serial principle of timbre structuring dominated the aesthetics of the Cologne studio in the 1950s. The timbres were constructed on the

23

indicates sounds with a defined pitch typically produced by voice or instrument. Thus the term Tonkunst [tone art] applies to the “traditional” acoustic music made of pitched sounds and the term Klangkunst [sound art] to any kind of artistic form that uses sound. In this essay I use predominantly the term “sound” for any kind of sound used for artistic purposes, including pitched and non-pitched sounds. Wittgenstein shares a similar point of view when he states that musical understanding is contextual and related to the forms of life. See “Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics”, pp. 13-41 herein. 125

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basis of primary pure elements—the sine waves—that were treated as partials to generate complex harmonic and non-harmonic tones. The first electronic music pieces by composers such as Herbert Eimert (1897-1972), Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), Karel Goeyvaerts (1923-1993), Paul Gredinger (1927), Gottfried Michael Koenig (1926), and Henri Pousseur (1929-2009) applied principles of serial composition to spectral and formal structuring. In addition to pure sinusoidal tones, two other main electronic sound sources— noise and impulse—were subjected to the same serial methods of sound composition. Eimert’s article “What is Electronic Music” (1958), an early account of the aesthetics of the composers of the Cologne studio, examines the situation of electronic music from the perspective of sound. Electronic sound is classified in six categories: tone (the sinus tones), note (built up from series of harmonic overtones), note mixture (the frequencies not harmonically ordered), noise, chord (note complex), and impulse (Eimert 1958, 3-4). Eimert considers electronic music a logical consequence of the serial technique, a natural evolution of the compositional situation resulting from Webern’s discovery of the timbral quality of the single note. Webern’s sound structures generated according to the permutation principles of the series come near to the processes of electronic music. Electronic music transfers this idea to the “total organization of the electronic sphere” (Eimert 1958, 2). The composition with sine tones in breaking the boundaries of instrumental sound, leads to the understanding of the compositional microstructure of sound: “This electronic music is not ‘another’ music, but is serial music” (Eimert 1958, 9). Although the focus on timbre occupies a central place in 20th century electroacoustic and acoustic music composition, the emphasis on serial techniques as a fundamental of sound composition brought electronic music into a hermetic situation. It was quite difficult, even impossible, to understand serial organization by just listening to the music. Dahlhaus points out that electronic music requires an immediate understanding, which is incompatible with rigorous constructivism. In contrast to instrumental and vocal music, which is score based and therefore can be understood by reading and analyzing the score, electronic music cannot afford to be obscure; the composition must be transparent and perceived through listening. The timbre structure consisting of partials organized according to serial principles remains impenetrable. That is why the serial technique as the sole foundation of electronic music had to be abandoned (Dahlhaus 1970, 85). From another point of view, the hermetic dilemma can be articulated in terms of visibility and invisibility of sound in composition. In the essay “Naissance et développement de la musique électronique” [Birth and Development of Electronic Music] from 1962, Pousseur (1970) observes that 126

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electronic music articulates a continuous interaction between different levels of sound organization, so that it becomes difficult “to draw a precise boundary between internal composition of sound and higher levels of composition” (Pousseur 1970, 82). The musical sound is not an isolated object but can be understood only in a compositional context; it is not possible to speak of sound phenomena even when isolated, without considering their compositional possibilities. Therefore, electronic music articulates the production of musical sound in a multilayered meaningful, poetic activity that relates microscopic and macroscopic levels of sonic composition. The necessity to make visible the “poetics” of sound composition moved the serial composers of the post-Webern generation to incorporate external materials and models in their electronic works; for instance, speech and singing (Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge, 1955-56); speech (Berio’s Tema–Omaggio a Joyce, 1958; Eimert’s Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama, 1960-62); acoustic instruments (Stockhausen’s Kontakte, 1960; Mikrophonie I, 1964); sounds of nature and the industrial environment (Pousseur’s Trois Visages de Liège, 1961); and sounds of radio and musical quotations (Stockhausen’s Hymnen, 1966-67). The use of voices and instruments establishes a “historical continuity” (in the sense of Dahlhaus) between acoustic and electronic music. In his text from 1962, Pousseur formulates the awareness that electronic music is not a separate domain of music, a particular musical aesthetics, but: it should be rather considered as a set of means (instrumental, in the broadest sense) just added to the existing means (human voices and traditional musical instruments) and, while modifying them gradually in a very profound way, tending to join them in order to make as rich as possible the current musical practice. (Pousseur 1970, 81; emphasis in the original) 3.2. Musique concrète: Acousmatic Listening and Composition 24 The question of visibility and invisibility is inherent in the aesthetics of acousmatic that derives from musique concrète. Schaeffer’s conception of acousmatic music, extensively elaborated in his Traité des objects musicaux (1966), aims to create a new consciousness of sound that denies the causal and visual sources of sound production. The term acousmatic goes back to the pre-Socratic concept of aurally transmitted knowledge. For five years, 24

The term “acousmatic” is used here both as noun and adjective. 127

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the disciples of Pythagoras stayed behind a curtain listening in complete silence to lectures given by the master without seeing him, focusing only on the sound of his voice. Acousmatic proposes thus to listen to sound as an invisible phenomenon. Schaeffer’s approach is an attempt to overcome historical and cultural listening habitudes of vocal and instrumental music in order to disclose new possibilities of musical creativity. The sound is to be set apart from its external connotations so that the fantasy can entirely focus on the sound phenomenon and leave behind cultural, social, and historical connotations, and above all, stereotypes engraved by classical and romantic music. We are to listen to sound and music like the disciples of Pythagoras listened to the master’s lectures; we are to let the sound speak for itself through its inner voice. For Schaeffer, the new means of telecommunication are rooted in the human experience of “natural sound communication”; the radio and electroacoustic sound reproduction carry on the traditional experience of the “invisible voice” (Schaeffer 1966, 91). The acousmatic aesthetic is tributary to the technology of sound reproduction; the tape recorder, developed after World War II, was assigned a very particular role. It virtually functions as Pythagoras’s curtain: “it creates new phenomena to observe, it creates above all new conditions of observation” (Schaeffer 1966, 98). More than an aesthetic vision, acousmatic is both a listening and a compositional attitude, a plea to develop a different kind of sound consciousness. The notion of reduced listening (écoute réduite) applies the technique of eidetic reduction from Husserl’s phenomenology, which aims to identify the essential elements that distinguish an experience and discard everything else. The phenomenological method brackets the world to concentrated on its essences, which are immanent to phenomena. For instance, time consciousness emerges when we identify objects and events that appear as temporal experience. Husserl’s eidetic phenomenology is concerned with the dynamic interplay of different levels of consciousness that makes possible the apprehension of time as a living-present. His account of internal time consciousness is particularly interesting from a musical point of view since he compares internal time consciousness to listening to a melody (cf. Husserl 1966, 1990).25 From Husserl’s phenomenological method, Schaeffer derives the eidetic notion of reduced listening through which sound appears independent of 25

For a musical investigation of Husserl’s account of consciousness of time, cf. “Spectral Semiotics: Sound as Enacted Experience, A Phenomenological Approach to Temporality in Sound and Music” (Chagas 2010). For an application of spectral semiotics theory, cf. “Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin”, pp. 43-63 herein. 128

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its material source; yet everything else in Schaeffer’s method seems to be a simplified, even superficial reading of Husserl. Structuralism plays a much more important role in shaping his thinking. For example, the theory of modes of listening that accounts for four different ways to perceive sounds: Schaeffer distinguishes between (1) an indexical primal mode of identifying sound objects and events (écouter), (2) a peripheral non-intentional mode (ouïr), (3) a subjective and selective mode of listing (entendre), and (4) a symbolic mode of listening, implying a cognitive level of assigning meaning to sounds (comprendre) (Schaeffer 1966, 103-28). Schaeffer relates the notion of reduced listening to the phenomenological epoché, which is translated as a “bracketing” of the external physical reality of the sound. He proposes a listening that “disengages from the world” (Schaeffer 1966, 267), particularly the world of musical sounds. Acousmatic listening focuses on non-referential, non-symbolic aspects of sound in order to develop a new consciousness of its creative potential. Schaeffer proposes a complex program of musical research, clearly inspired by structuralism and linguistics, consisting of methods of analysis and synthesis, morphology, and typology of sound and musical objects (Schaeffer 1966, 360-85). Indeed, the musique concrète disengages sound from the traditional sphere of vocal and instrumental music and reconstructs it as an open form. Schaeffer’s notion of sound object points to the different contexts shaping our experience with sound. Rather than a linear object, sound is to be seen as a network of virtual interactions in a communication process. As a criticism, one can argue that the morphological and topological models proposed by Schaeffer and his followers, which are supposed to illuminate the compositional possibilities of the acousmatic project, for the most part contributed only to add confusion and obscure the understanding of the matter. Moreover, it fails to recognize the symbolic role of technique in shaping sound consciousness and the enormous impact of the studio apparatus on the aesthetics of electroacoustic music.26 3.3. Semiotics of the Electroacoustic Studio The electroacoustic studio such as the studio of musique conrète is a metaapparatus of communication consisting of a variety of apparatuses that have different functions. The studio apparatuses record sound from the real world, 26

See for instance Chion (1983, 1994), Smalley (1986, 1997, 2007), and Wishart (1996). My criticism refers to the background of these investigations, inspired by structuralism and post-structuralism, which provides a limited, linear-chain model of the acousmatic project. 129

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transform the sound into manipulatable sound objects, and produce musical works that reintroduce the result of the manipulation into the real world. There is a double movement, firstly from outside to inside and secondly from inside to outside. The elements of the outer reality are internalized in the manipulation process, put in relationship with one another in a musical piece, and reinserted into the physical, social, and cultural world. The tape recorder plays a privileged role in this process as the apparatus that embodies the symbolic transformation of sound objects into musical objects. Before tape machines were introduced in the studio in 1950, Schaeffer used turntables to play sounds. He was fascinated by the possibilities of performing with sound machines like keyboard instruments: Let there be an organ of which the stops each correspond to a disc player of which one would furnish the fitted turntable at will; let us suppose that the keyboard of this organ sets the pickups into action simultaneously or successively, instantly and for the duration that one wants … one obtains, theoretically, an enormous instrument capable not only of replacing all existing instruments, but of every conceivable instrument, musical or not, of which the notes do or do not correspond to the pitches given in the range. This instrument is currently a figment of the mind, but it is achievable to some extent. (Schaeffer 1952, 15-6; Emmerson 2007, 25; emphasis in the original).27 The use of the turntable as an instrument anticipates the digital sampler. As Emmerson points out, it remains a “visionary moment” for Schaeffer’s view of the analog studio as a performance situation: the composer plays with technical apparatuses; his actions (i.e., the active situations) produce events (i.e., the passive situations) that may or may not be reflected in the musical works as situations of actions and events: “The finished work instantiates an idealized performance—only one which did not happen at one particular time” (Emmerson 2007, 25). The functions of the apparatuses are constraints that shape the composer’s individual creativity. The interaction between the different apparatuses in the physical and symbolic space of the studio can be also seen as a situation of intertextuality. The experience in the studio relates to previous experiences with the apparatuses. The continuous recycling of previous ideas and materials shapes the meaning of sound objects. A semiotics of musique concrète must take into account the interaction with the different apparatuses in the physical and 27

Emmerson (2007, 25) for the English translation. 130

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symbolic space of the studio, the processes of encoding and decoding that take with the apparatuses. To illustrate this approach, a semiotic model is helpful in examining the symbolic functionality of the three main apparatuses used in the analog studio: microphone, tape recorder, and loudspeaker. These three apparatuses relate to both Tarasti’s concept of situation28 and Peirce’s universal categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness: First is the conception of being or existing independently of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the conception of reaction with something else. Third is the conception of mediation, whereby a first and second are brought into relation. (Peirce 1992, 296)29 The microphone is used to convert sound vibrations into electric signals. Technically, the conversion should be as true and proportional as possible. Firstness is the perceiving of simultaneous and unarticulated vibrations through the microphone; Secondness is the distinguishing between action and reaction, stimulus and response; Thirdness is fixing what has been perceived and distinguished. The microphone is the apparatus that mediates between the word—the acoustic environment—and the body. Using the microphone as a listening tool is an intentional act. This mediation is both a selective and a reciprocal process, since listening affects the way we use the microphone and the microphone affects the listening experience. The tape recorder is an electroacoustic memory that converts electrical signals representing sound with as much fidelity as possible onto magnetic tape, faithfully representing those signals. Firstness is neutrally representing the recording of sound on magnetic tape; Secondness is observing the recorded sounds and distinguishing their potential to change; Thirdness is manipulating the recorded sounds, using the tape recorder as a compositional tool. The sound captured by the microphone and memorized by the tape recorder becomes a manipulatable object. The actions taken with the tape recorder—separation, fragmentation, transposition, repetition/loop, and montage, create a continuous chain of interpretations of the sound object. The loudspeaker is used to convert electrical audio signals into acoustic energy. It accomplishes a similar role as the microphone but in reverse order: the microphone responds to variations in air pressure, while the mechanical motion of the loudspeaker causes the pressure waves in the air 28 29

For an account of musical situation cf. Tarasti (2002, 65-87). See also the description of the categories in the Introduction to Peirce’s Selected Works (Houser 1992, xxx). 131

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that we call sound. Firstness here is the projecting of sound as a simultaneous and unarticulated phenomenon in the continuous flux of sound waves; Secondness is listening to the sound projected through the loudspeaker; Thirdness is assigning symbolic and artistic meaning to the sounds produced by the loudspeaker.30 3.4. Electroacoustic Studio as Non-Trivial Machine From the point of view of cybernetics, the studio of musique concrète can be seen as machine for processing sound and music. The combination of the three apparatuses—microphone, tape recorder, and loudspeaker—configures a process of cybernetic circularity. The studio converts the physical reality of the acoustic environment into sound and music objects that are projected into the real world, as works of music, which become themselves available as sound and music objects for further transformations. This feedback loop shapes the creativity of the electroacoustic studio. It is possible to formulate this insight using the terminology first proposed by Heinz von Foerster and further elaborated by Luhmann (cf. Foerster 1984; Luhmann 2013, 67-68). Foerster distinguishes between trivial and non-trivial machines. A trivial machine is characterized by the fact that the input is transformed into output according to a specific rule. For example, a mathematical operation such as 2 x 2 will always return the output of 4. The trivial machine is predictable and history independent. A non-trivial machine differs in the sense that “a response once observed for a given stimulus may not be the same for the same stimulus given later” (Foerster 1984, 10; emphasis in the original). The non-trivial machine can be understood as having a machine inside a machine, which builds a self-referential loop built using its own output as input, so that its internal logic changes with every operation. The behavior of the machine becomes unpredictable even if one knows the principle of its program. The four characteristics of the non-trivial machine, according to Foerster, are: synthetically deterministic, as it can be easily constructed; history dependent, because every operation changes the logic operator; analytically indeterminable, because of its non-linear mode of operation; analytically unpredictable, because the uncertainties of its behavior cannot be eliminated (cf. Foerster 1984, 13). Cybernetic machines are not limited to mathematical and scientific models but include all kinds of individual and social constructs. As Luhmann claims, “conscious systems are non-trivial machines” (Luhmann 2013, 68) 30

For a technical description of these devices, see Rossing et al. (2002). 132

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but we live in social systems that tend to be constructed as trivial machines, assuming that everything has to function according to a set of rules. We want to remove all uncertainties in our environment. When we buy a car or a phone, we expect them to function exactly as intended. However, if we extend this principle to human relations, if we begin to trivialize one another, we reduce the number of choices and reinforce autistic tendencies that pave the way to a kind of collective blindness. The ethical imperative, as Foerster suggests, is de-trivialization (Foerster 1984, 13). In this sense, system theory proposes a radically different approach assuming that social systems function as non-trivial machines according to the principle of “operational closure”31 When using this combined lens of semiotics, cybernetics, and system theory, it is necessary to revise our description of electroacoustic music. Both elektronische Musik and musique concrète have strongly influenced contemporary conception of sound by developing aesthetics that have transformed sound into a meaningful medium. Elektronische Musik describes itself as a non-trivial machine processing sound in relation to the tradition of vocal and instrumental music. It distinguishes the opposition between noise and musical sound as one of its crucial operations. This opposition feeds the self-referential loop of elektronische Musik that extends and transforms traditional categories of music composition such as harmony, spectrum, rhythm, and texture. A critique of elektronische Musik must question whether its attachment to tradition may have the negative effect of transforming it on a predictable basis and becoming a trivial machine. Musique concrète (and the related tradition of acousmatic) defines itself as a non-trivial machine processing sound as a self-referential phenomenon; it articulates sound aesthetics based on self-describing approaches that detach sound composition from the traditional models; it relies instead on morphology and typology of sound as proposed by Schaeffer and his followers.32 A critique 31

32

Operational closure is the central issue of self-organizing, autopoeitic social systems, including the social system of art. For a discussion of operational closure related to the idea of non-trivial machines, see Luhmann (2013, 63-70). See also “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein. For an example of this approach see the tables in the concluding part of the Traité des Objects Musicaux, which represent an attempt to provide a consistent description, classification, and generalization of the theory of musique concrète (Schaeffer 1966, 584-7). Michel Chion’s Guide des Objects Sonores (Chion 1983) is a very useful tool for accessing Schaeffer’s theory; it provides a dictionary of 100 notions from Schaeffer’s treatise grouped under research and description categories. Schaeffer’s methodological approach nourishes the imagination of many composers that continue to develop the acousmatic project both in terms of composition and academic research. For example: Smalley (1986; 1997; 2007) and Whishart (1996). Chion’s Audio-Vision (Chion 1998) 133

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of musique concrete can be formulated in the following terms: “starting from recorded real sounds, [musique concrète] certainly gave access to a vast sound vocabulary; but the sonic transformation seems to me rudimentary compared to the richness and the personality of the starting sound” (Risset 1990, 108). This criticism was motivated by Risset’s engagement to computer music, which as he claims, creates the possibility of accessing the microstructure of sound and composing the sound itself. This argument, as we have seen, is also problematic when digital synthesis turns its attention to the simulation of acoustic instruments and voices and when computer music languages develop compositional grammars that reinforce traditional forms of musical thinking.33 What is essential for the study of musique concrète, elektronische Musik, and computer music is the integration of technology into the observing process so that technology itself becomes an observer. The observer “is characterized by being able to make descriptions” (Foerster 2003, 283). From the perspective of system theory, the observer is the one that observes operations and, at the same, the observer is himself an operation (cf. Luhmann 2013, 10119).34 This definition seems awkward if we don’t make a distinction between operation and observation. The observer should not be equated with an individual; a social communication system is also an observer. Any theory of electroacoustic music, whatever definition we might assign it, must consider the apparatus as an observer and integrate the observations made by the apparatuses into the framework of conceptual distinctions. The investigation has to consider aesthetic implications of the apparatus, how the manipulation of apparatuses or the playing with apparatuses shapes the formal decisions. In other words, the machinery should be recognized as an observer and enter the feedback loop of the observation system. Against the core proposition of the acousmatic project, or the notion of “reduced listening”, the conclusion here is that the assumption of a sound that could be made invisible by eliminating its references creates a “blind spot”, preventing one from making visible the function of the apparatus in the creative process. By setting the apparatus apart from the system of electroacoustic music, we are left with an unsatisfactory account of its creative possibilities.

33

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presents a reflection on the development of audio-visual inspired by acousmatic and focused on sound in cinema. I am referring to computer music languages for digital synthesis like the MUSIC series and Csound, which internally articulate the fundamental distinction between the control level (score) and the sound generation level (orchestra) (cf. Roads 1996, 49-84). The recent development of Csound surmounts this distinction. For an account of the concept of observer see “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein. 134

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4. Creativity with Apparatuses 4.1. Technical Reproduction “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin’s essay originally published in Paris in 1936,35 is a major reference in humanistic studies on the relationship between art, media and technology. Benjamin reflects on the impact of technical reproduction on artistic creation, perception and the function of art in emerging mass society. One of the most quoted passages of the essay states: “[F]or the first time in world history, technical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical existence on ritual” (Benjamin 1977, 144).36 The first artworks, according to Benjamin, originated in the service of a ritual, first the magical then the religious ritual. The aura of the work of art is ingrained in its ritualistic function, which declined during the Renaissance and was replaced by the secular cult of beauty. This prevailed for three centuries until the advent of photography, which was the first revolutionary medium of technical reproduction that challenged the notion of the “authentic” work of art. For Benjamin, the doctrine of l’art pour l’art appeared as a reaction to the loss of authenticity, installing a sort of theology of art, a cult of pure artwork detached from any social function. We can interpret the ritualistic function of art from the perspective of the body. The religious ritual is celebrated in a physical location in the presence of bodies. When art gets detached from religion, the artwork is transformed into an autonomous object that can eventually be celebrated as an ersatz for religion. The aura of the work of art is thus due to this simulacrum of religious content that became invisible as the art itself became a “profane” ritual. The technology of reproducibility replaces the physical presence through a virtual presence, which creates its own rituals. Along with photography, recorded sound should also be included in the revolution that introduced the era of technical reproduction. The cinema is the first art form that accomplishes the convergence of these first virtual bodies, images and sounds.37 35

36

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The original text in French—“L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction méchanisée”— appeared in the journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung Jahrgang V, edited by Mark Horkheimer (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1936, pp. 40-68). Available at: http://ia700805.us.archive. org/2/items/ZeitschriftFrSozialforschung5.Jg/ZeitschriftFrSozialforschung51936.pdf [accessed August 1, 2013]. The passage is translated from the German text. The German word “Reproduzierbarkeit” means literally “reproducibility”; it has been translated as “mechanical reproduction”; I prefer instead the term “technical reproduction”, which is more general, yet it doesn’t convey the exact meaning of the original German word. In How We Became Posthuman, Hayles proposes a semiotic model to analyze the materiality of signifying processes in the post-industrial society that give rise to new 135

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Benjamin’s essay, written during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi party, is a political critique of fascism in Europe; it anticipates the events that culminated in the outbreak of World War II and the tragedy of the Holocaust. The reflection on the role of technological reproduction in shaping human experience goes together with his concern about the increasing proletarization and development of a mass culture in modern society, a process that Marx and Nietzsche had already observed at the end of the 19th century. The conclusions are ambivalent. On the one hand, Benjamin suggests that technology introduces a revolutionary change, which appears already in photography and especially in film, as it disengages the artwork from its “aura” of authenticity, allowing the spectator to participate in the creative experience. The technical apparatus has deeply penetrated into reality; in film, for instance, the actor performs not directly for the audience but for the camera. The camera doesn’t present the actor’s performance but its own performance resulting from the combination of shooting and editing techniques. The audience can only empathize with the actor’s performance if it empathizes with the camera’s performance. As Benjamin points out, the technical apparatus brings a new kind of creativity that liberates art from the bonds of authenticity and the ritualistic function associated with location and the original utility. However, creative potential can only be achieved if the aesthetics of the artwork explores the new possibilities of the apparatus from a critical perspective, if the apparatus doesn’t become itself an object of veneration. On the other hand, Benjamin recognizes the alienating potential of art in the age of technical reproduction. Film illustrates this resistance to eliminating the cult function of the artwork; it creates a new kind of illusion that puts the audience into a state of scattered, fragmented attention. In the epilog of the essay, Benjamin replaces his optimistic tone with a warning and an apocalyptic vision of the future dominated by the fear of emerging fascism. The violation of the masses and of the technical apparatus are two related consequences of the fascistic orientation of society. The technical apparatus is pressed into the production of ritual values, serving the fascistic purpose of reintroducing aesthetics into politic life: “All effort to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war” (Benjamin 1977, 168). Benjamin quotes Marinetti’s manifesto about the Ethiopian war, in which he celebrates the beauty of the war machinery and the aesthetics of war and violence. War is supposed to provide the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed kinds of embodiment, through the interplay of presence and absence (cf. Hayles 1999, 247-82). 136

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by the machine and technology. Benjamin sees in fascism the culmination of the ideal of l’art pour l’art. Self-alienation within fascism becomes so extreme that the destruction of humanity becomes itself an aesthetic experience.38 4.2. The Telematic Dialog A half century after Benjamin, Flusser’s media philosophy expresses a similar kind of ambivalence toward the potential of technical apparatuses. Flusser is recognized as one of the first philosophers to anticipate the emerging digital society of the internet and web-based culture dominated by technical and electronic images, a form of life that is now shaping our scientific, political, and artistic environment.39 His book Into the Universe of Technical Images (Flusser 2011), written in the mid-1980s, one decade before the internet revolution and two decades before the mobile communication revolution, introduces “the prospect of a future society that synthesizes electronic images [;…] a fabulous society, where life is radically different from our own” (Flusser 2011, 3). The book opens with a warning statement about the repressive potential of global networks, while at the same time, is a manifesto for unraveling their creative potential through a new kind of connected communication that he calls “telematic dialogue”: Taking contemporary technical images as a starting point we find two divergent trends. One moves toward a centrally programmed, totalitarian society of image receivers and image administrator, the other toward a dialogic, telematic society of image producers and image collectors. From our standpoint, both these social structures are fantastic, even though the first presents a somewhat negative, the second a positive, utopia. In any case, we are still free at this point to challenge these values. (Flusser 2011, 4) The first option provides the scenario of a techno-fascism that eliminates human agency and decision, and transforms man into a programmable 38

39

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is a major symbolic event for the fascination exerted by violence and destruction; the images of the attack repeatedly delivered by the mass media are examples of the potential of terrorism to shape aesthetic pleasure. In Baudrillard’s words: “By the grace of [sic] terrorism, the World Trade Center has become the world’s most beautiful building—the eighth wonder of the world” (Baudrillard 2002, 48). For a concise account of Flusser’s media philosophy, cf. Hartmann (2000, 279-98), and Kloock and Spahr (1997, 77-98). 137

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being; the second option encourages us to explore the liberating potential of digital technology, which empowers us with the ability to achieve a new kind of freedom by programming our own reality. Flusser’s account of the telematic society focuses on the transformation from a writing-based culture to a digital images-based one. He analyzes the evolution of communication codes through the text/image relationship. The image has a magical and mythological meaning; prehistoric man communicated through traditional images that preceded the invention of text. The development of writing, which began with the Sumerians around 3500 BC, represents the lack of belief in the magical iconic power of images and the belief in narratives, theories, and ideologies. Flusser associates writing with the linear mode of thinking that created historical consciousness. The shift occurred, according to him, when the scientists of Modernity began to envision knowledge more in terms of numbers and less in terms of texts; theoretical thinking has migrated from written to numerical codes—from alphabetical codes and historical consciousness to binary codes of computer and cybernetic systems. This transformation culminated in the invention of technical images—photo, film, television, video, and computer. The calculative and analytical thinking of science and technology has decomposed the phenomena into abstract and punctual elements. This process has resulted in the crisis of Modernity that affects all spheres of life, including the existential, social, cultural, and has caused the lack of faith in the power of theories and ideologies. Technical images are the expression of the crisis and at the same time, the possibility of overcoming it. They have re-codified the world by re-introducing magic and belief in the power of the image. Yet the current magic of technical images is of another kind, different from the magic of traditional images. The pre-historic images encode the concrete world in terms of myths—they are like mirrors that can be decoded as signs; technical images encode abstract concepts that can only be decoded in terms of programs. Flusser reflects on the cybernetic paradigm of dematerialized information. He argues that the apparatuses that produce technical images have the possibility of reversing the process of alienation or abstraction, rescuing and reshaping the concrete universe. As previously mentioned, he calls this ability of the technical images to create concrete forms from abstract elements the power to imagine [Einbildungskraft] (Flusser 2011, 33-39). Our culture is no longer concerned with creating a picture of reality, but with developing an alternative imagination, by exploring the products of scientific and technological revolution. The alternative words that have been emerging in computers and other digital devices represent this processes of transformation from abstract into concrete elements: they are condensations 138

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of digital particles or bits, taking the form of images, sounds, and eventually bodies, robots, and other forms of life endowed with artificial intelligence. Computers symbolize calculating thought that can synthesize and project alternative worlds from algorithms.40 As Flusser claims, “We are no longer subjects of a given objective world, but projects of alternative worlds. From the submissive subjective position we have raised ourselves to projecting. We are growing up. We know that we are dreaming” (Flusser 1997a, 213). These projections can be as concrete as the environment that surrounds us. The more sophisticated the condensation processes of computers are, the more real the synthetic worlds become, so that we no longer distinguish between reality and digital appearance. In the unfinished essay Vom Subjekt zum Projekt [From Subject to Project] (Flusser 1998), which can be considered the latest stage of his digital utopia, Flusser recasts the idea of telematic dialog in terms of the practice of projection. Numerical, calculating thinking has penetrated deeper and deeper into things, “but instead of reaching a bottom has dissolved things into clouds of vapor floating in nothingness” (Flusser 1998, 11). This relationship has gradually abolished the belief in the subject/object relationship. As an object, man is dissolved into a network of simultaneous relations—psychological, psychic, social, and cultural; as a subject, man is fragmented into calculus itself. Flusser applies the analogy of the computer bit in order to characterize the transformation from linear thinking or written codes to the pixel, and then to the null dimensionality of digital codes and the state of nothingness, which evokes the “death of humanism”. Yet Flusser rejects nihilistic pessimism; he proposes instead a negative anthropology—a postmodern and post-humanistic one—in order to deny nothingness. From this reversal results an affirmative philosophy of the practice of projection, which is performed by means of digital apparatuses and transforms numerical thinking into synthetic codes: lines, shapes, colors, and sounds. Thanks to the power to imagine we have overcome the lack of belief, the subjectivity that led us to the state of catastrophe. We are standing up in order to project ourselves, not as a group of individuals, but as a dialog in a telematic network. The possibility to construct alternative worlds reconstructs the concept of “freedom”, in that we have to continuously

40

See Flusser’s emblematic essay “Digitaler Schein” [Digital Appearance] in Flusser (1997a, 202-15). Concerning the function of the computer Flusser gives the following definition: “Computers are devices for realizing inter-human, interpersonal, and extra-human possibilities thanks to the precise computational thinking” (Flusser 1997a, 213). 139

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develop a consensus to keep this inter-subjective dialog alive and participate in the practice of projection (Flusser 1998, 17). Flusser’s description of the telematic society indicates tendencies of the present. For example, the playful game of generating information points to the Platonic utopia of a society whose economy becomes increasingly dedicated to providing people with entertainment and leisure; the networking architecture of the dialog points to the merging of political and private spheres in the social media; the interactions between humans and robots point to the mutation towards a hybrid (post-human) society: The scenario, the fable, I propose here is this: people will sit in separate cells, playing with their fingertips on keyboards, staring at tiny screens, receiving, changing, and sending images. Behind their backs, robots will bring them things to maintain and reproduce their derelict bodies. People will be in contact with one another through their fingertips and so form a dialogical net, a global superbrain, whose function will be to calculate and compute improbable situations into pictures, to bring information, catastrophes about. Artificial intelligences will also be in dialogue with human beings, connected through cables and similar nerve strands. In terms of function, then, it will be meaningless to try to distinguish between natural and artificial intelligence (between primate brains and secondary brains). The whole thing will function as a cybernetically controlled system that cannot be divided into constituent elements: a black box. (Flusser 2011, 161) 4.3. Telematic Chamber Music In the concluding chapter of Into the Universe of Technical Images, Flusser suggests chamber music “as a model for dialogic communication in general, and for telematic communication in particular” (Flusser 2011, 162).41 He draws a parallel between communication through music and through technical images. The universe of music is just as calculated and computed as that of technical images. Both have emancipated themselves from the semantic dimension, channelizing the possibilities of composition and computations toward selfreferential “pure” art. Traditional chamber music, according to Flusser, is a 41

For an account of telematic chamber music see my article “A Música de Câmara Telemática: a Metáfora de Flusser e o Universo da Música Eletroacústica” [Telematic Chamber Music: Flusser’s Metaphor and the Universe of Electroacoustic Music] (Chagas 2008). 140

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pre-industrial form of communication that anticipates imaging techniques. It requires sophisticated communication between the players, each one performing for him- or herself and for all the others. From the point of view of sound production, chamber music requires interaction between bodies, voices, and musical instruments. It shapes a direct relationship between the bodies and instruments or voices, since the resonance of the instruments is transmitted to the bodies (in the case of voice the transmission is internal) and the bodily activity of the musicians controls the sound events of the musical flow. There is thus a direct and analog feedback between body and sound. From the point of view of communication, chamber music is a collective process unlike music for soloists. At the same time, it stimulates the individuality of musicians, unlike orchestral music directed by a conductor. Feedback processes affecting the body and sound also regulate the relationship between the musicians.42 The dialog between bodies and instruments, including the voice, is therefore the foundation of chamber music both as sound production and communication. Gesture is one of the most important aspects of this dialog. In performing a work of chamber music, the musicians refer to a system of instructions that can either be a pure score (classical music), a schematic score (jazz, popular music), a diagram with instructions (improvised music), or any kind of textual or graphical notation (free improvisation is generally communicated orally). The interpretation of these instructions requires a multifaceted system of communication consisting of aural, visual, and gestural elements. It is through gesture that musicians communicate intentions such as maintaining a rhythm, beginning or completing a musical phrase, increasing or decreasing loudness, accelerating or decelerating tempo, and other crucial features of musical performance. Typical gestures of chamber music include breathing to indicate the intention of synchronizing actions, tapping feet on the floor; making movements with the head, arms, or other body parts. Other gestures involve making abrupt movements with the instrument such as with a woodwind, the bow for stringed instruments, or drumsticks with percussion instruments. In general, musical performance produces indexical gestures resulting from the combined action of bodily movements with specific movements of the instruments. The function of gesture in music is not restricted, however, to the corporeal and immediate aspect of performance. As pointed out by 42

