Writings Manfred Werder
time [ of ] incidence
but one can imagine the concert - later on ? - as exclusively a workshop, from which nothing spills over - no dream, no imaginary, in short, no 'soul' and where all the musical art is absorbed in a praxis with no remainder.
Roland Barthes, MUSICA PRACTICA, 1970 (transl. Stephen Heath)
What could be this practice of the musical art from which nothing would spill over, no dream, no imaginary, no 'soul'?
Approaching this question rather frontally runs the risk of becoming itself the dream of such practice.
The times of the economy between the overspending (Vorausgabung) and the dream, the imaginary, imposed by the intimidation of culture -
In this economy the overspending tends to a proliferation of enchantments which - particularly under the metaphor of light (which includes the metaphor of its absence) -, as projection of dream and imaginary contribute to the production of monuments.
The desaster of production -
The times of recurrence of enchantments and their monuments.
What could be the sound of a practice beyond intimidation and overspending?
incidence
rarity
coincidence
reality
space
time
inclination
fall
pleasure
noun
inherence
abundance
gravity
Written in September 2014 and published in Interpretations., a project by Q-02 and Julia Eckhardt, Brussels
Interview 2013
Simon Reynell Manfred Werder
2005/1 seems to occupy a pivotal position in your catalogue, marking a shift away from performance towards simply listening or paying attention to the world. Is this how you see it?
Good point to start. I worked on the score of 2005/1 for almost two years, and I’d say that there were two concerns that took me such a long time: first, I wanted to relinquish 'differential thinking' in the score itself regarding the classical parameters of sound, harmony, process etc. and secondly, I wanted to propose a different musical practice that would break the dyad of performer and listener.
Of course both concerns had already been present in my work before - the first in, e.g., the performer series (1999-), and the second in ein klang und eine stille (1997/1998) and especially in the realisation practice of for one or a few performers (2001-)
( ‘a lot of time / a few sounds / for itself / simple’) (documented on here).
However, in those cases it seemed to be more an interpretative approach than a structural matter of fact written down in the score. I can give as an example the realisation of for one or a few performers (2001-) in September 2004 in Monthey: during 48 hours, 3 musicians dispersed over the city in 3 specific outdoor locations realised the score, following a time structure that decided which musician would be present at what hour. There were of course some sounds produced by the performers realising the score in front of an audience, but what really struck me was the interplay of absence and presence of a musician in a location.
On February 28th 2005 in Santiago de Chile, I started an ongoing actualisation project in a public space with 2005/1. I roamed the streets and looked for places to realise the score. In some locations my presence was immediately noticed, which then allowed a dynamic open situation, and in others it was rather a 'private act towards' the sounding of the world. The crucial issue here is that it’s not at all about simply replacing the performer / listener dyad by the dyad of world and listener. So, I think we should be extremely cautious when we describe our complex situation as musicians, since simplistic concepts and interpretations ultimately reveal teleological presumptions.
In August 2005 I made a first realisation of the score with the group incidental music in a gallery space, in Zürich. The four performers decided on their own when to appear and leave the space where they 'presented' an activity that would sound. However, these realisations remained difficult as regards the relinquishing of 'differential thinking', because - especially in concert-like situations - we're so used to thinking in categories of difference and to precisely appointing these to a supposed quality of 'profoundness'.
So answering your question, I think there isn't an antagonism between the two situations you mentioned; it's rather about challenging both situations from scratch. I must say though that I find the sounding of the world exceedingly exciting, and I recognize what we call ‘music’ in a concert or from a CD as one rather specific section in it. Basically I work on scores that would be capable of extending my sense of the sounding world, rather than on scores that I would inflect with my pre-existing view.
Can we back-pedal a bit and have you say a bit more about ‘relinquishing differential thinking’? The way your recent pieces challenge conventional thinking about music ‘from scratch’ – as you put it - is something that I find fascinating but also disconcerting. Can you spell out more clearly exactly what it was that you wanted to challenge, and why?
I think that I became increasingly worried about the great effort that composers kept giving almost exclusively to the content of the music in terms of the above mentioned classical parameters, in a moment where, to put it briefly, 'other possible parameters' have powerfully emerged through the great transparency of their beautiful music. I would argue that the more transparently a music is unfolding, the more important these 'other possible parameters' become, because what sense would this transparency have if not exactly in allowing something to occur that is external, and uncontrollable? The transparency's beauty and hospitality would otherwise run the risk of becoming pretension.
So I could no longer neglect the 'outside the work', that is, everything which surrounds the presumed 'content' of compositional decisions: the reality of the venue, the reality of the person realising an activity, the reality of the musical encounter where something would occur beyond the seductive aesthetic power executed from within a highly framed centre. There's an interesting Badiou quote in this respect: “What ultimately interests me is the situational declination of the event, not the entrenchment or transcendence of the event itself” *
Could we say then that a ‘situational declination of the event’, which would be something like a new sense of the reality's potential after the event's immediate dissolving, is far more important than the artwork itself, which precisely would in turn reaffirm that the artwork (without any structure towards transcendence) is so essentially important?
By 'relinquishing differential thinking' I wanted to propose mainly two things, both regarding the medium of the score and the performance practice: first, that the level at which compositional strategies regarding the classical parameters of sound, harmony, process etc. basically operate their effectiveness, would not play any (prominent) role anymore, and secondly, that any place and any time are equally perfect (perfect in their totality) regarding an actualisation of 2005/1. Any place and any time would disclose what they disclose. I guess I am still trying to come to terms with these propositions today, and in this sense you are right, 2005/1 has marked a shift.
* [In Bruno Bosteels, “Can Change Be Thought? A Dialogue with Alain Badiou”. Alain Badiou: Philosophy And Its Conditions. Ed. Gabriel Riera (Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 2005). pp. 237-261.]
So your recent scores are clearly underpinned by a particular philosophy or ongoing process of critical thinking, one which, as I’ve said, I find at once inspiring and troubling. However, it seems to me that the scores’ openness – and 2005/1 is a good example – means that they can be interpreted in an infinity of different ways, some of which may ignore or even go completely against the grain of your thinking. So, for example, in theory a studio recording of either a pop song or a neo-classical quartet – both of which do apply ‘differential thinking’ in relation to harmony, structure etc. - could be presented as actualisations of 2005/1, even though they wouldn’t be engaging with your underlying ideas at all. Is this a problem? Are there, or could there be, realisations of 2005/1 that you felt were ‘invalid’? Or, to put it differently, are there limits to the ways in which you feel that musicians should approach the piece even though nothing to this effect is specified in the score?
There are various important issues here. First, 'any place and any time are equally perfect (perfect in their totality)' does not mean that just 'anything goes'. It's always about engaging with a score. Thus, looking into the potentials of a score (and this applies to any score), I’d propose that what doesn’t appear in the score should not appear in a realisation except as its actual world, or if you like, its 'contextual material / conditions'.
The actual world of a score could be the occurrence of a situation where there's no outside the work. (The above mentioned 'highly framed centre' reminds me of a powerful religion that provokes endless problems that are the problems of capitalism as well). Where there is no outside the work, we could encounter the actual world through a music that is transparent. And what if this were simply enough?
So, then, what could 'a pop song presented as an actualisation of 2005/1’ mean? I can well imagine pop or classical music being part of an actualisation of 2005/1. Actually this is something that occasionally happens. We have had crack-trafficking being framed in a project last year in Santiago de Chile. That's not significant except that it has happened and not been staged. In your proposition a hypothetical content appears detached from a more integral situation that might in the end be capable of making sense.
Furthermore, it’s not at all about exploring specific places and times; places and times just offer what they are. Of course I have preferences, everybody has preferences, but don't they operate on a fundamentally different level? The way I’d hope to see the world is essentially connected with particular conceptual sets. However the world often discloses a different reality which forces me to adjust or extend my view of the conceptual set. Preferences populate the world as phenomena, they sound lower or higher, shorter or longer etc.
Finally, the score operates on a level of the implicit that, I would assert, reflects the entire generic process of a realisation. If I had any reservations regarding a realisation, I would locate them in this area.
So if I understand right, for you 2005/1 would ideally be a simple framing of one corner / moment of the world as it unfolds, without any dramatic or organisational structure being imposed upon it; a framing which allows what you’ve called ‘the sounding of the world’ to take place in as transparent or unmediated a way as is possible. Is that right?
Yes.
Moving on to the particular realisations of 2005/1 that the invited musicians submitted for this project, while I’m pretty sure that all of them are aware of your thinking, it seems that some of the musicians were less obedient than others in the way that they realised the score. Several of the recordings (especially Németh, anteroom and Davis) include ‘differential’ aspects of performance and / or composition that move sometimes far away from an unmediated presentation of ‘the sounding world’. For me these (deliberate?) mis-readings of the thinking underlying the score create an additional level of interest and tension which I enjoy, however perverse they may be. What did you make of this aspect of the project?
Let me first say that 'obedient' isn't a word I can relate to.
In my scores I'm looking for a certain economy of language which I think has become more evident in recent years with projects such as the found sentences or found words. It's a different economy of language that doesn't operate frontally.
Language is not a function of frontal and explicit communication and has far more to do with locating oneself in an environment than with communicating whatever contents to others. Thus, as I reject a frontal or explicit communication, the entire complex of a score's potentiality arises differently. So, I can't relate either to what you've called "mis-readings".
I would say that the score keeps being the referential instance, even if I personally realise the score now and then, or propose a certain reading. This reading is my way of dealing with the score; however, there are certainly others.
A generic process both highly depends on and affects its actual world, and we can add that the worlds of the involved musicians are considerably divergent. So, I do welcome what a generic process discloses, and of course we can always analyse or deconstruct the powers and dynamics of such a process, but this would need to be done with great care.
Another aspect of the realisations that I’d like to ask about is the degree of difficulty that several of the musicians experienced in achieving a recorded realisation of the piece. Some of them refer to this in the short texts they wrote to accompany their realisations, and more than half of the musicians missed the initial deadline. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with musicians having to struggle to complete a project, but I wonder whether you feel that this is characteristic of your pieces?
You're surely right in alluding to the fact that this difficulty is a characteristic of my work in general, and obviously, it's a difficulty I'm also struggling with. I think it's due to the way I organise my work: I try to separate a compositional reflection from a performative practice, in order to make sure that the former isn't compromised by the latter's constraints.
I also locate this difficulty in my aim of actualising in music our bond to place and time. In a certain way I propose this to be 'enough', however 'lateral' such a music might sound. Sometimes I wonder whether this evokes something like an apocalyptic tone in the sense of an end of history of music-making or expression. Of course I completely disagree with such a view.
I wonder whether this desire to situate your music in the particular time and place of its realisation renders problematic any attempt to represent your music in a recording, as any recording is inevitably taking it away from that immediate context? I think that one of the things I wanted to explore when we set up this project was to what extent a work like 2005/1 can be realised at all in a recording. The musicians were explicitly asked to produce an audio object ‘that was suitable for repeated playings’, but this runs against the grain of the piece in many ways. Do you think that this was part of the reason for the difficulties some of the musicians experienced, and what is your attitude to recordings of your recent music in general?
For me now, any recording is not simply a representation of musical content or immediate context but always potentially evidence of relating anew to place and time. I'm aware that our experiences of place and time are essentially very layered, meaning that a bond to place and time may be a somewhat narrowing statement.
A 'repeated playing’ is always exposed to time, and thus always offers such evidence. Can't we say that in recent years strategies have been increasingly developed that realise the potentials of the playback listening situation as a way of both 'transferring sound' and actualising our bond to place and time? It seems to me that there's still too much of a simplistic or dualistic view on this, focusing rather on their respective ends; that is, either a result-oriented object as pure content (supposedly featuring mere quality), or an apparent void as interactive trigger (supposedly featuring mere concept). But the realities of our practice and their rendering through different media have become far more complex and abundantly layered, and we would really need to look most carefully, if not to say speculatively, at the implications and potential trajectories of the decisions involved in a work. Also, the potential trajectories of a work - that is, its capacity to be mediated - are always heterogeneous and contradictory, depending so much on the dynamics of a speculative reading and the framing of that work by others as well as the author. I would say that these dynamics are what I'm interested in above all.
This could be my answer to your question regarding my attitude to recordings of my recent music in general, and I would say it's also true regarding my attitude to 'concert realisations' or 'more lateral' projects. Finally, the ‘difficulties’ you mention might reveal a still very limited view we have of 'recording' in general.
So, I think that the realisations of 2005/1 for this project offer great insight into these dynamics.
