Fidelity and Form
Posted by admin on March 12th, 2007 filed in musicYesterday I attended a talk given by the Swedish composer Mattias Petersson. He works somewhere between the fields of electronica and electroacoustic music, from minimal beat based work to screaming noise. This is the second such presentation I’ve been to in the past couple of weeks. I’m finding this kind of thing increasingly invigorating; it is a peculiar thing to hear people talk openly about what drives them to compose or perform, give them an hour or two to get as excited as they like and see what slips through the cracks. I mean that quite literally, the little guilty smiles that seep out when the discussion brushes past the kernel driving the work, giving it form and expressivity. I find this is more so with composers/performers/practitioners than theorists, the space for shameless esoterica, openly subjective obscurity gives rise to something rare.
For Mattias this kernel appears to be 9. The very mention of the number draws out into the open the enjoyment of the number, there is a shyness in exposing it. The processes by which it is attained and the sounds that are the result of its cardinality are the subject of carefree discussion but the number itself appears to be of little and at the same time utmost importance. Why nine? I asked, but there is no reason, no ground upon which this value stands, “the results are interesting”. From the formalistic precision of qwomb ⎯ its base frequency of 1.8hz chosen, it would appear, for the combined value of the numbers as much as the stomach rumbling frequency itself, the structural and rhythmical organisation is formed around the attainment of 9 ⎯ to the more relaxed fashion in which seventeen tracks are convolved through each other based on the proximal relationship to this number, it appears everywhere.
All that I can get out of Petersson is that this decision was taken long ago, and the consistency of an entire compositional approach is built upon this initial decision. If I had read more Badiou I might be tempted to refer to it as an axiom; the almost arbitrary assertion of a value becomes the ground or constant point of reference for a system of creative thought.
Composition appears as a decision, a choice put into action for the sake of production. A discussion of improvisation emerged in Petersson’s presentation, but when such a performance is inclusive of the inescapable formalism that any computational intervention asserts, how useful is this term? This goes all the way back; the decision to act in performance is in itself the opening gesture of composition, regardless of the instrument. So do I now believe improvisation to be impossible? In the sense that it emerges in Eddie Prevost’s writing I would say yes; “every sound performed as if it were your first,” but is this statement just a useful lie that AMM told themselves in order to be productive? Decisions in action, the selection of parameters, a decision which although controlled or activated on a whim stretches back to when the code was first written. The active unfolding of a composition, we cannot dissolve all that we have learnt, inherited and nurtured over time towards the attainment of a pure creative impulse. A thread is picked up with each performance, improvised or otherwise, decisions are made, assessed, remade, even ready-made, composition is a process which is activated in performance, and the document is just a snap shot.
In Petersson’s presentation the dedication to the decision appears more immediate, perhaps the assertion of a value is easier to spot than other defining events that lie hidden, are more ambiguous or bear a complicated relationship to a background of noise. Sound and performance are filtered through this decision, through the choice to remain faithful to a numerical value for results that can be teased out of it. Recorded sounds, documented improvisations, intuitive procedures, are all subject to a formalist assertion, they are literally filtered through the values that can be derived from working with this decision, with the thought process behind its creation. But is this filtering not what is found in performance of any kind, this gesture over that, one sound and not another; each impulse is subject to a decision and filtered through thought. This perhaps points towards a more definitive decision: to resist or to submit, to filter an impulse into subjective expression or to submit to selfless, impulsive power. But this is also a decision, to become subject to a background of noise, a wave or vibration through the performance space. Perhaps it seems important to me now as it is a paradoxical decision not to compose in performance, to improvise is to compose and to compose is to make a decision. Even in the use of aleatory operations, the pseudo-random numbers which computers churn out, there remains a decision to commit to the use of such data. Its influential privileges are carefully defined and incorporated into the idea of composition or performance at the point of execution or their initial incorporation within the code.
I am tempted to risk a Badiouian summary, although it is one I barely understand, and say that the evental site of performance is always in a sense filtered through the decision or declaration that comes to define it, its “evental qualification”.
In Petersson’s music this is 9, my question for him now is what came before?
March 14th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Although hardly the “final word” on the subject, I like Anthony Braxton’s thoughts on this…
“De-spiritulisation of Western society and the gradual collapse of its traditional cultural varieties over the last 2-300 years has led to the separation of Western art music from other world musics; developing according to intellectual, or existential, criteria – such as the expansion of its own inner logic systems- rather than with regard to spiritual values or essence factors. This empiricism (which goes hand in glove with materialism and mechanistic science and is part of the overall direction of western civilisation) has resulted in separation and specialization, in the elevation of the composer over the player, and in an emphasis on technique and “correct” playing at the expense of improvisation”.