Flusser reflects on the embodiment of musical communication in his essay “Die Geste des Musikhörens” [The Gesture of Music Listening] (Flusser 1997b, 151-59). He claims that, when listening to music, the body is literarily penetrated by the musical message: “the body becomes music and the music becomes body” (Flusser 1997b, 155). 141

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Wittgenstein, gesture plays an important role as an external sign of musical understanding.43 Recent studies on musical semiotics indicate that gesture not only articulates nuances of perception, cognition, and affection, but also negotiates the understanding of more abstract musical structures through the internal synthesis and integration of elements. Barthes, in his essay on Schumann’s piano music, identified several “figures whose body textures constitute the musical meaning” (Barthes 1985, 307). Lidov (1987) outlined a semiotic theory of gesture in music, showing through the interpretation of Chopin’s music for piano how gesture can contribute to creating different musical meanings. Hatten (2004) developed a comprehensive theory of emergence and generalization of musical gesture. Defining gesture as “significant energetic shaping of sound through time” (Hatten 2004, 95; emphasis in the original), he demonstrates the evolution of stylistic gestures in the works of classical and romantic composers such as Beethoven and Schubert. Hatten’s analysis focuses on the interpretation process through which physical gesture is transformed into musical gesture. This process creates stylistic and stereotyped gestures, which synthesize or integrate various musical elements that are relevant to understanding different levels of structure and musical form. A semiotic investigation of musical gestures provides insight into musical evolution from the point of view of the relationship between stylistic elements and concrete contexts. This can be observed for example, in the evolution of the string quartet, a form of chamber music that has achieved an outstanding level of sophistication. In watching a performance of a string quartet, we can observe how physical and musical gestures vary according to specific styles and aesthetics. Since the mid-18th century, composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Schoenberg, and Webern have written works that have expanded the instrumental and aesthetic possibilities of music for string quartet. This process has also extended the repertoire of musical gestures, as we see for example, in the music for string quartet composed in the second half of the 20th century: micro-polyphonic textures (Ligeti), complex scores that transcend the logical limits of notation (Ferneyhough), stochastic and algorithmic models of composition (Xenakis), and experimental aesthetics that re-elaborates concepts of time and space in music (Stockhausen). In Stockhausen’s Helikopter–Streichquartett [Helicopter String Quartet] (1992-93) each musician of the string quartet plays inside a flying helicopter and the audience sits in a concert hall. The sound of the instruments is captured by microphones, mixed with noise produced by the aircraft and 43

See “Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics”, pp. 13-41 herein. 142

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projected to the audience in the concert hall together with images of the musicians captured by cameras. This work can be considered a prototype of telematic chamber music for many different reasons: (1) The piece disconnects the performance from the physical presence in the concert hall and connects it to a telematic choreography that creates a displacement of both space and time. (2) The piece subverts the function of the helicopters as they fly for the sole purpose of performing a work of art. (3) The musicians perform for the audience via the electroacoustic audiovisual medium (microphone, amplifiers, and video projection) so that the presence of the electroacoustic medium replaces the physical body. Flusser’s model of telematic dialog is an attempt to make a synthesis of two different types of communication: (1) The communication of chamber music, which occurs in the physical medium with bodies producing gestures that are translated into sounds. (2) The communication of electronic music, which occurs in the virtual medium with apparatuses producing programs that are translated into sounds or images. He describes the telematic performance as a dialog between “musicians” and “intelligent memories”, which are, at the same time, transmitters and receivers of information. The goal of the dialog is to synthesize new information. Unlike traditional chamber music, which is structured as a succession of linear events such as themes and variations, the telematic dialog “occurs in simultaneous time and space, and all players in all places make decisions relating to themes and their variations all at once” (Flusser 2011, 163). In this view, the basis of telematic communication is not an original score but a program, a set of rules that will soon be replaced by reprogrammed memories with which the musicians will improvise. He doesn’t distinguish between composition and performance; his model of telematic communication suggests that he is seeking to reconstruct an “experience of presence” that emerges from the performative character of improvisation and at the same time, ignores the crucial role of composition in the development of the string quartet. What are the implications of such a conception of creativity? Flusser speculates on the convergence of acoustic and visual media. As mentioned above, he considers the universe of technical images as “calculated” and “pure” in the same sense that music alone was. A new level of audiovisual consciousness is reached with the rise of technical images, one that realizes the visionary power of music. Should we consider convergence between image and sound as restricted to the universe of audiovisual technology or as a more general subject of artistic creation? Flusser notes that all pretechnical images and all pretechnical music could be understood as aspiring to technical sounding images, making the technical image 143

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the first instance of music becoming an image and an image becoming music […] It will become pointless to try to distinguish between music and so-called visual arts because everyone will be a composer, will make images. The universe of technical images can be seen as a universe of musical vision. (Flusser 2011, 165) The music by Morton Feldman (1926-87) is a compelling example of how sound and image can be interlaced as a basis for musical creativity. Feldman was very closely aligned with painters belonging to the movement of abstract expressionism; many of his compositions found inspiration in paintings and patterns of traditional Middle Eastern rugs.44 Reflecting on how painting can be described, by its subject or its surface, Feldman asks how these two categories can be interpreted in music. He calls construction “the controlling metaphor of the composition” (Feldman 2000, 83). The difference between musical construction and surface lies for him in the conception of time. A music that doesn’t have a surface submits to time and becomes a rhythmic progression. The music that develops a surface creates a sense of “Undisturbed Time”.45 Feldman acknowledges that music surface became an obsession for him. He considers his works as moving between the categories of time and space, between painting and music, between construction and surface. His music, although it operates only with the medium of instrumental and vocal sound (he didn’t compose electroacoustic music), uncovers a unique power to imagine emerging from the methodological search of principles mutually relating music and visual composition. 4.4 The Electronic Implosion of the Radio: The Feedback of the Masses Exploring the common cultural, political, and economic roots of technical sound in the 20th century can provide an understanding of the historical development of electroacoustic music. We see how musical models of creativity arise from situations shaped by previous political, economic, and cultural praxis, which created the material conditions and social consciousness for future artistic imagination and agency. In the specific case of electroacoustic 44

45

For a description of the influence of rug patterns see Feldman’s article “Crippled Symmetry” in Feldman (2000, 134-49). Feldman’s distinction between construction and surface can be analyzed according to the semiotic theory of “modalities”. Construction is related to the temporal modality of “doing” and surface to the temporal modality of “being”. Tarasti developed the theory of musical modalities inspired by the structural semiotics of Greimas; cf. Tarasti (1994, 27, 38-43). 144

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music, the medium of radio played a key role, particularly in the political context of the German Third Reich. Radio broadcasting was directly linked to the National Socialist Party as a main instrument of propaganda, education, and mobilization of the masses. Radio politics determined what people were allowed to listen to and how they should listen. The development of radio occurred parallel to the development of the loudspeaker, which radically transformed the experience of listening. The significance of the loudspeaker in controlling the acoustic landscape is similar to the role of modern means of transportation in controlling territory: “Without cars, without airplanes and without loudspeakers we wouldn’t have conquered Germany,” admitted Adolf Hitler (Weinbrenner 1938, 3). Hitler addressed the masses through the radio and always in public spaces. The propaganda machine of the Third Reich explored the use of electroacoustic apparatuses for making Hitler’s voice appealing. The voice was captured by microphone, amplified and projected through loudspeakers into monumental spaces, re-captured by microphones, mixed with the sound of the roaring masses, and finally broadcast on radio. This process can be seen as an aesthetic manipulation of the feedback of the enthusiastic masses in order to add a living, vibrating quality to Hitler’s speeches. The amplified voice enhanced with this feedback significantly contributed to aesthetically constructing the cult of the Führer. As an instrument of propaganda, the radio in the Third Reich developed an aesthetics of sound that deliberately orchestrated both acoustics and the artistic use of sound technology. Along with the improvement of the quality of the electroacoustic apparatuses, the radio explored the broadcast studio as a tool for intensifying the acoustic experience. As stated by Dr. Braunmuehl, chief engineer of the Reichrundfunk: Indeed, the acoustic conditions of the room, such as the characteristics of microphones, amplifiers, and speakers, cannot be understood from a purely technical point of view. While the electroacoustic elements of transmission are to be developed only according to the requirement of transmission fidelity, the acoustic quality of a room is inseparable from the resulting sound image, as it also impacts the speakers, musicians, and the audience. (Braunmuehl 1938, 70) McLuhan (1964) associates radio with the political, social, and cultural forms of European societies, which he considers “earthy” and less visual than American societies and therefore more receptive to the magic of radio, which he associates with tribal ritual. It is the tribal magic of radio that resonates with fascism, claims McLuhan: “Had TV come first there would have been 145

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no Hitler at all” (McLuhan 1964, 299). The radio offers a world of unspoken communication between the speaker in front of the microphone and the listener in front of the loudspeaker. It simulates the experience of private intimacy mediated by electroacoustic apparatuses. As McLuhan notes, “The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums” (McLuhan 1964, 299). The radio has a dimension of resonance that transforms society into a single echo chamber. The sounds of radio reach people in several ways; they enable objective and subjective processes of communication via electromagnetic waves that transform the mass society into a global village. The radio thus was one of the most effective tools for introducing the globalization process of capitalism. It triggered the electronic transformation that preceded the universe of telematic comunication: “Radio provided the first massive experience of electronic implosion, that reversal of the entire direction and meaning of literate Western civilization” (McLuhan 1964, 300). In his analysis of 1930s Germany, McLuhan detects a feeling of claustrophobia engendered by the electronic implosion of radio and compression of the physical space. This is expressed by the German obsession with the idea of Lebensraum [space to live], which became a motivation for justifying the imperialistic and military ambitions of the Nazi regime. The tribal past is deeply rooted in German history and has never disappeared from the German subconscious mind, according to McLuhan. Even while criticizing the historical anachronism of this kind of analysis, I fully agree with this observation. It confirms the subjective impression I accquired living in Germany for 25 years.46 On the other hand, the tribal character that can be associated with the collective imaginary of German society encourages the development of oral (myths) and auditory (radio) communication. As McLuhan claims, the visceral quality of the sound of radio gave them easy access to the new non-visual world of subatomic physics. McLuhan sees radio as a hot medium that conveys a preliterate vitality: “The message of radio is one of violent, unified implosion and resonance” (McLuhan 1964, 301). Listening to the radio we experience the invisibility of the sound; we have to fill the acoustic impression with all the senses. After World War II, the German broadcasting system was reorganized as a network of local stations distributed across the country. The new broadcasting was indeed oriented to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), but 46

In January 1980, I moved from Brazil to Europe. First I lived in Liège, Belgium, and visited Germany regularly. In September 1982, I moved to Cologne and lived there until November 2004, when I moved to Riverside, California. 146

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in contrast to the British model it had a decentralized configuration. Like many other structures of post-war German society, the radio broke with the legacy of the Nazi regime. As a consequence of this historical rupture, a new kind of experimental creativity emerged both in artistic and technical fields. International figures such as the German visual artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and the American composer John Cage (1912-1992)—who had a significant impact on the German musical avant-garde—symbolized a new attitude that questioned established artistic categories and the very concept of art. The break with the past transformed the implosion of Nazi radio into the creative explosion of postwar radio. The radio took over an important role in the organization of musical life in Germany; it supported the movement of Neue Musik that carried on the experimental tradition of serial music, which the Nazi regime had condemned as degenerated art and tried to eliminate. It is in the fertile ground of experimentation nourished by radio that electronic music has sprouted and grown. 4.5. The Experimental Creativity of the Radio: Stories from the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne The history of the Cologne Studio for Electronic Music still has to be written.47 The official version documented in archives of the WDR has to be confronted by the unofficial stories, narratives, and reports by the people who worked in the studio or were in one or another way linked to its activities. Unofficially, the Studio für Elektronische Musik des Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunks (NWDR) began in 1951 when a group of people started to put into practice the idea of creating music with electronic apparatuses especially for the medium of radio. It took a while, however, before the final studio was set up in the Cologne Funkhaus [Broadcasting Center] (cf. MorawskaBüngeler 1988, 7-18). The phonetician and communication scientist Werner Meyer-Eppler (1913-1960) played a key role in the foundation of the studio (cf. Ungeheuer 1992). He was responsible for its interdisciplinary, artistic, and scientific orientation that was reflected in the works of the first generation of composers that worked there, such as Eimert and Stockhausen. The influence of phonetics on electronic music composition—at the level of both sound 47

For the early history of the Cologne studio from the foundation in the 1950s until the mid1980s see Schwingende Elektronen: Eine Dokumentation über das Studio für Elektronische Musik des WDR 1951-1986 (Moraska-Büngeler 1988). For the period between 1990 and 1999, see “The Temple of Electronic Music: The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne in the 1990s”, pp. 159-202 herein. Some topics of this section intersect with the essay though from a different perspective. 147

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material and formal structuring—is illustrated by seminal works such as Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56) and Eimert’s Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama (1960-62) (see above). The studio was officially launched in 1953 with the first concerts of electronic music in the Cologne Funkhaus. This concert hall, strategically located in downtown Cologne near the Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station) and Dom (Cathedral), served as a recording and broadcasting studio as well. After the division of NWDR in 1956, the Electronic Studio was integrated into the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). In January 2001, 50 years after its unofficial foundation, the WDR Studio of Electronic Music ceased its activities of musical production. All its equipment was moved from the facility located in the Annostraße in the south of Cologne—where the studio had been functioning since the late 1980s—to a storage facility in Ossendorf in the Cologne suburbs. The facility in the Annostraße was closed and sold. Sound engineer Volker Müller made the decision to rebuild on a new location, despite the lack of interest of the WDR administration. Müller was assigned the task of digitizing the electronic music works produced in the studio, which he continued to perform after officially retiring in 2007. In discontinuing its production activity, the WDR studio has ceased to be a reference for electronic music. The historical background and events that led the WDR administration to take this radical decision must still be investigated. The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne left a historical legacy of experimental musical creativity that makes it an early example of the structure of telematic dialog (cf. Flusser 2011; Chagas 2008). Certain works produced by the studio became important references for 20th century music and reflect the interdisciplinary approach of the studio that generated a creative feedback between composers, technicians, and machinery. The composer most associated with the Cologne studio is undoubtedly Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose artistic career is closely intertwined with the history of the studio itself. He began there as musical assistant (1952-62), then became studio director (1963-89), and later composer-in-residence (1990-98). Stockhausen not only used the studio as a compositional tool but he also understood the potential of radio as “resonance chamber” for promoting and spreading electronic music in the globalized world. The concerts that took place in 1970 for several months in the spherical auditorium of the World Fair in Osaka, Japan represent a memorable moment in the history of electronic music: an emerging form of music was performed in a dedicated space providing a large international audience with a new kind of artistic, listening experience. This event contributed to the international reputation of both Stockhausen and the Electronic Studio of Cologne. Stockhausen successfully explored both the specific creativity of the 148

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studio—the contribution of the engineers, technicians, and musical assistants that helped him to realize his musical ideas—and the media structure of the WDR Radio to perform, record, and disseminate his works. On the other hand, the radio profoundly influenced Stockhausen’s musical choices. The mythical reality of the radio is reflected, for instance, in electronic music works such as Hymnen (1966/67), Sirius (1975-77), Oktophonie (1990-92), and his monumental opera cycle Licht (1977-2003), which was partially produced in the studio. Also, the ritualistic dimension of radio shaped his concerns with the spiritual development of mankind and the planetary and cosmic aspirations that he assigns to his own music.48 What still remains unnoticed in the official history of the WDR electronic studio, is the influence of sound technicians that acted “in the shadow of the renowned composers and studio directors” (Werner 2005, 105). For example, Heinz Schütz (1921-2005) was a true icon of the founding period of the studio. His virtuoso manipulation of analog apparatuses has no comparison in the performance of current DJs. Once when he came to visit the studio in the Annostraße, I had the opportunity to witness an amazing demonstration of his sound creativity in the “Museum”49: Using both hands and feet, Schütz produced very innovative and unique sounds by manipulating simultaneously and alternatively tape recorders, oscillators, mixers, fi lters, and other analog devices of the 1950s and 60s. It is likely that his peculiar and distinctive creativity questioned the hierarchical relationship between composer and technicians that prevailed in the personnel structure of the WDR studio. In 1958 Schütz left the electronic studio and founded the WDR Tontrickstudio (Sound-trick Studio), which later became the WDR Studio für Klangdesign (Sound-design Studio). As Werner notes: The self-taught Heinz Schütz with his creative thinking and living style has had a strong impact on the beginnings of the studio and therewith, like a catalyst, also on the worldwide development, indeed on the contemporary presence of electronic sounds in all media and in sound art. (Werner 2005, 105) 48

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Stockhausen was convinced that he would be perpetuated as a myth. In 1973 he said: “As a name I am a myth. […] When this body no longer exists, this name will be totally transformed into a myth”; cf “Stockhausen as Myth” in Stockhausen (1989, 1-2). The so-called “Museum” was a room on the second floor of the Annostraße, where the studio technology and equipment of the WDR studios were kept fully functioning. Conceived by the sound engineer Volker Müller, the “Museum” provided the composers of the 1990s with the same space design and equipment of the former studios of the 1950s and 60s. Müller hoped that the composers would use the “old” analog technology for producing new pieces. Unfortunately, it didn’t come to that. 149

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4.6. Klangregisseur and Criticism Between 1990 and 1999, while working as Klangregisseur [Sound Director] in the WDR Electronic Music Studio, I had the privilege of being part of its history. The position of sound director entailed assisting composers who were commissioned to produce pieces in the studio. The composers that held this job were also considered composers-in-residence and were afforded the opportunity to produce their own pieces in the studio. Some of them became established composers at the studio, for instance Stockhausen (1952-62; the first one), Gottfried Michael Koenig (1954-64), Mesias Maiguashca (196872), and Péter Eötvös (1971-73). In the essay “Spiel und Dialog” (Chagas 2002),50 I reflect on theoretical and aesthetic issues related to my professional experience as Klangregisseur and analyze production structures of the WDR studio in the 1990s through the investigation of the creative substrate of electronic studio as a model of telematic dialog engaging artists, technicians, and apparatuses. The term Klangregisseur goes back to Wolfgang Becker, former director of the WDR department of Neue Musik [New Music], which supervised the Electronic Studio. Becker anticipated the radical impact of digital technology on production methods and the personnel structure of the electronic studio. In the analog era, the technical-artistic assistant was assigned cumbersome and tedious tasks such as cutting and sorting thousands of bits of tape containing sound material, which were assembled in the electronic music composition. In the beginning of the 1990s, it was clear that a more comprehensive approach to the relationship between technique and art was required to assist composers in the realization of their artistic visions. The great majority of composers that worked in the studio had very little or no experience at all with digital apparatuses, including computer hardware and software, digital signal processing, digital synthesizer, or MIDI. They had to be introduced to the world of these black boxes to get a sense of their possibilities. Only then could they begin to understand the combinatory game of the apparatuses and learn to think in terms of numerical symbols. The sound director had to instruct composers on how to operate the apparatuses besides decoding their ideas in terms of the programs and functions of the apparatuses. In addition to assisting composers to move deeper inside the universe of apparatuses, the sound director was involved in the strategic activities of planning, investment, and the organization of the studio, as well as in the production of concerts. The specific work of sound director consisted precisely 50

For an English version of this essay—“Game and Dialog”—cf. Chagas (2006a). 150

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in this intermediation between technical, artistic, and administrative fields, shaping the cybernetic dialog of the digital era. On the other hand, the sound director was also a functionary in the same manner as engineers, technicians, composers, producers, and other individuals working in the complex scientific, technical, and artistic apparatus represented by the radio. (The electronic music studio can be analyzed as part of the meta-apparatus radio, which, in turn, is a part of the meta-apparatus media, and so on.) The term functionary in the sense proposed by Flusser, means the individual or institutional body that “plays with apparatus and acts as function of apparatus [sic]” (Flusser 2000, 83). As apparatuses function automatically and do not conform to any human decision, the functionary performs actions to keep the machinery in operation or to maintain the “absurd game with the apparatuses” (Flusser 2013, 26). However, as previously pointed out, the practice of electronic music production can raise consciousness of the function of the apparatus to a level that provides a model of freedom in post-industrial society. Together with engineers, technicians, and composers, the sound director shapes the nodes of creativity, the condensing knots from which emerge the musical works produced in the studio. In the mid-1990s, the WDR administration began to make plans for the future of the Electronic Music Studio. Although the studio was considered a prestige object, its importance shrank in the new German broadcasting landscape after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country divided since World War II. The era of pluralistic experimentation that had begun after the war was over. The radio took a more pragmatic and single-minded course, which aims to strengthen the radio’s core mission and differentiate itself from the emerging digital networks of information and communication with their instantaneous flux of multimodal information. Some attempts were made to relocate the studio to an educational institution (the Academy of Music in Essen) or a museum (the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne), but they all failed. Overall the whole process was quite obscure; neither the functionaries of the studio nor the German contemporary music community were involved in the decision-making. In late 2000, the journal MusikTexte launched a survey on the future of the studio: “Should the Westdeutsche Rundfunk [WDR] in Cologne give up or maintain its electronic studio, and in which form?”51 Composers, performers, musicologists, producers, and other people directly or indirectly involved with the studio responded with statements, comments, and criticisms that were published 51

Original title: “Sollte der WDR sein Elektronisches Studio aufgeben oder erhalten und in welcher Form?” (MusikTexte 2001, 16). 151

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in February 2001. However, this initiative ultimately did not impact the decision to practically shut down the WDR studio. My contribution to this survey was the article Zur Zukunft des Elektronischen Studios: Die künstlerische Herausforderung [On the Future of the Electronic Studio: The Artistic Challenge] (Chagas 2001)52 in which the argument is put forth that the WDR studio failed to advance an artistic vision that would justify its continuance. I pointed to the differentiation process of electronic music and the new trends of the early 21st century: Gone is the time when one could speak of ‘electronic music’ as an independent phenomenon in the music world and accordingly channel the studio’s work in a particular direction. The era of pure discovery, when electronic sound and the medium radio were explored as objects of musical creativity, has passed. Today, the term ‘electronic music’ has manifold and contradictory meanings, encompassing virtually any musical and acoustic form that can be reproduced electronically. Furthermore, one must consider the development of technology and media, which opens up new communication structures and perceptual spaces for music while closely connecting the acoustic phenomenon with complex fields of relationships. (Chagas 2001, 17-18) Additionally, I claimed that the direction of the studio was not attentive to the transformation of electronic music in the 1990s. The composer York Höller, artistic director of the studio between 1990 and 1999, felt personally attacked by my criticism and overreacted with an open letter with harsh and obtuse personal accusations. The problem was not so much a consequence of whatever decisions were made by individuals; rather, it was the inability of radio and its “functionaries” (in the sense formulated by Flusser; see above) to respond to the transformation of electronic music in society. Fundamental changes had taken place within the medium of radio; in the new German radio landscape, there was no place for experimental art requiring such intensive and time-consuming human and technical resources as the works produced by the Cologne Electronic Music Studio. Electronic music is nowadays a lively, vibrant field constantly diff using through all domains of society—both in a positive and in a negative sense. The convergence of industrial, scientific, and artistic categories leads to the diversity of musical forms. The future of electronic music no 52

The publisher omitted the title of my article. 152

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longer depends on the existence of the Electronic Music Studio. (Chagas 2001, 19) In short, the Studio in Cologne disappeared because it became obsolete. In the 1990s, the role of the studio was limited to the universe of German and European Neue Musik, in which electronic music occupied a limited space. The composers that worked in the studio produced mainly mixed works, in which electronic sounds shared their Dasein with sounds of instruments and/ or voices, although works of pure electronic music were also produced in the 1990s.53 4.7. Creative Circularity and Feedback Aside from Stockhausen as composer, sound engineer Volker Müller was the key figure in the recent history of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne. Officially he worked there from 1970 until 2007. Müller planned and supervised the relocation of the studio from the Funkhaus to the facility in the Annostraße, a process that lasted several years until its completion in 1987. He provided the studio with a modular and flexible design in terms of both architecture and technique that strongly impacted the work of the 90s; the studio facilities were allocated in many rooms so that different activities could be pursued parallel to each other. Secondly, the mixer and the speakers could be set up in different locations according to the kind of listening required (e.g. stereo or multi-channel). Müller’s concept aimed to provide a flexible and differentiating environment for production of electronic music: “Working procedures and methods must be adaptable to the wishes/ideas of the composers/directors/creators…”54 A central feature of the Annostraße facility was the comprehensive infrastructure for exploring sound spatialization and sound space composition, which had been a focus of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne since the 1950s. The new facility ensured continuity of this tradition by expanding the capability of multi-channel sound recording, mixing, and projection. The major apparatuses for that were the Programmable Audio Console (PTR), an analog mixer with digital control (specially designed for the Electronic Studio by the German audio company Lawo), and two Sony 24-track digital audio 53

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For example, Stockhausen’s Oktophonie (1990-92); Stroppa’s Zwielicht (1994-99), and my works Migration – 12-channel electronic music (1995-97), Projektion – 12-channel electronic music (1999-2001), and Projektion – 12-channel installation (2001). Notes by Volker Müller (Allgemeine Ziele / Allgemeine Anforderungen) from the beginning of the planning phase of the relocation of the studio (approximately 1982; manuscript). 153

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tape machines (PCM-3324 A). With the introduction of the first Pro Tools system in 1995, digital technology replaced tape recorders as a platform for multi-channel music production. It also impacted working methods, as the digital apparatuses demanded news skills from the engineers and technicians, opening a process of specialization that at the same time, led to a loss of the technical autonomy of those involved in the production process. The possibility of designing different set-ups of loudspeakers gave flexibility to the concept of sound spatialization. The main production room was built with a metal frame on the ceiling to which a ring with a diameter of approximately 8.2m was attached. This ring provided a track for hanging speakers with sliding systems attached, allowing them to be easily moved and adjusted. Generally, 12 speakers were installed on the ring and 4 others in the corners of the room. The maximum configuration of 16 loudspeakers enabled two different geometries of sound projection: a circular one with 12 movable speakers and a square one with 4 fixed speakers. In addition, it was possible to put speakers anywhere in the space of the studio. Stockhausen, for instance, developed in Oktophonie (1990-92) a sound space in the form of a cube using 8 speakers equally spaced—4 placed on the floor and 4 suspended perpendicularly above the others. In my electronic music compositions Migration (1995-97) and Projektion (1999-2001) I explored the concept of circular sound space, taking advantage of the 12 speakers evenly distributed along the ring.55 Unlike most recording studios including those of the WDR, the Electronic Music Studio had large windows, natural lighting, and ventilation. Volker Müller put emphasis on creating a pleasant working atmosphere. Usually, the composers worked between three and six months in the studio many hours a day, sometimes even in the evening. The composer counted on the assistance of the sound engineer, the technician, and the Klangregisseur, but could also work alone. Stockhausen used to bring his large personal staff (family members and collaborators) to assist him with production. Volker Müller’s enormous creativity, commitment, and dedication contributed significantly to the atmosphere of cooperation and exchange in the studio, which reached out to writers, technicians, musicologists, and other individuals who were in some way involved in studio activities. The knowledge and information generated through this structure of telematic dialog configured a cybernetic architecture

55

For a description of this concept of sound spatialization see my essay “Composition in Circular Sound Space: Migration –12-channel Electronic Music (1995-97)” (Chagas 2008b) 154

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of circularity that is arguably a model of creativity for electroacoustic music composition (cf. Chagas 2002, 2006a). The deactivation of the Electronic Music Studio represents the end of a particular type of creativity that emerged in regard to radio as a consequence of historical, social, and cultural contingencies. The creativity of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne lay in the production of works that were performed, broadcasted, and submitted to the observation of society. The works function as condensed forms of communication for the feedback loop of creativity. Without the works, the feedback loop of creativity ceased to flow.56

5. Looking Forward Studying the creativity of electroacoustic and digital music requires a multifaceted and pluralistic view combining historical, theoretical, cultural and practical approaches. A comprehensive approach seeks to investigate both particular cases and the context of its cultural references Electroacoustic and digital technology has radically transformed sound consciousness and propelled the process of artistic differentiation. The creativity that emerges through the use of apparatuses becomes more and more integrated in all spheres of musical activity. How then, shall we look into the future? Sounds are vibrations transmitted through the air and perceived by the ear and other parts of the body and thus have the ability to put the body into vibration. Musical sounds are forms built as differences in the acoustic medium, which are used for the purpose of artistic communication. Acoustic music results from the action of the body; either the body generates its own sounds (voice, handclapping) or it manipulates an instrument to produce sounds. Electronic sounds generated by apparatuses play an increasingly important role in music. Apparatuses are products of scientific and technical knowledge that prevail in all spheres of life. The category of music apparatus embraces both those that generate electronic sounds such as computers and

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The creativity of the radio was not limited to electronic music. The WDR itself promotes other forms of sound and music creativity such as the Hörspiel, the experimental radio drama produced by the “Studio Akustischer Kunst” [Studio of Acoustic Art]; the series “Musik der Zeit” [Music of the Time], which commissions new works and promotes concerts of contemporary music; the series of radio shows “Studio Elektronische Musik” [Studio Electronic Music], which broadcasts a diversity of electroacoustic music, etc. For a comprehensive documentation of the WDR activities in regard to contemporary music between 1951 and 2001, see Hilbert and Vogt (2002). 155

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synthesizers, as well as meta-apparatuses that organize music in society, such as mass media or networking media. A fundamental characteristic of modern art is self-programming.57 Electroacoustics expands music’s capabilities of self-programming by creating new channels of collaboration between art, science, media, economy. It stimulates the creative and critical use of apparatuses, increasing the connective possibilities between sound and other media such as image, body, and space. Being that electroacoustic music emerged from the experience of World War II, the medium of radio awakened the consciousness of the aesthetic manipulation of electroacoustic sound and of the listening experience through the loudspeaker. In the 1950s, the studios of the European stateowned broadcasting corporations started to produce electroacoustic music on a regular basis and integrate it into the communication system of art. The studios of Paris and Cologne are emblematic for the aesthetics of musique concrète and elektronische Musik and their different self-descriptions of the source material of electroacoustic music composition: the former favors processing of sounds captured from the acoustic environment and the latter, the synthesis of sounds generated by electronic apparatuses. These two approaches show how electroacoustic music can develop different kinds of aesthetics through self-programming. Cybernetics, another byproduct of war, has provided the philosophical and scientific basis for the development of computer science. Computer music that emerged from the research on sound synthesis merges analog electroacoustic music with the digital medium. The development of digital technology propelled the popularization of electroacoustic music. The concept of digital music points to the self-description of music in the digital society, including use of digital technology for composition, performance, distribution, and listening. The emergence of the apparatus as a reflexive medium reconstructed the concept of self-programming as a function of the apparatus, which creates an automated reality that becomes emancipated from man—and thus selfreferential. The ambivalent feelings concerning the relation between art and technology have been the object of critical studies at least since Benjamin. However, such critical approaches still have a limited impact on fields of music studies such as musicology, music theory, and analysis. 57

The concept of self-programming means that the artwork has to develop its own program, which is different for each artwork; it means that “the work constitutes the conditions of possibility for its own decision, that it observes itself, or, more accurately, that it can be observed only as a self-observer” (Luhmann 2000, 204). See “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein. 156

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The notion of composition is traditionally coupled with the medium of a written score, which functions as a programmatic memory for the performance. Electroacoustic music extends the notion of composition to the medium of technical reproduction. The analog apparatus (tape) emerged as a device for sound reproduction but turned into a tool of composition and performance. The computer intensifies the multifunctional characteristic of the technical apparatus as it transforms sound into numerical data that can be manipulated in manifold ways, re-coded, recombined, and reconstructed. Digital technology challenges the idea of the work of art as a closed and complete unit, for example, through the practice of “remixing” material from existing artworks. Increased openness in digital music suggests a tendency to emphasize the contingency of the artistic process rather than the necessity of a form as a unity. In other words, improvisation instead of composition. We observe this tendency in many spheres, not only in the world of DJs, but also in academic institutions, for example with improvisation ensembles and laptop orchestras. Jazz improvisation is clearly a prototype of such an improvisation model. Jazz musicians improvise on the basis of a “program” and make decisions at the moment of the performance, communicating with each other and with the audience. Continuous feedback is incorporated in the formal process, which is a central aspect of jazz creativity. Although Flusser’s model of telematic communication is centered on chamber music, it is also rather oriented around jazz improvisation. This becomes clear from a number of observations such as the musicians use of “recordings of recordings of recordings”, and “the improvisation with continually reprogrammed memories will replace the score” (Flusser 2011, 182). Flusser’s model doesn’t solve the problem of the temporal processing of meaning concerning both composition and improvisation. Composition is a calculating and computer time that requires time, but improvisation requires the reference to a style that is also a temporal form. A possible approach to the distinction between improvisation and composition is through the distinction between incorporation and inscription proposed by Hayles (1999, 192-221). Incorporation practices are context specific, always “performative and instantiated”, so that they necessarily contain improvisational elements. In contrast, inscribing practice can be transferred from context to context once it has been performed. Incorporation emerges from the collaboration between the body and embodiment and cannot be separated from the embodied medium. In contrast, inscription is normalized and abstract, in the sense that it constitutes a system of signs operating at a symbolic level and independently of any particular manifestation. 157

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I suspect that the emphasis on improvisation that we currently observe in the practice of electroacoustic and digital music is an attempt to restore the so-called “authenticity of human experience” in the creative process. This effort of reconstructing subjectivity can be also observed in the current scholarship, for instance with the persistence of notions such as presence, materiality, and embodiment, together with the emphasis on the “experience of presence”.58 Electroacoustic and digital creativity can been analyzed from different perspectives; for instance through the relationship between man and machine and their interpretations disclosing both positive and negative tendencies. Flusser’s utopian vision of the telematics dialogue points to the need to creatively shape the partnership between man and machine. The joyful game is the strategy for generating information, exercising reflexive criticism, and promoting freedom. Diversity is the most significant aspect of electroacoustic and digital music. Music becomes heterogeneous in manifold ways. The differentiation of music and other artistic forms increases environmental complexity, constantly redrawing the boundaries between different domains of observation. Therefore, there is a need to adopt a global perspective on multiplicity and heterogeneousness. Investigating the diversity of electroacoustic and digital music creativity uncovers the differences between medium and form. By adopting the perspective of system theory, it becomes possible to selectively reduce complexity by making connections. It is crucial to reflect on the constitute role of technology in the constitution of meaning and to analyze the processes of evolution while reflecting on the socio-cultural background and recognizing the forces that progress the creativity of electroacoustic and digital music.