Isn’t the ‘bond to time and place’ what people are often seeking to untie with music? Many people walk around wearing headphones as if they’re trying to create their own bubble and remove themselves from the perceptual realities of their environment. Similarly most recordings are made in insulated studio spaces that minimise the actual context and try to situate the music on an ideal, abstracted plane. Is that a tendency, and an attitude to music, that frustrates you?
I can perfectly understand your comment, however, isn't it to a certain extent governed by a problematic moral undertone? The world is a machine, and I guess we all have various overlapping and contradictory strategies to keep functioning within this machine. What we can see is that there's no outside this machine that creates ever new dependencies on facilities. A world conquered for facilities, has human history ever been much different? However, I'm convinced that there are still possibilities for making real decisions, and that it’s better to embrace these possibilities gladly and courageously if we have the chance.
Much of your recent practice inevitably recalls aspects of Cage’s thinking, for example his famous statement that ‘music is all around us; if only we have ears, there would be no need for concert halls.’ Do you see yourself as working within a post-Cageian tradition, or are you more combative with regard to his legacy?
To be honest, right now I can't say much about John Cage. I think that even today it's still difficult to realise in music the reaches of the ideas in his writings, and I'm convinced he also was aware of this. And the reaches of these ideas remain a real challenge.
I feel that it’s generally difficult to realise ideas in music. Music is a poor, clumsy and unreliable vehicle in that respect; ideas just don’t stick to it. Whereas I feel that any sound always already contains within it a sensual aspect, so that music cannot help but have a strong emotional pull. But I imagine that you might see things differently…?
Actually, I didn't want to play music off against ideas, nor the converse. Take the quote you mentioned about music being all around us: I'm sure Cage realised this statement personally in his daily life, but finally he turned back again towards works such as Etudes Australes or Freeman Etudes, pieces which require both virtuosity and an exceptional acoustic, as well as works for orchestra that were played in concert halls. Happily he did, but one could at least ask: Why?
Ideas often collide with reality, and I think this isn’t because reality is more complex (ideas are reality as well) but rather because we have a narrowing concept of ideas. Aren't ideas a practice? We're so stiff in terms of language, in which ideas are expressed, that we only see functions and objectives. Music seems to be more immediate, it is something like pure reality, or pure condition (including humans interacting as a part of this), neither of which are very pure intrinsically, but rather abundant and transparent.
I suppose music and ideas occur at once.
Interview conducted by email between September 26 of 2012 and May 18 of 2013 and published at Another Timbre as part of Simon Reynell's project with 2005/1
2005/1 seems to occupy a pivotal position in your catalogue, marking a shift away from performance towards simply listening or paying attention to the world. Is this how you see it?
Good point to start. I worked on the score of 2005/1 for almost two years, and I’d say that there were two concerns that took me such a long time: first, I wanted to relinquish 'differential thinking' in the score itself regarding the classical parameters of sound, harmony, process etc. and secondly, I wanted to propose a different musical practice that would break the dyad of performer and listener.
Of course both concerns had already been present in my work before - the first in, e.g., the performer series (1999-), and the second in ein klang und eine stille (1997/1998) and especially in the realisation practice of for one or a few performers (2001-)
( ‘a lot of time / a few sounds / for itself / simple’) (documented on here).
However, in those cases it seemed to be more an interpretative approach than a structural matter of fact written down in the score. I can give as an example the realisation of for one or a few performers (2001-) in September 2004 in Monthey: during 48 hours, 3 musicians dispersed over the city in 3 specific outdoor locations realised the score, following a time structure that decided which musician would be present at what hour. There were of course some sounds produced by the performers realising the score in front of an audience, but what really struck me was the interplay of absence and presence of a musician in a location.
On February 28th 2005 in Santiago de Chile, I started an ongoing actualisation project in a public space with 2005/1. I roamed the streets and looked for places to realise the score. In some locations my presence was immediately noticed, which then allowed a dynamic open situation, and in others it was rather a 'private act towards' the sounding of the world. The crucial issue here is that it’s not at all about simply replacing the performer / listener dyad by the dyad of world and listener. So, I think we should be extremely cautious when we describe our complex situation as musicians, since simplistic concepts and interpretations ultimately reveal teleological presumptions.
In August 2005 I made a first realisation of the score with the group incidental music in a gallery space, in Zürich. The four performers decided on their own when to appear and leave the space where they 'presented' an activity that would sound. However, these realisations remained difficult as regards the relinquishing of 'differential thinking', because - especially in concert-like situations - we're so used to thinking in categories of difference and to precisely appointing these to a supposed quality of 'profoundness'.
So answering your question, I think there isn't an antagonism between the two situations you mentioned; it's rather about challenging both situations from scratch. I must say though that I find the sounding of the world exceedingly exciting, and I recognize what we call ‘music’ in a concert or from a CD as one rather specific section in it. Basically I work on scores that would be capable of extending my sense of the sounding world, rather than on scores that I would inflect with my pre-existing view.
Can we back-pedal a bit and have you say a bit more about ‘relinquishing differential thinking’? The way your recent pieces challenge conventional thinking about music ‘from scratch’ – as you put it - is something that I find fascinating but also disconcerting. Can you spell out more clearly exactly what it was that you wanted to challenge, and why?
I think that I became increasingly worried about the great effort that composers kept giving almost exclusively to the content of the music in terms of the above mentioned classical parameters, in a moment where, to put it briefly, 'other possible parameters' have powerfully emerged through the great transparency of their beautiful music. I would argue that the more transparently a music is unfolding, the more important these 'other possible parameters' become, because what sense would this transparency have if not exactly in allowing something to occur that is external, and uncontrollable? The transparency's beauty and hospitality would otherwise run the risk of becoming pretension.
So I could no longer neglect the 'outside the work', that is, everything which surrounds the presumed 'content' of compositional decisions: the reality of the venue, the reality of the person realising an activity, the reality of the musical encounter where something would occur beyond the seductive aesthetic power executed from within a highly framed centre. There's an interesting Badiou quote in this respect: “What ultimately interests me is the situational declination of the event, not the entrenchment or transcendence of the event itself” *
Could we say then that a ‘situational declination of the event’, which would be something like a new sense of the reality's potential after the event's immediate dissolving, is far more important than the artwork itself, which precisely would in turn reaffirm that the artwork (without any structure towards transcendence) is so essentially important?
By 'relinquishing differential thinking' I wanted to propose mainly two things, both regarding the medium of the score and the performance practice: first, that the level at which compositional strategies regarding the classical parameters of sound, harmony, process etc. basically operate their effectiveness, would not play any (prominent) role anymore, and secondly, that any place and any time are equally perfect (perfect in their totality) regarding an actualisation of 2005/1. Any place and any time would disclose what they disclose. I guess I am still trying to come to terms with these propositions today, and in this sense you are right, 2005/1 has marked a shift.
* [In Bruno Bosteels, “Can Change Be Thought? A Dialogue with Alain Badiou”. Alain Badiou: Philosophy And Its Conditions. Ed. Gabriel Riera (Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 2005). pp. 237-261.]
So your recent scores are clearly underpinned by a particular philosophy or ongoing process of critical thinking, one which, as I’ve said, I find at once inspiring and troubling. However, it seems to me that the scores’ openness – and 2005/1 is a good example – means that they can be interpreted in an infinity of different ways, some of which may ignore or even go completely against the grain of your thinking. So, for example, in theory a studio recording of either a pop song or a neo-classical quartet – both of which do apply ‘differential thinking’ in relation to harmony, structure etc. - could be presented as actualisations of 2005/1, even though they wouldn’t be engaging with your underlying ideas at all. Is this a problem? Are there, or could there be, realisations of 2005/1 that you felt were ‘invalid’? Or, to put it differently, are there limits to the ways in which you feel that musicians should approach the piece even though nothing to this effect is specified in the score?
There are various important issues here. First, 'any place and any time are equally perfect (perfect in their totality)' does not mean that just 'anything goes'. It's always about engaging with a score. Thus, looking into the potentials of a score (and this applies to any score), I’d propose that what doesn’t appear in the score should not appear in a realisation except as its actual world, or if you like, its 'contextual material / conditions'.
The actual world of a score could be the occurrence of a situation where there's no outside the work. (The above mentioned 'highly framed centre' reminds me of a powerful religion that provokes endless problems that are the problems of capitalism as well). Where there is no outside the work, we could encounter the actual world through a music that is transparent. And what if this were simply enough?
So, then, what could 'a pop song presented as an actualisation of 2005/1’ mean? I can well imagine pop or classical music being part of an actualisation of 2005/1. Actually this is something that occasionally happens. We have had crack-trafficking being framed in a project last year in Santiago de Chile. That's not significant except that it has happened and not been staged. In your proposition a hypothetical content appears detached from a more integral situation that might in the end be capable of making sense.
Furthermore, it’s not at all about exploring specific places and times; places and times just offer what they are. Of course I have preferences, everybody has preferences, but don't they operate on a fundamentally different level? The way I’d hope to see the world is essentially connected with particular conceptual sets. However the world often discloses a different reality which forces me to adjust or extend my view of the conceptual set. Preferences populate the world as phenomena, they sound lower or higher, shorter or longer etc.
Finally, the score operates on a level of the implicit that, I would assert, reflects the entire generic process of a realisation. If I had any reservations regarding a realisation, I would locate them in this area.
So if I understand right, for you 2005/1 would ideally be a simple framing of one corner / moment of the world as it unfolds, without any dramatic or organisational structure being imposed upon it; a framing which allows what you’ve called ‘the sounding of the world’ to take place in as transparent or unmediated a way as is possible. Is that right?
Yes.
Moving on to the particular realisations of 2005/1 that the invited musicians submitted for this project, while I’m pretty sure that all of them are aware of your thinking, it seems that some of the musicians were less obedient than others in the way that they realised the score. Several of the recordings (especially Németh, anteroom and Davis) include ‘differential’ aspects of performance and / or composition that move sometimes far away from an unmediated presentation of ‘the sounding world’. For me these (deliberate?) mis-readings of the thinking underlying the score create an additional level of interest and tension which I enjoy, however perverse they may be. What did you make of this aspect of the project?
Let me first say that 'obedient' isn't a word I can relate to.
In my scores I'm looking for a certain economy of language which I think has become more evident in recent years with projects such as the found sentences or found words. It's a different economy of language that doesn't operate frontally.
Language is not a function of frontal and explicit communication and has far more to do with locating oneself in an environment than with communicating whatever contents to others. Thus, as I reject a frontal or explicit communication, the entire complex of a score's potentiality arises differently. So, I can't relate either to what you've called "mis-readings".
I would say that the score keeps being the referential instance, even if I personally realise the score now and then, or propose a certain reading. This reading is my way of dealing with the score; however, there are certainly others.
A generic process both highly depends on and affects its actual world, and we can add that the worlds of the involved musicians are considerably divergent. So, I do welcome what a generic process discloses, and of course we can always analyse or deconstruct the powers and dynamics of such a process, but this would need to be done with great care.
Another aspect of the realisations that I’d like to ask about is the degree of difficulty that several of the musicians experienced in achieving a recorded realisation of the piece. Some of them refer to this in the short texts they wrote to accompany their realisations, and more than half of the musicians missed the initial deadline. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with musicians having to struggle to complete a project, but I wonder whether you feel that this is characteristic of your pieces?
You're surely right in alluding to the fact that this difficulty is a characteristic of my work in general, and obviously, it's a difficulty I'm also struggling with. I think it's due to the way I organise my work: I try to separate a compositional reflection from a performative practice, in order to make sure that the former isn't compromised by the latter's constraints.
I also locate this difficulty in my aim of actualising in music our bond to place and time. In a certain way I propose this to be 'enough', however 'lateral' such a music might sound. Sometimes I wonder whether this evokes something like an apocalyptic tone in the sense of an end of history of music-making or expression. Of course I completely disagree with such a view.
I wonder whether this desire to situate your music in the particular time and place of its realisation renders problematic any attempt to represent your music in a recording, as any recording is inevitably taking it away from that immediate context? I think that one of the things I wanted to explore when we set up this project was to what extent a work like 2005/1 can be realised at all in a recording. The musicians were explicitly asked to produce an audio object ‘that was suitable for repeated playings’, but this runs against the grain of the piece in many ways. Do you think that this was part of the reason for the difficulties some of the musicians experienced, and what is your attitude to recordings of your recent music in general?
For me now, any recording is not simply a representation of musical content or immediate context but always potentially evidence of relating anew to place and time. I'm aware that our experiences of place and time are essentially very layered, meaning that a bond to place and time may be a somewhat narrowing statement.
