Perspectives of New Music, Volume 52, Number 3, Mar 31, 2015
The importance of technological media for John Cage was not limited to their literal use in his w... more The importance of technological media for John Cage was not limited to their literal use in his works as previous scholarship has examined. New technologies also served as metaphoric models to conceive idiosyncratic ways to compose, as well as theorize, music, which better approximated nature's manner of operation in the composer's view. The attempt to imitate the operations of magnetic tape in the 1950s, for instance, resulted in the pursuit of graphic notation and indeterminacy on the one hand, and the reframing of silence on the other. As the common model for imitation, technological media mediated what Cage did and what he said he did. But in so doing, it also revealed where the two came into conflict: whereas his music always necessitated mediation, his discourse tended towards silencing this necessity. This distance was seemingly resolved in the 1960s, by switching the primary metaphor from tape to amplification. The result was a naturalization of technology, and works which now claimed not imitation, but identification with nature's manner of operation. By analyzing the mechanism of mediation in Cage’s works and words, this paper offers an alternative to the two prevalent ‘naturalist’ attitudes to Cage’s music, which reflect the composer’s own biased disposition: that of approaching his works solely through what he said about them, or on the contrary, discrediting his words to focus solely on the immediacy of what he did.
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Reminded by the Instruments sets out to solve the puzzle of David Tudor by applying Tudor’s own methods for approaching the materials of others to the vast archive of materials that he himself left behind. You Nakai deftly coordinates instruments, electronic circuits, sketches, diagrams, recordings, letters, receipts, customs declaration forms, and testimonies like modular pieces of a giant puzzle to reveal the long-hidden nature of Tudor’s creative process. Rejecting the established narrative of Tudor as a performer-turned-composer, this book presents a lively portrait of an artist whose activity always merged both of these roles. In simulating Tudor’s distinct focus on what he called “the specific principles which exist inside each material,” Nakai undermines discourses on sound and illuminates our understanding of the instruments behind the sounds in post-war experimental music.
(first presented at: "After Experimental Music" conference at Cornell University on February 8-11, 2018)
First, the influence of the philosopher Raymond Ruyer, who was cited in «Erfindung und Entdeckung: Ein Beitrag zur Form-Genese» (1961), will be examined, along with the cybernetics and information theory that Ruyer himself relied upon. It is known that Stockhausen was impressed by these latter theories while studying under Meyer-Eppler, though the actual resonance of this learning in his works remains relatively understudied. The problematic of form(ation) (or “Gestalt”) was a major issue in cybernetics/information theory, as it was thought to constitute the basis of human information processing which proved difficult to articulate in a mechanical-objective manner. The recourse to the problematics of form(ation) could therefore be understood as having granted the composer tools with which to conceive solutions to his primary concern around this period, as exemplified in the development of “Moment-form”: the creation of compositions based on the cognitive processes of the listener, rather than the perceptional, as had been central for most of the 1950s.
From this theoretical perspective, it will be shown that despite superficial differences in style, all the works from this period submit to a common pattern of treating familiar “sound objects” (to some extent a paraphrase of “Moment”) that a listener and/or performer could immediately identify, with a process of transformation (variously paraphrased as “process planning,” “intermodulation,” or “realtime modulation”). Special focus will be given to Prozession and Kurzwellen, for which an analysis of “Skizzenblatt” drawn during the process of composition shows in detail how Stockhausen composed the form(ation) of his pieces. An examination of their distinct manner of improvisational performances demonstrates further how the form inscribed on the score was rendered into an audible-temporal form via the performer's listening process. Together, these examples serve to verify how the composer's concern with form(ation) pervaded the various phases of his works.
Following the manipulation of form in the phases of composition and performance, in the phase of (the audience's) listening, Stockhausen's role as the controller of a potentiometer in his concerts is read as an extension of his position to that of an authoritative listener who (literally) sits in between the performer and the audience, shaping the final form of sounds played out from the speakers. This augmentation of the composer’s function reveals an inherent contradiction in Stockhausen's approach, one that led to dismantling the Stockhausen Ensemble and the subsequent developments in the 1970s; it may also explain the disappearance of his detailed self-analyses in this decade: the medium that ultimately frames a musical composition and controls its reception shifted from language to mixing board circa 1960.
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As she writes, it is interesting to note, in the third person (http://ellenccovito.com/biography.html):
Covito realized that the fundamental issues of music were formally no different from those of ecology (or of feminism, for that matter): the endless process of setting and erasing dichotomies, of differentiating what belongs to one side (“us”) and not to the
other (“them”), and of effacing even that difference so that “we” could have more and more. A mechanism that obviously resonates with the political violence that surrounded her childhood. In the recent years, her focus has become clearer, and her tactics more lucid. Her works now specifically attack the problematic (too easily dismissed but actually not so easily dismissible) dichotomy between composition and improvisation. She does this by introducing distance between the performer and what is performed, while removing the distance between the act of composition and performance.
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Covito’s concept of ecology, arising early in the interview, is idiosyncratic. Her compositions are indisputably disruptive to the fixed conceptual structures of how we make music. But Covito is an absolute structuralist according to her own statements. She views the composition/improvisation pair as a dichotomy to start with. After attending the performance described above, I had a vague impression of Covito as a mildly provocative musical version of Maria Abramovic. In Covito’s compositions, there were tests, dares, and limits to be transcended. But there was also a lot happening musically. The sounds themselves were actually freed of their normal constraints. For me, this was one of the strongest aspects of the event.