58

For an account of improvisation from the point of view of system theory, see “Improvisation: Form and Event: A Spencer-Brownian Calculation” (Landgraf 2011). 158

Chapter 5

The Temple of Electronic Music: The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne in the 1990s1

I In the history of the WDR Studio for Electronic Music, there are myriad elements that have influenced the development of electronic music over the past 50 years. What is meant by electronic here is music generated by apparatuses, which include a variety of categories such as electroacoustic music, computer music, and even more specific designations.2 The essence of this genre from a contemporary perspective is not the name given to it, but the close relationship to media and the cultural-technological space. All contemporary or historical music that is medially produced exhibits a certain deformation through the electronics. It is electronic music that is able to provide access to the understanding of music apparatuses. It is generated with apparatuses, but it does not limit itself to the programs of the music apparatuses. Unlike music that is electronically reproduced, electronic music is only justified in that it creates new information and concepts, which help society to understand the programs of the apparatuses. Since its founding in 1951, the Studio for Electronic Music has been closely tied to the radio broadcasting structure of the WDR. The link with 1

2

The original text in German—“Der pluralistische Raum: Die Produktion des Studios für Elektronische Musik des WDR in den 90er Jahren. Eine Einführung und Dokumentation”—was written in 1999 and published in three parts in the journal Mitteilungen of the DEGEM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik [German Society of Electronic Music]) (cf. Chagas 2000a; 2000b; 2000c). The three articles are also published in Chagas and Werner (2012, 46-100). I revised the text and updated the information, especially when it was necessary to clarify the changes that occurred in the WDR Electronic Studio afterwards. However, I tried to preserve the historical authenticity by keeping as much as possible the original tone and ideas. For DEGEM cf. http://www.degem.de (accessed August 1, 2013). The terms “electronic music” and “electroacoustic music” are generally used as synonyms in this article. 159

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this media makes the studio distinctive: It determines how the studio works from an artistic, technical, and practical point of view and is reflected in the musical works produced there. At the end of the 1990s, with the rapid development of new technology, the question of media and of communication altogether, became particularly relevant. New models of creativity were required to allow a critical look into the inner structure of the apparatuses and called for reflexive dialog to confront the repeticious automatisms in the growing networking structures. Otherwise we are left with nothing but to sink into the entropy of banality. Trends in art, technology, science, and communication converge in the apparatus electronic studio; they crystallize in the production of the studio and flow from there into society. A look at the production of the WDR Electronic Studio from 1990 to 1999 tracks its evolution, makes the knowhow of the studio understandable, and introduces it as an object of discussion.

Space for Living Experience In the 1980s, the production of the Electronic Studio was restricted by the move out of the WDR broadcasting studio in the center of Cologne, where the studio had occupied different rooms for production since its founding. Morawska-Büngeler (1988) provides a critical documentation from the 1950s up to this period. This outstanding book provides information on the compositions, composers, and technical equipment, though an update is in order to correct a couple of errors. The Electronic Studio relocated in 1987 into the building of the former WDR television studio “L” in the Annostraße (south Cologne); the move and the renovation of the rooms stretched over two years. As of 1987, some commissioned works were partially produced in the new rooms of the Electronic Studio, but it took several years before the infrastructure enabled full production activity. The sound engineer Volker Müller developed the spatial and technical concept of the studio that would be normative for the work in the 1990s. This concept is based on “methods of production that have a historical tradition in the Studio”, while creating space for the expansion, improvement, and rationalization of these methods and opening possibilities for the gradual introduction of new technology.3 3

Allgemeine Ziele/Allgemeine Anforderungen [General Objectives/General Requirements], notes by the engineer Volker Müller written in the beginning of the planning phase for the 160

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One of the most important objectives of the new phase of the studio was formulated on the idea that, “Working procedures and methods must be adaptable to the wishes/ideas of the composers/directors/creators…”.4 This flexibility demanded a modular and mobile spatial concept with interconnected areas for production, preparation, routine work, and parallel activities. The configuration of the rooms had two work areas with the same technology, acoustically separated by two other rooms but linked through glass windows and networks for audio and later, data transmission. Two other floors contained a “museum” where the historical apparatus of the old studio was kept in working order, as well as a small social area with a lounge and kitchenette. The most important production studio was Room 304, located in the former rehearsal room of the WDR television ballet, which was rebuilt for the studio. This room measuring more than 103m2 symbolizes the philosophy of the studio with regard to production methods and the necessity of acoustic and spatial experience in the realization of electronic music. Room 304 was not a typical studio control room, but an acoustically live room. It featured a suspended circular metal frame of 8.2m in diameter above the central area of the room. It was customary for the composer and or producer to sit in the center of the circle. The basic configuration was 12 loudspeakers on the circular rail and 4 others in the corners of the room, for a maximum of 16 loudspeakers. Variations of this configuration exerted great influence on works produced in the studio, particularly the ones exploring the spatial dimension of electronic music composition. Flexibility demands uniform technology in all areas of the studio. The audio network had two structures: a central structure linking all rooms and additional connections between neighboring rooms. All devices operated to a uniform standard with regard to connectors and impedance level. The studio’s main patch panel (with a total of 1152 jack connectors) was located in Room 304. Each input of this panel could in principle be connected with any number of outputs. These mixing and monitoring capabilities met the flexibility requirement with regard to the production of multi-channel electronic music. The main mixing console, named PTR (Programmable Audio Console), was specially designed by the German audio company Lawo for the WDR Electronic

4

renovation of the studio (approximately 1982; manuscript). These remarks were written in the period when Volker Müller was taking care of the electronic studio practically alone. Parallel to the planning, renovation, and relocation of the studio, he was occupied with concert activities and routine work. Allgemeine Ziele / Allgemeine Anforderungen … 161

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Music Studio. It was an analog mixer with digitally programmable controls, 48 channels (double-assigned with monitors and inline inputs with additional outputs for each channel), 36 groups, 42 motorized faders, and 28 internal memories for snapshots (no real-time automation). A special feature of this mixer was that the channels could be assigned to different functions (input, auxiliary, output or volume), which made it possible to simulate multichannel mixings with multiple parallel sources. For example, different sound sources (multi-channel tape machines, synthesizers or microphones) could be distributed and heard simultaneously over 12 loudspeakers without having to be mixed together.

“More Production than Experimentation!”5 The relocation from the WDR central building in downtown Cologne to the building in distant Annostraße disconnected the Electronic Music Studio from other broadcasting production units. Problems were created with regard to the compatibility of production methods and the sharing of technical know-how. Volker Müller recognized the difficulties that would arise when he set technical priorities: “Introduce new technology gradually. Priority should be given in the beginning to fully developed technologies. The product of the work should not be primarily a research product. The universality of composition methods is restricted by this”.6 Indeed, the compatibility with other technical systems of the WDR was taken into consideration in the design of the new technical facilities of the Electronic Studio. However, the development of digital technology forced the studio to make some adjustments that led to intermediate solutions, which were first introduced into the studio and only some time later found a place in other areas of the WDR. The new, unreliable, and mostly “unprofessional” devices of the consumer industry were gradually integrated into the proven, secure infrastructure of radio broadcasting technology. The Fairlight III was the first digital sampling synthesizer introduced into the Electronic Studio in the second half of the 1980s. Such an expensive purchase was still in line with the desire for an open music system that covered as many areas as possible with consistent and accessible operating principles meeting professional technical standards.

5 6

Allgemeine Ziele / Allgemeine Anforderungen … Allgemeine Ziele / Allgemeine Anforderungen … 162

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This soon proved to be unrealizable. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Electronic Studio purchased MIDI samplers and synthesizers, as well as Macintosh computers with the MIDI software of the time, such as MIDI sequencers and editors. In the mid-1990s, the studio bought two Pro Tools III hard disk recording systems, which over time became the major devices for multi-channel audio production. Before Pro Tools, production on a multichannel basis was accomplished with two 24-track Sony PCM 3324-A digital tape machines, which could be used synchronized as 48-track. The Sony tape also served as storage of both materials and finished works. Initially, Pro Tools synched tape machines through SMPTE time code, so that the number of available tracks for recording was first expanded to 96 channels. But soon it became clear that Pro Tools represented not only a quantitative, but a qualitative leap as well, as the integration of sound recording and processing in the multichannel digital environment facilitated and improved the realization of some technical processes of the analog era (e.g., feedback). The studio had limited capabilities with regard to sound synthesis and processing. The Yamaha FM-synthesizer system purchased in the late 1980s, software from IRCAM (e.g., AudioSculpt), effected devices such as Lexicon PCM70 and the Eventide Ultra-Harmonizer 3500. The large analog synthesizer EMS Synth-100 and the EMS Vocoder played an important role by serving different purposes: aside from being used for sound synthesis and processing, they were used for example, as a voltage control source combined with MIDI devices for the purpose of sound spatialization (e.g., in Migration; see below). The Electronic Studio of the WDR was not just a field of experimentation for specific applications of computer music, as there were never typical computer sounds or algorithmic compositions in the strictest sense of the word.

Dialog in Real Time? The shift to digital technology has had a disruptive effect that has lead to the fragmentation and specialization of tasks and to the loss of technical autonomy. Whereas it used to be that an astonishing creative potential was drawn from limited resources such as tape machines, measuring instruments, and manageable analog modules, now the demands of the time can only be met by a novel, networked structure of ideas, people, and apparatuses. The adjustment process concerns not only the technology, but the people and the collective working methods. Here it must be clearly stressed that it was not the technical equipment, but the close collaboration with and the 163

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intensive support of the composers by the studio staff —sound engineer, sound technician, and sound director7—that played a decisive role in the quality of the finished product. This close collaboration was also what made it possible for composers without any experience in electronic music to be invited to the studio and realize their compositions. The collaboration was not by any means one-sided, but a continuous learning and application process motivated by the impetuses and visions of the composers and studio staff. This is perhaps the most important knowledge gained from the history of the Electronic Studio, which by the end of the 1990s, presented itself as an existential question for society as a whole: Would we be able to make the emerging qualitative leap? Would we use dialogizing media channels for new forms of art and communication? Would we make dialog the principle for the production and dissemination of information? The issue of dialog in technologized music is very often only related to its exterior. Thus, attention is diverted from the core of the matter. The live electronics dream of the 1990s and its aura of real time, symbolize the hope as well as the illusion. But its meaning is undisputed. The following section addresses the consequences of the technological development in the production of electronic music of the 1990s and introduces the works realized in the WDR studio which include the compositions of: Jean-Claude Eloy, Denys Bouliane, Luc Ferrari, Michel Waisvisz, Jörg Birkenkötter, Younghi Pagh-Paan, York Höller, Johathan Harvey, John McGuire, Marco Stroppa, Mauricio Sotello, Karlheinz Stockhausen and myself. II The production of a new work in the Electronic Studio of the WDR normally took place in two phases. The first phase traditionally lasted about one month and was dedicated to experimentation, while the second phase entailed realizing the piece, which usually took about two months. The first phase was devoted to becoming familiar with the studio, the preparation of sound materials, and the planning of the work. Out of this experimental phase, the composers’ ideas were allowed to mature, but it was also customary that the experimentation continued into the realization phase. It was not unusual that an additional work period of one to three months would be added in order to complete the production. 7

The sound director has, among other functions, the role of a technical-artistic assistant for the composers. He/she collaborates with both the composers and the technicians in bridging their differences. 164

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Although compositional decisions are within the purview of the composer, the expertise of electronic studio staff had a major influence in the realization of the work. The aesthetic categories that are formative for the work can be traced through the analysis of the use of the apparatuses. Which goals do the composers pursue when they decide to express themselves through electronics? How do they work with the studio equipment? How strong is the influence of the apparatuses on their works?

Programmed Freedom Traditional sounds such as voice or instrumental sounds are perceived as phenomenon, similarly to natural sounds. Instruments are tools used to produce sounds. Electronic sounds, by contrast, are decoded as concepts produced by apparatuses. The apparatuses function with programs that have a symbolic function as simulations of thought processes, procedures, logical connections, and forms of communication. The apparatuses’ programs are basically models that perform automatic tasks and replicate themselves in society. The ritualization of programs shapes communication in society. Such ritual models can be recognized, for example, in television broadcasts as well as concerts of contemporary new music [Neue Musik]. The meaning shifts from things to the concrete world to the simulation processes. The electronic apparatus determines the behavior of the whole of society while playing an ambivalent role; it is positively a means for liberating the human being for work, or negatively, the vehicle for new forms of human oppression. The apparatuses of the analog era that originated from the radio studio and broadcasting technology play a mediating role between quasi-tools and apparatuses. On the one hand, they are concrete devices. The musicians can still understand them as they physically access their functions by pressing buttons, turning knobs, and moving faders; their manipulation is in some way analogous to music making with simple instruments. On the other hand, the analog apparatuses represent a certain degree of alienation. They cause a shift in thinking for the musician: Thus for example in the 50s and 60s measuring and testing devices became important “instruments” of electronic music. The analog synthesizers of the 70s, which were designed specifically for electronic music, brought nothing new in terms of sound generation. They basically facilitated the work and thereby made possible new compositional processes. But in the composition practice, the building blocks of these devices (oscillators, 165

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filters, etc.) were often used for other purposes than those actually intended. (Chagas 1990, 1) At the beginning of the 1990s however, a completely new situation arose. The development of digital technology bridged the gap between the pioneering experiments of the early analog years and the tradition of vocal and instrumental music. MIDI synthesizers and samplers and music hardware and software connected both worlds and showed the ambivalence of music technology quite clearly. The modern digital music apparatuses have a user-friendly surface, equipped with buttons and sensors, and link traditional instrument making with the computer and electronics. The apparatuses began to get more and more efficient, opening access to a complexity of sounds and structures. Yet humans are ever less capable of understanding or mastering the apparatuses. For example, a survey in the 1990s showed that over 90% of Yamaha DX7 synthesizer users were satisfied with just using sound presets. They did not explore the complex and creative possibilities of FM synthesis at all. The sound stereotypes and automatic processes of the music apparatuses literally program the expectations of the user and society in their own interest with the aim of maintaining and improving the apparatuses. The virtual world of the computer is no different; the user’s choice is limited by the categories of apparatuses. Man can only do what the apparatus makes possible for him; his intentions are subject to the apparatus program. Freedom is programmed by it. The Electronic Studio of the WDR (and electronic music as such) abandoned its apparent technological autonomy at the end of the 1980s in the sense that it could engage its own equipment and technical resources. Since then it has become fully dependent on the products of the music industry. Today human beings operate black boxes, on which they are less and less competent: “Anyone who is involved with apparatuses is involved with black boxes where one is unable to see what they are up to” (Flusser 2000, 73). How does one construct a creative space for human intention in a world dominated by the apparatuses of post-industrial society? How can we best guard against automatic programming that lead to the banality of concepts?

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The Transcending Critique In the early 1990s, one expected new musical impulses from the connections between electronics and traditional instruments. In other words: live electronics. Works from the analog era such as Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie I and Mixtur demonstrated exciting possibilities and it was hoped could be further developed with still more variety, precision, and liveness through the use of computers and efficient digital memories—digital samplers and sound processing devices. The utopia of a musical creativity emerging as the actual shaping of the steady flow of information between old and new technology acting as equal and active partners motivated composers. “Let us thus create new connections between the traditional instruments/the human voice and electronics/the computer, between expression and sound, spontaneity and construction!” wrote the composer York Höller (1990, 6). At the invitation of then chief producer for contemporary music [Neue Musik] at the WDR, Wolfgang Becker-Carsten, Höller was nominated as artistic director of the Electronic Studio (1990-99). Along with Becker-Carsten, the two were responsible for the selection of composers invited to work in the studio. Live electronics and the aura of real time symbolize the dream of cybernetic dialog of electronic music in the age of digital technology. Certainly, the question of dialog is not new to music. For instance, polyphony articulates a network of musical layers synchronized through a dialog of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic cues; the practice of chamber music requires that musicians develop a dialog of musical gestures for interpreting the score without a conductor. In electronic music however, a new and extended type of dialog takes place; simultaneously in space and time. The spatial dimension refers to the game in the broadest sense of the term: not only the performance that generates the sound vibrations, but primarily the thinking-game [Denk-Spiel] from which the music emerges. With electronics, music evolves from a “pure game” between humans using bodies and instruments to a game of human players and electronic apparatuses that simulate thinking. The game is the strategy to produce information in opposition to the automatic programming of the apparatuses; it shapes the entire musical process from conception to production to public performance. In the temporal dimension, programmable artificial memories play an ever more important role in both electronic music and music that is electronically reproduced. Artificial memories are for example, magnetic tape machines, which record and reproduce a fixed sequence of sound information, but also digital storage systems such as hard disks, chips, and RAM, which can store 167

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temporal streams of sound events as numbers and make them available for artistic manipulation and analog audio conversion. Real time or no real time, live electronics or audio tape, game or automation—these oppositions bring us back to the heart of the universe of apparatuses and their programs. We are called upon to criticize these concepts and to reveal apparently unintentional functions that will then provide answers to the question of human freedom. Such a critique should attempt “to create a space for human intention in a world dominated by apparatuses” (Flusser 2000, 75). In more in-depth examination of the works, engagement methods and techniques that account for the dialoging process with apparatuses in the electronic music will be uncovered. Depending on which aspects of the process are emphasized in the work, there are three categories to distinguish: Development, Communication, and Interface. The category of development refers to the realization of the piece. How was the studio as meta-apparatus involved? Which strategies were pursued to generate information? How did key concepts emerge? The category of communication focuses on the performance of the work and how the work shapes the playful relationship between human being and apparatus. How does the composer handle the issue of synchronization between acoustic and electronic sounds during the performance? Finally, the category of interface refers to the critical engagement with the work, which includes artistic, cultural, and scientific concepts; it emphasizes the idea of information as an improbable situation.8 The question of freedom has to be objectified in the context of the apparatuses and their programs. The task of criticism is to identify the way human beings attempt to get a hold over the apparatuses and the way these aim to absorb the human intentions within themselves..9 Of course these categories are constructs and not mutually exclusive; a single work can illuminate several categories at once.

MIDI Experiences and Strategies Jean-Claude Eloy and Denys Bouliane engaged for the first time with digital technology when they began in 1990 with the production of their pieces in 8

9

“‘Probable’ and ‘improbable’ are concepts from informatics, in which information can be described as an improbable situation: the more improbable, the more informative” (Flusser 2011, 17). “Freedom is conceivable only as an absurd game with apparatus, as a game with programs” (Flusser 2013, 26). 168

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the WDR Studio for Electronic Music. They worked with MIDI sampler and sequencer software, but pursued different strategies with these apparatuses. Eloy used the new technology for the realization of an electroacoustic music recorded on tape, which is the basic layer for the live performance of a soloist. Bouliane explored the new possibilities of samplers and MIDI controllers and created a work of live electronics with musicians and no tape. For the realization of Erkos (1990-91) for a soloist (voice and instruments) and electroacoustic music, Jean-Claude Eloy worked mainly with the Fairlight III (14 MB RAM; 8 voices), the ATARI computer with C-LAB Notator software, and a 16-track analog tape machine, which was synchronized with the computer through SMPTE. The working process can be divided into three parts: the collection of material, the sound processing, and the production of sound structures. Eloy made many recordings of voice, percussion, and other instruments (mostly Asian ones such as the Satsuma-Biwa), then transformed and combined the sounds in several intermediate stages. The final product consisted of a certain number of stereo takes recorded on DAT, which were mixed live with the voice and the instruments of the soloist. In Eloy’s conception, the electroacoustic music unfolds sound masses around the soloist object. Eloy composed many works of electronic music using analog technology; Erkos was his first experience with the new world of MIDI apparatuses. He explains how he felt the difference: I think that the electronics that I have used in this piece [...] is already something different from that which I produced previously. It is an electronics that rather tries to refine the elements, to merge them into each other. Analog electronics was more an electronics of large blocks, a bit rigid and cumbersome to handle. I would say that the digital tool in this case works like a small chisel in relation to the large chisels that in a way mold large masses of sculpture. That is more or less the difference that I feel between the analog and the digital tool. (Chagas and Lies 1992, 23-24)10 The electronics of Denys Bouliane’s meta-cabaret Une Soirée Vian (1990-91; text by Boris Vian) is based on the use of sampler programs that are played by five of the eight musicians using MIDI devices: two singers (soprano and baritone) play samples stored on four AKAI S-1000 samplers (16 MB RAM 10

Eloy’s statements are excerpts from an interview I recorded with him after the experimental phase. It was a casual conversation in French. 169

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each) using a pitch-to-MIDI converter (Roland VP-70); two instrumentalists play MIDI wind controllers (Yamaha WX-7/EWI), and the pianist plays a MIDI master keyboard. Both voices are additionally processed live with harmonizer and vocoder effects (Roland VP-70). The samples used in the piece were taken from ambient noises as well as vocal and instrumental sounds. The noises contributed to translating Boris Vian’s surreal world into music. For example, the sound of a machine becomes an element of the composition. The samples of voice and instruments were used in combination with acoustic sounds produced by the performers as a kind of doubling, so that they often cannot be distinguished from each other. This intentional effect of sonic illusion is a crucial aspect of Bouliane’s aesthetics (Chagas and Lies 1992, 30-38). The possibilities of MIDI control are systematically and very effectively used in live electronic performance. The musicians shape the sound of samples by sending MIDI commands such as velocity, pitch bend, and after touch, and additionally trigger pre-programmed MIDI sequences that are integrated into the composition. A Macintosh IIcx computer with the MIDI sequencer Opcode Vision was used at the premiere of the piece on March 10, 1991. Bouliane recorded the sampling material with musicians at the WDR studio during his experimental phase; afterwards, he worked at home editing the samples and programming the live electronics. That was atypical for the work in the Electronic Studio; customarily, composers would take great advantage of the assistance of the staff. Furthermore, nearly all composers were known to spend a lot of time working alone in the studio, making plans and preparations for the production. What is most clear is the way in which composers must engage themselves in-depth with the apparatuses. They have to understand how they function in order to generate new information. Jean-Claude Eloy underlined this issue very clearly: So I am sure that there are many possibilities of the MIDI system that I have not yet explored. I think you have to own a couple of these devices yourself in order to really learn how to use them and to explore all their possibilities. You cannot learn that one hundred percent in a few months in a studio. These few months in the studio give you an overview, but you must be able to continue these experiences at home, have unlimited access to the things, and so on, [...] enrich your knowledge of what these devices can and cannot do. (Chagas and Lies 1992, 24)

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The experiences with the production in the Electronic Studio were known to greatly influence the future work of the composer and often set them onto new paths. Eloy once again: Under the impression of this work I have decided to invest something in my own equipment and have begun to set up for myself a small, somewhat more modern studio in order to continue and improve my work. (Chagas and Lies 1992, 24) Furthermore, Eloys made the point about how the new technology significantly changed the function of the Electronic Studio. This comment from 1990 sounds like a warning for the future: I believe that in the future the relationship between the composer and the studios will be healthier, in the sense that a composer no longer comes into the studio with completely empty hands, in order to make a production in four months and having first to literally get to know the studio; rather, he will come into the studio with his pockets full of sounds, having already done the groundwork, so that the large studio is only there for the production itself. Because in the beginning I had first to get to know the devices, the work was cumbersome and was slowed down. (Chagas and Lies 1992, 24)

The Electronic Studio as Cultural Interface Although the Studio for Electronic Music belonged to the WDR radio station, the works of the 1990s were produced exclusively for the concert situation. Even though all the pieces were broadcast, the studio direction showed no interest in developing electronic music for radio or multimedia productions. The Electronic Studio served the needs of the concert business, particularly the public of the German Neue Musik. No attempt was ever made to address a different audience. The Electronic Studio however, promoted musical pluralism through the integration of different aesthetics and technologies. The composers invited to the studio came from different countries and musical backgrounds. Moreover, the studio turned itself into an aesthetic object as the works of some composers reflected on its history and media aura. The following two pieces are examples of the pluralistic orientation and musical diversity of the studio: the work by French composer Luc Ferrari elaborates references to the musique 171

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concrète and experimental radio drama, while the work of Dutch composer Michel Waisvisz, who acquired a reputation as a performer and inventor of experimental musical instruments, emerged from the confrontation with the studio’s symbolic atmosphere. For the work Porte Ouverte sur Ville (1992-93), Luc Ferrari produced an electroacoustic music on tape based on an entirely abstract structure of time slots that represented a multi-layered arrangement of sequences of simultaneous events interfering with each other. It was not a score in the traditional sense, rather a diagram of time events. The time slots were filled with fragments of radio broadcasts, which were selected and recorded using a very unconventional method: The sound technician randomly chose radio stations by manipulating the knob of an analog radio receiver; the sound engineer moved faders on the mixer up and down according to the temporal diagram, and recorded what was being broadcast on the radio. Ferrari compares the turning on and off of the electroacoustic tape to the opening and closing of a window through which the city can be seen (Ferrari 1994, 36). The reality of the city emerges abruptly and symbolizes the presence of the observer. In addition to the radio fragments, Ferrari fi lled the time slots with concrete sounds recorded in Cologne—steps on stairs, a car ride, the ambience of an arcade—and also abstract electronic tones. The musicians (oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, and viola) performed live as a counterpoint to the tape, sometimes in dialog with the electroacoustic sounds, sometimes independently. Ferrari considered the work to have a confusing and pessimistic character (Ferrari 1994, 36). Michel Waisvisz only worked for a month in what he called the “temple of electronic music” (Waisvicz 1994, 13). He was fascinated and surprised by the atmosphere of the Electronic Studio, especially the apparently chaotic but extremely lively and ubiquitous state of the tape archive (located in the main production studio, room 304), which overturned prejudices and replaced them with a positive view: “In a country like Germany I would have expected that such tapes would have been exhibited in a museum for serious art or philosophy or be found in an electronically guarded bunker,—but instead they were just lying around” (Waisvicz 1994, 13). As a composer and performer of improvised live electronic music, Waisvisz expected that working in the WDR Electronic Studio would be a confrontation with the cultural tradition of “serious” electronic music. Instead, he was surprised that the confrontation turned into something “extremely stimulating”. In the short experimental phase, Waisvisz recorded sound material from a synthesizer that he brought to the studio and also from 172

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the large WDR analog synthesizer EMS Synth 100. Due to time constraints, he forewent the production phase. The dialog between the contrasting traditions of electronic music characterizes the aesthetics of his work Faustos Schrei (1994) for “The Hands”, dance, and voice. The MIDI controller “The Hands” is a digital instrument developed in the STEIM Amsterdam and operated by the composer himself in the performance. Different sounds and programmed sequences can thus be controlled live. Waisvisz describes his work as follows: Faustos Schrei harks back to the night hours during which I listened to rituals in this tradition-laden studio. Yet Faustos Schrei did not originate either in a studio or at the desk of the composer, but in the reality of several concert halls where I have used the sounds created in Cologne. (Waisvicz 1994, 13)

Electronic-Instrumental Sound World The electronic music of the 1990s fostered a close relationship with instrumental music. It was the starting point for approaching electronics and developing an aesthetic that aimed to create electronic sounds to interact with traditional instruments. This development was undoubtedly facilitated by digital technology, which made the non-linear representation of sound as a reproducible phenomenon a matter of course. The tape machine stands as a prototype for the possibility to reproduce sound electronically. One can manipulate the course of the recorded sound, even radically process it, but as a matter of fact the operating mode of electromagnetic tape systems symbolizes linear thinking. Digital systems on the other hand, break down the sound into an atomic dot-like structure. The sound disintegrates into a mosaic of numbers and the bond with temporal sound tissue dissolves. The fragmented granular structure of the sound, which can be manipulated by computers and artificial intelligences, replaces linear thinking and promotes the consciousness of the microstructure of the sound. Digital systems such as samplers and hard disks stand as prototypes for the possibility of projecting sound artificially, i.e., reinventing it. Sound information is generated with apparatuses through analysis and synthesis of prior information. In this process, instrumental and electronic sounds interact mutually and continually. Vocal and instrumental sounds 173

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can serve as a model for creating new electronic sounds; synthetic sounds may offer ideas for composing vocal and instrumental music. The works Spiel/Abbruch (1991-94) for ensemble and tape by Jörg Birkenkötter and Tsi-Shin-Kut (1993-94) for percussion quartet and tape by Younghi Pagh-Paan develop an interplay of sound events that led to the blending of the perception of instruments and electronics. The electronic sounds of both pieces were created on the basis of samples of instrumental sounds: percussion, piano, and accordion in Birkenkötter’s piece; percussion and contrabass flute in Pagh-Paan’s piece. The mutual influence between acoustic and electronic sounds can occur at many stages. For example, some samples of instruments, played with enhanced or unusual techniques, function already as compact models for electronic composition. On the other side, the electronic composition generates unpredictable ideas that flow into the composition for instruments, such as instrumental mimesis of electronic sounds. The electronic processing of instrumental sound contributes to shaping “this apparent contradiction between the invented and the available” that characterizes Birkenkötter’s music, according to Jahn (1997). In the case of Pagh-Paan’s music, a similar dialectics between new invention and old reference underlies the composition for percussion inspired by ritual music of rural Korea. For both Birkenkötter and Pagh-Paan, the pieces realized in the WDR studio were their first compositions with electronic sounds. Their approach to electronics shows the fascination with the possibilities of the apparatuses, but also their criticism of the programmatic reality of the apparatuses: Through my work I wish to encourage the critical rethinking of our “throw-away society”. I oppose the trend of throwing everything away after a superficial use, in order to buy even more perfect and comfortable devices; important to me is the equal treatment of simple, ancient percussion instruments along with the sound products of exactly those electronic devices that no longer belong to the newest models. (PaghPann 1994, 6) In Birkenkötter’s music, extremely soft almost unnoticeable sounds reflect the critical intention to push experience towards the limits of sound perception, in order to illuminate the alienation process. Extreme dynamics are meant to critically reveal the seductive glamour of the surface of apparatuses:

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If the mentioned dynamics of the electronic material itself sometimes threatens to come dangerously close to clichéd “sound indulgence”, as antithesis—clearly perceptible on the auditory surface at least at one point in the piece—the technical aspect of the tape as a reproduction device is thematized. (Birkenkötter 1994, 27) III The WDR Studio for Electronic Music provided a media platform for the realization of electronic and vocal and/or instrumental compositions. The aesthetic approaches and categories that accompanied the entire musical development of the second half of the 20th century can be recognized in the studio’s productions. The works demonstrate the broad, pluralistic spectrum of contemporary music [Neue Musik] with all its trends, objectives and utopias; both successful and failed attempts. In the 1990s, the old analog and new digital apparatuses cohabited and complemented each other and the experience of the analog era being further worked out, continued to prove pivotal in the production. In its original concept the Electronic Studio is to be understood as a complex apparatus, or meta-apparatus, consisting of people and technical facilities. The production of works took place within a process of information exchange between the composer and the studio’s technical and artistic staff. The dialog reflected in the works flowed back as recursive feedback into the studio apparatus. The process of change in the media accelerated in the second half of the 1990s and imposed the restructuring of the WDR, which affected the Studio for Electronic Music dramatically. The WDR direction questioned the continuance of the studio, although not officially, and took initiative to relocate it. This development can be interpreted as a cultural crisis that expressed the loss of faith in the value of the old structures. The evolution of the crisis in the context of electronic music illuminates the problems art faces in the digital society.11