A 'repeated playing’ is always exposed to time, and thus always offers such evidence. Can't we say that in recent years strategies have been increasingly developed that realise the potentials of the playback listening situation as a way of both 'transferring sound' and actualising our bond to place and time? It seems to me that there's still too much of a simplistic or dualistic view on this, focusing rather on their respective ends; that is, either a result-oriented object as pure content (supposedly featuring mere quality), or an apparent void as interactive trigger (supposedly featuring mere concept). But the realities of our practice and their rendering through different media have become far more complex and abundantly layered, and we would really need to look most carefully, if not to say speculatively, at the implications and potential trajectories of the decisions involved in a work. Also, the potential trajectories of a work - that is, its capacity to be mediated - are always heterogeneous and contradictory, depending so much on the dynamics of a speculative reading and the framing of that work by others as well as the author. I would say that these dynamics are what I'm interested in above all.
This could be my answer to your question regarding my attitude to recordings of my recent music in general, and I would say it's also true regarding my attitude to 'concert realisations' or 'more lateral' projects. Finally, the ‘difficulties’ you mention might reveal a still very limited view we have of 'recording' in general.
So, I think that the realisations of 2005/1 for this project offer great insight into these dynamics.
Isn’t the ‘bond to time and place’ what people are often seeking to untie with music? Many people walk around wearing headphones as if they’re trying to create their own bubble and remove themselves from the perceptual realities of their environment. Similarly most recordings are made in insulated studio spaces that minimise the actual context and try to situate the music on an ideal, abstracted plane. Is that a tendency, and an attitude to music, that frustrates you?
I can perfectly understand your comment, however, isn't it to a certain extent governed by a problematic moral undertone? The world is a machine, and I guess we all have various overlapping and contradictory strategies to keep functioning within this machine. What we can see is that there's no outside this machine that creates ever new dependencies on facilities. A world conquered for facilities, has human history ever been much different? However, I'm convinced that there are still possibilities for making real decisions, and that it’s better to embrace these possibilities gladly and courageously if we have the chance.
Much of your recent practice inevitably recalls aspects of Cage’s thinking, for example his famous statement that ‘music is all around us; if only we have ears, there would be no need for concert halls.’ Do you see yourself as working within a post-Cageian tradition, or are you more combative with regard to his legacy?
To be honest, right now I can't say much about John Cage. I think that even today it's still difficult to realise in music the reaches of the ideas in his writings, and I'm convinced he also was aware of this. And the reaches of these ideas remain a real challenge.
I feel that it’s generally difficult to realise ideas in music. Music is a poor, clumsy and unreliable vehicle in that respect; ideas just don’t stick to it. Whereas I feel that any sound always already contains within it a sensual aspect, so that music cannot help but have a strong emotional pull. But I imagine that you might see things differently…?
Actually, I didn't want to play music off against ideas, nor the converse. Take the quote you mentioned about music being all around us: I'm sure Cage realised this statement personally in his daily life, but finally he turned back again towards works such as Etudes Australes or Freeman Etudes, pieces which require both virtuosity and an exceptional acoustic, as well as works for orchestra that were played in concert halls. Happily he did, but one could at least ask: Why?
Ideas often collide with reality, and I think this isn’t because reality is more complex (ideas are reality as well) but rather because we have a narrowing concept of ideas. Aren't ideas a practice? We're so stiff in terms of language, in which ideas are expressed, that we only see functions and objectives. Music seems to be more immediate, it is something like pure reality, or pure condition (including humans interacting as a part of this), neither of which are very pure intrinsically, but rather abundant and transparent.
I suppose music and ideas occur at once.
Interview conducted by email between September 26 of 2012 and May 18 of 2013 and published at Another Timbre as part of Simon Reynell's project with 2005/1
TEXT SCORES - STATEMENT (1)
A beginning of music as beginning which not yet is Music.
This beginning happens in an indetermined field where pure incidence may turn into coincidence - (something) occurs.
Much later Music and Discourse would follow.
Communication systems - language, notation - endure an intrinsic tension between the institutionally established system and their nature: No second use of a sign or a word has remained the same - words and language have already changed, permanentely they differ (their inherent quality of iteration allows language to become what it is).
So, the precision of a kind of notation becomes a lack of precision because, notation is permanentely differing, and emerging through a contextual proliferation.
When I'm hearing the sounding of the world, I sense a beginning of music touching me, transparently, without imposition on but immersion in the world.
Inclusion. Cheerfulness. By sensing and experiencing the vertiginous infinity of mere occurence, something like dignity in the relation to the world would appear.
The Score - a sheet of paper.
The plane of the score, be a field of incidence - unassignable unpredictability.
Not unlike the performance moment: its inherently environmental drift merely incides - and then, performance moment and environmental drift coincide.
Insects, plants, geographies have begun to populate my scores – a whole flora and fauna is emerging through the plane of the score.
The degré zéro of both a score and a performance is not an accurately prepared blank situation, but in fact is the world.
The moment of a score.
Onto that plane of the score, the world is reflecting its abundance, and the lighter the sheet of paper has been inflected by our wish, the more lucidly the reflection of the world on this sheet of paper is manifested. Each letter marks our wish, and therefore inflects the world’s reflection onto the score.
Wishes incline to the production of monuments. The letters in the score tend to both represent our wishes and produce monuments.
So, there is a precise though chaotically indeterminable economy both of letters and their impact in the world.
Words, a score, a performer, a place, a listener, they all are permanently drifting – drifting along, they meet contingently as part of the world’s abundance. Meeting contingently they actualize their potentiality and, permanently become what their drift implies.
Language seems to happen as uninterrupted speech without corresponding reply. Not unlike birds we hear and sing - though we intend to talk to each other. Not unlike birds we adjust ourselves every day to what we come across. There is in a beautiful moment that which has been called the event - not only that of a single work but - of the Écriture.
Written in March 2009 and published in: John Lely and James Saunders, Word Events, Perspectives on Verbal Notation, Continuum 2012
Statement on Indeterminacy
Une « époque » ne préexiste pas aux énoncés qui l'expriment, ni aux visibilités qui la remplissent. (Gilles Deleuze: Foucault, 1986)
Indeterminacy happens as intrinsic unavailability (Unverfügbarkeit) of world, and the occurrence of scores such as Cages 4'33" or Brecht's Water-Yam is beautiful evidence of the efforts to be made in order to trace this unavailability.
These efforts remain residing somewhere in the scores as evidence (énoncé) of the epoch.
But Indeterminacy has become an artistic strategy, and the resultant practice of producing musical situations (encounters referring rather to sound) reflects these efforts of the potentiality of the score, though in a rather chaotic and unpredictable way.
Language oscillates between power and unavailability. A score reflects this structure.
An encounter referring rather to sound and occurring as intrinsically unavailable, could it have emerged through a notation where the quality of iteration of language and notation has been locked and where letters and signs have become mere representatives?
Scores as such occurring as incident.
Unavailability.
Regarding their possible realisations, perplexity.
Trace elements of a world.
Written in February 2010 and published in: John Lely and James Saunders, Word Events, Perspectives on Verbal Notation, Continuum 2012
on 2005/1 winds measure recordings wm28
Jason Kahn Manfred Werder
Shortly before seeing your performance of "ort / zeit / (klänge)" from September 1-30, 2009 on the shores of the Limmat River in Zürich I'd just finished a realization of Michael Pisaro's composition "Only [harmony series no. 17]", which, besides asking for the performer to sit quietly and listen, also specified "A few times, playing an extremely long, very quiet tone." Your piece seemed to take the sitting quietly and listening to another level (although you were standing), in that there seemed to be not just an "intake" of sound and situation going on but also a projection, an insertion of your presence into the space (the shores of the Limmat River). As a performance I found this fascinating and at the time I didn't know anything about the score. I was interested in the aspect of your presence, of you standing on this one spot by the river, as a performance of a score. Aside from enjoying the experience of partaking in your experience of standing by the river listening, of being there, I began to ask myself, "how could one realize a piece like this in the context of a documentation, i.e. of a recording?"
I liked the idea of contrasting this, what in my opinion was, very radical approach to a performance (for whom? for the composer, for the space, for anyone who happened to walk by, not knowing this was a performance, maybe just seeing this as a man standing by the river looking / listening, "being there," attentively?) with the very classical, time-worn practice of recording a composition. How would this translate to the listener? And what would be my experience if I were to "interpret" this piece, not as a performer as much as an "instrumentalist" (a recordist), yet in fact by default playing the same role as you by the river: a person standing at a particular location somewhere over one month's time, to all passersby as someone perhaps not noticed at all, perhaps only slightly obvious as someone more still, more attentive than the average person relaxing or waiting somewhere. After thinking about this for a while I decided to ask you for the score and see about realizing the piece.
I guess my first question is, how did you feel about someone recording this composition? I would almost say it is a contradiction in the conceptual precepts of this piece to have it performed or, even further, to have the performance recorded.
When working on a score, I usually don't think of possible performances. The score and the performance seem to have two different reaches, each with its own potentials. So, when working on 2005(1) - ort / zeit / (klänge) -, I actually dealt with some compositional questions which had appeared at that time; for instance, how could I work the performance space in the score - the performance space which had become so important, so present by the mere fact of a certain absence of produced sounds by the performers? To a certain extent I wanted to mark in the score that which emerges through the absence of produced sounds (instead of keeping on structuring a few sounds to be if at all performed). And, I was looking for something like a 'structural matter of fact' rather than a 'prescription for action'. Something that could be just there and occuring regardless of any performance approach.
Already before, I had replaced a term like 'performance' by 'realization' or 'actualization'. I thought that a word like 'performance' would restrict our ideas of a practice of working on sound, by still refering to an object to produce which however had meanwhile become such a thing like the alteration of a given atmosphere. A word like 'actualization' would allude more to a practice of working on situations that are occuring to some extent by themselves, and where the 'performer' finds herself intrinsically as part of a situation (and not as its creator).
So, regarding your question, I'm definitely interested in challenging our notions of both the score, and a practice of performance which today includes that of recording, and your beautiful project with this piece allows us to reflect and ponder our complexe role as performers and recordists.
In a sense, I'm wondering now, despite the fact that you are a composer (defining this term as "a person who organizes sound"), how much this piece actually has to do with sound per se. Rather, perhaps this piece is more about creating a situation for focused perception of a space, a place, a situation ecompassing all of this, including sound, light, smell, temperature and so. Standing in Zürich's main train station roughly thirty minutes every day for a month, I realised within the first few days that this piece was about much more than the sound of the train station, the sound I was recording and documenting as a realization of this piece. I felt in a sense that I was focusing less at times on the environment around me than on how I was perceiving this environment, the perception of my perception, as it were. This, of course, gradually cast into doubt my idea of somehow documenting a realisation of the piece (sound recording), thinking that perhaps this piece was beyond documentation, was purely about the experience of me being in a place for a certain period of time; and of others (an "audience" come to watch me "peform") sharing this time and space with me, experiencing this situation in their way (which, I know, is in fact not any different than a traditional musical performance). In the end, I settled with the idea of the sound recording as a means of documenting several aspects of the piece: the sound experienced, the action of "being there," a sense of the time passing. Which brings us back to your statement that "The score and the performance seem to have two different reaches, each with its own potentials." And with time I began to realize this was one of the beauties of this piece, that only with the time of being there in the "peformance space" did the various reaches of the compostions manifest themselves.
I know that, as you said here, you are "interested in challenging our notions of both the score, and a practice of performance" but beyond this, when you are performing this piece what is your focus, how do you feel yourself in relation to the space and its identity as a place (as defined by its sound, its light, its presence)? How did the reaches of this piece reveal themselves to you?
Maybe we can say that all music is about much more than just the sounds per se because, producing sounds has ever been a way of locating and confirming one's existence in a world that is infinitely sounding.
I prefer your description of an 'intake of sound and situation', and at the same time a 'projection, an insertion of the performer's presence into the space' that is happening, rather than the idea of a focused perception which still seems to relate more to a subject - object structure which maybe has been at the 'beginning' of a long and very problematic history. I don't like so much a certain kind of exploratory spirit because, it usually takes up a space and destroys the place for its personal purposes. Each place is intrinsic multiplicity and doesn't need any intervention of ours. So, I try to approach a place regarding a performance almost unnoticeably, unimposingly.
I think when performing I'm looking for a situation where for a certain time something like 'the world' would appear. Not one to look at or listen to. Not one to project concepts onto. One to be part of, where in a chaotic and infinite becoming something like a real sense of meeting and sharing would emerge. I remember having been so overwhelmed and moved by the mere fact of finding myself in this great abundance of life on the shores of the Limmat River. I love Deleuze's call for 'giving consistency without losing anything of infinity' (donner consistance sans rien perdre de l'infini), it's such a beautiful statement, and I read here your sentence 'thinking that perhaps this piece was purely about the experience of me being in a place for a certain period of time' as a way of working on such a consistency. How can we think our practice of producing sounds so as to touch upon an idea or sense of an infinite situation?
I'm roaming the cities regarding possible places for projects, and revisit places to ponder their potentials. When performing I'm not so much interested in discovering certain identities of a place, but more in sensing that I actually interact in its infinity.
Regarding your question of how the reaches of this piece might reveal themselves to me, I would say, very personally, in the way the ongoing practice of private and public realizations of this score has heightened and transformed my experience and sense of the surroundings. This has been so enriching, and subsequently has deeply informed my later scores.
You have anticipated some possible reservations towards documenting such a project. I would say, our practice of producing sounds has of course changed, and so have our ideas of interpretation and documentation. Almost paradoxically we could add that an existing documentation retains its potential in that what is not and cannot be documented.
(August 2010)
Published in 2005/1 winds measure recordings wm28
Shortly before seeing your performance of "ort / zeit / (klänge)" from September 1-30, 2009 on the shores of the Limmat River in Zürich I'd just finished a realization of Michael Pisaro's composition "Only [harmony series no. 17]", which, besides asking for the performer to sit quietly and listen, also specified "A few times, playing an extremely long, very quiet tone." Your piece seemed to take the sitting quietly and listening to another level (although you were standing), in that there seemed to be not just an "intake" of sound and situation going on but also a projection, an insertion of your presence into the space (the shores of the Limmat River). As a performance I found this fascinating and at the time I didn't know anything about the score. I was interested in the aspect of your presence, of you standing on this one spot by the river, as a performance of a score. Aside from enjoying the experience of partaking in your experience of standing by the river listening, of being there, I began to ask myself, "how could one realize a piece like this in the context of a documentation, i.e. of a recording?"
I liked the idea of contrasting this, what in my opinion was, very radical approach to a performance (for whom? for the composer, for the space, for anyone who happened to walk by, not knowing this was a performance, maybe just seeing this as a man standing by the river looking / listening, "being there," attentively?) with the very classical, time-worn practice of recording a composition. How would this translate to the listener? And what would be my experience if I were to "interpret" this piece, not as a performer as much as an "instrumentalist" (a recordist), yet in fact by default playing the same role as you by the river: a person standing at a particular location somewhere over one month's time, to all passersby as someone perhaps not noticed at all, perhaps only slightly obvious as someone more still, more attentive than the average person relaxing or waiting somewhere. After thinking about this for a while I decided to ask you for the score and see about realizing the piece.
I guess my first question is, how did you feel about someone recording this composition? I would almost say it is a contradiction in the conceptual precepts of this piece to have it performed or, even further, to have the performance recorded.
When working on a score, I usually don't think of possible performances. The score and the performance seem to have two different reaches, each with its own potentials. So, when working on 2005(1) - ort / zeit / (klänge) -, I actually dealt with some compositional questions which had appeared at that time; for instance, how could I work the performance space in the score - the performance space which had become so important, so present by the mere fact of a certain absence of produced sounds by the performers? To a certain extent I wanted to mark in the score that which emerges through the absence of produced sounds (instead of keeping on structuring a few sounds to be if at all performed). And, I was looking for something like a 'structural matter of fact' rather than a 'prescription for action'. Something that could be just there and occuring regardless of any performance approach.
Already before, I had replaced a term like 'performance' by 'realization' or 'actualization'. I thought that a word like 'performance' would restrict our ideas of a practice of working on sound, by still refering to an object to produce which however had meanwhile become such a thing like the alteration of a given atmosphere. A word like 'actualization' would allude more to a practice of working on situations that are occuring to some extent by themselves, and where the 'performer' finds herself intrinsically as part of a situation (and not as its creator).
So, regarding your question, I'm definitely interested in challenging our notions of both the score, and a practice of performance which today includes that of recording, and your beautiful project with this piece allows us to reflect and ponder our complexe role as performers and recordists.
In a sense, I'm wondering now, despite the fact that you are a composer (defining this term as "a person who organizes sound"), how much this piece actually has to do with sound per se. Rather, perhaps this piece is more about creating a situation for focused perception of a space, a place, a situation ecompassing all of this, including sound, light, smell, temperature and so. Standing in Zürich's main train station roughly thirty minutes every day for a month, I realised within the first few days that this piece was about much more than the sound of the train station, the sound I was recording and documenting as a realization of this piece. I felt in a sense that I was focusing less at times on the environment around me than on how I was perceiving this environment, the perception of my perception, as it were. This, of course, gradually cast into doubt my idea of somehow documenting a realisation of the piece (sound recording), thinking that perhaps this piece was beyond documentation, was purely about the experience of me being in a place for a certain period of time; and of others (an "audience" come to watch me "peform") sharing this time and space with me, experiencing this situation in their way (which, I know, is in fact not any different than a traditional musical performance). In the end, I settled with the idea of the sound recording as a means of documenting several aspects of the piece: the sound experienced, the action of "being there," a sense of the time passing. Which brings us back to your statement that "The score and the performance seem to have two different reaches, each with its own potentials." And with time I began to realize this was one of the beauties of this piece, that only with the time of being there in the "peformance space" did the various reaches of the compostions manifest themselves.
I know that, as you said here, you are "interested in challenging our notions of both the score, and a practice of performance" but beyond this, when you are performing this piece what is your focus, how do you feel yourself in relation to the space and its identity as a place (as defined by its sound, its light, its presence)? How did the reaches of this piece reveal themselves to you?
Maybe we can say that all music is about much more than just the sounds per se because, producing sounds has ever been a way of locating and confirming one's existence in a world that is infinitely sounding.
I prefer your description of an 'intake of sound and situation', and at the same time a 'projection, an insertion of the performer's presence into the space' that is happening, rather than the idea of a focused perception which still seems to relate more to a subject - object structure which maybe has been at the 'beginning' of a long and very problematic history. I don't like so much a certain kind of exploratory spirit because, it usually takes up a space and destroys the place for its personal purposes. Each place is intrinsic multiplicity and doesn't need any intervention of ours. So, I try to approach a place regarding a performance almost unnoticeably, unimposingly.
I think when performing I'm looking for a situation where for a certain time something like 'the world' would appear. Not one to look at or listen to. Not one to project concepts onto. One to be part of, where in a chaotic and infinite becoming something like a real sense of meeting and sharing would emerge. I remember having been so overwhelmed and moved by the mere fact of finding myself in this great abundance of life on the shores of the Limmat River. I love Deleuze's call for 'giving consistency without losing anything of infinity' (donner consistance sans rien perdre de l'infini), it's such a beautiful statement, and I read here your sentence 'thinking that perhaps this piece was purely about the experience of me being in a place for a certain period of time' as a way of working on such a consistency. How can we think our practice of producing sounds so as to touch upon an idea or sense of an infinite situation?
I'm roaming the cities regarding possible places for projects, and revisit places to ponder their potentials. When performing I'm not so much interested in discovering certain identities of a place, but more in sensing that I actually interact in its infinity.
Regarding your question of how the reaches of this piece might reveal themselves to me, I would say, very personally, in the way the ongoing practice of private and public realizations of this score has heightened and transformed my experience and sense of the surroundings. This has been so enriching, and subsequently has deeply informed my later scores.
You have anticipated some possible reservations towards documenting such a project. I would say, our practice of producing sounds has of course changed, and so have our ideas of interpretation and documentation. Almost paradoxically we could add that an existing documentation retains its potential in that what is not and cannot be documented.
(August 2010)
Published in 2005/1 winds measure recordings wm28
La música del silencio, o el «sonar» del mundo
Translation by María Torres Valenzuela, 2011. Published at &, 2012.
He aquí algunas reflexiones de un compositor cuya obra se lleva a cabo de manera similar a la de la música descrita en los textos de la China antigua, y tal como François Jullien nos la hizo descubrir: tan similar que las descripciones de las superficies sonoras y de las estrategias en juego son intercambiables.
Podemos considerar la música como totalidad del todo sonora [Gesamtheit alles Klingenden] –, una totalidad que va mucho más allá del segmento que se refiere al hombre.
La totalidad del todo sonora es el sonar del mundo [das Klingen der Welt], y nosotros somos parte de ese sonar del mundo.
Oír esta música y escucharla, teniendo conciencia de todo aquello que no oímos y que, sin embargo, está simplemente allí, nos procura alegría, del mismo modo que la vista de un paisaje nos conmueve.
Evidentemente, esta música es magníficamente caótica, y la comparación con el paisaje es quizás discutible, probablemente porque para el hombre los actos de oír y de escuchar están ligados más fuertemente a una supervivencia primera que aquel de mirar.
Oír y escuchar hacen al hombre reencontrarse en este amenazante caos del mundo. Pero la experiencia del mundo se presenta también enteramente cambiada. El amenazante caos del mundo se encuentra ya tan domesticado que la voluntad de esta domesticación ha devenido el amenazante caos del hombre.
El articular de los sonidos como actividad remite probablemente, en primer lugar, a un plan del acto de oír [eine Ebene des Hörens]: a un plan del acto de oír, donde el hombre a la vez oye y se escucha a sí mismo y a su propia actividad de acuerdo con ese sonar del mundo.
A la vez, de manera general y determinada, se mezcla cada sonido con el sonar del mundo, como se mezcla también la actividad de articulación de sonido con la actividad del mundo.
Con cada sonido, percibo que un lugar propio se forma, por la interacción del sonido articulado, del lugar y de mí mismo. Esta mezcla se mezcla, por así decirlo, conmigo, y siento una magnifica infinitud del sonar, a la vez superficial y densa, tal como me sentiría probablemente en medio de una selva virgen.
No existe nada que no produzca mutuamente efecto; todo en consecuencia existe en correlación.
La idea de un lugar evoca demasiado fuertemente una entidad aislada. Cuando escucho un sonido articulado y mi sensación de ese sonido, surgen relaciones más diferentes a los seres y las cosas que yo encuentro y que se encuentran. En interacción todo es encuentro. El espacio de mi conciencia, encontrándose con una reflexión [Spiegelung]*, me hace efectivamente encontrar este encuentro.
Podemos calificar la «representación de música» como encuentro que concierne más bien a los actos de oír y escuchar. Estas precauciones descriptivas son esenciales porque separadas entre ellas, y de todos los otros sentidos, ninguno de esos actos existe. Los seres y las cosas se encuentran, y los mundos de sus sentidos, perceptibles o no para el hombre, se fundan y se actualizan.
Sin embargo, no se trata de encontrarse (como intención). No hay ninguna función aquí, ya que esto llega de todos modos.
Del encuentro que concierne más bien a los actos de oír y de escuchar, no se trata tampoco de dar una representación, sino por el contrario, de adquirir la capacidad de encontrar, en una relación general y determinada.
Esa relación general y determinada, que operaría en una regulación global de los fenómenos de fondo común, es aquello que no permite a este encuentro sino su actualización; porque estos fenómenos emergen y realizan eficazmente como tales –y no como ideas- , para en seguida sumergirse.
Al encuentro al que conciernen más bien los actos de oír y de escuchar, no doy entonces nada, sino que actualizo relaciones a los seres y las cosas que me conciernen.
Un sonido que yo articulo es así como parte de las relaciones; es exactamente el sonido que, en este momento general y determinado, y en una relación general y determinada, puede actualizar su potencialidad.
En la ausencia de sonidos articulados, el sonar de todo encuentro [das Klingen aller Begegnung] me descompone y me hace sentir el mundo; y, en el momento de un sonido articulado como toma de conciencia [observando esta articulación], emerge el espacio de mi conciencia de lo propio del hombre: siendo mundo y observando el mundo.
Me gustaría siempre revivir este momento, en el que me vuelvo enteramente hacia las cualidades de los encuentros.
Las cualidades de los encuentros serían una indecisión de las relaciones, de donde emergería el mundo.
Allí donde el mundo emergería, el arte sería por así decir la fiesta de esa indecisión.
Me imagino cómo todo lo que me concierne se deslizaría como un sonido en el espacio y se diluiría como mundo; y, todavía acordándome allí de la presunta conquista de cumplir como creador una creación para el hombre-, encuentro la obra de François Jullien y los textos de la China antigua, cuya actualización me hace la vida más bella y provocativa.