Live Electronics I: Sound Shaping and Performance Shaping The pieces Pensées (1994) by York Höller and One Evening... (1993-94) by Jonathan Harvey demonstrate different approaches to live electronics in the 1990s. Both composers had previously composed several electronic pieces 11

See “The Paradoxes of Electronic Music” below. 175

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on tape also in combination with acoustic, vocal, and instrumental music. Both attached great importance to the flexibility of the electronics in the performance, particularly with voices and or instruments, and in this regard set relatively high expectations in the new media. Höller’s and Harvey’s own experiences with digital technology, which can be ascribed to their work at the IRCAM Paris, likewise played a large role in the choice of means. The live electronics of Höller’s Pensées—Requiem for piano, orchestra and live electronics is based on the use of a MIDI piano (Yamaha Disklavier Grand Piano), which controls synthetic sounds (Yamaha FM synthesizer SY77 and later SY99). The MIDI piano takes over the function of expanding “the sound spectrum of the orchestral apparatus, long since more or less standardized, in a characteristic manner” (Höller 1993, 15). In the realization of the piece, Höller deliberately took limited sound material as a starting point. He produced a repertoire of 25 synthetic sounds “whose characteristics have a certain affinity to piano sound” (Höller 1993, 16). These finely nuanced sounds are played after each other in the course of the piece and mixed with the amplified sound of the piano; both sounds were projected through loudspeakers into the sound space. The electronic sounds formed a unity with the piano, not only through a similar spectral structure, but through their specific dependence on the dynamic. The MIDI velocity controls both the volume and the sound-specific parameters of the FM synthesis such as filters, envelopes, and FM operators. The climax of the piece in terms of live electronics is the long cadence. Here the pianist plays with a computer triggering and interactively reacting to pre-programmed events—single sounds and sound sequences. This is a typical score-follower application programmed with Max software. As Höller claims: “The pianist reacts to impulses coming from the computer. In summary: it creates a kind of dialog between man and machine” (Höller 1993, 17). The cadence renounces “any external virtuosity” and instead put the construction of a subtle sound world in the foreground. It links the pianistic tradition and its many complex nuances, with sonic expansion through electronics so that sound shaping and performance shaping merge into a unified aesthetic principle. After the cadence in the last part of Pensées, Höller uses together with orchestra and piano, a pre-produced 4-channel tape on which new sound material appears, including the transformation of the recording of sounds played inside the piano. This poses the question of why the concept of live electronics was not pursued. An explanation can be found in Höller’s then utopias and thoughts on the limits of the electronics of the 1990s: 176

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My ideal would be that, instead of a 4-channel tape running relentlessly, we would have the entire sound material of each track in the form of individual sounds on four samplers or four computers, and that the sounds could be brought directly into the performance by the keyboard with great flexibility; but we are quite a long way from that. (Höller 1993, 84) Live electronics is also a crucial issue in Jonathan Harvey’s piece One Evening... (1994), for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and chamber ensemble (flute/bass, flute/piccolo, oboe/English horn, French horn, percussion, harp, violoncello, two MIDI keyboarders). Harvey’s concept of live electronics combines three parallel strategies of the playback of pre-produced material, sample instruments controlled by MIDI keyboard, and the live processing of instruments. Harvey developed his concept in close collaboration with the studio staff, drawing on past experiences of the analog era of the studio. One basic idea is the transformation of duration into timbre through the acceleration of rhythmic cells, which created a continuous transition between musical parameters. Harvey drew inspiration from Stockhausen’s notion of composition in the time continuum as introduced in the seminal text “…How Time Passes…” (cf. Stockhausen 1959; 1963b).12 The technical realization of this principle with analog technology (impulse generators and tape machines) was complex and time consuming. Many intermediate stages were required to accomplish the transformation of materials between different time scales. Harvey envisioned a digital version that would perhaps facilitate the process. Sound engineer Volker Müller found a way to realize this idea by exploring a unique feature of the Fairlight III, namely, the extreme variation in the sampling rate (between 5 and 100 kHz), which made it possible to transpose samples over several octaves. By applying this feature to samples of rhythms, it was possible to progressively accelerate the rhythm until it was perceived as a continuous sound with a particular timbre that corresponds to the rhythm, or slow down the timbre until the rhythm emerged. Another feature of the Fairlight III explored in this context was its capability to draw waveforms by hand, making it possible to draw impulses and sequences of impulses that could be submitted to the same process of time scaling.13 12

13

Harvey received significant influence from Stockhausen. As a young man he wrote a book on Stockhausen: Jonathan Harvey, The Music of Stockhausen (London: Faber & Faber, 1975). Harvey’s model of “unified time structuring” was of course the electronic music of Stockhausen’s Kontakte; One Evening... has a sound structure very similar to the 177

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Another basis of One Evening… was the transformation of instrumental samples by artificially extending the resonance through spectral and harmonic additions. For example, the resonance of the plucked strings of a harp were subtly modulated and recorded as a pre-produced event. Additionally, the sound of some of the instruments was processed live with two harmonizers (Eventide 3500), generating harmonic fields that were fully integrated into the acoustic sound world of the ensemble. Harvey conceived the music as the representation of different types of consciousness inspired by Buddhism and Eastern philosophy. The acceleration of rhythmic cells that drove the transformation from rhythm to timbre is thought of as a musical symbol of continuity between physical and spiritual existence. Slowing down from the shimmery timbre to the rhythmic domain represented the incarnation of the spirit as body. Electronic, vocal, and instrumental sounds expand and complement each other in the piece to symbolically achieve the state of oneness. One Evening… is an example of how acoustic chamber music and live electronics can create a unifying synthesis.

Sound Sequences: Serialism and Minimalism The American composer John McGuire characterizes his music as an attempt to develop a synthesis between American minimalism and European serialism. His constructivist approach is based on musical fundamentals, especially on functional tonality and temporal periodicity. McGuire’s electronic music distances itself from instrumental models and is based on personal algorithmic concepts that cannot be realized using acoustic instruments. McGuire produced three electronic music works in the WDR studio. Along with the continuity of the compositional approach, these pieces reveal how his ideas evolved by exploring new technological possibilities with ever more precision. Pulse Music III (1978) was realized with the analog synthesizer EMS Synth 100 and intensively used its built-in sequencer; Vanishing Points (1988) utilized the synthesizer Yamaha TX816 as sound generators and the hardware

seminal passage at minute 17 in Kontakte. First we hear a continuous timbre consisting of accelerated rhythms, which impressively slow down until we hear the original. Stockhausen describes this passage of Kontakte in his lecture “Four criteria of electronic music” (Stockhausen 1978a, 1989a). 178

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MIDI sequencer Yamaha QX1; A Cappella (1992-97) utilized the software MIDI sequencer Cubase (Atari 1040ST) playing samples on Fairlight III. The sequencer became the most important tool for the realization of McGuire’s electronic music. Some elements of his aesthetics such as the periodic motive, the microscopic quantization of the rhythm, and the varying repetition, pointed to a “sequential way of thinking”. Nevertheless, McGuire denies a significant influence of the sequencer in his composition: By the time I began the sketching and production of ‘A Capella’, my compositional ideas were influencing the way I used the sequencer, rather than the other way around. Put more simply, the sequencer had almost no influence on my compositional ideas at the time.14 In regard to the material, A Cappella for female singer and tape is the most restrained piece produced in the 1990s in the WDR studio. McGuire used samples from only three sung vowels (e, a, and u in English pronunciation).15 for artificially extending the vocal register while keeping the timbre of the voice unaltered. With this restricted material, McGuire created a complex polyphony of musical layers of two types: color sequences and pitch sequences. The color sequences constructed on the basis of the three vowel sounds produced faster rhythmic variations on the phonemes. The pitch sequences were constructed on the basis of paired notes in intervals of fifths (e.g., C/G) and their symmetrical variations (e.g., B, D, F, A). The central pair of notes moved around the cycle of fifths until all notes of the cycle occurred by the end of the piece. The electronic music forms two virtual choirs, which in the performance were mixed with the live voice of the female singer.

Sound Space I: 12-Channel Electronic Composition Few works in the 1990s dealt with spatial composition and made use of the unique possibilities of the Electronic Studio for multichannel production. These include the pieces Oktophonie by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zwielicht by Marco Stroppa, and my pieces Migration and Projektion. 14 15

Personal letter from John McGuire to Paulo C. Chagas from April 21, 2000. The soprano Beth Griffith recorded the sound material of A Cappella and premiered the piece, which is dedicated to her. The samples of her voice melt completely with the live performance so that it creates an impressive effect of aural illusion. 179

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Migration (1995-96) was the first 12-channel electronic music produced in the WDR studio as well as the first based on Pro Tools and hard disk recording. It was realized for the most part by myself and also with my own equipment. The Pro Tools III Nubus system was limited to 32 tracks and had to be coupled with two Sony 24-track digital tape machines in order to expand the number of available tracks necessary for such a large multichannel production. Pro Tools and Sony were synchronized through SMPTE time code and their outputs were connected to the analog Lawo mixing console. The 12-channel layers were produced on Pro Tools and the tape machine was used for storing intermediate mixes (up to 48 tracks mixed down to 12 tracks) and for the final mix. Spectral and temporal transformation of the sound material (samples from speech and piano for the most part) formed the basis of this composition. The speech material comes from the short story “The Library of Babel” by the Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges, which was recorded in four languages (German, English, Spanish, and French), each one with a male and a female speaker (eight versions total). The story describes the universe in the form of an infinite library containing all possible books with all possible combinations letters. The library metaphor approaches several philosophical concepts that influenced the composition such as the opposition between creative chaos and totalitarian order and the combinatory and circular nature of reality. Furthermore, the composition reflects on the idea of migration as a process of individual agency, emerging from my own status as immigrant, and reconstruction of physical, social, and cultural environment. Migration stands as symbol for the diversity and mutation of the world. The electronic music of Migration embodies a multi-layered structure of sound migrations at the level of both individual sound objects and sound structures. Speech and piano sounds are processed through different kinds of spectral techniques based on FFT methods of analysis and synthesis such as temporal compression/expansion, filtering, and cross-synthesis. The processes of spectral transformation generate sound families, hybrid sounds, sound mutations, and metamorphoses, which can become radically different from their primary sources. Working mainly with the IRCAM software AudioSculpt, I was able to take advantage of its script function for changing the parameters of algorithms over the time. I created script files with the software “Patchwork”, using mathematical functions for generating largescale temporal processes such as band-pass filters moving across 12-channel sound files. Migration is to be performed for an audience surrounded by a circle of 12 loudspeakers, arranged like the numerals of a virtual analog clock. This 180

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choice was influenced by the architecture of the main production studio with its suspended ring construction of 12 loudspeakers. The concept of circular sound space develops a 12-channel polyphony by correlating spectral transformation to sound spatialization on the basis of two general principles:16 1. Decomposition in static sound spaces: The sound spectrum is separated into a number of components and distributed in the space; the spectral elements can be dispersed as source point locations (single speakers), form fields, patterns, or geometric figures in various sizes and dimensions (e.g. with 3, 4, 6 and 12 channels). 2. Movement in dynamic sound spaces: The sound moves between speakers mostly as rotations through 6 or 12 speakers, but also with other kinds of patterns; the displacements create gestural fluxes and shape geometric figures such as twelve-sided polygons, hexagons, squares, or triangles. Special attention was given to sound rotations in Migration, a method of sound space composition rooted in the history of the WDR Electronic Studio. Stockhausen was the first composer to systematically explore rotations as a feature of electronic music in Kontakte (1959-60). The studio built a special device called the Rotationstisch, which was a rotating table, for generating quadraphonic rotations: a speaker was mounted on the center of a round table that was able to rotate and four microphones were placed around the table; a mono signal was sent to the speakers and recorded in four channels as the table rotated. The speed of the Rotationstisch could be manually changed (and was later driven by an electrical motor) so that it was possible to produce sound rotations that accelerated or slowed down.17 In this system, whether the speed of the rotation is regular, increases, or decreases, the characteristic of the rotation is arbitrarily determined by the mechanism that drives it. By contrast, Migration develops rotations that are not arbitrary, but derived from the characteristics of the sound material itself. The primary sound material for shaping the rotations is speech. The audio signal of a speech (phrase or long passage) was sent to the analog synthesizer (EMS Synth 100); the synthesizer tracked the dynamic envelope of speech and converted it into voltage control; the voltage control signal is converted into a MIDI signal and processed with Max software; it becomes the control signal for driving the sound rotation system. 16

17

For a discussion of the concept of circular sound space composition and further details on Migration see my article “Composition in Circular Sound Space: Migration 12-channel Electronic Music” (Chagas 2008b). Cf. Chagas 2008b. 181

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The Max patch simulates the attenuation curve of the stereo channels of the pan-pot of an analog mixer, like the ones used in the 1960s in the WDR radio studios. The Max patch generates MIDI data for controlling the level of the stereo outputs of six effect devices (Lexicon PCM70). For example, louder speech causes faster rotations, soft speech slower rotations; as human speech is not a monotone sound but features a constant variation in loudness, the speed of the rotation constantly varies. The attenuation curve in Max can be freely defined, even graphically drawn by hand, so that it is possible not only to control the speed of the rotations but the characteristics of the sound. In this way it is also possible to radically transform the rotating sound. For example, instead of continuous curves, one can draw just a couple of disconnected dots to create a pointillist sound texture similar to granular synthesis. With this in mind, the following are two important issues in electronic music: 1. The principle of organic shaping as a fundamental of electronic sound composition. The organic relation between sound and movement is obtained by coupling the structural characteristics of speech to the speed of the rotations; the control techniques (voltage control and MIDI control) are employed to accomplish this organic correlation. 2. The principle of the subversive use of apparatuses. The spatialization system combines analog and digital apparatuses (EMS Synth 100, Lexicon PCM70, Max software) in unusual and unpredictable ways and the apparatuses are used as toys in a game that reverses its automated functions.

Sound Space II: Psychoacoustic Stereo Simulation Besides the original 12-channel electronic music, Migration was mixed in the versions of 8-channel, 5.1-surround, and stereo. The stereo mix simulates a 12-channel virtual sound space with two speakers. It was produced with the Pro Tools plug-in “Proton”.18 The psychoacoustic algorithm of the plug-in takes as reference a virtual listener placed in the center of the circle and calculates the aural perception for each of the 12 speakers. The spectral characteristics of the music change according to the parameters of each speaker, e.g., position, distance, and height. Consequently, the psychoacoustic translation accurately simulates the spatial location and movement. The stereo mix of Migration 18

The Crystal River Engineering “Proton” plug-in for Pro Tools takes a mono signal and calculates the psychoacoustic effect in relation to a virtual listener that can be placed anywhere in a 3D room. The plug-in was applied to the 12 tracks, each one set to a listener placed in a different position in the circular sound space. Proton runs with Pro Tools up to version 3.2; its production has been discontinued. 182

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creates the impression of being in the middle of a virtual circle for the listener; one can listen to sounds coming from the front, rear, and sides, and perceive the rotations with great accuracy. Migration represents an exception with regard to the reduction of multichannel electronic music to stereo mix, which is the standard sound format in radio and internet. Normally, the spatial distribution is done with pan-pots, whereby different channels are assigned to specific positions in the stereo panorama. For example, for the stereo mix of a quadraphonic piece one places two channels (the front or the rear) on the extremities of the stereo panorama and the other two in intermediate positions. This method has an enormous disadvantage as it practically eliminates the spatial depth of quadraphony. For certain pieces, this can be a real disaster. The WDR Electronic Studio focused on the performance of electronic music in the physical space and thus did not develop any know-how for converting multichannel electronic music into media specific formats. This limitation ultimately prevented the reception of the pieces by a broader audience.

Live Electronics II: MIDI Piano and Techno The 12-channel electronic music of Migration was subsequently integrated into Migration for MIDI piano, ensemble (15 players) and live electronics (199597). The soloist plays a Yamaha Disklavier Grand Piano that interacts with a computer using Max software and sending and receiving MIDI data. A series of Max patches were programmed that successively activate in the course of the performance. The patch algorithms calculate chords and sequences of notes according to a system of intervals inspired by Pousseur’s “harmonic networks”.19 The computer generates notes that aggregate sonic material to MIDI piano and thus expands its harmonic and melodic possibilities. The piano sound is amplified and also slightly transformed with an effects processor (Eventide 3500 Ultra-Harmonizer). After the introductory electronic music, the MIDI piano activates the first Max patch: the pianist plays a single note and the computer adds successive intervals of minor ninths above and below this note to build chords spreading over the entire register of the piano—from the very low bottom to the highest note. This same type of algorithm is used later to build very dense chords consisting of a great number of intervals of fifths and thirds. Other 19

Henry Pousseur proposed the theory of “harmonic networks” in the 1960s. I have applied it in several of my compositions (cf. Pousseur 1968). 183

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algorithms include pre-programmed sequences with rhythmic structures and stochastic processes generating rapid sequences of notes sweeping all over the piano register. Through the interaction with the computer, the MIDI piano is transformed into a sort of mechanical-digital sound machine. A special moment of the piece is the cadence, in which the pianist has the freedom to improvise his/her own version by interacting with the different Max patches and additionally using a MIDI controller (JL Cooper Fadermaster Pro) for switching between patches and changing its parameters (e.g., the speed of MIDI sequences). The composition develops great virtuosity both for the piano soloist and for the instrumental ensemble, and a dense complexity resulting from the multiple relations between electronic music, instrumental ensemble, and MIDI piano in live interaction with the computer. Conceptually, the MIDI piano represents the virtual center of an infinite universe, inspired by Borges’ story “The Library of Babel”, which unfolds a cyclical metamorphosis between chaos and order. My techno opera RAW (1999), commissioned by the Opera in Bonn, was originally an independent work that became associated with the WDR Electronic Studio through the initiative of the WDR jazz producer Ulrich Kurt. The studio provided technical support for the performance and the WDR produced a live recording of the opera for radio broadcast.20 RAW is conceived for five soloists (two sopranos, mezzo soprano, tenor and bass), a dancer, and an ensemble of six musicians (three keyboardists and three percussionists). Each keyboardist plays a MIDI master keyboard that controls three different synthesizers and a sampler. Each percussionist plays, besides acoustic percussion instruments, a MIDI drum pad controlling a synthesizer. The electronic music is generated entirely live without any recorded or pre-produced material and produces a differentiated sound texture of evolving timbres with a clearly orchestral character. Rhythm is a driving force of the composition, which elaborates elements of Afro-Brazilian ritual and techno music. RAW thematically explores the immense fascination with war and violence while critically reflecting on the illusion and disappointment caused by it. The musical aesthetics, combining opera bel canto with electronic music, embodies these ambiguous feelings. The electronic music ritualizes the insane, ambivalent attraction of war, which evokes at the same time fascination and rejection. In this way, RAW embodies the ambivalence of war while revealing 20

RAW was performed in the theater of Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany (Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland). 184

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the paradox of techno music: on the one hand, techno demonstrates musical inventiveness in the way it creatively uses electronic music apparatuses; on the other hand, it programs human consciousness for repetition and automatic behavior through recurrent sound patterns, reinforcing the idea of automation of the apparatuses.

Sound Space III: Projektion21 The concept of circular sound space is further developed in my work Projektion (1999-2000), which exists in two versions: Projektion 12-channel electronic music and Projektion 12-channel sound installation. Projektion intentionally relates to some ideas and visions of the analog era of the studio in the 1950s and 60s, which I tried to implement more exactly and precisely with digital technology. It includes the notion of parametric music inspired by serial thinking, composition in the time/space continuum (Stockhausen), and the construction of multichannel sound space. The electronic music explores processes of feedback for transforming a single sound sample that rhythmically rotates in a circular sound space. The work was born by accident in 1995 during the experimental phase of the production of Migration. Volker Müller and I were working on the development of the analog-digital 12-channel spatialization system when the computer crashed while loading a sample of a female speech. It kept repeating a fragment of the sample as an endless loop. The length of the loop is approximately 100 milliseconds, repeated ten times per second. Instead of restarting the computer, I sent the audio output playing the loop to the 12-channel spatialization system and then something surprising happened: the difference between the length of the loop and the envelope that controls the spatialization produced disturbances, which are perceived as rhythmic variations. I immediately recorded the result as a 12-channel Pro Tools session. Indeed, the 12 VCA (voltage controlled amplifiers) of the spatialization system function as time windows that open and close according to the envelope curve, letting the sound pass. The time frame of the window is approximately 72 milliseconds. As the duration of the rotating loop is 100 milliseconds, a desynchronization occurs between the loop and the window 21

Projektion was the last production of the Electronic Studio; it was completed shortly before the studio was dismantled and relocated into the storage facility in Ossendorf in 2001. The work was not commissioned by the WDR and came into being thanks to the personal engagement of Volker Müller. 185

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envelope (at the ratio 10 to 7) so that each window reveals a different part of the loop. The effect impacts sound perception both in terms of time and space. On the one hand, the length of the time window of the spatialization system—perceived as a steady, rotating rhythm—produces temporal and spatial stability. On the other hand, the difference between the time window and the sound loop—perceived as accents and displacements—produces temporal and spatial instability. The combination of stability and instability creates a temporal and spatial polyphony shaped by the rotations. Figure 1 shows a diagram of the 12-channel spatialization system. It displays on the top the loop generated by the computer crash, just below that the time windows (envelopes) in the 12 channels, to the right the connection of the 12 outputs to the amplifiers and the speakers, and on the bottom the circle with the 12 loudspeakers.

Figure 1: 12-channel spatialization system of Projektion

In 1999, I returned to the Pro Tools session with the raw material and decided to make a piece out of it. The 12-track original structure generated by the spatialization system was taken as basic material of the work. It was subjected to systematic transformation processes that led to five other additional 12-track structures. Each transformation applies a different processing method such as filter, delay, or feedback, while using many different algorithms. For example, for the filter transformation, I processed the raw material with band pass 186

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filters, whose center frequencies constantly move, modulated by both periodic sine waves and non-periodic chaotic algorithms. The original structure and its five transformations were combined to generate six different mixings of piece. Projektion 12-channel electronic music is the mixing of the six structures consisting of 72 tracks in Pro Tools. Projektion 12-channel sound installation is the sequential arrangement of the six mixings building an infinite loop. The piece premiered at the Contemporary Music Festival in Witten [Wittener Tage für Neue Musik] in May 2001. The stereo version of Projektion 12-channel electronic music was made by applying the Pro Tools plug-in “Proton” in the same manner as for Migration.

Intermediate Spaces The electronic material from Marco Stroppa’s Zwielicht (1994-99) for contrabass, two percussionists, and 13-channel electronic music developed from instrumental sounds that partly came from the composer’s collection and were partly recorded in the studio. The microscopic characteristics of the sound material influence the composition of the electronic music and are reflected in the macroscopic structure of the piece. The varied, colorful integration of instrumental and electronic sounds that characterizes the work is like a musical reinforcement of that source raw material that the composer has called “twilight sounds”: These are very unusual phenomenon, which can rarely be heard in concert, because they are too quiet or unpredictable to be able to reproduce them. For example, a special sound emerges that depends on the nature and the speed of the gesture, if one gently rubs several times with a knitting needle along the edge of a crotale. If a phrase of the contrabass is played with an extremely light, quick bow, an ardent, very lovely, pan flute-like, fleeting sound comes out of it. (Stroppa 1999) In his experimental phase, Stroppa made a large number of recordings of percussion instruments with special microphones placed close to the instruments or contact microphones, placed directly on their resonance bodies. These recordings act as musical gestures of his compositional intention, namely, to bring into the foreground and illuminate the transitions of complex acoustic processes. The two methods that can be discerned are (1) the dynamic amplification of the transitional form and (2) the temporal expansion of the transition time. 187

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For the sound transformation and form shaping, Stroppa used IRCAM software (especially “AudioSculpt”), his own software, as well as the program “Zeitplan” by Marcel Schmidt (Musikhochschule in Cologne).22 Zwielicht was produced with Pro Tools III and Pro Tools was also used for playback of the electronic music at the premiere (April 10, 1999, WDR concert hall). Pro Tools was used here not as a replacement for the tape machine, but as an independent medium. Stroppa changed the music even during the rehearsals, adjusted it to the instruments and acoustics, and opted for a version that he considered as merely one possibility of the piece. The interplay of the sound in different areas of the concert hall determines the 13-channel spatial concept of the piece: Five speakers on stage, two on the border between the stage and the audience, and another five in the audience. The historical experience of the studio and its technical possibilities regarding multichannel spatial composition fascinated him and provided the impetus for his expanded sound space concept. He stressed the “unique achievement of the studio” for spatial composition and viewed Zwielicht as a tribute to the famous history of the studio in this domain: Actually, space is not treated as an independent parameter, separated from the sounds that originate in it. On the contrary, each sound family was recorded with a certain “spatial aura”, which uniquely links a collection of spatial characteristics with it. Not only are sounds projected into the space, but the “space” itself enriches each sound. (Stroppa 1999)

Listening and Modeling The result of the work of Mauricio Sotelo in the Electronic Studio between 1997 and 1999 was the electronic music of his chamber music work Angel de la Tierra as well as his chamber opera De Amore—Una Maschera die Cenere and the production of the solo pieces De Amore for violoncello and Argo for saxophone. Sotelo eventually used the same material for composing these different pieces. In addition, he processed recordings of different instrumental works of his own (as well as from Luigi Nono and Gustav Mahler) for the realization of his electronic works.

22

Marcel Schmidt is still today (2013) the main technician of the Electronic Music Studio of the Cologne Academy of Music (Musikhochschule). He programmed the software “Zeitplan” for the Atari 1040ST computer; I used it extensively in Migration. 188

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Sotelo’s own instrumental music and the engagement with its medial reproduction are central to his approach. That is above all, thanks to the digital medium of hard disk recording with graphic software support. Pro Tools simplifies the access to the deep structure of the material, since it offers an operational surface with tools for manipulating sound and musical concepts, which are accessible enough for a composer to learn and make use of. Sotelo used Pro Tools as a tool for sculpting raw materials. He produced sound masses from mixtures of existing recordings, forms and deforms the material through intuitive and targeted intervention using a montage of elements, manipulations of loudness, and transformation of the timbre through effects (Pro Tools plug-ins). The individual changes may be very subtle. Nevertheless, he was less concerned with detail than with the perception of the whole. Sotelo describes these methods as a mediation between observing and listening whose roots can be traced back to the Renaissance, through the interweaving of artistic, scientific and philosophical models. The oral tradition of the “Canto Jondo”, an expression of the flamenco vocal style, became the center of his research. Recordings of female flamenco singers were processed as sound material and act additionally as a source for transformation processes. In Sotelos’ approach, we recognize how information is synthesized through analysis of prior information. For example, the spectrum of flamenco songs were analyzed through the FFT method to extract information (pitch, amplitude, etc.) for creating filter programs in the form of scripts (with Patchwork and AudioSculpt), which were applied to process other sound materials (e.g., sound masses). The new experiences with electronic tools gave him deeper insight into the composition of pure instrumental music. During his production time in the Electronic Studio, Sotelo worked on two solo pieces for violoncello and saxophone. Both scores require a tremendous degree of virtuosity from the interpreter, including special extended techniques, which did not come out in the recording. Sotelo processed the recordings in Pro Tools, correcting “mistakes” with meticulous precision and taking advantage of Pro Tools’ editing capabilities, until the result corresponded with what he had envisioned. This is an example of how the digital tools open up new possibilities for creative interactions between composers and performers. Today composers have other possibilities of making their own ideas accessible to performers and also of training performers through a new type of imitative learning. This also shows how instrumental and electronic sounds are inextricably interwoven so that it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between electronic music produced with samples of instruments (or with synthetic sounds that simulate instruments) and instrumental music that is 189

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recorded and electronically processed. Does it make sense at all today to draw boundaries between these different types of electronics?

Oktophonie and Intuitive Vibrations Karlheinz Stockhausen worked in the Electronic Studio from 1990 to 1998 in regular intervals of two years. This special status can be explained by his artistic and historic contribution to the WDR studio, and the biannual rhythm was proposed by the artistic director of the studio, York Höller. The electronic works produced by Stockhausen for multichannel tape mostly fulfill a double function: They are electronic music for independent performances and at the same time playback tape for staged or quasi concertante performances of his opera cycle Licht. Stockhausen was one of the first composers that treated space as a parameter of electronic music composition. By the 1950s he had set new standards for multichannel spatial composition with major works that contributed to the relevance of the WDR studio in the field of sound space composition. He also contributed to the awareness that the composition of electronic music doesn’t emerge from abstract models, but evolves as a practical experience during the production process. The electronic studio was for him a model of a performance situation; the listening experience has to be constantly actualized in order to adapt the compositional ideas to the production conditions in studio including technique and space. As each piece develops a different spatial concept, the studio configuration should be adaptable to the needs of individual composers. When the Electronic Studio was relocated in the 1980s, the design of the production facility put an emphasis on the ability to make the space flexible for different kinds of production, including multichannel mixing and listening, and free configuration of speakers. In the electronic work Oktophonie (1990-92), Stockhausen expands the quadraphonic geometry to the three-dimensional space. The concept of octophonic sound space simulates a virtual sound cube by placing a total of eight equidistant speakers, four on the floor and four suspended. The piece featured different kinds of rotations and several types of sonic movements between the four vertices and the six faces of the cube, such as spiral and diagonal displacements. The spatialization system of Oktophonie (designed by Volker Müller and myself) was implemented with the combination of a MIDI sequencer (C-Lab, Atari), a MIDI controlled digital mixer (Yamaha DMP7), and a MIDI-fader (JL Cooper). The MIDI tools translated the main concepts of the Rotationstisch for the digital world. Feeding four input 190

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channels of the digital mixer with a monophonic signal and attenuating it successively through the four outputs generated the quadraphonic rotation. The MIDI sequencer was used to store the MIDI controller data assigned to the faders that controlled the attenuation of the four output signals. By manipulating the MIDI fader manually, the tempo of the sequencer could be changed and therefore the speed of the rotation. Two four-track spatialization systems, each one requiring a specific MIDI sequencer, a digital mixer, and a MIDI fader, could be used simultaneously.23 The four-track rotations generated by this digital system constituted the raw material of Oktophonie. The three-dimensional spatialization concept required that the rotations move between the six faces of the cube. Technically, this involves multichannel mixing procedures. For example, to make a rotation move between two faces, it was necessary to create two groups of four channels fed with the same four-track signals. A single fader controlled the amplitude of each group. By opening or closing these faders, one could determine where the rotation would sound. Fading in one source while fading out another created the impression that the axis rotation moved from one face to another. Certain complex displacement of the rotations required several mixing steps. Stockhausen insisted on manipulating the faders of the main Lawo mixing board himself. This gestural approach to electronic music production was an essential aspect of his aesthetics; the composer plays with the machinery of the studio in dialogue with the technicians and assistants (Chagas 2002; 2006b). Nevertheless, his understanding of the new digital tools was bound by his experience with the apparatuses of the earlier analog electronics: tape recorders, sound generators, filters, mixers, etc. He wanted all the rotations to be manually controlled and expected the faders to behave like in an analog mixer. He used to meticulously notate the position of the faders on the mixer strip and was surprised if the amplitude didn’t always match the same position. In fact, he struggled with the fact that digital faders in opposition to the analog ones, were not fixed, but could be assigned to different ranges and channels. This kind of misunderstanding became a source of frustration during his productions in the 90s.24 23 24

For a description of the sound spatialization system of Oktophonie Chagas (2008b). In 1998, Stockhausen abandoned the production of his electronic music piece Michaelion and left the studio. This incident is documented in his report WDR – Studio für Elektronische Musik ‘ kaputt’ (Stockhausen 1998) and in my response to Stockhausen’s report Ein Regler ist nicht ein Regler ist nicht ein Regler. Oder wie man aus der Oper Licht eine virtuelle Operette schaff t [A Fader is not a Fader is not a Fader. Or how the Opera Licht becomes a Virtual Operetta] (Chagas 1998). Both articles are unpublished manuscripts. 191

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Oktophonie develops new approaches on mediating the perception of the verticality of sound space. By exploring the three-dimensionality of the cube, the piece unfolds a multi-layered spectral and spatial structure of circular movements, shapes, and volumes. The concept of octophonic sound space also reaffirmed the gestural, playful approach to machinery. The composer “does not play with the machinery, but rather plays against it; he tries to create information, by realizing new, unlikely possibilities with the machinery” (Chagas 2006b, 164). The new digital tools and the enormous multi-track mixing capabilities of the WDR studio expanded the boundaries of sound space composition and introduced a higher level of control and precision. The flexible and modular concept, which integrated analog and digital design, stimulated a new kind of hybrid creativity. Rather than being anchored in a specific technology or aesthetic, it instigated the creative dialog between art, technique, and handicraft. This created fertile ground for generating new ideas. Stockhausen’s production in the Electronic Studio was a remarkable, lively experience, comparable to the rehearsal of chamber music work with conductor. He actively used a team of assistants (alias performers) including the studio staff and his own staff. He took the role of sound director, instructing and directing the flow of communication between humans and apparatuses that shaped the creative work. He counted on the assistance of his son Simon Stockhausen and later Antonio Perez-Abellan for producing the sound material. They brought to the studio a great variety of synthesizer models and samplers that they operated themselves. The sound events were played manually, but Simon Stockhausen also used a MIDI sequencer that was synchronized with the multi-track tape machines (analog and later digital) through SMPTE. Stockhausen continued experimenting and integrating new ideas into the composition during the different stages of the production: material production (single sounds and sound structures), spatialization, montage, intermediate mixing, and final mixing. He envisioned the production of an electronic music work in studio as the result of a live performance with musicians and technicians playing with musical apparatuses. He emphasized the importance of taking into account the musical gestures that shaped this kind of artistic-technical communication. For him, music produces not only sound vibrations [Schwingungen], but also intuitive vibrations related to the aura of the musicians that emerged from the action of performing music. Stockhausen elaborated this notion of intuitive vibrations in a lecture from 1972 on the future of electroacoustic apparatuses (Stockhausen 1978c). Based on his own experience with analog technology, he suggested developing 192

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new apparatuses for live sound processing (Klangwandler) and live sound spatialization (Rotationstische). He claimed that the transmission of music could be improved by: 1. Exploring those musical waves that are not yet considered in order to achieve complete transmission of all the vibrations emanating from the musicians while performing music. 2. Reducing to a minimum any delay in music playback. The consciousness of listening to a direct transmission changes listening completely in comparison with the consciousness of listening to a tape playback. So live transmission as much as possible. (Stockhausen 1978c, 433-34) Stockhausen activated visions that influenced succeeding generations of musicians. He challenged not only through new sounds and ideas but— and above all— by his capacity to instigate and motivate musicians and audiences. He provoked, juggling with people’s expectations. He did not become repetitive or stale as many composers of his generation, but kept experimenting and integrating new issues into his compositions. Those who had the privilege to work closely with him, including myself, became aware of his charisma and his fine sense of humor. They also discovered his power to seduce people and engage them passionately. Yet, his talent to excite and surprise caused both fascination and disappointment.25

Crisis and Intention The changes in production conditions in the Electronic Studio were to a great extent the consequences of the development of the digital society, which challenged the status of electronic music in society, and by extension the role of the WDR Electronic Studio. The retirement of Dr. Wolfgang BekerCarsten, producer of the department of Neue Musik, and the structural reform of the WDR left the studio without a clear artistic orientation; it was thrown into a void with no way out. In the collapse of the Electronic Studio one can trace the transformation of the creative structures of post-industrial society. Since its foundation in the 25

An example of that was his remarks in the aftermath of the events of 9/11 2001. Stockhausen’s comment that the terrorist attacks to the World Trader Center in New York was “the greatest work of art imaginable for whole cosmos” caused repugnance worldwide and overshadowed his reputation. 193

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1950s, the studio philosophy was to offer a production environment where composers could count on technical and artistic assistance for concretizing their ideas. The composers were not required to have any previous knowledge of the production of electronic music. They were given almost unlimited freedom to develop works according to their own artistic visions and the WDR offered full support to perform the work, stinting no efforts to realize the composer’s ideas. In the 1990s, the concerts of electronic music had become increasingly costly due to the differentiation of electronic music and the technical complexity required to perform the works, as well as the fact that the Electronic Studio did not have its own infrastructure and was forced to outsource concert activity. Whatever circumstances may have impacted the studio mission, the main issue for understanding the collapse is that the studio was programmed for a linear, historical consciousness that became inadequate; the studio failed to keep up with the codes and structures of the non-linear, networked mode of the emerging digital society. The increasing tendency of the apparatuses to automate the world and program people for certain behaviors is also demonstrated in the practice of electronic music. The apparatuses are becoming ever more complex and impenetrable and humans are ever less competent to operate them. The experiences of the past did not prove to be enough to cope with the technological development of the present. The composer lost his autonomy and was dependent on the collaboration with experts in order to realize his ideas, as York Höller, for example, clearly observed after the production of Pensées: “[...] I realized something crucial: today I would absolutely not be able to do anything alone. The Synth 100 I could still reasonably understand and could do a lot of things alone—that is today impossible” (Hellermann 1999, 80). Höller’s observation points to the programmatic reality of digital apparatuses, which is perceived as the loss of autonomy and competence. As Flusser claims, apparatuses are black boxes that simulate thinking in the sense of a combinatory game using number-like symbols; at the same time, they mechanize this thinking in such a way that, in future, human beings will become less and less competent to deal with it and have to rely more and more on apparatuses. (Flusser 2000, 32) Concerning the difference between analog and digital technology, Höller compares the tape machine to the computer. While it was not difficult to operate a tape machine, one only had to press the record button to connect 194

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the devices manually by patching their inputs and outputs, this was no longer possible with the computer: “You must master a program perfectly—if you only master it 90%, it simply doesn’t work” (Hellermann 1999, 81). The question that arises then is how should the networked dialogical creation as it existed until recently in the Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR be organized in the future? How can we best shape the critical exchange between composers, musicians, engineers, technicians and producers vis-a-vis the cultural interface that the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne provided? How can we overcome the crisis of electronic music and music altogether?

Design and Projection The term electronic music as it was defined by the WDR Electronic Studio, originated in the context of Neue Musik, which stands in the tradition of serial thinking and orchestral polyphony. It explores the auditory experience mediated by the loudspeaker, which could be extended to the perception of vocal and instrumental music. Today, electronic music indicates trends and tendencies that are based on different approaches. The decay of the aesthetic significance, which made electronic music in the 1950s appear as a revolutionary, visionary development, accelerated with digital technology and has led to the dissolution of sound, things, and of thinking itself. We can see this change in the privileged position that the concept of design occupies in contemporary discourse. Design interfaces between art and science. It represents, originally, the coming together of great ideas from the material and symbolic worlds. On the one hand, design manages the increasing merging of scientific, economic, and artistic thinking. On the other hand, it disdains ideas, material, and work and directs the consciousness to the surface of the electronic media. Design accelerates the process of the devaluation of cultural values. As Flusser claims: “By the fact that the word design makes us aware that all culture is trickery, that we are tricksters tricked, and that any involvement with culture is the same thing as self-deception” (Flusser 1999, 20; emphasis in the original). It would therefore be wrong to view pessimistically the current recoding of the world, of thinking, and of humans. True, we experience the vacuum, the zero-dimensionality of an alienated world full of pixels, disintegrating structures, and abstractions. But we are beginning to develop a new practice of concretizing and projecting: from punctual elements to sounds, images, models, and bodies. In the process of which we, the designers, are not to be 195

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understood as individuals or groups of individuals, but as an essential part of this networked dialog. In the interrelation of a dialogic network with objective and subjective relational fields, and not only restricted to sound and music itself, the broad field of elecatroacoustic music continues to offer itself as a pluralistic space for experience, knowledge, criticism, polemics, controversy, and debate.

The Paradox of Electronic Music: Do We Need the Electronic Studio?26 The demise of the Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR points to the paradoxical position in which electronic music finds itself today: Electronic music is being produced more and more often, but its meaning is perceived less and less. Have electronics been integrated into music in such a manner that it no longer makes sense to speak of electronic music as a difference that makes a difference? Or are we experiencing a banalization of its informative, artistic potential in favor of electronics as the byproduct of music reproduction? These considerations take into account the question of to what extent the collective consciousness is occupied with the role of electronic media as creator or destroyer of culture. Conflicting statements regarding the composers’ concerns about the demise of the Electronic Studio revealed the confusion veiling a possible solution as well as the necessity for a broad and open dialog in order to comprehend the complexity of the issue. In this context, it is necessary to distinguish between the meaning electronic music has had for society and the function that Electronic Studio of the WDR served.27

26

27

The original text in German—“Paradoxien der Elektronischen Musik oder wozu braucht man das Elektronische Studio”—was written in 2000 and published in the journal Mitteilungen from the DEGEM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik [German Society of Electronic Music]) as a contribution to the discussion on the future of the WDR Eletronic Studio (cf. Chagas 2000d). I preserved the original ideas and background but altered some sentences for the purpose of clarification. I proposed to launch a discussion forum in DEGEM journal, but there was no response to my efforts. 196

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“Composers no longer need an electronic studio, nowadays they can do everything at home.”28 The founding of the Electronic Studio of the WDR at the beginning of the 1950s was more than just symbolic: Electronics, which until then were only used as a means for music storage and reproduction, began to serve as the basis for the music production itself. Historically the most important message of electronic music, which emerged as a genre and experienced its first peak in popularity in the 1950s and 60s, had to do with turning the attention from the reproductive to the informative potential of electronics. In the network of electronic music, information flows through channels that spread in different directions and intersect in various ways. Individual and collective movements generate fields of aesthetic subjectivity in whose nodes concepts emerge, such as with electroacoustic music, computer music, acoustic art, sound design, sound installation, and sound poetry. These concepts point to the pluralistic and polyphonic modeling of subjectivity through the coupling of musical and medial forms. The Electronic Studio of the WDR opened new channels for the production and distribution of new electronic music, but not by producing it for the medium of radio. On the contrary, an alien product and a genre incompatible with radio was produced there. Although the listening experience of the radio influences the electronic music, it calls for much more than the production of new sounds that can be transmitted by radio. A great mistake has been the tendency to reduce electronic music to its sound dimension, as it is not only about inventing new sounds or broadening the palette of instrumental music through synthetic timbres. Electronic music finds its justification in the creation of subjective spaces of experience, in which different experiences in sound, speech, space, and communication are redefined. If one reduces electronic music to its medial translation or if one ties it to a certain apparatus (in the case of computer music), then it could be said that every skilled composer today is capable of producing electronic music with a computer himself/herself at home. He/she would operate the computer and software as one formerly played piano. If that were the case, then one would have to agree with those who have suggested that the availability of the computer renders the Electronic Studio anachronistic.

28

This phrase is not attributed to anyone particularly, but conveys the kind of statement that the WDR administrations repeatedly made as justification for deactivating the Electronic Music Studio. 197

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The unique possibilities of the Electronic Studio, which have been acknowledged by all the composers who have worked there, are not based on a nostalgic, historically backward-looking inclination or on a preference for computer and music apparatuses, but on the sober awareness that it was a place where artists were able to participate in a collective process through which new concepts came into being. The Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR had at its disposal, unique spaces and technical conditions for the production of multichannel electronic music not found in the usual radio or recording studios, for example, the flexible patching and mixing concept and the variable setup of speakers. Where else have octophonic, 12 and 13-channel works been produced in recent years? Although the facility was truly unique in many ways, the quality of the work produced there was less attributable to the rooms and apparatuses and much more to the concepts developed. As a meta-apparatus, the studio functioned like a network for composers, technicians, scientists, and others involved in the medial process of music production and distribution. The artists had the opportunity to confront their own ideas within the infrastructure of the studio. Musical products were created in a collective process that is best described as a dialogic creation and presented themselves as the convergence of different tendencies. Through this type of cybernetic information exchange, the WDR Electronic Studio developed into an autoproductive model for the information society: The dialog took place both between people and between people and machines and was reflected in the musical works produced and flowed back as feedback into the studio, into the WDR, and into society. In this way, the studio functioned as a network that stored, processed, and generated information and thus fulfilled a critical role.

“Programming is post-ideological manipulation” 29 One then must wonder why this model that seems so suitable for the contemporary information society ever found itself in crisis? Why did the structures of this living concept machine disintegrate? The polarization of the recently disclosed debate gives the distorted impression that the sole responsibility for this decision rests with a single person. But this standpoint is based on an incorrect assessment of the media apparatuses, for their characteristics cannot be analyzed with non-apparatic, ideological criteria. It

29

Flusser (2000, 38) 198

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is even less a question of power, since the development is by no means subject to human intention. In reality, the crisis of the Electronic Studio was as old as its founding (1951 or 1953?),30 insofar as it made the programs of the media the object of its critical work. The existence of the Electronic Studio has been called into question again and again at least since the 1970s, and there have been repeated deliberations on how the WDR might have been able to continue in collaboration with other partners. During the renovation and the move into the building on the Annostraße in the 1980s, the production of the studio was discontinued or substantially reduced. In the 1990s, there was again intensive production: 24 new works, partial digitalization of tape collections, and several ancillary productions. In spite of this considerable output, the signs of crisis multiplied over the years and were coupled with technical and especially staffing shortages. The limitations were most obvious in the concert activities of the studio. The performances of the multichannel tape productions and/or live electronic works required the deployment of a technical infrastructure and corresponding know-how. The WDR did not have either at its disposal and had to rent it expensively from third party providers. The fact that neither dedicated concert halls nor technical equipment were available for the performance of electronic music limited the rehearsal time and compromised the implementation of the ideas that were developed in production. Some works of live electronics that required musicians, sound directors, and technicians to gain new hands-on experience with the technique, could not be adequately performed. What has long since been accepted as a matter of course in pop music, namely, that electronics is integrated into the performance as an essential component of the music, remains here an exceptional situation. The electronic music that developed from the aesthetics of Neue Musik still represents a foreign object in the concert business. The newly built concert halls (e.g., the Cologne Philharmonic Hall) offer optimal conditions, but only for the music of the past. The training of musicians in institutions of higher education follows classical and romantic models, which also determine the understanding of music in society. Most established and emerging composers do not want to create electronic music pieces, afraid that they will rarely be performed. Electronic music faces the resistance or the lack of understanding of concert organizers, who do not want to waste money on the equipment and 30

The date of the founding of the Electronic Studio is the subject of debate. The studio was launched as a project in 1951 but the first official concert took place in 1953. Which year should be considered depends on the historical point of view taken. 199

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time-consuming rehearsals, or of the artists, who cannot acquire a reputation with it. “One shouldn’t waste time on technical things!” is often said. For example, during the dress rehearsal for the premiere of a work for MIDI piano and orchestra with the WDR Orchestra and the Electronic Studio, the computer that controlled the live electronics crashed for the first time. The conductor was horrified, did not want to wait a second for the computer to reboot, but start the rehearsal right away without the electronics, which didn’t make any sense.31 Music today has largely become a reproductive activity and this understanding plays a decisive role in the programming of the media apparatuses. Electronics is the basis of the music reproduction from a technical and especially from an aesthetic point of view. The electronic apparatus (including studios, equipment, sound media, and the human beings involved) programs the surface of the sound and the musical expectation of society. But it would be a mistake to try to draw ideological boundaries for distinguishing between the mass culture, which is supposed to be manipulated, and an elite culture, which is considered free of manipulation (e.g., Neue Musik). Or to believe that only music that is produced specifically for the mass culture is affected by this reproductive, automatized characteristic. For programming is the post-ideological manipulating of all instances of music life including but not limited to schools, conservatories, concerts, radio, recorded music, television, composition, performance, and music criticism. As paradoxical as it seems, electronic music is the one instance for which there is no functioning program in society. Electronic works cannot be performed without additional equipment in existing venues and cannot be broadcast on radio or reproduced without “translation”. Performing with electronic apparatuses is still not part of the training of musicians and composers, apart from a few exceptional cases. As far as the media is concerned, there is no radio program at present devoted to electronic music. This paradox can be explained from the point of view of the musical content as follows: Electronic music is concerned with the essence of machines and their dulling effect; it is committed to criticizing the music apparatuses and their programs. It can only inform if it sets itself the task of finding unpredictable solutions that overcome the automatizing tendency of apparatuses.

31

This piece was Pensées by York Höller and the conductor was Hans Zender. 200

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Museum, University or Therapy? By observing electronic music in all its manifestations, one realizes that its resonances spread and make the entire society vibrate. It seems that the lack of interest for electronic music in the established cultural spheres stands in contrast to the enthusiasm that it inspires in the young generation. Although a large amount of electronic music, which has developed as a genre within pop and techno culture, is made for immediate consumption, one would have to be deaf not to recognize its lively creative potential pulsating and growing. What is more important is that a new consciousness emerges for the subjective space of experience of electronic music in the form of sounds, communication, and the playful experimentation with old and new apparatuses. In this process, one recognizes the striving for freedom in the intention of expanding existing aesthetic categories and generating new ones. On the other hand, there is the danger that the aesthetic spheres that develop a crucial engagement with electronic apparatuses will not be able to disentangle themselves from the programs of mass communication and the effort will lead to nothing. This ambivalence is obvious and shows the necessity of leaving behind individual and collective passivity and of taking part in a critical dialog. We have been accustomed to privileged structures so long that they have become a matter of course. We have perhaps thought that the apparatus would keep itself autonomous. Only when it suddenly becomes clear that such privileges are decaying is the alarm sounded and everyone quickly tries to defend their own interests and save what still can be saved. Or is the breakdown irreversible? What exactly do we need the Electronic Studio for? If one tried to justify the survival of the studio based on its historical meaning, then there is no satisfactory answer. The references of the past should not over-code the present. The Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR produced a heterogeneous, significant body of works (its archive is considered an historical treasure), in which we recognize musical trends and models of the 20th century and beyond. But if exploring the legacy were henceforth the studio’s only mission, then it would be better to convert it into a museum of electronic music apparatuses. It would at least be an elegant solution that would bracket the essential advantage of such a meta-apparatus, namely, its networking function and ability to establish relationships between the elements, independent of the elements themselves. This would have only happened if the studio continued to carry out a medial function, not as a place to display electronic music works and equipment, but as unity of production, distribution, and processing of electronic music information. It would also have been disastrous 201

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to bind the studio to a music academy or university, as the educational system is not oriented towards artistic practice-based communication. Without this practical aspect, there is no confrontation with society and no feedback for further development. The cybernetic circularity of the artistic process will cease. The convergence of information technology, telematics, and the audiovisual allows us perhaps to dare take a decisive step in the direction of interactive artistic communication, by which we would enter a post-medial era. The dialog between humans, machines, and apparatuses (live electronics, networking, and multimedia) would set up new categories on the condition that a new social, political, and aesthetic practice will free us from traditional media and meaningless language. The automatizing programs of the media impose with symbolic violence (cf. Bourdieu) the state of “emptiness” that maintains dominance. The production of new aesthetic paradigms represents a dialogizing process of producing a different kind of subjectivity in medial context. This thoroughly therapeutic approach must also retain its autonomy in order to behave auto-productively. Even if structures change, the creative link between the elements should be guaranteed. The best hope for studios producing electronic music is that they may continue to generate heterogeneity and complexity and at the same time allow a criticism of the apparatus contexts. Only then will the electronic studio have the possibility of remaining a reference in the future.

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Chapter 6

Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition: The Relationship between Medium and Form

1. The Distinction between Medium and Form On the basis of the distinction between medium and form, Luhmann proposes a theory of art as a social system (Luhmann 2000), which is the starting point for my reflections on audiovisual and multimedia composition.1 Medium and form are not understood as structures, but as concepts accounting for operational distinctions made by an observer. Medium is defined as a loose coupling of elements and form as a tight coupling of elements (cf. Luhmann 2000, 104). The medium consists of elements or events in the time dimension, but these elements are only loosely connected. Form, by contrast, arises from the “concentration of relations of dependence between elements, i.e., thorough selection from the possibilities offered by a medium” (Luhmann 1990b, 216). The medium is defined by the nature of the loose elements of which it consists, but is only perceived through the form that coordinates its elements. As Luhmann explains: “We do not see the cause of light, the sun, we see things in the light. We do not read letters but with the help of the alphabet words” (Luhmann 1990b, 216). The distinction between medium and form can also be understood as a distinction between chaos (entropy) and order (negentropy), as used in information theory (Shannon) and cybernetics (Wiener). In The Human Use 1

The medium/form distinction reproduces the system/environment distinction that serves as the basis for Luhmann’s theory of social systems (cf. Luhmann 1984). Luhmann revised and reformulated his theory again and again. A further discussion of the medium/ form distinction can be found in Luhmann’s later book, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (1997, 190-202). The many essays that Luhmann dedicated to art and literature over the space of more than 20 years reflect also the continual development of his theory (cf. Luhmann 2008). For English translations cf. Luhmann 1995 (translation of Luhmann 1984); 1990a (a collection of essays); and 2013 (a series of lectures). For an account of Luhmann’s theory of social system see “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein. 203

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of Human Beings, Wiener expounds the vision of cybernetics as a science that contends against the natural tendency of the universe to deteriorate and lose its distinctiveness, to move “from a state of organization and differentiation in which distinction and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness” (Wiener 1954, 12). Cybernetics uses probabilistic and statistical methods to calculate and predict how information comes into being from an indeterminate, chaotic state. When information emerges from chaos, it becomes a fundamental attribute of communication. From mathematics and statistics, cybernetics moves towards a theory of knowledge extending the probabilistic view of the world to the social sphere. In the age of information, the cybernetic study of communication requires an understanding of the mechanisms of control underlying the exchange of information between man and machine and between machines. Although the universe tends to run down, Wiener believes that “there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for organization to increase” (Wiener 1954, 12); and organizing life in these enclaves is the task of the new science of cybernetics. The idea of a chaotic universe underlying life is also expressed by the distinction between randomness (noise) and pattern. Wiener suggests the metaphor of the organism as being a message through which the organism emerges from a background of randomness to constitute itself as a pattern of organization: Organism is opposed to chaos, to disintegration, to death, as message is to noise. To describe an organism, we do not try to specify each molecule in it, and catalogue it bit by bit, but rather to answer certain questions about it which reveal its pattern; a pattern which is more significant and less probable as the organism becomes, so to speak, more fully an organism. (Wiener 1954, 95) By focusing on the body, recent humanistic studies have reversed the tendency of cybernetic and computational thinking to treat information as an abstract concept, disconnected from a physical structure. Today, body metaphors frame the discourse on information. In How We Became Posthuman, Katherine Hayles reconstructs the distinction between randomness and pattern in the context of the critical theory of the posthuman society.2 In opposition to the computational account of information as a non-material entity, Hayles’ 2

The post-human is a very controversial concept on the crossroad of science fiction literature, artificial intelligence and humanistic criticism. 204

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vision of the posthuman emphasizes the role of embodiment and materiality in the processes of constituting meaning: information is not only an abstract code but is perceived and carried by embodied entities. Hayles proposes a representation of meaning in the form of a semiotic square with two axes: the main axis is the distinction between presence and absence; the secondary axis is the distinction between randomness and pattern. Two diagonals that connect these two axes trigger a dynamics of signification. The diagonal connecting presence and pattern conveys replication; the diagonal connecting absence and randomness signals disruption. The interplay between presence and absence shapes materiality; the interplay between randomness and pattern gives rise to information (cf. Hayles 1999, 247-51). Hayles envisions the posthuman as a more sophisticated way to approach the world of new technologies in which the human is seen not as an autonomous self but as part of a chaotic and unpredictable world. Instead of assuming an attitude of panic, as cybernetics does by assigning to itself the task of reversing the natural process of entropy, Hayles suggests that we accept the “posthuman”; that we should abdicate from taking control of the world and try to “maximize human potential in a world that is in essence chaotic and unpredictable” (Hayles 1999, 291). What is the use of the distinction between medium and form for analyzing artistic forms? As Luhmann points out, art depends on primary media such as acoustics and optics. Sound objects and events are shaped in the acoustic medium; visual objects and events are shaped in the optical medium (Luhmann 1990b, 218). Furthermore, art also needs a higher medium in order to communicate. The most general medium of art is the so-called medium of meaning [Sinn].3 Meaning is processed through the distinction between actuality and potentiality. The form thus selectively reduces the combinatory possibilities of the medium. The actualization results from selective processing that restrains and limits the connecting possibilities. For example, any sound can be combined with any other in a temporal flow, but in a piece of music there must be some constraints in selecting which sound follows the previous one. Each new sound actualizes the potential of the musical work. The result is that the distinction that creates meaning is itself a form that allows subsequent distinctions in time; “meaning is a form that creates forms in order to assume forms” (Luhmann 2000, 108). In short,

3

“Meaning is the medium that allows the selective production of all social and psychic forms. [...] In relation to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, meaning is for Luhmann the premise of every processing of experience: meaning points in the surplus of references to further possibilities of experience in each individual experience” (cf. Baraldi, Corsi, and Esposito 1997, 170). 205

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the form updates and renews the medium by coupling and uncoupling it. The form processes a selection of distinctions that actualizes its potential. This recursive character of the distinction between medium and form is what allows the reproduction of meaning. Every distinction between medium and form creates “a form with two sides, one of which, the side of the form contains itself” (Luhmann 2000, 104). In other words: “meaning is also a form that on both sides contains a copy of itself in itself” (Luhmann 1998, 50). Each new operation that creates meaning is a re-entry of the distinction medium and form in one of its sides.4 The successive operations through which a medium is transformed into a form, then into a medium, then into a form, and so on generate a recursive network of distinctions, a feedback-loop mechanism that ultimately drives and controls the system itself. Th is leads to an evolutionary conception of meaning, which applies also to art. The distinction between medium and form is based on the view that society is a self-referential and closed system, an “autopoeitic” system that produces and reproduces communication. Art is a sub-system of society sharing the same characteristics of the society in terms of autonomy and operational closure. Art communicates through works of art, which can be considered as “compact communication or as a program from innumerable communications about the work of art” (Luhmann 1990c, 194). Art can only function as communication for those who can distinguish the difference between medium and form and communicate about it. Art articulates the difference between medium and form by making available new possibilities of form building. For example, medieval music created the medium of modality for distinguishing melodic forms and the medium of polyphony for harmonic forms. Furthermore, music created the mediums of tonality, atonality, electroacoustics, and so on. Luhmann argues that artistic evolution can be described “as the increase in the capacity for dissolution and recombination, as the development of ever new media-for-forms” (Luhmann 1990b, 221). Modern art has appropriated media such as the human body, society, technology, and even art itself—for example, the works of art that are staged as paradox (Duchamp and Cage). An artwork comes into being through an operation that transforms an unmarked space into a marked space and creates a boundary by crossing that boundary. The determination of one side makes the other side accessible. The work of art cannot reject the world; it invites us to discover further distinctions that can 4

George Spencer Brown introduced this idea of form as distinction in his book Laws of Form, which is a constant reference in Luhmann’s theory. For the concept of “re-entry”, see Spencer Brown (1969, 56). 206

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be made by observing the work of art and what is left outside. The work of art thus stimulates the crossing of its own boundaries. This double function of art is what permits us to continue performing and listening to the music of the past. Any new interpretation of the music by Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven for example, allows us to gain new insights into both the marked and unmarked space of these works. The aesthetic experience accomplishes the paradox of making visible what is invisible. The music of the past becomes itself medium for new distinctions of forms. The focus on medium and the related concepts of mediality, medialization, and medial thinking, dominates studies on digital art and music in German speaking countries. There is a tendency to interpret sound as a “media object” and to categorize aesthetic issues according to the media structures and channels. This is evident when emerging genres such as sound art, radio art, and soundscape are elucidated as media-specific forms; or when one claims that the far-reaching “medialization of sound” impacts the “compositional forms, structures and aesthetics concepts until it finally questions our traditional understanding of music” (Harenberg 2012, 7-8)5 Media studies and communication studies offer very different theories on the history and structures of media. But overall they deliver a vision of media shaped by the reality of mass media and media technologies. The difficulty of such a consideration appears when one asks whether there is a special medium for that which we today call audiovisual art. The main reference is film, in which the image is in the forefront while music plays a secondary role. The relation image/sound in film is thus an asymmetric one.6 Cinema is the symbol for the dominance of technical images in our society, while we see other audiovisual forms emerging with a more differentiated relationship between sound and image from experimental film to video, musical composition to sound installation, concert to multimedia performance, and of course the video game, which has evolved into a powerful media using new technologies and unfolding an unpredictable, ambiguous potential of creativity.7 Media studies focused on information tend to assign a privileged role to digital technology in the constitution of the audiovisual and multimedia. Digital technology is considered a new form that brings about the convergence of 5

6

7

For an account of media from a German perspective see: Kittler (1999), Hartmann (2000), and Kloock and Spahr (1997). Michel Chion’s book Audio-Vision (Chion 1994) offers a comprehensive account focused on cinema of the relations between sound and image. Manovich proposes a theory of new media based on the differences between new and old media. He claims that the cinema was the first media to make use of the principles that shape new digital media (cf. Manovich 2000, 49-51). 207

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channels and the integration of formats through multimodal coding. From this point of view, multimedia is defined as “a multimodal aggregation of digital media” (Hartmann 2008, 8). Friedrich Kittler, who remains maybe the most influential German media theorist, shapes the discourse on digital technology with a radical pessimistic tone: Before the end, something is coming to an end. The general digitization of channels and information erases the differences among individual media. Sound and image, voice and text are reduced to surface effects, known to consumers as interface. Sense and the senses turn into eyewash. Their media-produced glamour will survive for an interim as a by-product of strategic programs. Inside the computers themselves everything becomes a number: quantity without image, sound, or voice. And once optical fiber networks turn formerly distinct data flows into a standardized series of digitized numbers, any medium can be translated into any other. With numbers, everything goes. Modulation, transformation, synchronization; delay, storage, transposition; scrambling, scanning, mapping a total media link on a digital base will erase the very concept of medium. Instead of wiring people and technologies, absolute knowledge will run as an endless loop. (Kittler 1999, 1) From the perspective of critical and phenomenological studies of digital media, sound and vision are crucial references. Reproduction technology introduced in the 19th century created new possibilities for the arrangement of medium/form relationships associated with the primary media of acoustics and optics. They reconstructed our experiences of hearing and seeing. Digital technology represents a further step in that transformation. Recent accounts of digital technology focus on models of embodied and extended cognition in the construction of meaning also affecting our understanding of sound and vision. In The Auditory Past, Sterne argues that the “boundary between sound and not-sound is based on the understood possibilities of the faculty of hearing” which is grounded in our bodily practices (Sterne 2003, 12). The practices of sound reproduction he claims, have to be understood in relation to other bodily practices. In Philosophy for New Media, Hansen analyzes how digital visual media engages the body in the process of creating meaning. With digital media, the body has the function of filtering information and providing an affective supplement. Hansen sees a “fundamental shift in aesthetic experience from a model dominated by the perception of a selfsufficient object to one focused on the intensities of embodied affectivity” (Hansen 2004, 12-13). 208

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These preliminary considerations should have made clear that the audiovisual and multimedia represent a complex field of investigation. From the perspective of historical musicology and semiotic studies, the relation between sound and image has been approached mainly in the context of conventional forms such as opera and film. For instance, Walt Disney’s mythical visualization of Stravinsky’s music in Fantasia, with its pre-historical landscapes of volcanoes and dinosaurs and the multiple references to the American way of life, has attracted a good deal of attention.8 On the other hand, the contemporary studies on theory, aesthetics, and history of digital media focus predominantly on image and visual languages. Music is bypassed. Investigating the audiovisual and multimedia demands a methodology for distinguishing between elements and relations in this increasingly complex field. However, “complexity enforces selection” (Luhmann 1990d, 81; emphasis in the original). My purpose here is neither to develop a comprehensive account of current approaches, nor to review critically the discourses on new (digital) media. By bringing up those connections between music and other media that are demonstrated in my own work, I intend to point to the broad spectrum of possibilities of audiovisual and multimedia composition, in terms of both convergence and differentiation of media and forms. My approach is based on the phenomenological method of describing the reality as it appears and looking into the surrounding, meaningful references.