Dian, interrogado por Confucius sobre aquello que quería hacer, si sus méritos fueran finalmente reconocidos y si pudiese desplegar todos sus talentos:
Hacia el fin de la primavera, las ropas primaverales una vez preparadas, con cinco o seis compañeros, seis o siete muchachos, nos bañaríamos en el río Yi, gozaríamos del viento sobre la terraza de las Danzas de la lluvia, para luego regresar juntos cantando.
(Elogio de lo insípido, Picquier, p. 57)
* En el original «réflexion» que, como en español, adquiere en este contexto el sentido de «lo que es reflejado», o «espejeado», cuestión que ayuda a dilucidar la palabra alemana «Spiegelung», reflejo. [N.T]
This text was originally written in French in early 2005 and published as La musique du silence, ou le «sonner» du monde, in Chine/Europe. Percussions dans la pensée. A partir du travail de François Jullien. PUF / Paris, 2005, Editors: P. Chartier / T. Marchaisse.
He aquí algunas reflexiones de un compositor cuya obra se lleva a cabo de manera similar a la de la música descrita en los textos de la China antigua, y tal como François Jullien nos la hizo descubrir: tan similar que las descripciones de las superficies sonoras y de las estrategias en juego son intercambiables.
Podemos considerar la música como totalidad del todo sonora [Gesamtheit alles Klingenden] –, una totalidad que va mucho más allá del segmento que se refiere al hombre.
La totalidad del todo sonora es el sonar del mundo [das Klingen der Welt], y nosotros somos parte de ese sonar del mundo.
Oír esta música y escucharla, teniendo conciencia de todo aquello que no oímos y que, sin embargo, está simplemente allí, nos procura alegría, del mismo modo que la vista de un paisaje nos conmueve.
Evidentemente, esta música es magníficamente caótica, y la comparación con el paisaje es quizás discutible, probablemente porque para el hombre los actos de oír y de escuchar están ligados más fuertemente a una supervivencia primera que aquel de mirar.
Oír y escuchar hacen al hombre reencontrarse en este amenazante caos del mundo. Pero la experiencia del mundo se presenta también enteramente cambiada. El amenazante caos del mundo se encuentra ya tan domesticado que la voluntad de esta domesticación ha devenido el amenazante caos del hombre.
El articular de los sonidos como actividad remite probablemente, en primer lugar, a un plan del acto de oír [eine Ebene des Hörens]: a un plan del acto de oír, donde el hombre a la vez oye y se escucha a sí mismo y a su propia actividad de acuerdo con ese sonar del mundo.
A la vez, de manera general y determinada, se mezcla cada sonido con el sonar del mundo, como se mezcla también la actividad de articulación de sonido con la actividad del mundo.
Con cada sonido, percibo que un lugar propio se forma, por la interacción del sonido articulado, del lugar y de mí mismo. Esta mezcla se mezcla, por así decirlo, conmigo, y siento una magnifica infinitud del sonar, a la vez superficial y densa, tal como me sentiría probablemente en medio de una selva virgen.
No existe nada que no produzca mutuamente efecto; todo en consecuencia existe en correlación.
La idea de un lugar evoca demasiado fuertemente una entidad aislada. Cuando escucho un sonido articulado y mi sensación de ese sonido, surgen relaciones más diferentes a los seres y las cosas que yo encuentro y que se encuentran. En interacción todo es encuentro. El espacio de mi conciencia, encontrándose con una reflexión [Spiegelung]*, me hace efectivamente encontrar este encuentro.
Podemos calificar la «representación de música» como encuentro que concierne más bien a los actos de oír y escuchar. Estas precauciones descriptivas son esenciales porque separadas entre ellas, y de todos los otros sentidos, ninguno de esos actos existe. Los seres y las cosas se encuentran, y los mundos de sus sentidos, perceptibles o no para el hombre, se fundan y se actualizan.
Sin embargo, no se trata de encontrarse (como intención). No hay ninguna función aquí, ya que esto llega de todos modos.
Del encuentro que concierne más bien a los actos de oír y de escuchar, no se trata tampoco de dar una representación, sino por el contrario, de adquirir la capacidad de encontrar, en una relación general y determinada.
Esa relación general y determinada, que operaría en una regulación global de los fenómenos de fondo común, es aquello que no permite a este encuentro sino su actualización; porque estos fenómenos emergen y realizan eficazmente como tales –y no como ideas- , para en seguida sumergirse.
Al encuentro al que conciernen más bien los actos de oír y de escuchar, no doy entonces nada, sino que actualizo relaciones a los seres y las cosas que me conciernen.
Un sonido que yo articulo es así como parte de las relaciones; es exactamente el sonido que, en este momento general y determinado, y en una relación general y determinada, puede actualizar su potencialidad.
En la ausencia de sonidos articulados, el sonar de todo encuentro [das Klingen aller Begegnung] me descompone y me hace sentir el mundo; y, en el momento de un sonido articulado como toma de conciencia [observando esta articulación], emerge el espacio de mi conciencia de lo propio del hombre: siendo mundo y observando el mundo.
Me gustaría siempre revivir este momento, en el que me vuelvo enteramente hacia las cualidades de los encuentros.
Las cualidades de los encuentros serían una indecisión de las relaciones, de donde emergería el mundo.
Allí donde el mundo emergería, el arte sería por así decir la fiesta de esa indecisión.
Me imagino cómo todo lo que me concierne se deslizaría como un sonido en el espacio y se diluiría como mundo; y, todavía acordándome allí de la presunta conquista de cumplir como creador una creación para el hombre-, encuentro la obra de François Jullien y los textos de la China antigua, cuya actualización me hace la vida más bella y provocativa.
Dian, interrogado por Confucius sobre aquello que quería hacer, si sus méritos fueran finalmente reconocidos y si pudiese desplegar todos sus talentos:
Hacia el fin de la primavera, las ropas primaverales una vez preparadas, con cinco o seis compañeros, seis o siete muchachos, nos bañaríamos en el río Yi, gozaríamos del viento sobre la terraza de las Danzas de la lluvia, para luego regresar juntos cantando.
(Elogio de lo insípido, Picquier, p. 57)
* En el original «réflexion» que, como en español, adquiere en este contexto el sentido de «lo que es reflejado», o «espejeado», cuestión que ayuda a dilucidar la palabra alemana «Spiegelung», reflejo. [N.T]
This text was originally written in French in early 2005 and published as La musique du silence, ou le «sonner» du monde, in Chine/Europe. Percussions dans la pensée. A partir du travail de François Jullien. PUF / Paris, 2005, Editors: P. Chartier / T. Marchaisse.
Note on stück 1998 seiten 1-4000
The score stück 1998 consists of 160'000 time units written on 4000 pages. One time unit indicates a duration of 12 seconds, structured by a frequency of 6 seconds to be played by one or more musicians, and a silence of 6 seconds.
There are 72 frequencies corresponding to 6 octaves of the well-tempered twelve ton system. The frequencies are indicated by the alphabetic characters of the ton pitches, f.i. C, d, e1 etc., in order to abstract the specific relation of the clefs in traditional music notation to the respective instruments and pitches.
A frequency that is out of reach of the respective musicians' instruments is realized as the respective time period to last, which results in a time unit of silence of 12 seconds. The 160'000 time units are actualized (the term I prefer to 'performed') in consecutive sections and essentially only once, lasting in its totality 533 hours and 20 minutes. This means that every sound to occur has its very precise and unrepeatable moment within this absolute structure. In the context of this score the alphabetic character that indicates the frequency allows the sign to operate according to its intrinsic quality of iteration. It takes its precise place in the structure but doesn't represent any sound quality at all.
There are various levels of Indeterminacy, f.i. the distribution by chance procedure of the 72 frequencies over the 160'000 units. This is very explicit; however, as we will see, the frequencies feature a particular structure of potentiality. The instruments with their sound qualities and ranges provide a more challenging level. According to their ranges, a violinist would play about the half of the frequencies and a trombonist would play about the exact other half, precisely at the times when the violinist doesn't produce any frequency. A pianist would play all the frequencies which results in a regular flow of sound of 6 seconds and silence of 6 seconds. We can consider instruments with particularly small ranges: An actualization would easily result in one long silence.
So, the selection of the instrument(s) effectuates not only the sound quality but the actual flow of the music: The intersection of the course of the frequencies (given in the score at the precise moment of the ongoing thread) and the specific range of the selected instrument(s) produces an ever contingent situation. This essentially allows the structure to unfold its potentiality, including its extremes, which are a regular flow of sound of 6 seconds and silence of 6 seconds, and a complete silence (which simply means absence of played frequencies).
There is an absolute structure, but not until coming together with reality the structure and its signs are actualized under the specific condition of the situation as the actual material: the selected instruments and their performers, and the place as the occurring intersection of all its divergent potentials. The absolute but empty structure of stück 1998 allows us to consider music to essentially consist in its condition occurring in place: a musician touches a sound source and at a time at a place produces a sound or not. This set lets the precise condition of each situation, regarding our proposed structure, occur as intrinsic reality of the situation. I propose this to be already enough: the intrinsic reality of a situation. (2010)
There are 72 frequencies corresponding to 6 octaves of the well-tempered twelve ton system. The frequencies are indicated by the alphabetic characters of the ton pitches, f.i. C, d, e1 etc., in order to abstract the specific relation of the clefs in traditional music notation to the respective instruments and pitches.
A frequency that is out of reach of the respective musicians' instruments is realized as the respective time period to last, which results in a time unit of silence of 12 seconds. The 160'000 time units are actualized (the term I prefer to 'performed') in consecutive sections and essentially only once, lasting in its totality 533 hours and 20 minutes. This means that every sound to occur has its very precise and unrepeatable moment within this absolute structure. In the context of this score the alphabetic character that indicates the frequency allows the sign to operate according to its intrinsic quality of iteration. It takes its precise place in the structure but doesn't represent any sound quality at all.
There are various levels of Indeterminacy, f.i. the distribution by chance procedure of the 72 frequencies over the 160'000 units. This is very explicit; however, as we will see, the frequencies feature a particular structure of potentiality. The instruments with their sound qualities and ranges provide a more challenging level. According to their ranges, a violinist would play about the half of the frequencies and a trombonist would play about the exact other half, precisely at the times when the violinist doesn't produce any frequency. A pianist would play all the frequencies which results in a regular flow of sound of 6 seconds and silence of 6 seconds. We can consider instruments with particularly small ranges: An actualization would easily result in one long silence.
So, the selection of the instrument(s) effectuates not only the sound quality but the actual flow of the music: The intersection of the course of the frequencies (given in the score at the precise moment of the ongoing thread) and the specific range of the selected instrument(s) produces an ever contingent situation. This essentially allows the structure to unfold its potentiality, including its extremes, which are a regular flow of sound of 6 seconds and silence of 6 seconds, and a complete silence (which simply means absence of played frequencies).
There is an absolute structure, but not until coming together with reality the structure and its signs are actualized under the specific condition of the situation as the actual material: the selected instruments and their performers, and the place as the occurring intersection of all its divergent potentials. The absolute but empty structure of stück 1998 allows us to consider music to essentially consist in its condition occurring in place: a musician touches a sound source and at a time at a place produces a sound or not. This set lets the precise condition of each situation, regarding our proposed structure, occur as intrinsic reality of the situation. I propose this to be already enough: the intrinsic reality of a situation. (2010)
Interview February 2004
James Saunders Manfred Werder
In the preface to the score of stück 1998 you write the phrase “für sich, klar und sachlich. einfach.” [to itself, clear and objective. simple.]. This seems like both a performance indication and an aesthetic statement which defines your work in general. In practice, how does this statement relate to the way your music operates, and your aims as a composer?
That’s a very interesting point to start. The phrase ‘für sich, klar und sachlich. einfach’ [to itself, clear and objective. simple] replaced all further indications on dynamics, sound qualities etc., since 1997. In general I wanted to write a music where the used material – sound and absence of sound – were just there as material (and not as an author’s composed preferences). The used material could be seen then more precisely as context specific material (the accidental qualities of performers, instruments, the site), as general conditions in a world, and itself as part of the world. In this sense every sound bears its precise dynamic and quality through its context.
I thought all indications would lead to representation only, so I decided to describe (more literally than poetically) a general and essential attitude aimed at letting the ‘world’ emerge from its context specific potential. I think all my work operates in relation to our complex situation of being the world, and at the same time observing the world.
For me one of the interesting things about the piece is the disparity between the extremely tight control of pitch and duration, and the relative openness of the sounding result (as a consequence of unspecified instrumentation, or uncontrollable sound production within certain boundaries for example). So when looking at the score or listening to the first few events in performance it seems to be completely about the structure (a repeating pattern of a sound lasting six seconds followed by silence for a further six seconds, with only the pitch and register specified). Gradually though the timbral fluctuations that result from sustaining these events for long periods of time reveal themselves and I find my listening focus gets drawn into the sounds: a note becomes a complex of micro-events. Given your comment about the importance of context, do you feel your music operates at this level primarily, or at the more immediately obvious level of the event?
In stück 1998 I think the framework still generates contextual questions relating primarily to ‘music’ and ‘composition’, and I agree with your description of a note becoming a complex of micro-events. Although it may strongly depend on the performance: you describe with ‘extremely tight control of pitch and duration, and the relative openness of the sounding result’ a framework which may also lead to a performance of some 10 minutes of silence by using an instrument with a small pitch range.
There’s a fundamental disparity between the score and a performance. I see the score as a specific section of the world, a performance as a specific section of the score (and also the world), and context as the support of a possible event. Both, context and event, are essentially inseparable, and arise everywhere (in our experience and perception). A performance proposes and creates a specific intersection of articulation, context, and the listener’s experience and perception in a heterogeneous mutuality. The more balanced the meeting of all parts, the more challenging an event may emerge.
Later then in for one or a few performers (2001-) I propose a framework focusing rather on an acoustic exploration of the surroundings. And there I think the sound events operate primarily as articulations affecting the listener’s quality of perception of the surroundings.
Presumably this is a consequence of the more unpredictable placing of sounds: the only direction in the score is “a lot of time. a few sounds. for itself simple.” I would hope that musicians contemplating a performance of this piece would be sensitive to your approach, but to what extent are the range of possible performances acceptable to you? A “lot of time”, and “a few sounds” might mean many different things to different people. One of the things which I find intriguing about your work, and that of Antoine Beuger and Jürg Frey, is the tension created by relatively little sound in a listening environment: you’re almost torn between two parallel existences. So picking up on your previous comment, do you intend an active exploration of the surroundings by the listeners and/or performers, or do you feel that the articulated events are the listening focus?
I wanted this score to become ‘a function of truth’. It’s essential to get a performer to the point where he advances into fields where he and his risk are not backed up by a structure, how ever far this structure would go in the composition. If I see a performer not willing to collaborate in this sense, it hardly is acceptable to me, so I locate this question rather there. But still, that direction of four lines is literally the score which prescribes a very clear and intrinsic situation. I think this score comments on ‘precision’ and its omnipresent impact, especially in occidental culture, and hopefully generates some experiences towards an other ‘economy of precision’.
The two parallel existences are the human condition: being nature and (consciously) observing nature. The absence of articulated events brings about a heightened experience of being more and more dissolved into this whole environment of sounds, of nature, and in happy moments we experience just ‘being’, or ‘being nature’. Then, in the very moment of an articulated event, as a moment of awareness of oneself observing this articulation, emerges the space of consciousness of the human being’s condition.
Maybe experiencing this space again and again is already enough. But how to get ‘composition’ to that level? And knowing that ‘composition’ is only one of the ‘involved parts’ of such a moment.
What then is your role as a composer, and to what extent do you feel you can intervene in this relationship?
A composer not backing up his work against the risk of its disappearance will find himself exploring the potential of his work’s own effectiveness.
I think all composers would view that in a different way: notation is always a compromise. For me notation should be efficient, meaning it should serve its purpose without containing redundant information, even if a lack of explicit direction in some areas creates particular contingencies in its realisation (looking at what composers don’t notate is always revealing). I think your notation is efficient in this way, and its role in your work is a very interesting one. I’d like to ask you about how it relates to your working method. Whilst some of your scores involve quite a lot of material (the 4000 pages of stück 1998 for example), others are more conceptual. Could you explain how you work?
An important part of how I work is observing, sensing the world and nature of the involved parts of this performance moment. The performance as a moment where
people meet and where all incidences may coincide, where the possible (das Mögliche) may become the real (das Wirkliche). I observe and sense this moment of coincidence and interaction in order the refine my propositions towards such a moment. I’d say the most important and beautiful part is observing and sensing how I personally coincide with the world’s very sound. Often I just listen for hours. Then I try to think what it is that I did when I listened. So I look at the world wherein I see myself interacting. There I see my possibilities to be effective.
What appears in a score in a certain way is what a composer (still) may consider worth mentioning (the same would stand for an interview), bringing us back to the question of an economy of precision. We live with a tremendous excess of the explicit. Conceptually I wouldn‘t separate too much scores like stück 1998 or ein(e) ausführende(r) (2002-) with their 4000 pages from later prose scores including only a few words. I’d rather think that a certain idea or layout for a composition proposes a certain ideal form of the score.
There are some quite fine distinctions between your pieces and particularly between versions of pieces (such as ein klang und eine stille, or stück 2003), where sometimes there is only one word different in the score, but the impact of this change is often very large. They seem to hint at trying to isolate performance archetypes, particularly in relation to listening and observation as you have mentioned, but also relationships between performers. Is this questioning of how people interact important for you?
Beyond a cultural extinction through what has been called ‘the society of the spectacle’ a richness of expression does obviously exist, and personally I feel a fundamental necessity to deconstruct the complex ‘wickerwork’ of elements and parameters involved in musical composition and its performance situation. This ‘wickerwork’ is actually mirroring our entire culture. So I try to isolate basic questions. In this sense I aim at focusing on ‘that people interact’ before questioning ‘how people interact’.
Where do we localise the essential impact of a performance of one performer in relation to a performance of two performers, or three performers? Where do we localise the essential impact of no articulated sound in relation to one articulated sound, to two or even three articulated sounds which already seem to be much closer to infinity? Elementary numerical relationships, especially within the numbers 0, 1 and 2, and the ideas of the infinite reveal quite some questions on ‘composition’ and its ‘constitution’, finally on being.
In the scores I claim these questions to be the compositional questions (and there I aim at omitting to work on all questions I consider being contextual in order to avoid their dominant presence). The performances then materialize these questions, and a whole contextual situation emerges where the compositional questions and their materialisation should maintain a transparent balance.
At the end I hope the richness of being and expressing to become a palpable experience.
Some of your pieces are performed in succession, continuing in the score from where the previous performance finished. You’ve also organised series of daily performances of your pieces in a particular space. This seems closely linked to your idea of being and observing the world, perhaps mirroring the structure of the pieces on a larger scale. Why do you present your work in this way, and how do you view the boundaries of both a piece and its performance?
The presentation is always an invitation for people to meet. A performance lets a whole range of human beings’ sensations emerge, and the more we care for these sensations’ quality, the more we need to care for the presentation as well, which actually opens a new field of compositional decisions.
There is an essential relation between the what and the how of a proposition. I aim at bringing forth a flat as possible hierarchy within all the incidences coinciding, and its quality is then the listener’s possibility to live his own experience. With the performance succession I intend to balance performance moment and ‘non- performance moment’, finally to balance the performance moment and life.
Incidences demand a general and certain awareness of care and attention otherwise they get lost in mere representation. I intend to conceive how ‘the world’ appears as ‘world’ in a performance.
I conceived a more general layout (for example in stück 1998) in order to continue to refine a layout as one complex: all pieces then intend to refine this complex. I need to reduce the focus on both an inner-compositional field of possibilities of ‘attraction’ and a linear process of a work as a succession of ‘autonomous compositions’ in order to let appear the mere world as a field of incidences.
So I conceived these scores which are performed in succession: each new, both easily recognisable and essentially different succession may so draw our attention to the situation’s ‘material’ as an exact moment of ‘world’.
Maybe the boundaries of both a piece or a performance are the boundaries of its potentiality as thought, or as information. Intuitively I would ask for a centre, or centres of a piece and its performance. The centres of a performance could be what I called before a heterogeneous mutuality.
Interview conducted by email between 1 and 10 February 2004 and published in
THE ASHGATE RESEARCH COMPANION to EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC (Ed James Saunders) 2009
In the preface to the score of stück 1998 you write the phrase “für sich, klar und sachlich. einfach.” [to itself, clear and objective. simple.]. This seems like both a performance indication and an aesthetic statement which defines your work in general. In practice, how does this statement relate to the way your music operates, and your aims as a composer?
That’s a very interesting point to start. The phrase ‘für sich, klar und sachlich. einfach’ [to itself, clear and objective. simple] replaced all further indications on dynamics, sound qualities etc., since 1997. In general I wanted to write a music where the used material – sound and absence of sound – were just there as material (and not as an author’s composed preferences). The used material could be seen then more precisely as context specific material (the accidental qualities of performers, instruments, the site), as general conditions in a world, and itself as part of the world. In this sense every sound bears its precise dynamic and quality through its context.
I thought all indications would lead to representation only, so I decided to describe (more literally than poetically) a general and essential attitude aimed at letting the ‘world’ emerge from its context specific potential. I think all my work operates in relation to our complex situation of being the world, and at the same time observing the world.
For me one of the interesting things about the piece is the disparity between the extremely tight control of pitch and duration, and the relative openness of the sounding result (as a consequence of unspecified instrumentation, or uncontrollable sound production within certain boundaries for example). So when looking at the score or listening to the first few events in performance it seems to be completely about the structure (a repeating pattern of a sound lasting six seconds followed by silence for a further six seconds, with only the pitch and register specified). Gradually though the timbral fluctuations that result from sustaining these events for long periods of time reveal themselves and I find my listening focus gets drawn into the sounds: a note becomes a complex of micro-events. Given your comment about the importance of context, do you feel your music operates at this level primarily, or at the more immediately obvious level of the event?
In stück 1998 I think the framework still generates contextual questions relating primarily to ‘music’ and ‘composition’, and I agree with your description of a note becoming a complex of micro-events. Although it may strongly depend on the performance: you describe with ‘extremely tight control of pitch and duration, and the relative openness of the sounding result’ a framework which may also lead to a performance of some 10 minutes of silence by using an instrument with a small pitch range.
There’s a fundamental disparity between the score and a performance. I see the score as a specific section of the world, a performance as a specific section of the score (and also the world), and context as the support of a possible event. Both, context and event, are essentially inseparable, and arise everywhere (in our experience and perception). A performance proposes and creates a specific intersection of articulation, context, and the listener’s experience and perception in a heterogeneous mutuality. The more balanced the meeting of all parts, the more challenging an event may emerge.
Later then in for one or a few performers (2001-) I propose a framework focusing rather on an acoustic exploration of the surroundings. And there I think the sound events operate primarily as articulations affecting the listener’s quality of perception of the surroundings.
Presumably this is a consequence of the more unpredictable placing of sounds: the only direction in the score is “a lot of time. a few sounds. for itself simple.” I would hope that musicians contemplating a performance of this piece would be sensitive to your approach, but to what extent are the range of possible performances acceptable to you? A “lot of time”, and “a few sounds” might mean many different things to different people. One of the things which I find intriguing about your work, and that of Antoine Beuger and Jürg Frey, is the tension created by relatively little sound in a listening environment: you’re almost torn between two parallel existences. So picking up on your previous comment, do you intend an active exploration of the surroundings by the listeners and/or performers, or do you feel that the articulated events are the listening focus?
I wanted this score to become ‘a function of truth’. It’s essential to get a performer to the point where he advances into fields where he and his risk are not backed up by a structure, how ever far this structure would go in the composition. If I see a performer not willing to collaborate in this sense, it hardly is acceptable to me, so I locate this question rather there. But still, that direction of four lines is literally the score which prescribes a very clear and intrinsic situation. I think this score comments on ‘precision’ and its omnipresent impact, especially in occidental culture, and hopefully generates some experiences towards an other ‘economy of precision’.
The two parallel existences are the human condition: being nature and (consciously) observing nature. The absence of articulated events brings about a heightened experience of being more and more dissolved into this whole environment of sounds, of nature, and in happy moments we experience just ‘being’, or ‘being nature’. Then, in the very moment of an articulated event, as a moment of awareness of oneself observing this articulation, emerges the space of consciousness of the human being’s condition.
Maybe experiencing this space again and again is already enough. But how to get ‘composition’ to that level? And knowing that ‘composition’ is only one of the ‘involved parts’ of such a moment.
What then is your role as a composer, and to what extent do you feel you can intervene in this relationship?
A composer not backing up his work against the risk of its disappearance will find himself exploring the potential of his work’s own effectiveness.