2. Polyphony, Intermedia, and Polyphonic Subjectivity How should multimedia be understood in the context of art and music? Is there such a thing as a multimedial music? These kinds of questions are often times answered from the perspective of the production and dissemination of information in the digital society, which bring forth the integration of different media. However, the investigation of multimedia shall focus instead on the issue of meaning, with the construction of meaning placed in the foreground. The concept of multimedia is typically associated with simultaneity of states and events. But this is nothing new; it has been present in music since approximately the 9th century as the fundamental of polyphonic composition. Polyphony is a central issue of music defined as the “specific mode of operation of auditory perception which distinguishes multiple and 8

See for example “Disney’s Dream: The Rite of Spring Sequence from ‘Fantasia’” (Cook 1998, 174-214), and “Walt Disney and Americanness: An Existential-Semiotical Exercice” (Tarasti 2000, 172-90). 209

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independent events and creates a musical difference between sound and environment” (Chagas 2005). Sound is the differentiation of a polyphonic form in the acoustic medium. According to this view, polyphony should not be defined from the usual standpoint of the musical multiplicity of voices or structural layers but as a structural coupling of experiences in different domains. Polyphony articulates different levels of musical events that can be synchronized temporally. In this regard, the medium of polyphony is closely related to the manner in which we perceive time. According to Husserl’s phenomenology, time consciousness is the constitutive basis of consciousness and subjectivity. Time consciousness is based on time objects that are perceived not as isolated points in time, but as streams. Husserl reflects on consciousness of tone and melody as a paradigm of time consciousness (cf. Husserl 1966). By listening to a melody we establish links between the present, the immediate past, and the immediate future in the constitution of time consciousness. The same can be said of the perception of any sound. The unity of time consciousness emerges from the articulation of temporal processes occurring simultaneously at different levels. This point of view is also in line with the view of modern neurophenomenological research, which describes consciousness as an embodiment of mental processes. According to Varela, “any mental act is characterized by the concurrent participation of several functionally distinct and topographically distributed regions of the brain and their sensomotor embodiment” (Varela 1999, 272). The nervous system operates with neuronal oscillators that vibrate at different frequencies and are synchronized by the consciousness. The forms that take shape in the medium of polyphony must demonstrate at the same time variety and individuality. Plurality and identity are the two core ideas of European polyphony as constituted in the Middle Ages. In traditional polyphonic composition, pitch has a structural function. Pitch is differentiation in frequency that organizes the musical time-space according to two principles: the horizontal principle—the temporal flow of the notes— and the vertical principle—the simultaneity of the notes. Horizontality and verticality are associated respectively with the concepts of melody and harmony. Melody and harmony are media for polyphonic form building, in that they organize the notes in relation to time and space. The possibilities of form building in the medium of polyphony have expanded considerably in the course of music history. In the 20th century, new forms of polyphonic composition developed as a result of serial and structural thinking. Today one sees polyphony not only as a composition with melodic voices, which are subordinated to a harmonic structure, but as the arrangement of events that share certain sound properties. Thus one speaks, for example, of a polyphony 210

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of timbres and sound textures. In addition, each polyphonic form can itself serve as a medium of form building. Pierre Boulez, for example, drafts the vision of a future music constructed as a “polyphony of polyphonies” (Boulez 1963, 133). The concept of intermedia arises from the extension of polyphony to other domains of perception and experience. Intermedia composition explores artistic connections between different media such as sound, image, speech, movement, gesture, and space while interacting with technical and media apparatuses. In the history of music, there are plenty of examples of how music creates multiple connections with other media. For instance, the coupling of possibilities of the media sound, text, and speech generates hybrid forms such as the medieval ballad, the Romantic Lied, and the commercial pop song. These connections present a world of meaning that is shaped based on selections of possibilities processed in interdisciplinary domains. In contrast to traditional forms in which music is combined with other media, the shaping of intermedia is coupled with the use of technical apparatuses that allow it come into being by accomplishing the crossing of boundaries of the individual media that facilitates their interpenetration. The traces of the apparatus become visible in the formation process and can no longer be separated from the work of art. An example of this is the importance of computers in contemporary art vis-a-vis digital music, digital video, electronic art, and network art. Two tendencies appear in intermedia composition: the diff erentiation process whereby new interdisciplinary domains of art come into being and interactivity with the apparatus. The functional differentiation of society leads to the proliferation of viewpoints for observing and defining art. The concept of sound art is an example of the impossibility of a unifying perspective for observing sound and music in today’s society. The use of apparatuses opens up a new kind of ambiguity, which Flusser expresses in the following terms: on the one hand, new possibilities arise out of the experimental engagement with the apparatus; on the other hand, the programmatic reality of the apparatus determines the boundaries of freedom and forces the user to adopt automatic behaviors that eliminate criticism (cf. Flusser 1983). The contradictory role of the apparatus and its programs can be observed in different forms of both popular and so-called serious contemporary music. Technical apparatuses and machinery of information and communication work directly with human subjectivity. They interact with different kinds of cognitive and emotional domains such as memory, intelligence, sensitivity, and the subconscious in order to produce meaning. Guattari (1992) speaks of desiring machines that replace human subjectivity. They generate a 211

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polyphonic and heterogeneous understanding of subjectivity characterized by the pluralistic subjectivity of technology. By desiring machines, Guattari is referring not only the technical but also abstract machines of society such as social institutions, academic discourse, cultural forms, and collective desires and behavior. Polyphonic subjectivity is to be understood as a basic feature of desiring machines that produce the pluralistic, heterogenic forms of today’s posthuman society. New forms of life emerge through the close cooperation between humans and apparatuses. The social media that come into existence on the internet point to the hybrid reality of the posthuman world—for instance, the crossing of boundaries between private and public spheres of life. It is not Being, but rather the functions and components of the technological desiring machine that now determine existence.

3. Musical Theater, Opera, War, and Violence My original works discussed here highlight several aspects and different approaches to audiovisual and multimedia composition.9 My interest in intermedial forms emerged from my engagement with electronic music. I created my first intermedia compositions during my graduate studies in electronic music composition at the Electronic Music Studio of the Musikhochschule in Cologne (1982-89). I produced different works there, most of which premiered in the music school itself, including: Eshu (1984): musical theater; Peep Show (1985-87): musical theater; Ellipse (1986): electronic music for mime; Vom Kriege III (1989): chamber opera; Vom Kriege I (1990): chamber opera; Oddort (1989): chamber opera; Shango: Kultmusik (1989): dance theater and performance. Eshu (1984) is a work in which electronic music is based on a scenic and dramatic composition and was composed with sound material originating from the music of the Afro-Brazilian religion “candomblé”. I was especially interested in the ritualistic, transcendental function of Afro-Brazilian cult music and set out to compose electronic music that would reflect these characteristics. The uninterrupted electronic music on tape provides the temporal structure for the live musical and dramatic performance: a baritone saxophone in the main role, four female speakers/actors, and four percussionists accompanied by a projection of slides. It was produced in cooperation with the photographer Heinz Wedewardt, Professor of Visual 9

For audio and video recordings of my works see my personal website: http://www. paulocchagas.com (accessed July 1 2013). 212

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Design and Audio-Vision at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. For the visual composition, he used three computer-controlled slide projectors synchronized with the electronic music.10 The integration of electronic and acoustic music and dramatic performance characterizes the development of my multimedia aesthetics that began with Eshu. The musical theater Peep Show (1985-87) likewise combines electronic and acoustic music, dramatic performance, and image projection. In this case, however, the image projection becomes the core element of the multimedia composition. The convergence of music and image has a structural, formative function in Peep Show. This composition deals with the industry of sex and pornography, particularly the growing role of technology as a mediator of eroticism and sexual pleasure and as ersatz for human sexuality. The musical theater deconstructs the world of sex shops that marked the landscape of the downtown pedestrian zones of German cities in the 1980s. Beate Uhse’s sex shop chain was the quintessential example of a successful business that was said to profit greatly from the new possibilities of multimedia pornography.11 Peep Show combines electronic music on tape with live music played by a pop band. The composition works out the aesthetics of pop music and its relation to electronic music and multimedia technology. The musical theater tells the story of a futuristic Peep Show in which people experience eroticism and sexual fantasies with computers, robots, and other intelligent machines. An actress/singer plays the main role of a woman working as an erotic object in the peep show; a computer scans her body to make synthetic images of women that appear as real to peep show customers. In the course of the story, the computer experiences a breakdown, which provokes a chaotic situation that causes the deconstruction of the peep show and frees the woman from being a sexual object. The visual composition using projected slides synchronized with the electronic music was likewise developed in cooperation with Heinz Wedewardt. An essential aspect of this multimedia work is the interplay between the real-life actors on the stage and the virtual actors on the image projection. The aesthetics of Peep Show thus anticipates tendencies of interactive art that only became more readily accessible with digital video and audio technology in the mid-1990s. Peep Show premiered 10

11

The software for the slide projectors ran on the legendary Apple II computer. The sequence of slides was programmed according to the electronic music, but the computer was not technically synchronized with the tape machine; they were started manually and run independently. Beate Uhse became famous as a female pilot in the German Luftwaffe during World War II. After the war she founded the first sex shop in the world, which became a world empire of sex and pornography. 213

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in 1986 as a work in progress at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, and the composition was further developed in the course of two other performances. The actress Stefanie Mühle (1960-2011) played the main role and significantly contributed to the development of the story. I consider Peep Show one of my most important pieces because of the original musical language and visionary multimedia concept. I would gladly perform the piece again in order to take full advantage of the new possibilities of interactive digital technology. Ellipse (1986) was commissioned by the mime Isidoro Fernandez and composed in close cooperation with him. The mime describes the lifespan of a person from childhood to old age. The composition translates the body language of the mime, narrating the coming into being and passing away of the human being in the cycle of life. The electronic music, as Seeber describes it, is generated “from two acoustic basic elements: the one—made of two descending notes—is created synthetically; the other is a natural noise—a recording of human breathing. Chagas develops these two, simple elements parallel to the growth of the organism in increasingly complex sound shapes” (Seeber 2004).12 Exploring body metaphors provided these new ideas for sound and music formation. The intermedial relations between sound and body are reflected in different levels of the composition—not only on the micro-temporal level of sound synthesis, but also on the macro-temporal level of the musical form. With Ellipse I was conscious of how new possibilities for intermedia composition unfold through the relationship to the body and as a structural and precise synchrony of music and movement. The opera trilogy Vom Kriege (Of War) came into being over the years 1984-99. It is a reflection of my long-time engagement with the themes of war, violence, and fascism in relation to my own political history and my experience in Germany.13 When I arrived in Germany in 1982, the effects of the Second World War were still very visible. German society continued to be haunted by the effects of the immeasurable crimes of the Nazi regime, which reflected the metaphysical worldviews of totalitarian claims to “be able to absolutely grasp the ‘true’ essence of history and nature” (Safranski 1993, 150). My chamber opera Oddort, based on Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s book Rigodon and premiering in 1989 at the Festival d’Avignon in France, also deals with fascism and the worldview of totalitarianism. The electronic music for Oddort was likewise produced at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. The triptych Vom Krieg consists of the short chamber operas Vom Kriege I (1990, 12 13

Radio broadcast; cited from the manuscript. In 1971, as a 17-year-old, I was arrested and tortured in prison in Brazil for collaboration with opposition groups (cf. Chagas 2006c for a short description of this experience). 214

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25 minutes), Vom Kriege III (1989, 35 minutes), and the full-length technoopera RAW (1999, 75 minutes), which was initially called Vom Kriege II but was renamed for the premier at the Opera in Bonn in 1999. All three works were set to music texts by Ernst Jünger, as well as other texts such as poems by F. T. Marinetti in Vom Kriege III, philosophical essays on the nature of war by the Prussian General C. von Clausewitz, and traditional Yoruba myths and poetry in RAW.14 These three chamber operas developed the concept of intermedia composition with electronic, vocal, and instrumental music in connection with drama and or dance. The electronic music for Vom Kriege I and Vom Kriege III was produced in the studio of the Musikhochschule. The 4-channel tape had an additional click track for the synchronization of the electronic music with the live music during the performance. In RAW however, the electronic music is performed live in real-time by three keyboardists and three percussionists completely without tape or pre-recorded sound. Herein lies an important development of intermedia composition, namely, from the rigidity of electronic music produced on a fixed medium of tape or hard disk and played back in the performance to the flexibility of electronic music played live with electronic instruments and/or live processing of acoustic sources such as voice or instruments. This dualism points to a current complex issue concerning the aesthetics of electroacoustic music, since the live electronic music is not to be seen as a substitute for or opposed to the pre-produced taped music, but as an extension of its possibilities, with the corresponding advantages and disadvantages. The artistic engagement with war and violence also takes place in Shango: Kultmusik. The dance theater piece premiered in 1989 in Saint Peter’s 14

Vom Kriege, RAW, and Vom Kriege III make use of texts from three autobiographic books by Ernst Jünger (1895-1998): Im Stahlgewitter (The Storm of Steel) (1920), Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis [Battle as Inner Experience] (1922) and Feuer und Blut [Fire and Blood] (1925). They describe the author’s experiences as a soldier during the First World War. Jünger allows us to experience with him the horrors of war, but at the same time his lavish description full of symbols and sensual images (visual, onomatopoeic, etc.) is a testimony to the fascination and the seduction of war. The book Im Stahlgewitter, which made Jünger famous, has been criticized for glorifying war. Jünger has also been criticized for being sympathetic to the Nazi regime, but this is a very controversial issue as he kept a distance from the National Socialist movement but never publicly criticized it. The texts from the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, which are set to music in RAW, are taken from the beginning of his well-known main work Vom Kriege (On War) (1832) (in which is to be found the famous sentence: “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means”). The texts that in RAW have reference to the Yoruba war deity “Ogun” are translations of poems and myths from Nigeria, Benin, and Brazil. In Vom Kriege III, I set to music the poem Zang Tumb Tumb (1914) by the Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. 215

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Church in Cologne and was performed several times in the following years in different places in Germany, including in unusual contexts such as a circus tent in Bremen. Shango is the most popular “orisha” (deity) in many AfricanAmerican religions that originate in the culture of the Yoruba in West Africa and is worshipped as the god of thunder. His symbol is the double-edged ax, with which he exercises his power and upholds justice in the world. Shango: Kultmusik develops an intermedia composition with dance, electronic and acoustic music, with two percussionists. The electronic music combines preproduced sounds on a 4-channel tape and a live synthesizer. The percussionists play drums and other African-American instruments, improvising according to African cult music traditions. 15 The aesthetics of Shango: Kultmusik draws on musical and dramatic elements of the Afro-Brazilian “candomblé” cult. The electronic music on tape creates the sound space and time span for the live interaction of the dancers with the musicians, who mutually influence and inspire each other, just as in a “candomblé” ceremony. On the other hand, Shango: Kultmusik also engages with the idea of speed and the disappearance of freedom inspired by Virilio’s theory of interconnection between speed, technology, and war. For Virilio, the acceleration of events, technological development, and fascination with speed bring about a movement of disintegration of matter and disappearance of space. We confine ourselves to letting go of all living things in favor of emptiness and speed (cf. Virilio 1984)16 In the composition of Shango: Kultmusik, the aesthetics of speed and disappearance is created as the manipulation of time through the acceleration and deceleration of musical structures. The composition develops impulse sequences that accelerate and decelerate exponentially, whereby a unity of rhythm, pitch, and timbre is created. The electronic music captures the emblematic aesthetics of composition in time-space by Karlheinz Stockhausen (cf. Stockhausen 1963, 99-139).

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The percussionists were Samson Gassama and Daniel Moreno and I played the synthesizer. Virilio’s apocalyptic and somewhat excessively pessimistic account of modern technology and speed is based on a phenomenological vision of freedom as an experience that includes and embodies the materiality of space (cf. James 2007). Virilio analyzes the transformation of the perception of space and time and its effects on political and social structures: “The field of freedom shrinks with speed. And freedom needs a field. When there is no more field, our lives will be like a terminal, a machine with doors that open and close. A labyrinth for laboratory animals” (Virilio and Lotringer 1983, 69). 216

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4. The Creative Dialog: Dance, Speech, and the Body Collaborating with choreographers and directors was an important step in the expansion of my musical language in the first half of the 1990s. By extending the compositional experience to the interdisciplinary connections with dance, speech, and the body, I aimed to develop an aesthetics that links electronic sounds closely and organically with vocal and instrumental sounds. Creating choreography is a completely different process than composing music. The choreographer works with dancers in a physical space and must adjust his ideas to the physical attributes and conditions of the dancers. The body has its own dynamic, limitations, and a specific, unique intuition, which is not necessarily subject to the mind and cognitive understanding. The composer, on the other hand, works with representations of sounds and forms, which seem at first like mental abstractions and only in performance are realized as concrete objects. In traditional vocal and instrumental music, the gestures and visual elements of the performance can still be traced in the process of sound shaping. One hears the sound and can imagine how it is produced or played, even if one does not experience the performance directly. But electronic sound realizes a completely new musical situation, as it disrupts the link to the source of sound production. The authenticity of the sound in relation to its bodily or instrumental origin is no longer visible in the electronic music performance. Even if one is physically present at a performance and experiences directly how the musicians operate apparatuses such as the computer and synthesizer, one can hardly (if at all) perceive a “meaningful” connection between their bodily actions and movements and the resulting sound. Since its beginnings in the 1950s, electronic music has been incorporating acoustic sounds along with the performance practices of vocal and instrumental music. This tendency increased in the 1990s, as digital technology simplified and expanded the possibilities of sound analysis, synthesis, and processing. Digital tools offer an opportunity to look directly into the inner world of sound phenomenon; the vibratory reality of the sound transformed into binary code becomes the material substrate of compositional approaches. Sound metaphors resulting from the analytical practices mediated by technology are instantiated in the musical composition. An example of such metaphoric formalization is the so-called aesthetics of “spectral music” that emerged in France in the early 1970s with composers such as Gerard Grisey and Tristan Murail. The spectral approach uses computer-based analysis of sound spectra to identify elements that inform the composition. Today, the terms spectral music and spectralism are associated with a variety of aesthetics and styles that 217

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treat timbre as a main compositional feature. It has contributed significantly to establishing an aesthetics of instrumental music—solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra—that achieves a fine control of timbre structuring by combining intuitive approaches with the systematic use of digital technology.17 The spectral orientation forges a more qualitative organic approach to sound impacted by the interactions between vocal, instrumental, and electronic sounds and points to the embodiment of a hybrid world shared by humans and machines. Indeed, the systematic search for methods for organically shaping the interplay between electronic and acoustic sounds characterizes the aesthetics of many composers in the 1990s. For me personally, it was the collaboration with choreographers and dancers that gave me the decisive impetus for exploring a chamber music in which acoustic and electronic sounds form an organic unity. During the composition process, I have often observed the creative interaction of choreographers and dancers and developed the composition until they were satisfied with the musical result. Dancers have a very special way of talking about music since they relate to it through movements and literally “embody” it. Their musical understanding cannot be separated from the embodied medium. When dancers talk about music, one has to first translate their body language into the abstract language of music in order to understand their ideas. As a composer, one must learn and master this kind of interdisciplinary translation in order to profit from the collaboration. The ability to work as part of a team and dialog creatively is an essential and decisive aspect of intermedia composition. The work Sodoma was created in collaboration with the Brazilian choreographer Cláudio Bernardo, who lived in Belgium at the time, and premiered in 1991 at the Atelier Saint Anne Theater in Brussels. I composed the music for Sodoma for a large ensemble consisting of vocal quintet (SSATB), string orchestra, three percussionists, and electronic sounds. The music was recorded in the studio and played during the performance.18 The electronic music was conceived for 7 channels of sound projection, to be able to function additionally like a sound space installation. The choreography in Sodoma was inspired by the gold mine of Serra Pelada, which emerged in the middle of nowhere in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the 1980s. 17

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See for instance Gérard Grisey’s article “Structuration des trimbres dans la musique instrumentale” (in Barrière 1991, 352-85), in which he describes the approaches to timbre composition in his cycle of pieces Les Espaces Acustiques (1974-85). The CD recording of Sodoma with the Tippett Ensemble, the Helix Ensemble, Philippe Herr, Gérard Bernard, and Géry Cambier (percussion) under the direction of Celso Antunes was released in 1993: CD Subrosa SUBCD 026-48. 218

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Up to 40,000 “garimpeiros” (gold prospectors) worked and lived there in miserable, almost inhuman conditions. They were mostly very poor men from different regions, who streamed into the Amazon Eldorado in search of a better life.19 Cláudio Bernardo’s choreography associates Serra Pelada with Sodom, the biblical city on the shore of the Dead Sea. It links the life of the “garimpeiros” with representations of Sodom from the Old Testament: the fall of the city, the sinful behavior of its inhabitants, the homosexuality, and the social deterioration. A mythical ritual develops from this with allusions to existential themes of the present such as exploitation, misery, loneliness, alienation, and oppression. The composition consists of symbolic musical representations of the imaginary universes of Sodom and Serra Pelada. The virtual music of Sodom is represented by the vocal melody and the timbre of Hebrew song; the music of Serra Pelada is meant to embody the pluralism of Brazilian society and to reflect the influence of European, African, and Indigenous elements. I imagined the music of the Middle Ages as a mediator between these two poles. Medieval polyphony becomes the symbol of the combination of different elements that mutually influence each other and form a unity. The music of Sodoma shares with the “garimpeiros” of Serra Pelada the idea of a multicultural world shaped by the movements of migrants and the crossing of cultures and traditions that create a new synthesis: a world inhabited by different sounds, noises, and musical languages. My collaboration with Cláudio Bernardo continued with the composition of Raptus in 1992. He was quite fascinated by the music of Shango: Kultmusik and created new choreography, which he danced himself. However, he developed an aesthetics that followed the contemporary European dance theater—especially Pina Bausch—and distanced itself radically from the “African-American” universe of Shango: Kultmusik. Raptus was performed with the same electronic music and the same musicians as Shango: Kultmusik, but Cláudio Bernardo’s dance theater gives the composition a completely different character. In Shango: Kultmusik the construction of meaning occurs in the medium of “candomblé”. Both the composition and the choreography embody the universe of the African-American religion and articulate new 19

The pictures of the gold mine of Serra Pelada from the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado are the most famous ones: “Black-and-white photographs of a vast pit, its sides cut into a giant’s stairway and scaled by crude ladders, its surface covered with figures, most bearing large sacks; scanning the space between foreground and distant background, the effect is dizzying” (cf. Julian Stallabras, Sebastião Salgado and Fine Art Photojournalism, http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/people/stallabrass_julian/essays/SALGADO.pdf [accessed July 1, 2013]). Also the films Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi by the American director Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass show impressive footages of Serra Pelada. 219

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meanings by relating to this tradition. Music and dance act in synchrony to the medium “candomblé”. For example, the electronic music refers to the rhythms of the African-American drums, while the choreography refers to the symbols of the deity (orisha) Shango. In contrast to Shango: Kultmusik, the choreography of Raptus unfolds a dialectic of ambiguity in relation to the medium of “candomblé” and remains in apparent opposition to the music that carries on this tradition. Music and dance build a relation of asynchrony—or asymmetry—that becomes the core of form building in Raptus. In Luhmann’s terms, the choreography actualizes the meaningful potential of “candomblé” by creating an aesthetics that in the first instance seems to reject the world of “candomblé” but later reveals itself as an affirmation of it, as it creates a new context for projecting its meanings. In this sense Raptus demonstrates how intermedia composition is a meaning-processing system that transcends the meaning of the individual media. Meaning, according to Luhmann, results from the reduction of complexity. Intermedia composition reduces the complexity of the media with its potential to couple and uncouple loose elements through a dialectical synthesis of oppositions that relates the media to each other.20 The choreographic theater Francis Bacon by Ismael Ivo and Johann Kresnik, which premiered in 1993 in the Stuttgart Theater, drew a lot of attention and was featured several times worldwide. The original composition is written for three singers (soprano, countertenor, and baritone), string quartet, percussion, and electronic sounds and was composed and recorded in the studio in a very short span of time.21 The life and work of the great Irish painter Francis Bacon (1909-92) inspired both Kresnik’s choreography and my composition. The dance production depicts the complex, tormented world of Bacon with force, violence, and a great deal of nakedness. According to Kresnik, “choreographic theater is a pictorial medium; with the work and the biography of an artist as the basis of a play, the director faces the task of creating a synthesis between the painter’s and his own imagination”.22 Kresnik emphasizes that the music was an important factor in the creation of the piece, as the composition 20

21

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For an account of multimedia based on the distinctive combination of similarity and difference see Cook’s Analysing Musical Multimedia (1998), particularly chapter 3: “Models of Multimedia”, pp. 98-129. The music was recorded twice with different musicians. The first recording is the one used for the dance performance. The second recording of Francis Bacon with Anne Cambier (soprano), Michel Puissant (countertenor), Bernd Valentin (baritone), the Quadro Quartet (Igor Semenoff, Gudrun Vercampt, Jeroen Robbrecht, Jean-Paul Dessy), and Michael Weilacher (percussion) under the direction of Celso Antunes was released as CD in 1994: CD KlangStudioC C9401. Francis Bacon, CD booklet, KlangStudioC, C9401. 220

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sketches sound spaces and constructs the atmosphere for the development of the pictures.23 In my view, the music builds a double relation of conformance and contradiction to the choreographic concept. On the one hand, the music expresses the same existential mood of despair as the choreography, which is associated with Bacon’s life and pictures; on the other hand, it unfolds a poetics of fragility that remains in opposition to the choreography. The music aligns with the choreographic theater and at the same time introduces elements of collision and confrontation that constitute an additional level of experience. Francis Bacon is a full-length 80 minute composition consisting of 23 short pieces that alternate different combinations of vocal, instrumental, and electronic sounds. The basic material of the electronic music consists of vocal sounds produced by the dancers (breathing, moaning, screaming, and whispering), which I recorded, processed, and combined with other sounds. Although Francis Bacon was composed for this specific choreographic theater, it is meant to be a self-contained music to be performed without choreography. This double function, which I have pursued in other pieces, reinforces my concept of musical autonomy in the realm of intermedia composition: the music is not a servant art subordinated to another media (as for instance the music for film) but has the right to assert its own Dasein; at the same time, the music has to demonstrate the capability to interact with the other medium and contribute to accomplishing the synthesis of media that creates new meanings.24 The experience with Francis Bacon as a multimedia composition for chamber music ensemble and electronic music was immediately followed up with the scenic oratorio Der Fluss [The River] 1994. Here it is the medium of speech that triggered the intermedia project. Der Fluss was conceived by Simone Rist, who wrote the libretto and directed the piece. The libretto is an adaptation of two poems from the Tríptico do Capibaribe [Triptych of the Capibaribe River] by the Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-99), in the German translation by Curt Meyer-Clason.25 João Cabral de Melo 23 24

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The comments by Johann Kresnik are from the booklet of the CD Francis Bacon (1994). The music of Francis Bacon was employed later in the digital oratorio Corpo, Carne e Espírito (2008) (see below). The use of the piece in another context strengthens my claim to the autonomy of the composition. Cf. Melo Neto 1993. The Capibaribe triptych consists of three poems: O Cão Sem Plumas [The Dog Without Feathers] (1949-50), O Rio [The River] (1953) and Morte e Vida Severina [Death and Life of a Severino] (1954-55) (c.f. Melo Neto 1994). Curt MeyerClason (1910-2012) was a major translator of Latin American and Brazilian 20th century literature into German. He translated, among others, works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and important Brazilian authors such as Jorge Amado, 221

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Neto elaborates a poetics of the construction of language that is turned to concrete things and often reflects on the conditions of human existence. The Triptych of the Capibaribe River, written in the 1950s, narrates the poetic trip of the Capibaribe River through his homeland of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil, with the river as narrator. It describes the nature and people of this poor region of Brazil marked by the droughty, rough landscape and the misery and hopelessness of an exploited, exhausted, and inert population. As a native of the state of Bahia, close to Pernambuco, I too, experience northeastern Brazil as a space where time stopped in the Middle Ages. The medieval atmosphere of this region, in my imagination, is significantly impacted by the heritage of the Portuguese colonization. That is why my composition for the scenic oratorio Der Fluss elaborated an aesthetics shaped by medieval plainchant and modality. The music for actors, three speakers, three singers (mezzo soprano, baritone, and bass), string quartet, percussion, and electronic sounds seeks the unity of poetry and speech. As noted by a music critic after the performance at the “Alte Oper” in Frankfurt: The music organizes the events. It never plays in the foreground. Paulo Chagas keeps the word-tone relationship always in balance. […] The transitions from speech to song are imperceptible. Any Brazilian flavor is lacking. The music has more of a liturgical character. The word is not musically suggested, but fluently declaimed. Der Fluss is a piece that does not impose itself, but captivates.26

5. Media-Music-Theater: Collaboration with the BEC From 1992 to 1997 I collaborated as an artist-in-residence with the “Bonner Entwicklungswerkstatt für Computermedien e.V.” (BEC). Founded in 1987, the BEC’s goal was to produce media theater. This concept was put into practice in the 1990s, when the BEC was located in an abandoned wallpaper factory on the outskirts of the city of Bonn. Bodo Lensch, the director of the BEC, invited artists, technicians, and scientists to develop new experimental projects for which he had secured public funding. The BEC conducted artbased research on media art including electronic music, sound space, film,

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Carlos Drumond de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, Ferreira Gular, Clarice Lispector, and João Guimarães Rosa. The translation of Der Fluss is an outstanding rendering of the original poem. Curt Meyer-Clason died in 2012 at the age of 101 years. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 9 October 1994, p. 26. 222

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video, holography, animation, and interactivity. My contribution to the BEC consisted predominantly of composing commissioned works of electronic music that were part of media theater productions. The following works were the result: Rasender Stillstand (1992), Book of the Air (1993), Global Village— Hidden Pathways (1993), Observation Suite (1996), Observation Environment (1996), and Märchen aus dem Metakino: Das Choreoskop (1997). At the end of the 1990s, the BEC was granted its own room in a movie theater complex in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, where it has run the multimedia theater “Animax” since about the year 2000. A focal point of this concept is cultural education projects for children and youth with interactive and multimedia art.27 Composing for media theater is an interactive process involving collaboration with other artists, technicians, and scientists and requires one to adapt to a collective production environment. For this, the BEC provided a virtual setup for the projects in line with its overall artistic conception. Moreover, in some cases aesthetic strategies with regard to content, form, material, and desired effect were specified for the composition. That is to say, one composes in dialog with partners—humans and apparatuses. The production of the works required mastery of the tools of electronic music and the readiness to integrate other artistic ideas and media in the composition: dance/choreography, visual media art, interactive motion graphics, and video. With the BEC, Bodo Lensch pursued the concept of an interactive environment in which the space is integrated into the performance and becomes a medium of embodied interaction with the environment. A key to making this feasible is the use of sensors in the room for capturing data that is used in artistic processes that generate sound, image, movement, graphics, and dance. Initially, the BEC room was equipped with motion detectors on the basis of light sensors, later replaced by infrared. In addition to the sensor system, the BEC provided the room with an 8-channel sound space system. Eight speakers were distributed evenly on the perimeter of the rectangular room: two placed on each of the four sides. Later, the sound space system was expanded to 24 channels with three groups of eight speakers arranged on three levels around the perimeter of the room: one on the floor, one at ca. 2 m high, and the other one at ca. 4 m high. This setup allows for the spatialization of the sound in three dimensions. In 1996, the BED installed a computer-controlled spherical sound space system with 24 speakers surrounding the listener. Special dedicated hardware and software was developed that significantly improved the possibilities of 3D sound spatialization. It was possible to 27

Cf. http://www.animax.eu [accessed July 1, 2013]. 223

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define the location of sound sources and control discrete or continuous 3D movements. One could design sound events that moved organically through the space. Rasender Stillstand (1992) is an interactive media performance for electronic music, dance (Ursina Minck), and light (Lu Mettelsieffen). The electronic music consists of sound samples that are activated by the motion of dance and projected into the 8-channel sound space. The motion of dance is what controls the light. Book of the Air (1993) is an interactive installation with holography and video by Doris Vila, American artist-in-residence at the BEC. The installation consists of five holograms hung in the room, whose lighting is controlled by the movements of the viewers so that the view of the holography changes according to their position. Interactive videos were also projected onto the holograms. The movement of the viewers likewise triggered the interactive electronic music that I composed for Book of the Air. The music is closely linked to the holographic installation, but at the same time creates an independent sonic layer flowing through the 8-channel sound space. The material of the music consists of samples of speech and breathing sounds provided by Doris Vila that were transformed and mixed in different ways with sounds from the Yamaha FM synthesizer and other synthetic sounds generated with computer software. My collaboration with Doris Vila continued in the same year with the work Global Village— Hidden Pathways (1993), an interactive multimedia performance based on an original idea from Bodo Lensch. Doris Vila designed an installation with holography and video for the interactive performance stage; I composed the music for a singer (Daniela Gierock) and electronic sounds. The singer used the interactive stage as an instrument, activating the sensors with choreographic movements that control the holograms, the light, and the electronic music. Global Village—Hidden Pathways sounds like a speaking room. The interactive musical events projected into the multi-channel sound space give the impression of pathways in a labyrinth made of speech, light, sound, and noise. The last three works resulting from my collaboration with the BEC presented me with complex technical and artistic challenges. Observation Suite—Szenarien für Tänzer und virtuelle Akteuren (1996) represents the vision of a multimedia theater as an interdisciplinary form between art, science, and technology. A dancer plays on a stage and interacts with a world inhabited by virtual organisms in the form of eyes. The American dancer James Saunders created for this the character of an old, highly decorated general, who disintegrates into the world of eyes. The piece premiered in the Bonner Biennale in 1996 shortly thereafter James Saunders’ life was tragically 224

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cut short.28 The Brazilian Lina do Carmo took the dancer part in the second staging of Observation Suite, while I took over the direction. The interactive sound space installation Observation Environment (1996) was produced immediately afterwards with sound material and computer graphics from Observation Suite. The following year I finished my collaboration with the Bonner Entwicklungswerkstatt (BEC) with the composition of the electronic music for the installation Märchen aus dem Metakino: Das Choreoskop (Tales from a Meta-Cinema: The Choreoscope) 1997, with interactive motion graphics and sound space. The composition created an interactive game with excerpts of popular music from different parts of the world assigned to different regions of a virtual map projected on the floor and activated by people walking through the installation. The music was conceived as a prototype for a children’s opera, an idea that BEC pursued in the following years with the Animax concept. Observation Suite represented a more elaborate stage of the media-musictheater project that the BEC had pursued since the beginning of the 1990s. The music created a sound collage on the basis of a large number of samples, electronic sounds, and noises that were activated and transformed interactively by the dancer and projected into the 3D sound space. Notes on Observation Suite: Electronic Music for Dance in a Multimedia and Interactive Environment 29 The mechanical and electronic reproducibility of music opens the door to its dissemination. Digital technology goes a step further: It renders sound mundane. Anything we hear can become music now: every sound, speech or noise ever caused by humans or nature... even all music itself. It is this possibility that the music industry has long since recognized. Any piece of music taken from a CD can be sampled and easily mutated. It can be transformed using digital technology and or remixed with other pieces. In this way, music often seems very arbitrary like many other industrially manufactured products. 28

29

James Saunders fell 30 ft. to his death while performing a character inspired by the mythical figure of Icarus on the stairs of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. More than 500 people were watching the solo performance and saw him falling down, silent and graceful. Assuming that his fall was part of the dance performance, some people were upset when the show stopped and requested the reimbursement of their tickets. The following notes were written in 1996 for premiere of Observation Suite. They provide insight on compositional ideas of that time, including the technological background and the aesthetic choices in regard to the media-music-theater. The provocative tone of the original text has been kept. 225

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Wherein lies musical originality today? Is it all more or less a compilation of existing material or is it possible to create something new? In my opinion something new can be created—but only through a deep and honest engagement with the material. The sound should not only be impressive, but also fragile; the music should express not only fascination, but doubt, critique, and passion in the broadest sense. The composition of Observation Suite can be seen as evidence of this. It consists of myriad sound sources such as rain and thunder, human noises, machine noises, animal sounds such as pig, lion, tiger and bird, vocal music from indigenous people in Brazil, piano and orchestra music by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as original soundtracks from television broadcasts, recordings from my earlier works Sodoma and Leçon des Voyelles, and much more. Sometimes the original sounds are easily recognized, sometimes only with difficulty. Very often the sounds are transformed through time stretching, so that their microscopic structure can be traced. It is like slow motion in the auditory domain, as subtle nuances of the sound spectrum and the transformation of their components become clearer and more musical. Another procedure is cross-synthesis, in which two sounds mutually influence each other and their characteristics are changed by every possible crossover and modulation. When the sounds of a factory building are filtered through the harmonic structure of a Bach prelude, one is given the impression that machines can sing, too. Real sound mutations can be generated through cross-synthesis. The structure of Observation Suite was developed on two levels. The first is a 4-channel tape, where the musical elements provide the temporal and spatial framework for the dance performance. The music creates a series of sound spaces with different acoustic and psychological qualities. The sounds evoke associations and memories; the listener has the opportunity to pave his own way through several simultaneous layers of sound events. The second level is the interactive music, which consists of nearly one hundred samples of filtered animal sounds that are transformed and in the course of the piece are selected and played by the dancer. The dancer’s movements and gestures captured by a camera and digitally processed are integrated into the programmatic score; the sound material is made available for the interactive game according to the compositional context. In this sense, the dancer becomes a kind of interpreter. His activity and movements shape the flow of the music. Just as a violinist masters the art of using the bow and the fingering of his violin, the dancer must master the techniques of the media stage. In contrast to traditional ballet where the dancer reacts to the music, in this case he participates in producing it. He is a musician and like a musician, must learn to play their instrument. 226

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The possibilities of media-music-theater present the composer with many challenges. The spatiality of the sound becomes a musical parameter; the music conception has to strongly engage—much more than before—the sound space. Through the close structural connections between acoustic and optic events, new categories of perception can be created: music becomes visual; sight becomes an extension of hearing. Moreover, the concept of the instrument must be re-examined as the interface between the human and the machine shifts to the center of attention. Everything that an individual can bring into motion through his body and mind is an expression of life and a language that still needs to be invented, also musically.