I think all composers would view that in a different way: notation is always a compromise. For me notation should be efficient, meaning it should serve its purpose without containing redundant information, even if a lack of explicit direction in some areas creates particular contingencies in its realisation (looking at what composers don’t notate is always revealing). I think your notation is efficient in this way, and its role in your work is a very interesting one. I’d like to ask you about how it relates to your working method. Whilst some of your scores involve quite a lot of material (the 4000 pages of stück 1998 for example), others are more conceptual. Could you explain how you work?
An important part of how I work is observing, sensing the world and nature of the involved parts of this performance moment. The performance as a moment where
people meet and where all incidences may coincide, where the possible (das Mögliche) may become the real (das Wirkliche). I observe and sense this moment of coincidence and interaction in order the refine my propositions towards such a moment. I’d say the most important and beautiful part is observing and sensing how I personally coincide with the world’s very sound. Often I just listen for hours. Then I try to think what it is that I did when I listened. So I look at the world wherein I see myself interacting. There I see my possibilities to be effective.
What appears in a score in a certain way is what a composer (still) may consider worth mentioning (the same would stand for an interview), bringing us back to the question of an economy of precision. We live with a tremendous excess of the explicit. Conceptually I wouldn‘t separate too much scores like stück 1998 or ein(e) ausführende(r) (2002-) with their 4000 pages from later prose scores including only a few words. I’d rather think that a certain idea or layout for a composition proposes a certain ideal form of the score.
There are some quite fine distinctions between your pieces and particularly between versions of pieces (such as ein klang und eine stille, or stück 2003), where sometimes there is only one word different in the score, but the impact of this change is often very large. They seem to hint at trying to isolate performance archetypes, particularly in relation to listening and observation as you have mentioned, but also relationships between performers. Is this questioning of how people interact important for you?
Beyond a cultural extinction through what has been called ‘the society of the spectacle’ a richness of expression does obviously exist, and personally I feel a fundamental necessity to deconstruct the complex ‘wickerwork’ of elements and parameters involved in musical composition and its performance situation. This ‘wickerwork’ is actually mirroring our entire culture. So I try to isolate basic questions. In this sense I aim at focusing on ‘that people interact’ before questioning ‘how people interact’.
Where do we localise the essential impact of a performance of one performer in relation to a performance of two performers, or three performers? Where do we localise the essential impact of no articulated sound in relation to one articulated sound, to two or even three articulated sounds which already seem to be much closer to infinity? Elementary numerical relationships, especially within the numbers 0, 1 and 2, and the ideas of the infinite reveal quite some questions on ‘composition’ and its ‘constitution’, finally on being.
In the scores I claim these questions to be the compositional questions (and there I aim at omitting to work on all questions I consider being contextual in order to avoid their dominant presence). The performances then materialize these questions, and a whole contextual situation emerges where the compositional questions and their materialisation should maintain a transparent balance.
At the end I hope the richness of being and expressing to become a palpable experience.
Some of your pieces are performed in succession, continuing in the score from where the previous performance finished. You’ve also organised series of daily performances of your pieces in a particular space. This seems closely linked to your idea of being and observing the world, perhaps mirroring the structure of the pieces on a larger scale. Why do you present your work in this way, and how do you view the boundaries of both a piece and its performance?
The presentation is always an invitation for people to meet. A performance lets a whole range of human beings’ sensations emerge, and the more we care for these sensations’ quality, the more we need to care for the presentation as well, which actually opens a new field of compositional decisions.
There is an essential relation between the what and the how of a proposition. I aim at bringing forth a flat as possible hierarchy within all the incidences coinciding, and its quality is then the listener’s possibility to live his own experience. With the performance succession I intend to balance performance moment and ‘non- performance moment’, finally to balance the performance moment and life.
Incidences demand a general and certain awareness of care and attention otherwise they get lost in mere representation. I intend to conceive how ‘the world’ appears as ‘world’ in a performance.
I conceived a more general layout (for example in stück 1998) in order to continue to refine a layout as one complex: all pieces then intend to refine this complex. I need to reduce the focus on both an inner-compositional field of possibilities of ‘attraction’ and a linear process of a work as a succession of ‘autonomous compositions’ in order to let appear the mere world as a field of incidences.
So I conceived these scores which are performed in succession: each new, both easily recognisable and essentially different succession may so draw our attention to the situation’s ‘material’ as an exact moment of ‘world’.
Maybe the boundaries of both a piece or a performance are the boundaries of its potentiality as thought, or as information. Intuitively I would ask for a centre, or centres of a piece and its performance. The centres of a performance could be what I called before a heterogeneous mutuality.
Interview conducted by email between 1 and 10 February 2004 and published in
THE ASHGATE RESEARCH COMPANION to EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC (Ed James Saunders) 2009
The field
Le pré, aussi, est une façon d'être. Décidons de nous y laisser aller, aujourd'hui.
The field, as well, is a way of being. Let's decide to drift there, today.
(Francis Ponge: La Fabrique du Pré (Paris, le 22 octobre 1960), 1971) (transl. MW)
nature has unconditioned reality
(Schelling, 1799; cit.: Iain Hamilton Grant, Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, 2008, p 21)
I propose the field not to be a 'material'.
'Material' would be that what a phenomenological assumption once more identifies as isolated objects to be perceived.
'Silence' has been one method of breaking this phenomenological assumption: The experienced extensions of the places of performance have definitely provoked the field to be of central concern.
We could identify 'material' with Kant as the world's appearance for us.
How can we think the extension of a place not exclusively projected/experienced by a limited group of privileged subjects (performers and audience)?
The extension of a place where all is permanently drifting in its own right.
The intrinsic reality of a situation.
All is permanently drifting, thus we might say: There is no outside the performative.
I don't talk of predicates (variables, characteristics, properties) of a world (they describe the world's appearances for me) but I do of the world's mere operating.
There is no outside the field. It also includes the digital silence in the editing of a 'recording' as a possible frame, as far as it unconditions this specific reality, as one conceptual form of the field.
Personally I prefer not having the human subject privileged in its relation to the world.
A spider is integrating parts of my body in its cobweb.
The field: Be it unconditioned reality.
Written in August 2011 and published in the catalogue of FIELD FEST, Q-02, Brussels October 2011
The field, as well, is a way of being. Let's decide to drift there, today.
(Francis Ponge: La Fabrique du Pré (Paris, le 22 octobre 1960), 1971) (transl. MW)
nature has unconditioned reality
(Schelling, 1799; cit.: Iain Hamilton Grant, Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, 2008, p 21)
I propose the field not to be a 'material'.
'Material' would be that what a phenomenological assumption once more identifies as isolated objects to be perceived.
'Silence' has been one method of breaking this phenomenological assumption: The experienced extensions of the places of performance have definitely provoked the field to be of central concern.
We could identify 'material' with Kant as the world's appearance for us.
How can we think the extension of a place not exclusively projected/experienced by a limited group of privileged subjects (performers and audience)?
The extension of a place where all is permanently drifting in its own right.
The intrinsic reality of a situation.
All is permanently drifting, thus we might say: There is no outside the performative.
I don't talk of predicates (variables, characteristics, properties) of a world (they describe the world's appearances for me) but I do of the world's mere operating.
There is no outside the field. It also includes the digital silence in the editing of a 'recording' as a possible frame, as far as it unconditions this specific reality, as one conceptual form of the field.
Personally I prefer not having the human subject privileged in its relation to the world.
A spider is integrating parts of my body in its cobweb.
The field: Be it unconditioned reality.
Written in August 2011 and published in the catalogue of FIELD FEST, Q-02, Brussels October 2011
The Sounding of the World
Translation by Nicholas Melia. Published at Sounds of Europe, 2011.
It is possible to conceive of music as the totality of all sound [Gesamtheit alles Klingenden] — a totality far exceeding the thin sliver audible to man.
This totality of all sound — of which we are part — is the sounding of the world.
To hear this music, conscious of the presence of all sounds that remain inaudible to us, is to be filled with a great joy comparable to that which arises in viewing an affecting landscape.
Of course, such a music is wonderfully chaotic, and to draw a comparison with the landscape is, perhaps, questionable, since the act of hearing is, for humans, related more strongly than the act of seeing to a primordial survival instinct. The act of hearing repeatedly exposes the human to the threatening chaos of the world.
But our experience of the world has altered greatly. The threatening chaos of the world has become domesticated to the extent that the desire for such domestication has become our own threatening chaos.
***
It seems that the act of articulation of sounds is primarily concerned with the act of hearing [eine Ebene des Hörens]: an act in which humans hear themselves and their actions in relation to the sounding of the world.
Each articulated sound — in both a general and a determined manner — blends with the sounding of the world, just as the act of its production blends with the activity of the world.
This is how I hear, with every sound emerging in its own place, in the interaction between the articulated sound, its place, and myself.
Immersed in this mixture, I sense a beautiful magnitude of sounding, of surface as well as depth, as one might feel in the midst of a primeval forest.
***
There is nothing that does not interact and therefore all exists in relation. Indeed, perhaps the idea of a place still evokes too forcefully the notion of a discrete entity.
When I hear an articulated sound; when I hear my own sensation of this sound, a place appears — rather, relations emerge, between the most varied of beings and things encountered and encountering each other.
In interaction, all is encounter. The place of my consciousness—that is, the encounter with a reflection [Spiegelung] — effectively allows me to encounter the encounter.
***
We might think of the “representation of music” as an encounter that concerns in particular the act of hearing. This tentative description is essential, since there is no distinction between the act of hearing and any of the other senses.
Some beings and things encounter each other, and their sensory worlds, regardless of their appeal to human senses, dissolve and actualize.
It is therefore not an issue of encountering. The encounter has no function: it occurs regardless. In an encounter that tends towards the act of hearing, it is not a question of establishing a representation; rather, it is about harnessing the potential to encounter in a general and determined relation.
This general and determined relation — a global regulation of a single phenomenon on common ground — is what initially permits an encounter to be actualized; since phenomena emerge and interact as such — rather than as ideas — until they submerge.
In an encounter that tends towards the act of hearing, I do not therefore contribute anything, but, rather, actualize the relations between those beings and things that concern me.
***
I articulate a sound as a component of all existing relations. And this precise sound, in a general and determined moment, and in a general and determined relation, actualizes its potentiality.
In the absence of articulated sounds, I become increasingly dissolved into the sounding of all encounter [das Klingen aller Begegnung] and experience a being-world; in the very moment of articulation, in a moment of growing awareness of myself observing this articulation, my consciousness of the human condition takes place: Being world and observing the world.
***
I would like to relive this moment again and again, devoting myself to the qualities of the encounter — the indeterminacy of the relations from which the world emerges.
Where the world emerges, art celebrates indeterminacy.
This text was originally written in French in early 2005 and published in slightly different form as La musique du silence, ou le «sonner» du monde, in Chine/Europe. Percussions dans la pensée. A partir du travail de François Jullien. PUF / Paris, 2005, Editors: P. Chartier / T. Marchaisse.
It is possible to conceive of music as the totality of all sound [Gesamtheit alles Klingenden] — a totality far exceeding the thin sliver audible to man.
This totality of all sound — of which we are part — is the sounding of the world.
To hear this music, conscious of the presence of all sounds that remain inaudible to us, is to be filled with a great joy comparable to that which arises in viewing an affecting landscape.
Of course, such a music is wonderfully chaotic, and to draw a comparison with the landscape is, perhaps, questionable, since the act of hearing is, for humans, related more strongly than the act of seeing to a primordial survival instinct. The act of hearing repeatedly exposes the human to the threatening chaos of the world.
But our experience of the world has altered greatly. The threatening chaos of the world has become domesticated to the extent that the desire for such domestication has become our own threatening chaos.
***
It seems that the act of articulation of sounds is primarily concerned with the act of hearing [eine Ebene des Hörens]: an act in which humans hear themselves and their actions in relation to the sounding of the world.
Each articulated sound — in both a general and a determined manner — blends with the sounding of the world, just as the act of its production blends with the activity of the world.
This is how I hear, with every sound emerging in its own place, in the interaction between the articulated sound, its place, and myself.
Immersed in this mixture, I sense a beautiful magnitude of sounding, of surface as well as depth, as one might feel in the midst of a primeval forest.
***
There is nothing that does not interact and therefore all exists in relation. Indeed, perhaps the idea of a place still evokes too forcefully the notion of a discrete entity.
When I hear an articulated sound; when I hear my own sensation of this sound, a place appears — rather, relations emerge, between the most varied of beings and things encountered and encountering each other.