6. Audiovisual Media: Sound, Image and Space The popularization of digital technology has accelerated the convergence of sound and image in artistic creation. Audio and video recording, editing, and processing can be accomplished with the computer using similar techniques, sometimes integrated in the same virtual environment. Both the digital audio workstation (DAW) and the digital video workstation support this integrative approach by providing the artist with a set of hardware and software devices, tools, and plug-ins. Moreover, the technology available to individuals can practically match the quality standards of today’s professional audio and video production. Music video emerged as a filmed version of a song performance and became a mass consumption product in the 1980s thanks to MTV. From the media of film and television, music video has migrated to the internet, whereby its aesthetics has evolved from being a provider of visual illustration of a song into a medium for shaping and sharing individual and collective behaviors, attitudes, identities, and political views. Launched in 2005, YouTube has taken the mystique out of the production of music video, converting it into a global art object. Anyone can make a music video, upload it to the internet, and eventually be discovered or acknowledged as an artist. YouTube is the medium that accomplishes the worldwide banalization of music video; it redraws the boundaries between the system of art and the system of mass communication while unfolding a new kind of creativity, which conveys the ambivalence of information and communication technologies. Global networking creates new forms of freedom but also sets new boundaries for it, opening new possibilities for individual and collective exchange while at the same time developing new strategies for monitoring and controlling these exchanges, such as the mechanisms that are embedded in certain websites 227

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such as Google. Music video is the emblematic archetype of a form that emerges from the convergence of film and music and transforms itself into a medium for shaping new audiovisual forms in the current digital society. The music video that arose out of the tradition of serious electronic music is an intermedia form coupling electronic sounds with image projection, which enjoys growing interest and is developing into a sub-genre of electroacoustic music. The audiovisual merge seems to have the potential to make the music more accessible to a broader audience. But here one has to raise the following question: Does the multimedia intensify the sensorial experience and make the music more attractive, or does it simply provide a distraction that reinforces the patterns of entertainment and diversion of everyday life? Whatever the answer may be, embedding the music into an audiovisual form provides the listener with an immersive experience that is functionally linked to the situation of the movie theater: the music is projected into the room through loudspeakers, the sound surrounds the bodies, while the image projected onto a screen and focuses the audience’s attention on an illuminated surface. The electroacoustic music video relating sound, image, and space is primarily an immersive experience that can be also integrated with other forms, such as with live music performance (vocal, instrumental, and or electroacoustic music), dance, acting, or installation and so on. Traditionally, the audiovisual art is structurally coupled with the space both as physical and social medium. The immersive experience relates physical presence to social presence. By contrast, watching an electroacoustic music video on a computer, internet, or mobile device is mainly an individual experience, in which the embodied experience is dispersed along a spectrum of possibilities emerging from the interaction with the technological medium. Translating a work of art into another medium is an operation that changes its meaning according to the characteristics of that particular medium. Let’s examine how the meaning of space changes in the translation of electroacoustic music from the physical to the virtual environment. Space is a structural element of electroacoustic music. The acoustic properties of the performance hall play an important role in determining how the listener perceives the music. Reverberation for example, can significantly impact both the performance and the listening experiences. It affects the clarity and liveness of the sound and the localization of the sound source. In the case of electroacoustic music, the listening experience also depends on the quality of the sound system: the audio equipment, the characteristics of the speakers, and their distribution throughout the performance space. Sound spatialization, a crucial aspect of electroacoustic music performance, is in fact a virtual construction of sound space; the virtual space can be generated by 228

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the composition itself as with multi-channel electroacoustic music, or added as a new layer of aural experience in the performance as with acousmatic music performed with loudspeaker orchestra. Historically, an electroacoustic music composition was conceived to be performed in a concert hall with the goal of achieving the best possible listening experience while taking advantage of state-of-the-art audio and sound technology. However, the popularization of media such as computer and mobile devices has introduced new channels of music distribution and listening situations. Digital audio technology is rapidly evolving; audio data compression is being widely used for improving data storage and transmission on the internet. The well-established MP3 standard for instance, analyzes the audio signal according to a psychoacoustic model, taking advantage of certain limitations of human hearing such as the masking effect, to reduce the amount of encoded audio information. Audio data compression, in comparison to the compact disk format (44,100 16-bit samples per second), results in a loss of audio quality. But encoding is only one aspect impacting the perception. There is also the listening environment, the quality of the audio equipment, and many other factors. Listening to music with headphones or earphones, which is now taken for granted, imposes the need to reconstruct spatial hearing. In fact, digital audio applications are based on notions first explored in the field of computer music, including sound spatialization, which becomes increasingly important in many contexts of technologically mediated sound as a simulation of a virtual acoustic space. We are currently in a stage where digital technology is basically used for the purpose of simulation and emulation of analog processes. This is evident in the field of sound synthesis with digital synthesizers developing analog algorithms and in the field of sound spatialization through the way the medium space shapes the construction of virtual sound spaces. However, we also see differences appearing as we distinguish new forms that aim to reduce the complexity of the digital medium. Data compression is an example. The convergence of sound and image through digital technology can also be seen as a process of selection that actualizes the potential of the audiovisual medium and creates meaningful distinctions. Reducing complexity requires an understanding of the self-reproducing process that is historically given. It follows that the technical complexity of the audiovisual and intermedia composition can be unraveled most successfully in an interdisciplinary structure. One can argue vis-a-vis Flusser, that it is not very fruitful—and practically impossible—to access a comprehensive competency in new technology as an individual. The required creativity should not come from a single author, but from a dialog involving the interaction between humans 229

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and apparatuses and shaping both the internal and external references of the work. The challenge consists of setting up the dialog creatively through collaboration rather than with individuals. According to Flusser, the digital medium “will lift the production process out of the competence of the individual creator into the competence of the interpersonal dialogue” (Flusser 2011, 102).

7. Music Video, Audiovisual Installation, Music Laser Installation My collaboration with visual artists Inge Kamps and Rainer Plum resulted in audiovisual works including music videos and installations with music, video, and laser that seek a synthesis of the domains of perception. They were designed for the concert situation, but the necessity of disseminating and documenting the works constitutes the need for medial translation. I became acquainted with Inge Kamps in 1995 when we both participated in the “Babel” group, a project by artists from Cologne for developing collaborative work. Hans-Ulrich Humpert, composer and director of the electronic studio at the Musikhochschule in Cologne (my teacher), had invited me there, and he likewise collaborated with Inge Kamps at a later date. The music video The Journey was created in 1995 as the first result of my collaboration with Inge Kamps and premiered in the event “Best of Babel” at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. Two other music videos followed—Einblick (1995) and Zeit-Wände II (1997)—as well as the music video installation Zeit-Wände VII (2003). For The Journey (1995; 9:16”) I used part of the electronic music composed for the multimedia work Global Village—Hidden Pathways, performed in 1993 at the BEC. On the basis of the electronic music, Inge Kamps created a new videography in 1995 with abstract images derived from real source material in four motifs—water, earth, oscillograph, and mind-machine. The visual composition develops processes of alienation by building abstract textures and patterns in synchrony with the music. The aesthetics of The Journey emphasizes the correlation of auditory and visual perception. Two layers of experience are meant to stand over against each other as equals and at the same time create a close structural connection, by which an intermedial unity results. With the synchronism of auditory and visual perception, the electronic music video pursues the concept of a time-space synesthesia. From my point of view, The Journey is a successful example of the exploration of synesthetic perception in audiovisual art. The composition received an award from the Internationaler Videokunstpreis SWF/ZKM in 1997. 230

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The electronic music video Einblick (1995; 1:14”) developed a similar principle of time-space synesthesia focused on rhythm. Einblick is a short piece that addresses the multilayered, dynamic networking of elements that shape the experience of now. I composed Einblick parallel to the production of Migration (1995-97) in the studio for electronic music of the WDR. The sound material consists of samples from speech of different lengths, from fragments of a few milliseconds long to isolated phonemes, syllables, and words. The composition assembles this material in a 12-track collage that builds a dense structure of polyrhythms with a pulsing, vibrating character. The videography by Inge Kamps depicts an urban landscape with short sequences and fragments of images oscillating synchronously with the electronic music. The electronic music video Zeit-Wände II (1997; 8:50”) belongs to a cycle of works by Kamps focusing on the perception of time. The images were shot in an abandoned battery factory in Cologne-Kalk that was converted into a residential building where Inge also resided. The videography was based on time-lapse photography that documented the transformation of the postindustrial environment. The music creates acceleration processes with rhythmic sound sequences. The concept of time-space synesthesia, which was already applied in the composition of The Journey, is related to the idea of a transverse time axis connecting and unifying different levels of time perception. The music video installation Zeit-Wände VII premiered in 2003 in the box girder of the Deutz bridge in Cologne in the context of the exposition “Drittes Ufer” [The Third Bank of the River].30 Alienation of the mass media reality and the perception of temporal patterns are the subjects of the audiovisual composition that uses material extracted from TV and movies in combination with electronic music. The black and white video clips, mostly footage of people including celebrities and politicians, are projected with five video projectors placed next to each other, producing a single continuous elongated video image with five segments totaling about 15 m in length and about 2.2 m in height. The video clips are set up as short sequences that are played as loops. The visual composition explores the visual patterns resulting from the temporal and spatial arrangement of the video sequences on the different segments of the video image. The selection of video clips, cutting techniques, type of repetitions, and arrangement of video sequences in the five-segmented video image creates rhythmic structures that are linked to the electronic music. The basic technique of the visual composition consists of projecting the same video clip sequentially on different screens separated by a short time 30

The title of the exhibition is taken from the short story “The Third Bank of the River” by the Brazilian author João Guimarães Rosa. 231

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interval of a couple of frames. This creates a visual pattern with a rhythm—the time interval between the same clip projected on different screens—and a movement—the arrangement of the clips on the different screens. Examples of such rhythmic movements include directional patterns with the same clip moving successively from left to right or from right to the left along the five screens, symmetric patterns with the clip moving in opposite directions, and alternating patterns with the clips arranged in a specific manner. The musical composition also develops rhythmic patterns that emphasize the dialectic between the perception of continuous time and discrete timeevents. The musical segments fade in out of nothing, draw the consciousness into synchronizing the images with the sounds or vice-versa, and fade out into the silence. This process is repeated several times. The electronic sounds have a granular quality, which together with the rhythmic character of the music, contributes to correlate acoustic and visual perception. The electronic composition was conceived to integrate into the acoustic environment of the bridge—the traffic overhead, which reverberates in the box girder—and thus plays with the idea of the ambivalence of aural perception; the consciousness oscillates between the familiar and the strange, between the real acoustics of the environment and the virtual acoustics of the music. The audiovisual installation creates visual and auditory windows to access microscopic intervals in the time-space continuum. It invites the observer to experience a sort of time dilation in response to the audiovisual stimuli. The work of Rainer Plum, a visual artist who also lived in Cologne, explored the flow, form, and movement of laser light in space. We start working together in 1999 in the Electronic Music Studio of the WDR on experiments with converting laser signal into acoustic signal. We were interested in synchronizing laser and sound and tried to use the laser beam as an analog oscillator for generating sounds that would be controlled by the laser light, so that an organic, synchronous connection would be created between them. Actually, the system worked but the sonic result was not satisfactory. Instead, we took another direction and started to design integrative patterns that allow synchronization between laser and music at the perceptual level. The first result of this research was the laser projection that Rainer Plum created for the 8-channel electronic music Projektion (1999), which I was producing at that time in the WDR studio. This collaboration was presented in the Museum for Modern Art in Liège, Belgium, in November 1999.31 31

The piece that was presented in Liège was the first version of Projektion in 8-channel. The final version of Projektion in 12-channel was created in 2000 and premiered in the Institute of Musicology at the University of Cologne in February 2001. 232

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The following work, Streaming (2001), which we developed together from scratch, is the more significant result of our collaboration. Streaming is an electronic music and laser installation that explores the idea of constructing a monumental immersive space made of light and sound. The work was commissioned by the German IT company RAG-Informatik and was presented at a business event in the soccer stadium Schalke Arena in Gelsenkirchen in November 2001. The installation took place on the soccer pitch itself; four sources of laser light were projected onto the fog that filled the whole space of the arena; the music was played from loudspeakers located both on the ground and on the stands. The audience moved around on the soccer pitch and marveled at the interplay of laser images and electronic sounds, which had transformed the huge space of the arena into a virtual cathedral. The three-dimensional flow of the laser installation in combination with the spacious electronic sounds seemed to create an organic world of synthetic forms and movements. The audience was so impressed that we had to repeat the show the same night. A journalist described the overall experience as follows: In the swirling fog, which served as a projection surface, blazing green laser beams roamed through the arena as lines and as wide-ranging surfaces, piled up into pyramids of light, suddenly tipped over, and spun with thrilling vortexes the dimensions into confusion. The guests were fascinated. And people asked Plum: How real is that, what our eyes are seeing?32 Streaming plays with the aesthetics of illusion, embracing the idea of constructing reality using synthetic and artificial means through processes of both mimesis and simulation. According to Kamper, “mimesis is physical; simulation works with machines. Simulation replaces a reality with deceptively similar images. Mimesis creates a reality through physical gestures that give expression to wishes” (Kamper 1991, 17). The laser performance has a mimetic character in that quasi-physical objects such as lines, surfaces, and spaces are generated, and set in motion in synchrony with the music. The music sets the pace, provides the rhythm for the temporal form. It fills the space with vibrations and creates the ground from which the laser arises. The laser performance was designed according to the properties of sound and the time structure of music. The electronic music produces a continual flow 32

Bernd Aulich, “Arena glüht im Licht der Laser. Kunst-Spektakel: Besucher begeistert”, Recklinghäuser Zeitung, November 10, 2001. 233

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of sound objects and events, which arise from within and are continually in motion. The music simulates acoustic spaces, decelerations, and accelerations. The organic flow of the music compensates the quasi-automatic stream of the laser performance. The audience experiences Streaming as an immersive ritual of synesthesia. The interplay of laser light and electronic sound provides an embodied interaction with the environment that integrates the self into the audiovisual experience.

8. Interdisciplinary Composition and Interactivity I argue that the term polyphony denotes the structuring of multiple, simultaneous and independent sound events producing a temporal process of meaning.33 This concept of polyphony assumes that multiplicity, simultaneity, and independence are intrinsic qualities of the acoustic environment and thus polyphony creates a difference by articulating these qualities through a musical system of meaning that distinguishes itself from the environment. Polyphony is therefore the embodied interaction with the acoustic environment that relates the polyphonic reality of sound phenomenon to the contextual interconnections that define musical experience. Polyphonic thinking broadens the horizon for connecting the materiality of sound perceived as subjective qualities to the domain of artistic and social interactions. This notion of polyphony, as earlier discussed, is also linked with the concepts of plurality and heterogeneity. Guattari proposes a polyphonic analysis of subjectivity on the basis of the “ethic-aesthetic paradigm”, which emphasizes the relations of alterity between individual and collective units and offers an alternative to scientific and philosophical models. Guattari’s polyphonic subjectivity embraces the idea that subjectivity is not restricted to human consciousness but is at the crossroads of “heterogeneous machinic universes” framing the interaction between human beings and technology. In Guattari’s terms, subjectivity shifts from the human consciousness to the “machinic assemblages” of contemporary society.34 Polyphonic subjectivity underlies the concept of interdisciplinary composition, which embodies the heterogeneity of the machinic assemblages as aesthetic principle. Interdisciplinary composition deals with the complexity 33

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For an extensive account of this view of polyphony see my article “Polyphony and Embodiment: A Critical Approach to the Theory of Autopoiesis” (Chagas 2005). For an account of “machinic heterogenesis” and “machinic assemblage” see Guattari (1992; 1993); see also my article “Polyphony and Technology in Interdisciplinary Composition” (Chagas 2007). 234

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of contemporary artistic creation and the notions of multimedia and intermedia. We face the challenge of dissolving boundaries and integrate the different media—sound, image, speech, music, film, video, body, and space. Yet we also aim to reinforce the ethical principles of autonomy and alterity. Interdisciplinary composition must reflect our commitment to differentiation in a double sense: at the structural level of the composition itself through the differentiations resulting from recursive coupling and uncoupling of media and forms at the ethical-aesthetical level of the work and through the reiteration of human integrity and individual and collective autonomy. Interdisciplinary composition reinforces the belief that human existence embraces multiple and heterogeneous forms of autonomy. The following are three audiovisual and multimedia works that engage with the concept of interdisciplinary composition in different ways: Circular Roots (2004), Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder [Songs of the Eye] 2005, and Corpo, Carne e Espírito [Body, Flesh and Spirit] 2008.35 Circular Roots (2004) is an interdisciplinary composition for violin, electroacoustic sounds, video, and real-time image processing. It was created in collaboration with the Brazilian forestry engineer and occasional video artist Luiz Carlos Joels, the violinist Izumi Okobo, and the Centre de Recherches et Formation Musicales de Wallonie (CRFMW) in Liège, Belgium. Circular Roots explores gestural control by the violin in that gestures are captured by means of two sensors attached to the bow and the body of the performer and used to process digital images projected on a screen. Patrik Delges, a computer scientist working at the CRFMW, designed the Max/Jitter patch for interactive image processing. Interactivity occurs only at the level of image shaping; there is no live electronics or live processing of the violin sound. The fixed electroacoustic music is produced in surround 5.1. The violinist synchronizes the live performance with the electroacoustic sounds by means of a click track. At the premiere of Circular Roots at the Festival Ars Musica in Brussels in March 2004, Izumi Okobo stood next to the screen so that the violin performance and the interactive image projection would constitute a unity. Additionally, a DVD version of Circular Roots was 35

For the relationship between polyphony and technology in Circular Roots and Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder see “Polyphony and Technology in Interdisciplinary Composition” (Chagas 2007); for the concept and the creative process of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder see “The Blindness Paradigm: The Invisibility and Visibility of the Body” (Chagas 2006); for a short description of Corpo, Carne e Espírito see “Corpo, Carne e Espírito: A Digital Oratorio” (Chagas 2008) and “The Relation of Visuals to Music” (Birringer 2008); for a detailed account of the visual composition and performance see “Corpo, Carne e Espírito: Musical Visuality of the Body” (Birringer 2009a) and “After Bacon: The Music of Digital Flesh and the Pornography of Sensation” (Birringer 2009b). 235

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made with the recording of the live music and the video processing using the output of the computer (no footage of the performance on the stage.) This is an independent work that incorporates the performance as an embodied experience and projects it onto the context of the film.36 The music and video narrative of Circular Roots is a loose adaptation of the short story “The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges. A man comes to the ruins of a temple, which has been devoured by ancient fires and with the help of the God of Fire, creates a son entirely through dreaming who looks like a real person; later the man discovers that he is an appearance himself, that someone else has dreamed him. Like all Borges’ stories, “The Circular Ruins” has a multiplicity of meanings. Two themes have particularly interested me, both symbolized by the dream inside a dream: creation as a circular process and self-referential recursive thinking. The piece reflects on these themes at many levels. The video shows the transformation of the natural environment of the Brazilian Amazon, documenting the destruction of the rainforest and some aspects of the life of its inhabitants. We see, for instance, a cleansing ritual held by a modern Brazilian Indian, the traditional manufacture of manioc flour in the countryside, and the colorful boats anchored in the harbor of Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas. The musical composition generates interdisciplinary polyphony by exploring the relation between instrumental gestures produced by the violinist and captured by sensors, and the technological gestures generated by the digital interfacing of physical gestures and the mapping strategies for image processing. The accelerometer sensor attached to the bottom of the violin bow tracks the changes in the speed of the bow in both the horizontal and vertical axes. The flexometer sensor attached to the violinist’s right elbow joint tracks the expansion and contraction of the right arm, which holds the bow. In the composition of the violin part, I developed musical patterns designed to activate the sensors: for instance, musical passages requiring movements of speeding up or slowing down the bow for triggering the accelerometer and musical passages across different strings causing the frequent bending of the right arm triggering the flexometer. The score defines a certain number of temporal windows for image processing. The information acquired from the sensors is mapped onto typical video effects—such as feedback, zoom, color, and opacity, which occurs only inside the boundaries of the temporal windows specified by the score. The sensor data is interpreted as dynamic gestures expressing the changing of some quality over time. The systematic 36

Circular Roots received an award for “Best Sound Experiment” at the film festival “Flor” in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2005. 236

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use of feedback and recursivity for sound and image shaping emphasizes circularity as the main idea of the composition. As pointed out by Wittgenstein, gesture can be an instance of musical understanding and help to explain what someone thinks about music. Gesture makes visible the interiority of musical understanding; “sometimes the simplest explanation is a gesture”, says Wittgenstein (CV, 69). The aesthetics of Circular Roots treats gesture as the unifying principle of the interdisciplinary composition. The interplay between different kinds of gestures mediated by technology seeks to make visible the potential of “structural coupling” of the human with a complex and heterogeneous environment. The question here is how to shape a creative approach to musical gesture that takes into account complexity both at the level of traditional music practice (for example, the complexity of playing the violin) and at the level of new digital instruments and interfaces. There is a necessity to overcome the limitation of a thinking that treats information as separated from the body and to develop comprehensive approaches for exploring gesture as a process involving “multiple levels of interconnected, sensorimotor activity” (Varela, Thompson and Rosh 1991, 206) that accounts for the coupling of the human and the technical in a complex and heterogeneous environment. Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder [Songs of the Eyes], is an interdisciplinary composition for soprano, electronic music in surround 5.1, dance, and digital video in collaboration with the choreographer and media artist Johannes Birringer and the dancer Veronica Endo. As with Circular Roots, a live performance version was first developed for soprano, electronic sounds, dancer, and video projection and followed up with a DVD. The performance took place in July 2005 in the context of the “Interaktionslabor”,37 the third time that I participated in this international workshop. In 2003, I created Visionsraum, a sound space installation with interactive text projection and in 2004, Blind City, a prototype for an interactive opera installation also in collaboration with Johannes Birringer and other artists (cf. Birringer 2006).38 Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder engages thematically with the novel Ensaio sobre a Cegueira (Blindness) by the Portuguese author and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago. In this story, Saramago imagines a contemporary city where 37

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The “Interaktionslabor” is a “laboratory for interactive media, design, and performance, on the site of the former coal mine Göttelborn (Saarland)” founded in 2003 and directed by Johannes Birringer (cf. http://interaktionslabor.de [accessed July 1, 2013]). For a detailed description of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder see “The Blindness Paradigm: The Invisibility and Visibility of the Body” (Chagas 2006), and “Polyphony and Technology in Interdisciplinary Composition” (Chagas 2007). I limit myself here to discussing some aspects that are relevant for interdisciplinary composition. 237

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everyone loses their sight. Blindness spreads rapidly like an epidemic and provokes social collapse. Life is reduced to the basic instinct of survival. Saramago’s metaphor of blindness points to the vulnerability of a society on the edge of chaos and hopelessness. My approach to Saramago’s narrative was inspired by Schubert’s seminal song cycle Winterreise. I imagined a cycle of intermedia songs that explore the relations between sound, image, and dance in the unique environment of the abandoned coalmine, where the Interaktionslabor was located. The intermedia song cycle focused on the main character of Saramago’s novel, the doctor’s wife, the only person who can see in the world where everyone has gone blind. The dancer performed the role of this main character. I composed the electronic music of Canções dos Olhos/ Augenlieder with the software Max on the basis of two kinds of samples: the recording of a soprano voice singing four arias that I composed with texts from Blindness39 and the recording of my own voice reading five of my own poems inspired by Saramago’s novel.40 The technique of granular synthesis plays a significant role in the composition both for processing the sample material and for shaping the overall texture of the electronic music.41 Johannes Birringer’s choreographic and visual composition with dance and video explores the sensory deprivation and recovery of a woman who finds herself suddenly in an imaginary city where the people have become blind and disappeared. Birringer emphasized the ambivalent reactions of the woman: we do not know what she sees or cannot see and can only follow her physical and emotional experience of the unseen. We are drawn into a musical world and a gloomy industrial landscape, which links the movements of the body with the blindness of the inter-activity in such a world. The DVD version of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder is a hybrid form between dance and music video, in which images of the dancer influence perception while the music develops its own story. The aesthetics of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder reflects on interactivity and collaboration as distinguishing features of the interdisciplinary work of art. In contrast to the prevalent discourse of interactivity focused on physical aspects of technology such as the digital interfaces and the human-machine 39

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The soprano Hannah Morrison sang the arias in the live performance of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder in Göttelborn in July 2005; the soprano April Crane recorded the arias for the DVD version. I wrote these poems for my chamber music work Canções dos Olhos [Songs of the Eyes] (2005-09) for soprano, piano, and cello. Apart from sharing the same title and using the same text, the works are completely different. I used the set of external objects and abstractions developed by Nathan Wolek for Max – granular toolkit. http://www.lowkeydigitalstudio.com/2007/03/granular-toolkit-v1-49/ (accessed July 1, 2013). 238

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relationship, I define interactivity as the embodiment of the collaborative experience that materializes the creation process in the form of the work itself.42 This concept embraces both the arrangements of heterogeneous media that can be assembled by the work of art as well as the dynamic of personal relationships occurring in the creation process. In the beginning of the 21st century, interactivity emerges thus as a model of dialog communication in a broad sense, reflecting on the ethical and political dimension or the relationship between human beings and machines.

9. Digital Oratorio: Corpo, Carne e Espírito The digital oratorio Corpo, Carne e Espírito (Body, Flesh and Spirit) 2008, is a further collaboration with Johannes Birringer. The work explores intermedia relationships between music and digital performance with dance and film. I suggested to Birringer the idea of developing a new work for the stage inspired by the paintings and life of Francis Bacon (1909-92) on the basis of the music that I composed for the choreographic theater Francis Bacon by Kresnik/Ivo in 1993. In contrast to this earlier work, the aim of the new endeavor was not to translate Bacon’s universe into a dance performance, but rather to produce a new interpretation of Bacon’s universe, integrating the live performance of the music into a concept of audiovisual composition that explores digital technology and multimedia. Thematically, the piece was to reflect on issues of the body in contemporary society. The first steps were to select pieces from Francis Bacon to put together a specific sequence and develop a concept of audiovisual performance. The music of Francis Bacon for an ensemble of three singers (soprano, countertenor, baritone), five musicians (string quartet and percussion), and electronic sounds—consisted of more than 20 single pieces featuring different configurations of electronic music, solo voices and solo instruments, vocal trio and string trio, string quartet with and without percussion, etc. I extensively revised the score of Francis Bacon, which until then only existed as manuscript, converted it to computer notation, and supplemented it with detailed performance instructions.43

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For an extensive discussion of interactivity see “The Blindness Paradigma: The Invisibility and Visibility of the Body” (Chagas 2006c), and “Polyphony and Technology in Interdisciplinary Composition” (Chagas 2007). Through the revision I became more conscious of some of the particulars of the original composition of Francis Bacon, which had been accomplished in a very short period of time. 239

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As title for the new piece I suggested Corpo, Carne e Espírito [Body, Flesh and Spirit], which came to mind while reading Deleuze’s book Francis Bacon: Logic of Sensation (Deleuze 2004).44 Deleuze argues that Francis Bacon’s painting constitutes “a zone of indiscernibility or undecidability between man and animal”, which he associates with the entire body, “but the body insofar as it is flesh or meat” (Deleuze 2004, 20). The flesh is the condition of the body that links the human with the animal and with the spirit: “Man becomes animal, but not without the animal becoming spirit at the same time” (Deleuze 2004). The vision of the piece is also one of intermedia translation. The audiovisual digital performance takes over the role of indiscernibility that with Bacon is symbolized by the flesh. In Francis Bacon’s paintings, the flesh is also that which connects with the bone: “the bone as the material structure of the body, the flesh as the bodily material of the Figure” (Deleuze 2004) as with the connection of the mouth with the teeth in paintings such as Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) and the famous Study after Velázque’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953). In Corpo, Carne e Espírito the flesh is a metaphor of the intention to create diverse audiovisual connections. The indiscernibility unfolds in the intermedial association of music, digital images, and live performance. Corpo, Carne e Espirito was developed jointly over a period of several months. Birringer envisioned the digital oratorio concept of “choreographic scenarios”: sequences of digital images projected onto three screens hung beside each other on the back of the stage above and behind the performers. The screens form a concave triptych, a visual representation found again and again with Bacon. The digital images were pre-edited and their projection was improvised live with interactive software patches (Isadora) during the performance. The premier took place at the FIT Theater Festival in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in June 2008. I conducted the ensemble of three singers (soprano, countertenor, baritone), five musicians (string quartet and percussion), and electronic sounds. Birringer’s concept integrated the musicians into the digital performance environment with the projected images. During the performance, Birringer sat like a video director on the edge of the stage and operated the computer himself in order to manipulate the digital images in real time. Corpo, Carne e Espírito links the form of the musical oratorio with the visual form of cinema. One hears a staged performance of the composition with singers, instrumentalists, and electronic music, while 44

Especially the fourth chapter: “Body, Meat, and Spirit: Becoming-Animal”, pp. 19-24. The book was first published in 1981 but I hadn’t read it when I composed Francis Bacon in 1993. 240

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watching an interactive digital film with live music. In order to highlight the quality of this novel, intermedia connection between music, performance, and digital images as a genre, we called the work a digital oratorio. The main motive of the visual composition according to Birringer, is “soundless” bodies that interact with the music, not as visualization of the music, but as independent objects and events. The question for him was how best to translate painting into digital film. He created a visual counterpoint to the music with images of naked bodies that he had photographed or filmed and associated with different meanings: eroticism, pornography, danger, or violence, for example. Although his translation was inspired by the music, the bodies remain silent and do not respond to the music: “My images are in facto soundless, while the performance of the oratorio creates a full musical world separate from the visual action on the screen” (Birringer 2009a, 244). Birringer explores the spatiality of the image projection in the triptych configuration. The images appear in different combinations on the three projection surfaces and Birringer plays with the possibilities of the three-part, spatial projection. For example, single projection surfaces are selectively activated while the other two remain obscured, the three projection surfaces are occupied by the same image, the three projection surfaces are assigned three different images, or the images moved between the three projection surfaces. Birringer claims to have designed “a kind of orchestral spatialization of the images” (Birringer 2009a, 245). He treats the digital triptych as a cinematographic video sculpture controlled in real time with the music. However, Birringer’s story is all but diegesis, and thus his approach differs from the aesthetics of film music; in other words, he rejects a film-like representation in synchrony with the music. The images are designed as asynchronous objects to be used interactively with the music. They are incomplete without the interaction. In addition, the “unnatural’ movement of the projected bodies also disrupts the rules of representation of diegetic logic” (Birringer 2009a, 245). Corpo Carne e Espírito has eighteen scenes structured in five parts, with the first two parts comprising three pieces each and the last three parts four pieces each. The musical structure develops directional movements such as from electronic to acoustic music, from solo pieces to chamber music pieces with few instruments and finally to pieces with the entire ensemble plus electronic music. Birringer designed the five parts as thematic arenas so that within each one, the music and digital images are played continuously and the pieces seamlessly merge into each other. The five parts are interlinked by four silent entr’actes. At first I envisioned writing new music for them, but then we decided instead to introduce silence as a counterpoint to the continuous music. Birringer created for these silent moments a scenic interlude with the 241

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singers and the digital images. The singers stepped forward to the front of the stage and began to sing silently into a microphone: the mimic and the gestures are seen, but no sound is heard. The image of the mouth and face is captured by a camera and projected onto the triptych screens, sometimes also modified interactively. The microphone only intensified the silence, but the expressions of the mouth, teeth, skin, jaws, and cavities of the throat suggested that the voice could break through at any moment. The entr’actes of Corpo, Carne e Espírito are short dense moments of expectation unfolding a dialectic of proximity and distance. The silence resonates as a space of intimacy in opposition to the audiovisual flow; the representation of mouth and head related to the motifs of Francis Bacon’s paintings and particularly to the theme of the flesh as mediator between body and spirit.

10.

The Aesthetics of Distortion

In Bacon’s Study after Velázque’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) we see a distorted version of the original painting by Diego Velázquez from 1630. The distortion is reinforced by the fact that the figure of the sitting pope is screaming. As Deleuze points out, “the entire body escapes through the screaming mouth” (Deleuze 2004, 25). He suggests that behind Bacon’s scream there is a smile.45 Another example of a “screaming pope” is the untitled painting known as Pope (1954);46 Bacon suggested that here the smile is “hysterical”. According to Deleuze, hysterics is the sign of presence or insistence of a presence: “The insistence of a smile beyond the face and beneath the face. The insistence of a scream that survives the mouth, the insistence of a body that survives the organism, the insistence of transitory organs that survive qualified organs” (Deleuze 2004, 44). Deleuze argues that there is a special relation between painting and hysteria, as painting directly attempts to release the present beneath and beyond representation. By contrast, music does not have to deal with the problem of hysteria because it is already pure presence: 45

46

Bacon said that when he made the pope screaming he was obsessed by Monet. He was attracted by the movements of the mouth and the shape of the mouth and the teeth: “I like, you may say, the glitter and the color that comes from the mouth, and I’ve always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset […] And I’ve always wanted to and never succeeded in painting a smile” (Sylvester 1975, 50). The painting belongs to a private collection in Switzerland. It is to be offered for sale by auction in November 2013 and is expected to fetch $18m-$25m. According to Deleuze’s book, this painting dates from 1955. 242

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music traverses our bodies in profound ways, putting an ear in the stomach, in the lungs, and so on. […] It strips bodies for their inertia of the materiality of their presence: it disembodies body. […] In a sense, music begins where painting ends, and this is what is meant when one speaks of the superiority of music. […] When music sets up its sonorous system and its polyvalent organ, the ear, it addresses itself to something very different from the material reality of bodies. It gives a disembodied and dematerialized body to the most spiritual of entities […] This is why music does not have hysteria as its clinical essence, but is confronted more and more with an galloping schizophrenia. (Deleuze 2004, 47; emphasis in the original) My composition for string quartet and various combinations of violin, viola, and cello makes use of extended techniques such as strongly pressing the bow against the string in order to produce scratching sounds. The main result of these techniques is to create distortion; the pressing of the bow breaks with the symmetry of the normal string sound in that it destroys the periodic structure of the overtones that provides the sensation of a harmonic and pleasing sound traditionally associated with the ideal of beauty. Distortion introduces noise, irregularity, asymmetry, and dissonance. In addition to the extended techniques for strings, the music develops other kinds of asymmetric and irregular sound spectra. For instance, the composition for voices generates phonetic distortion by exploring the characteristics of vowels and consonants with contrasts, oppositions, and transitions. Vowels are associated with symmetric, consonant spectra; consonants with asymmetric, dissonant spectra. Distortion is a musical gesture that I used frequently and in different ways in the composition of Francis Bacon. The effect of distortion correlates with the “zone of indiscernibility” that Deleuze detects in Francis Bacon’s paintings and creates an overall sensation of nervousness that profoundly traverses our bodies: the latent schizophrenia. For a better understanding of the aesthetics of distortion, let us take a brief glance at the beginning of the piece Pope, for soprano, countertenor, baritone, string quartet, and percussion (Figure 1). • In measure 1, the cello plays the pedal of the perfect fifth D3/A3, a double stop with the empty strings I and II (measures 1-9). The baritone starts shortly thereafter at measure 2 by singing a melodic figure in the style of the music of the late Middle Ages or the early Renaissance; the Greek

243

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•

•

•

•

•

47

word “kyrie” triggers the short and pregnant melisma on the vowel [i];47 the melody reaches the fifth degree of the Dorian mode (A3) at measure 3, fourth beat. This is followed by events that completely distort and deform the medieval character of the beginning of the piece: In measure 4, first beat, the viola plays the note G#4 sul ponticello, a dissonant tone to both the D and A tones. The violin I and II start later, playing respectively the natural overtone D6 and C#7. The baritone articulates the consonant [f] as a sonorous inhalation, which is comparable to the gesture of applying pressure with the bow performed by the viola at the fourth beat. Both the sonorous inhalation and the scratching produce noise and dissonance. In measure 5, the baritone begins by articulating the plosive consonant [k] as a hard attack, continues by sustaining the noisy consonant [x], and finishes by repeating the sonorous inhalation on the consonant [f] in the fourth beat, last 16th note. The viola plays rhythmic microtonal variations of the note G#4 followed by scratching sounds combined with the semitone glissandi. The violins I and II distort the natural harmonics by means of glissandi and tremoli that introduce noise and dissonance. Measure 6 repeats the figure of measure 5 but with the consonant [g] for the initial attack, the consonant [r] for the sustain segment, and the sonorous inhalation with the consonant [f] at the end. The scratching sounds of violin I, violin II, and viola are linked to dynamic gestures of pressure (crescendo and sfz). In measure 7, the baritone sings a rhythmic figure, similar to that of the viola in measure 5; the attack with the plosive consonant [k] triggers a rhythmic structure with two pairs of phonemes—[iç] and [uç]—, which are combinations of the vowels [i] and [u] with the fricative consonant [ç]: first four 16th notes alternating between [iç] and [uç], then two quarter notes with transitions between these two sounds, and finally a long [iç] with decrescendo (five quarter notes). The rhythmic alternation between the phonemes achieves an effect of subtractive synthesis, similar to an analog VCF (voltage-controlled filter) modulating a white noise. In measure 8, the cello plays the pedal of fifth (D3/A3), placing the bow as close as possible to the bridge, so that it produces a noisy sound. The viola plays the G#4 on the bridge as well and the violin I and II play overtones D6 and C# sul ponticello. The combination of the grounded fifth (D3/A3) with the dissonant G#4 overtones creates a texture of harmonic ambiguity reinforced by the harsh timbre resulting from playing sul ponticello or The vowels and consonants are indicated in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). 244

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Figure 1: Pope, mm. 1-13.

245

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close to the bridge. The last chord fades out into quasi-silence (ppp) while the non-harmoniousness of the cymbals played with violin bow fades in. This kind of cross-fading creates a directional movement so that the non-harmonious spectrum of the cymbals, which has a certain similarity to the distorted sounds of the strings, seems to emerge from within the ambiguous and deformed body represented by the sound of the strings. The aesthetics of distortion illustrated here with Pope constitutes a zone of indiscernibility or undecidability corresponding to Bacon’s paintings (Deleuze 2004; see above). The distortion provides many ambiguous approaches to capturing forces that are beyond the sonorous. In the case of Pope, we see how the music operates with elementary forces such as attraction, gravitation, pressure, weight, inertia, and germination that are activated by recognizable figures belonging to the medieval musical past such as the perfect fifth, the medieval melody, and the melisma. These figures are not transformed in the sense of motivic development or thematic construction and deconstruction, but are submitted to processes of deformation. As Deleuze points out, “deformation is always bodily, and it is static, it happens at one place; it subordinates movement to force, but it also subordinates the abstract to the Figure” (Deleuze 2004, 50). The aesthetics of distorted ambivalence articulates a dialogizing structure of antagonisms, discrepancy, distances, and divergences. The music operates with figures and their deformations that give birth to abstract forms that turn into complex zones of indiscernibility common to several forms. For example, the movement that introduces noise or dissonant sound in the strings is subordinated to dynamic forces such as the pressure of the bow applied to the string, the position of the bow, the speed of the bow, the scratching on the surfaces of the tam-tam or the cymbal, and so on. The interactions between the different instruments and the voice establish the relationships that make visible the forces that sustain the sound. The deformations contract and extend the figures, activate rhythms, gestures, resonances, create contrasts as well as contrasts within contrasts. Overall, the composition operates through recursive and fractural structures made of movements pulsing symmetrically and regularly or asymmetrically and irregularly. Birringer’s visual composition also reflects the forces of isolation, deformation, and dissipation in Bacon’s paintings. Colors and bodily forms are projected on the surface of the triptych, creating rhythms and movements that are independent of the music. They intend to shape “quietly fragmenting spaces of something quiveringly present, breathing, unstable, contracting and expanding” (Birringer 2009a, 248). Birringer calls this kind of fragmenting 246

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technique granular digitality analogous to the technique of granular synthesis in electronic music, through which the sound is shaped by streams of grains submitted to modulation processes. The videographic objects are presented as photos, videos, graphics, animations, fragments, contours, patterns, and textures. The representation of the human emerges on the luminescent and ghostly video surfaces created through the projection of male and female bodies, heads, and parts of the body. The images are treated as vibrating grains constituting couplings of sensations. Granular digitality translates both the invisible forces underlying the bodily figures of Bacon’s paintings as well as the visual resonance of the physical gestures of the live performed music. Music and visual projection are two separated yet integrated levels of audiovisual composition. They constitute an emblematic example of intermedia polyphony, which stresses the relationship of heterogeneity and alterity as a compositional principle in the sense of Guattari (1992; 1993; see above). Birringer engaged intensively with the music of Francis Bacon, creating a visual language that resonates with musical aesthetics while articulating a range of different sensations. Birringer summarized this intimate relationship between music and projected images: Just as Chagas’s music attempts to capture the poetic of Bacon’s universe and invisible forces behind the surface of bodies, not necessarily related to anything realistic, concrete and objective, the video and the digital software transpose “obscene” images into virtual abstractions. None of them speaks “to” the music or expresses anything that one might think one is hearing. Contrary to Chion’s notion of the audiovisual scene, the music does not anchor the images. The graphics, then, cannot function as visual track or diegesis, and the music does not constitute a film sound track or underscore driving the action image or setting/propelling atmospheres. Independent from one another yet intertwined, the quasicinema of a visual dance of objects and the music imprint different sense experiences on the listener, sensations wresting with sensations. (Birringer 2009a, 52)

11.

Aesthetics of Multimedia

There are many different approaches to audiovisual and multimedia composition. From the starting point of Luhmann’s medium/form distinction, I have explored the relationship of music to other media such as 247

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images, stage, space, theater, opera, speech, poetry, dance, video, laser, film, installation, and digital performance. The impulse to develop an aesthetics of multimedia was triggered by my engagement with electronic music and it is to be understood as an organic extension of its possibilities. The possibilities of intermedia composition as an extension of polyphony thinking integrate plurality and heterogeneity following the “ethic-aesthetic paradigm”. Guattari’s concept of polyphonic subjectivity makes prominent the connection of human subjectivity with the subjectivity of machines in contemporary society. It provides a comprehensive approach to the question of technology in the aesthetic experience. Aesthetics should make technology transparent and engage with it critically. If one makes use of interactive systems using for example sensors and digital interfaces in the composition, then the work of art must deal with the question of the technology underlying interactivity. As pointed out by Heidegger, “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological” (1977, 4). We should not view technology in the sense of machinery and instrumentality or of focusing on the use of particular technologies. We should seek to understand the “ways of thinking that lie behind technology” (Heidegger 1977, 3). Technology is a way of revealing, but modern technology does not reveal by bringing something forth. The mode of revealing modern technology is by challenging us (Heidegger 1977, 14). Art offers itself as a privileged realm to reflect upon technology and is akin to the essence of technology, while at the same time fundamentally different from it. Yet as Heidegger claims, “the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes” (Heidegger 1977, 35). The cybernetic vision of the dialog involving humans, machines, and recursive feedback loops shapes the reflection on the relationship between art and technology in contemporary society. Both Flusser’s concept of telematic dialog (Flusser 1983) and Guattari’s concept of machinic heterogenesis (Guattari 1993) point in this direction. Two models of dialog are the “Centre de Recherches et Formation Musicale de Wallonie” (CRFMW) in Liège, Belgium, and the “Interaktionslabor” directed by Johannes Birringer in Göttelborn, Saarland. I have collaborated with both in the production of intermedia works, which I designate as interdisciplinary compositions. The pieces resulting from this collaboration reflect on the body and its relation to digital technology as a focal aspect of audiovisual composition. In Circular Roots, the gestural activity of the violinist is captured with sensors and translated into interactive processing of the projected video. In Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder, the body is placed in the condition of blindness, which is treated as a metaphor of the post-industrial society. The digital oratorio 248

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Corpo, Carne e Espírito develops an aesthetics of distortion inspired by Francis Bacon’s paintings in an audiovisual performance environment integrating live music and live video projection. These considerations are not a comprehensive account; they indicate merely some possibilities of composition with audiovisual media and multimedia. Two important tendencies that contribute to the diversification of the art system are the diff erentiation of artistic domains and the interactivity with the apparatuses. Intermedia composition explores artistic connections between different media that are brought out through the use of apparatuses. It triggers a process of recursive, temporal operations that can be interpreted as medium/form distinctions in the sense of Luhmann (1996; 2000). New forms are being continually created, which in turn serve as media for further formations. The primary medium of music is sound. Music creates meaning in the medium of sound but also connects with other media in order to create other kinds of meaning. Technology has made it possible for the sound to be freed from its musical Dasein. New artistic forms emerge from the medium of sound that distinguish themselves from music, while opening connections to other media that multiply the potential of unfolding new kinds of musical meanings. The medium/form distinction lends itself as an operational concept for further observations of audiovisual and multimedia composition. Digital technology can be used to intensify the artistic experience and increase the possibilities of developing new aesthetics of audiovisual and multimedia composition.48

48

An important aspect of audiovisual composition, which I am not taking into consideration here, is the relation of music and fi lm. My work Temporal Properties of the World (2010) in collaboration with Lynn Lukas develops an aesthetics of music and film distinct from the traditional film scoring; it relates to the beginning of cinema art, when music was recognized as essential and silent films were mostly shown with live music. 249

APPENDIX I

WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000

Following information is provided: 1 Composer (year of birth) 2 Title and designation of the work (year of production) 3 Original sound storage medium with number of channels and/or type of live electronics used. If pure electronic music the length is also provided 4 WDR type of recording (live-recording or production) 5 Length 1 Obst, Michael (1955) 2 Chansons (1987) for mezzo-soprano, bass and contrabass clarinet, synthesizer, 2 percussion and tape 3 4-channel tape, live electronics, live processing of instruments 4 Production 5 44:20” 1 2 3 4 5

McGuire, John (1942) Vanishing Points (1988) Electronic music 4-channel tape und mono tape 25:45”

1 2 3 4 5

Reich, Steve (1936) Diff erent Trains (1988) for string quartet and tape Stereo tape Live recording (ensemble version) 26:43”

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1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928) 2 MONTAG from LICHT (1988) electronic music for scenic or quasi concert performance 2a Montags-Gruß for multiple basset horns und electronic keyboards (can be performed with live basset horn and tape, or only with tape) 3a 8-channel tape 5a 34:25” 2b Geburts-Fest choral music with sound scenes for a capella choir and tape 3b 4-channel tape 5b 68:30” 2c Montags-Abschied for piccolo flute, multiple soprano voices and electronic keyboards (or tape) 3c 8-channel tape 5c 28:00” 1 Bouliane, Denys (1955) 2 Une Soiré Vian (1990-91) meta-cabaret for 2 singers, 6 instrumentalists and live-electronics 3 Live electronics: sampler, computer with sequencer software und live processing 4 Live recording 5 81:00” 1 Eloy, Jean-Claude (1938) 2 Erkos (1990-91) for a soloist playing Satsuma-Biwa, a vocalist (techniques from “Shômyo”) and electroacoustic music 3 Stereo tapes (10-channel sound projection) 4 Live recording 5 75:00” 1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007) 2 Oktophonie (1990-1992) electronic music from DIENSTAG from LICHT (1990-1992) for independent performance 3 8-channel tape 5 68:40”

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WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000

1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007) 2 Invasion/Explosion/Abschied (1990-1992) electronic music from DIENSTAG from LICHT (1990-1992) for scenic or quasi concert performance 3 8-channel tape 4 CD production 5 72:53” 1 Luc Ferrari (1929) 2 Porte ouverte sur ville (1992-93) for oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, viola and tape 3 Stereo tape 4 Live recording 5 Dauer: 31:34 1 York Höller (1944) 2 Pensées (1992-93) for piano, orchestra and live electronics 3 4-channel tape live electronics: MIDI-piano, computer with Max software, MIDIcontroller, Yamaha FM-synthesizer 4 Live recording 5 29:20” 1 2 3 4 5

Waisvisz, Michel (1945) Faustos Schrei (1994) for “The Hands” *, voice and dance Live-electronics: “The Hands” (STEIM), sampler, synthesizer Live recording 34:00”

1 2 3 4 5

Younghi Pagh-Paan (1945) Tsi-Shi-Kut (1991-94) for 4 percussion and electronic sounds 4-channel tape Live recording 18:50”

1 2 3 4 5

Jörg Birkenkötter (1963) Spiel/Abbruch (1993-94) for ensemble and tape 4-channel tape and stereo tape Live recording 23:26” 253

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1 Jonathan Harvey (1939) 2 One Evening (1994) for soprano, mezzo soprano, ensemble and live electronics 3 Live-electronics: CD payer, sampler, live processing of voices and instruments 4 Live recording 5 30:05” 1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007) 2 Electronic music from FREITAG from LICHT (1994) for independent performance 3 Two 8-channel tapes 5 146:00” 1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007) 2 Electronic music und sound scenes from FREITAG from LICHT (1994) for scenic or quasi concert performance In the context of an integral performance of FREITAG from LICHT the electronic music is played 8-track in two parts as FREITAG-GRUSS and FREITAGS-ABSCHIED before and after the two acts in the foyer, FREITAG-GRUSS also in the concert hall. 3 Two 20-channel tapes 5 146:00” 1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007) 2 Mittwochs-Abschied (1996) electronic and concrete music from MITTWOCH from LICHT for independent performance 3 8-channel tape 5 43:15” 1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007) 2 Orchester-Finalisten (1996) electronic and concrete music from MITTWOCH from LICHT for scenic or quasi concert performance 3 8-channel tape 4 CD production 5 46:00” 1 Paulo C. Chagas (1953) 2 Migration (1995-96) 12-channel electronic music 254

WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000

3 12-channel tape 5 24:30” 1 Paulo C. Chagas (1953) 2 Migration (1995-97) for MIDI-piano, ensemble and live electronics 3 12-channel tape Live electronics: MIDI-piano, computer with Max software, MIDIcontroller, live processing of piano 4 Production 5 28:06” 1 2 3 4 5

John McGuire (1942) A Cappella (1992-97) for singer and tape 8-channel tape (4-channel sound projection) Production 23:25”

1 2 3 4 5

Marco Stroppa (1959) Zwielicht (1994-99) for contrabass, 2 percussion and electronic sounds 13-channel Pro Tools session Live recording 36:20”

1 2 3 4 5

Mauricio Sotelo (1961) Angel de la Tierra (1997-99) for 4 voices, ensemble and tape Stereo tape Live recording 35:35”

1 2 3 4 5

Mauricio Sotelo (1961) De Amore. Una Maschera die Cenere (1996-99) chamber opera Stereo tape Live recording (Bayerischer Rundfunk radio) 89:50”

1 2 3 5

Mauricio Sotelo (1961) De amore (1999) for violoncello ** Stereo tape 11:30” 255

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1 2 3 5

Mauricio Sotelo (1961) Argo (1999) for saxophone ** Stereo tape 24:50”

1 Paulo C. Chagas (1953) 2 RAW (1999) techno opera 3 Live-electronics: 3 MIDI-master keyboards, 3 MIDI-drum pads, 12 synthesizer, sampler 4 Live recording 5 73:00” 1 2 3 5

Paulo C. Chagas (1953) Projektion (1999-2000) 12-channel electronic music 12-channel tape 17:28”

NOTES: * “The Hands” is an experimental interface developed by STEIM that converts sensor data into MIDI data. ** Instrumental piece; techniques of electronic music were applied in the production.

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APPENDIX II

WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000

List prepared by Paulo C. Chagas and Volker Müller

1. Mixing consoles 1 x Lawo PTR (Programmable Audio Console) – Special design for the WDR Electronic Music Studio – Analog mixer with digital programmable control – 48 inline monitoring channels with additional outputs for each channel – Uniform channels features for inputs, auxiliaries, outputs, volume, etc – Possible to create 36 different groups – 42 motorized faders – 28 internal memories for snapshots (no real-time automation) 1 x Semrau, analog 24 x 4 1 x Sennheiser M8 Professional, analog 12 x 2 2 x intermediate frames (mixer and control units between the analog tape machines): 5 x stereo line in, stereo out, mono out, cross connections, audio monitoring, patch panel with 60 jacks 2 x Yamaha DMP7 Digital Mixing Processor (also used as MIDI-controllable multi-VCA) 2 x Abe-Mixer, Analog 16 x 2

2. Amplifiers 16 x Klein&Hummel AK-120 2 x Urei 6260 (2-channel) 1 x Spendor RB50 (2-channel) 257

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3. Loudspeaker 16 x Urei 811C 16 x Altec O 81 4 x Spendor M50 ARD 4 x JBL 4425 2 x Spendor SA3 WDR 2 x Spendor SA1 4 x JBL Control 1 2 x JBL 4345 (used as subwoofer)

4. Patch Panels 1 x Patch panel in room 304: 1152 jack connectors 1 x Patch panel in room 304: 20 XLR connectors 1 x Patch panel in room 303: 196 jack connectors 1 x Patch panel in room 303: 30 XLR connectors 1 x Patch panel in room 302: 78 XLR connectors 1 x Patch panel in room 305: 192 jack connectors

5. Tape machines 5.1 Multichannel Digital 2 x Sony PCM 3324-A, 24-track (can be synchronized as a 48-track machine) 2 x RM3310 (remote control) 5.2 Multichannel Analog 1 x Telefunken M15-A, 2 inch, 24-track with Telcom (noise reduction) 1 x Telefunken M15-A, 2 inch, 16-track with Telcom (noise reduction) 1 x Telefunken M15-A, 1 inch 8-track with Telcom (noise reduction) 1 x Telefunken M10-A, 1 inch, 4-track with Telcom (noise reduction) 1 x Revox C278, 1/2 inch, 8-track 1 x Revox C274, 1/4 inch, 4-track

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WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000

5.3 Stereo/2-track Analog 2 x Telefunken M15-A, 1/4 inch, stereo, 76/38 cm/s 4 x Telefunken M15-A, 1/4 inch, stereo, 38/19 cm/s 2 x Telefunken, M2, 1/4 inch, 2-tracks, 38/19 cm/s 5.4 DAT Recorder 2 x Sony PCM 7030 2 X RTW DAT control (remote control for PCM 7030) 1 x Sony PCM 2700 5.5 Cassette Recorder 2 x Studer A710

6. Other Studio Equipment 6.1 Loudness Monitors 2 x NTP 377-100 (36-channel) 2 x Barco CM51 2 x Filbig Stereo monitors SSG-5 2 x Sony DMU 3024 digital meter unity (coupled with SONY-3324-A) 6.2 Effects Processors 1 x Lexicon 480L Digital-Effects System with LARC remote control 6 x Lexicon PCM70 Digital Effects Processor (also used as MIDI-controller for VCA) 2 x Eventide 3500 Ultra-Harmonizer 2 x Yamaha SPX 990 Multi-Effect Processor 6.3 SMPTE 1 x Alpermann+Velte TC30 Time Code Generator 1 x Alpermann+Velte TC30 Time Code Reader 1 x Alpermann+Velte TC30 Time Code Reader/Inserter 259

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6.4 Miscelaneous 1 x Studer A727 CD Player 1 x Studer B261 FM Tuner

7. Sound Devices 7.1

Analog Synthesizer/Processing

1 x EMS Synthi 100 1 x EMS Vocoder 2000 1 x EMS AKS 1 x EMS 4 Ring Modulator 1 x EMS QUEG Quadraphonic Effect Generator 7.2 Workstation/Sampler 1 x Emulator II, 8-voices 1 x Fairlight III, 8-voices 1 x Fairlight III, 2-voices 1 x Akai S1000, 32 MB RAM, 16-voices 2 x SampleCell, 32 MB RAM, 16-voices 7.3 Digital Synthesizer 1 x Yamaha TX 816 2 x Yamaha TG 802 1 x Yamaha DX7 II 1 x Yamaha SY 99

8. MIDI Devices 8.1 Keyboard/Controller 1 x Kurzweil Midiboard (MIDI master keyboard) 1 x JL Cooper Fadermaster Pro (Midi controller) 1 x Roland Octapad II Pad 80 (Drum controller) 260

WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000

1 x Fairligh Voicetracker (Voice to MIDI) 6 x Yamaha MFC 1 (Midi foot controller) 8.2 Interfaces 1 x Opcode Studio 5 (Macintosh MIDI-RS442) 1 x Motu Midi Timepiece (Macintosh MIDI-RS442) 1 x Motu Midi Timepiece II (Macintosh MIDI-RS442) 1 x C-Lab Unitor (ATARI 1040 ST) 1 X C-Lab Combiner (ATARI 1040 ST) 8.3 Processor/ Matrix 1 x Yamaha MEP 4 (Midi event processor) 1 x JL Cooper MSP (Midi matrix) 2 x Miditemp PMM 88 (Midi merge matrix) 1 x EMS 3 MIDI-to-CV Interface 8.4 Hardware MIDI Sequencer 1 x Yamaha QX1

9. Computer 9.1. Hardware 9.1.1. CPU 2 x Atari 1040 ST 1 x Macintosh IIfx, 32MB RAM, 1GB intern hard disk 1 x Macintosh PowerPC 7100, 138MB RAM, 1GB intern hard disk 1 x Macintosh PowerPC 8100, 270MB RAM, 2GB intern hard disk 9.1.2. Monitor 3 x Miro C2085E - 20 in 1 x Apple Multiple Scan - 20 in 1 x MAG Technology MXE17 S - 17 in 1 x Apple 13 in

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9.1.2.1. RGB und ADB Amplifier 2 x Gefen Extender (35m between computer and terminal) 9.1.3. Printer 1 x Hewlett Packard 4MV (large format laser printer) 1 x Hewlett Packard DeskWriter 540 1 x Epson LQ 850+ 9.1.4. Data Storage 1 x 4GB External Hard Disk 1 x 2GB External Hard Disk 2 x MOD (Magneto Optical Drive) 650MB 2 x Streamer Drive (8 mm cartridge) 1 x SyQuest Drive 40MB 9.2. Hard Disk Recording 1x Digidesign Sound Accelerator (used from 1990 to 1995 in the Macintosh IIfx) 1 x Pro Tools III NuBus System (used in the Macintosh PowerPC 8100) 2 x 888 I/O Audio Interface 1 x SSD (SMPTE Slave Driver) 1 x Expansion Chassis 2 x I/O Card 4 x DSP Farm 2 x SampleCell (32 MBRAM each) 1 x Lexicon NuVerb 4 x 9.1GB Hard Disk (Rack system) 1 x Pro Tools III NuBus System (used in the Macintosh PowerPC 7100) 1 x 888 I/O Audio Interface 1 x SSD (SMPTE Slave Driver) 1 x I/O Card 1 x DSP Farm 2 x 9.1GB 9.1GB Hard Disk (Rack system) 9.3. Software (only the most important programs are listed) 9.3.1 Atari C-LAB Notator (MIDI Sequencer) Steinberg Cubase (MIDI Sequencer) 262

WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000

C-LAB X-alyser (MIDI Editor) Steinberg Synthworks SY-77 (MIDI Editor) Dr.T’s Lexicon PCM-70 (MIDI Editor) Zeitplan (developed by Marcel Schmidt from the Cologne Musikhochschule) 9.3.2. Macintosh 9.3.2.1 System, Utilities, Network, Backup Apple System Software 7.6.1 FWB HDT Tools 2.0.6 Norton Utilities 3.2.1 Farallon Timbuktu Pro 2.0.3 Netscape Navigator 3.0.1 Grey Matter Response Mezzo 3.0 Dantz Retrospect 3.0 9.3.2.2 Text, Graphics, Programming languages Microsoft Office 4.2.1 Microsoft Word 5.1 Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0 Claris Draw 1.03 Apple/Digitool Common Lisp 4.2 ResEdit 2.1.3 9.3.2.3 Music 9.3.2.3.1 MIDI/Notation Motu Performer (until ca. 1995) Opcode Vision (until ca.1995) Opcode Galaxy Editor 2.1 OMS 2.3.2 FreeMIDI 1.4 Opcode/IRCAM Max 3.5.8 Coda Finale 98 9.3.2.3.2 Audio Passport Alchemy (until ca. 1995) Digidesing Softsynth (until ca. 1995) Digidesing Turbosynth 2.2 Digidesign Sound Designer II 2.82 263

Unsayable Music

Digidesign Pro Tools 4.11 Digidesign DAE 3.23 Motu DigitalPerformer 2.11 APB ∑1 1.01 ABP Tools EM I (Ethernal Machine) 1.11 Antares Infinity 3.1.4 Gallery SampleSearch 2.1 Lexicon NuVerb 1.03 (editor) Steinberg TimeBandit 1.05 9.3.2.3.2.1 TDM Plug-ins Digidesign Pro Tools 4.11 standard plug-ins Digidesign DINR 2.2 Digidesign D-Verb 1.2 INA GRM Tools I and II 2.3 Wave TDM Bundle 2.3.1 (C1, L1, Q1/Q10, etc.) Crystal River Engineering Protron 1.0 (until Pro Tools 3.2) 9.3.2.3.3 IRCAM (Forum Software) Patchwork 2.6.5 Audiosculpt 1.7.3 Diphone 2.5.2 Modalys 1.7

264

Bibliography

The works by Wittgenstein are cited according to the usual abbreviations: BrB

CV

L&C

LE NB

PI

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TLP

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Adorno, Theodor W. 2006. Philosophy of New Music. Translated and edited by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Attali, Jacques. 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Attali, Jacques. 2001. Bruits: Essai sur l’ économie politique de la musique. 2nd ed. Paris: Fayard/PUF. Baraldi, Claudio, Giancarlo Corsi, and Elena Esposito. 1997. GLU: Glossar zu Niklas Luhmanns Theorie sozialer Systeme. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Barriere, Jean-Baptiste, ed. 1991. Le Timbre, métaphore pour la composition. Paris: IRCAM/Christian Bourgois. Barthes, Roland. 1985. “Rasch”. In The Responsibility of Forms. Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, translated by Richard Howard, 299-312. Berkeley: University of California Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 2002. The Spirit of Terrorism. Translated by Chris Turner. London; New York: Verso. Benjamin, Walter. 1977. “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit.” In Walter Benjamin: Illuminationen, edited by Siegfried Unseld, 136-169. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Braunmuehl, Hans Joachim von. 1938. “Akustik von Senderäumen.” In Handbuch des Deutschen Rundfunks, edited by H. J. Weinbrenner, 70-3. Heidelberg; Berlin: Kurt Vowinckel Verlag. Bennet, Gerald. 1970. “Notes on Electroacoustic Music.” http://www.gdbennett.net/ texts/Contrechamps_article.pdf (accessed August 1, 2013). Birkenkötter, Jörg. 1994. “Spiel/Abbruch.” In Musik+Computer: Sieben Konzerte in neuen Klangregionen, 26-7. Program notes for a series of concerts at the festival MusikTriennale ‘94. Cologne: WDR. Birringer, Johannes. 2006. “FutureHouse, Blind Mine.” In Performance and Place, edited by Leslie Hill, and Helen Paris, 85-98. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/bibl.html (accessed August 1, 2013). Birringer, Johannes. 2008. “The Relation of Visuals to Music.” http://interaktionslabor. de/lab08/index.htm (accessed August 1, 2013).

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