In interaction, all is encounter. The place of my consciousness—that is, the encounter with a reflection [Spiegelung] — effectively allows me to encounter the encounter.
***
We might think of the “representation of music” as an encounter that concerns in particular the act of hearing. This tentative description is essential, since there is no distinction between the act of hearing and any of the other senses.
Some beings and things encounter each other, and their sensory worlds, regardless of their appeal to human senses, dissolve and actualize.
It is therefore not an issue of encountering. The encounter has no function: it occurs regardless. In an encounter that tends towards the act of hearing, it is not a question of establishing a representation; rather, it is about harnessing the potential to encounter in a general and determined relation.
This general and determined relation — a global regulation of a single phenomenon on common ground — is what initially permits an encounter to be actualized; since phenomena emerge and interact as such — rather than as ideas — until they submerge.
In an encounter that tends towards the act of hearing, I do not therefore contribute anything, but, rather, actualize the relations between those beings and things that concern me.
***
I articulate a sound as a component of all existing relations. And this precise sound, in a general and determined moment, and in a general and determined relation, actualizes its potentiality.
In the absence of articulated sounds, I become increasingly dissolved into the sounding of all encounter [das Klingen aller Begegnung] and experience a being-world; in the very moment of articulation, in a moment of growing awareness of myself observing this articulation, my consciousness of the human condition takes place: Being world and observing the world.
***
I would like to relive this moment again and again, devoting myself to the qualities of the encounter — the indeterminacy of the relations from which the world emerges.
Where the world emerges, art celebrates indeterminacy.
This text was originally written in French in early 2005 and published in slightly different form as La musique du silence, ou le «sonner» du monde, in Chine/Europe. Percussions dans la pensée. A partir du travail de François Jullien. PUF / Paris, 2005, Editors: P. Chartier / T. Marchaisse.
La musique du silence, ou le « sonner » du monde
Chine/Europe. Percussions dans la pensée. A partir du travail de François Jullien.
Eds: P. Chartier / T. Marchaisse. PUF, Paris, 2005
Voici quelques réflexions d’un compositeur dont l‘oeuvre s‘opère de façon similaire à la musique décrite dans les textes de la Chine ancienne, et telle que François Jullien nous la fait découvrir : si similaire que les descriptions des surfaces sonores et des stratégies en jeu sont interchangeables.
Nous pouvons considérer la musique comme totalité du tout sonore [Gesamtheit alles Klingenden] — une totalité qui dépasse de loin le segment qu’en entend l’homme.
La totalité du tout sonore est le sonner du monde [das Klingen der Welt], et nous sommes part de ce sonner du monde.
Entendre cette musique et l’écouter, en ayant conscience de tout ce que nous n’entendons pas et qui pourtant est simplement là, nous procure de la joie, comme la vue d’un paysage nous émeut.
A l’évidence cette musique est magnifiquement chaotique, et la comparaison avec le paysage est peut-être discutable, probablement parce que pour l’homme les actes d‘entendre et d’écouter sont plus fortement liés à une survie première que celui de regarder.
Entendre et écouter font se retrouver l’homme dans ce menaçant chaos du monde.
Mais l’expérience du monde se présente aussi entièrement changée. Le menaçant chaos du monde se trouve alors tellement domestiqué que la volonté de cette domestication est devenue le menaçant chaos de l’homme.
Articuler des sons comme activité renvoie probablement d’abord à un plan de l’acte d’entendre [eine Ebene des Hörens] : au plan de l’acte d’entendre, où l‘homme à la fois entend et écoute soi-même et sa propre activité en rapport à ce sonner du monde.
A la fois de manière générale et déterminée se mélange chaque son avec le sonner du monde, comme se mélange aussi l’activité de son articulation avec l’activité du monde.
Avec chaque son, j’entends ainsi un propre lieu se former, par interaction du son articulé, du lieu et de moi-même. Ce mélange se mêle pour ainsi dire avec moi, et je sens une magnifique infinité du sonner, à la fois surface et densité, comme je me sentirais probablement au milieu d’une forêt vierge.
Il n’existe rien qui ne fasse pas mutuellement effet, tout par conséquent existe en rapport.
L’idée d’un lieu évoque alors encore trop fortement une entité isolée.
Quand j’écoute un son articulé et ma sensation de ce son, s’engendre un lieu — émergent des rapports les plus différents aux êtres et choses que je rencontre et qui se rencontrent.
En interaction tout est rencontre. L’espace de ma conscience, en rencontrant avec une réflexion [Spiegelung], me fait effectivement rencontrer cette rencontre.
Nous pouvons qualifier la « représentation de musique » comme rencontre qui concerne plutôt les actes d’entendre et d’écouter. Ces précautions descriptives sont essentielles car séparés entre eux, et de tous les autres sens, aucun de ces actes n’existent. Des êtres et des choses se rencontrent, et les mondes de leurs sens, perceptibles ou non par l’homme, se fondent et s’actualisent.
Or il ne s’agit pas de se rencontrer (comme visée). Il n’y en a aucune fonction ici, car ça arrive de toute façon.
De la rencontre qui concerne plutôt les actes d’entendre et d’écouter, il ne s’agit non plus de donner une représentation, mais au contraire d’acquérir la capacité de rencontrer, en un rapport général et déterminé.
Ce rapport général et déterminé, qui s‘opérerait dans une régulation globale des phénomènes d’un fonds commun, est ce qui ne permet à cette rencontre que son actualisation ; car ces phénomènes émergent et effectuent efficacement comme tels – et non comme idées –, pour ensuite s’immerger.
A la rencontre qui concerne plutôt les actes d’entendre et d’écouter, je ne donne alors rien, mais actualise des rapports aux êtres et choses qui me concernent.
Un son que j’articule est ainsi comme partie des rapports ; il est exactement le son qui, à ce moment général et déterminé, et en un rapport général et déterminé, peut actualiser sa potentialité.
Dans l’absence des sons articulés, le sonner de toute rencontre [das Klingen aller Begegnung] me décompose et me fait sentir monde ; et, au moment d’un son articulé comme prise de conscience [en observant cette articulation], émerge l’espace de ma conscience du propre de l’homme: étant monde et observant le monde.
J’aimerais toujours revivre ce moment, en me tournant entièrement vers les qualités des rencontres.
Les qualités des rencontres seraient une indécision des rapports, d’où émergerait le monde.
Où le monde émergerait, l’art serait pour ainsi dire la fête de cette indécision.
Je m’imagine comment tout ce qui me concerne glisserait comme un son dans l’espace et se diluerait comme monde ; et, me souvenant là encore de la conquête présumée d‘accomplir comme créateur une création pour l‘homme —, je rencontre l’oeuvre de François Jullien et les textes de la Chine ancienne, dont l’actualisation rend ma vie plus belle et provocante.
Dian, interrogé par Confucius sur ce qu’il aimerait faire, si ses mérites étaient enfin reconnus et qu’il puisse déployer tous ses talents :
Vers la fin du printemps, des tenues printanières une fois apprêtées, avec cinq ou six compagnons, six ou sept jeunes garçons, on se baignerait dans la rivière Yi, on jouirait du vent sur la terrasse des Danses de la pluie, puis on rentrerait tous ensemble en chantant.
(Éloge de la fadeur, Picquier, p.57)
Eds: P. Chartier / T. Marchaisse. PUF, Paris, 2005
Voici quelques réflexions d’un compositeur dont l‘oeuvre s‘opère de façon similaire à la musique décrite dans les textes de la Chine ancienne, et telle que François Jullien nous la fait découvrir : si similaire que les descriptions des surfaces sonores et des stratégies en jeu sont interchangeables.
Nous pouvons considérer la musique comme totalité du tout sonore [Gesamtheit alles Klingenden] — une totalité qui dépasse de loin le segment qu’en entend l’homme.
La totalité du tout sonore est le sonner du monde [das Klingen der Welt], et nous sommes part de ce sonner du monde.
Entendre cette musique et l’écouter, en ayant conscience de tout ce que nous n’entendons pas et qui pourtant est simplement là, nous procure de la joie, comme la vue d’un paysage nous émeut.
A l’évidence cette musique est magnifiquement chaotique, et la comparaison avec le paysage est peut-être discutable, probablement parce que pour l’homme les actes d‘entendre et d’écouter sont plus fortement liés à une survie première que celui de regarder.
Entendre et écouter font se retrouver l’homme dans ce menaçant chaos du monde.
Mais l’expérience du monde se présente aussi entièrement changée. Le menaçant chaos du monde se trouve alors tellement domestiqué que la volonté de cette domestication est devenue le menaçant chaos de l’homme.
Articuler des sons comme activité renvoie probablement d’abord à un plan de l’acte d’entendre [eine Ebene des Hörens] : au plan de l’acte d’entendre, où l‘homme à la fois entend et écoute soi-même et sa propre activité en rapport à ce sonner du monde.
A la fois de manière générale et déterminée se mélange chaque son avec le sonner du monde, comme se mélange aussi l’activité de son articulation avec l’activité du monde.
Avec chaque son, j’entends ainsi un propre lieu se former, par interaction du son articulé, du lieu et de moi-même. Ce mélange se mêle pour ainsi dire avec moi, et je sens une magnifique infinité du sonner, à la fois surface et densité, comme je me sentirais probablement au milieu d’une forêt vierge.
Il n’existe rien qui ne fasse pas mutuellement effet, tout par conséquent existe en rapport.
L’idée d’un lieu évoque alors encore trop fortement une entité isolée.
Quand j’écoute un son articulé et ma sensation de ce son, s’engendre un lieu — émergent des rapports les plus différents aux êtres et choses que je rencontre et qui se rencontrent.
En interaction tout est rencontre. L’espace de ma conscience, en rencontrant avec une réflexion [Spiegelung], me fait effectivement rencontrer cette rencontre.
Nous pouvons qualifier la « représentation de musique » comme rencontre qui concerne plutôt les actes d’entendre et d’écouter. Ces précautions descriptives sont essentielles car séparés entre eux, et de tous les autres sens, aucun de ces actes n’existent. Des êtres et des choses se rencontrent, et les mondes de leurs sens, perceptibles ou non par l’homme, se fondent et s’actualisent.
Or il ne s’agit pas de se rencontrer (comme visée). Il n’y en a aucune fonction ici, car ça arrive de toute façon.
De la rencontre qui concerne plutôt les actes d’entendre et d’écouter, il ne s’agit non plus de donner une représentation, mais au contraire d’acquérir la capacité de rencontrer, en un rapport général et déterminé.
Ce rapport général et déterminé, qui s‘opérerait dans une régulation globale des phénomènes d’un fonds commun, est ce qui ne permet à cette rencontre que son actualisation ; car ces phénomènes émergent et effectuent efficacement comme tels – et non comme idées –, pour ensuite s’immerger.
A la rencontre qui concerne plutôt les actes d’entendre et d’écouter, je ne donne alors rien, mais actualise des rapports aux êtres et choses qui me concernent.
Un son que j’articule est ainsi comme partie des rapports ; il est exactement le son qui, à ce moment général et déterminé, et en un rapport général et déterminé, peut actualiser sa potentialité.
Dans l’absence des sons articulés, le sonner de toute rencontre [das Klingen aller Begegnung] me décompose et me fait sentir monde ; et, au moment d’un son articulé comme prise de conscience [en observant cette articulation], émerge l’espace de ma conscience du propre de l’homme: étant monde et observant le monde.
J’aimerais toujours revivre ce moment, en me tournant entièrement vers les qualités des rencontres.
Les qualités des rencontres seraient une indécision des rapports, d’où émergerait le monde.
Où le monde émergerait, l’art serait pour ainsi dire la fête de cette indécision.
Je m’imagine comment tout ce qui me concerne glisserait comme un son dans l’espace et se diluerait comme monde ; et, me souvenant là encore de la conquête présumée d‘accomplir comme créateur une création pour l‘homme —, je rencontre l’oeuvre de François Jullien et les textes de la Chine ancienne, dont l’actualisation rend ma vie plus belle et provocante.
Dian, interrogé par Confucius sur ce qu’il aimerait faire, si ses mérites étaient enfin reconnus et qu’il puisse déployer tous ses talents :
Vers la fin du printemps, des tenues printanières une fois apprêtées, avec cinq ou six compagnons, six ou sept jeunes garçons, on se baignerait dans la rivière Yi, on jouirait du vent sur la terrasse des Danses de la pluie, puis on rentrerait tous ensemble en chantant.
(Éloge de la fadeur, Picquier, p.57)
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