Triaxium Writings 1: Underlying Philosophical Bases (in) Lock, Graham. Forces in Motion: The Music Of Anthony Braxton (Da Capo Press, 1988) pp141
In terms of its relation to composition, improvisation is commonly considered the other. But surely the notion of improvisation as real time composition is fairly well asserted, its position as belonging to a rightful member category of composition can (almost) be assumed? I am interested in free, or what Derek Bailey considered non idiomatic improvisation, i.e. outside of one specific genre. As far back as 1936 Adorno appeared to criticise improvisational practice, and devalue it compared to the serious work of composition, however, this could perhaps be attributed to his hatred of Jazz, a genre that utilises improvisation to identify and define itself within popular musics and culture industry rhetoric. Jazz has its basis in popular song, its improvisational practice relates to chordal repertoire, and as John Bowers suggests, in terms of musical freedom or ideological/political liberation, jazz offers neither.(Improvising Machines: Ethnographicaly informed Design For Improvised Electro-Acoustic Music).
Improvisation can be construed as composition, but is this not merely a manifestation of capitalist, commodity centred rhetoric. Rhetoric obsessed with compartmentalisation, which equates the notion of composer to god like genius, and defines musician as labourers who merely play compositions. Thus safely separating music from creativity and associated transformative, self libratory, rebellious potential, I would perhaps suggest that all performances of notated score can be considered quite literally as mechanical reproduction, and that composition is merely a broken form of music making.
Music making: the fundamental act of making music, a concept so simple and straightforward that it appears to almost negate discussion. The origins of the term are well documented by Christopher Small, referring to music of African origin, he discusses music as “action, a process, in which all are able to participate”. Pointing out that much Western art music is premised on the head on conflict of tension and release through tonal harmony, the listener is teased and guided through time, eventually leading to resolution in the final cadence of the home key. In African societies, final resolution is never an option, “Resolutions are temporary only, and must be renegotiated anew with each new life situation”. The notion of head on conflict is considered as total failure of the social system, final resolution is an irrelevant concept. (Music of the Common Tongue pp 43-45)
Music making questions the separability of performance and composition. The focus on realtime (re)negotiation is like free improvisation, but this has become synonymous with a form of music making that emerged in the 1960’s, and to some extent has been appropriated by its principle parents. The notion of Music Making is bigger and all encompassing, it predates everything else and transcends all notions of genre. Through the notion of music making, we can reject the categories of composition, performance and improvisation, and in their place open up a new space, or more accurately we can return to an old space, a space for creativity to inhabit, a space for music making.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Thanks for picking this up john. I’m not really going for last words here, as I know you know, just trying to thrash out my own thoughts on the subject of performance/composition. I have a few points that I am not sure I completely understand/agree with (some of this is me be difficult for the sake of testing what I also think):
I’m not so sure about this, I am probably getting hung up on the transcendence part. Perhaps it precedes genre rather than transcending it? The initial opening gesture, the sound as it appears precedes its eventual location within some kind of proximity to any number of genres. Genre will eventually form around repetition of any kind so rather than transcending, as in being free from the compartmentalization of genre, perhaps it is pushing at the edges, existing before the naming of a genre. The choice is then whether to repeat and assert your location or move on like the littlest hobo.
I’m with you on the idea of improvisation as historically being composition’s other, and also with the idea that this is no longer a very useful of interesting distinction. What I’m trying to get at, as you are I think, is identifying action in performance as decision making, outside of the documentation or absolute prescription.
I would say that perhaps music making is linked to composition at every level. Practice (as in what is done in bedrooms) is composition, a creative act, the construction of style over time. You’re right that the idea of improvisation as real time composition is well established, and I’m reiterating that here, but at the same time this is not just real time in the sense that it happens in an immediate site, it stretches out in many directions a reaches far back in time, it is perhaps real time in the sense that it doesn’t go backwards?
I’m also not sure about the Bowers quote. Is this meant as a comment on genre in general or just jazz? Granted it is in a pretty sorry state if we look at where it (jazz) came from, and does little in terms of political work today, but that certainly has not always been the case, and the choice to repeat within stylistic or genre specific boundaries cannot be said to negate the political impact musical action can have. (I can’t think of any music that inspires effective political action without working within certain stylistic boundaries or a compositional approach).
I think my main point with this is that, although I agree with you on the idea of an active space for the performance of music, we cannot reject composition, improvisation or performance. Improvisation is the weaker term here, which is why it’s so interesting. Performance is essential to music (and I include dancing to it in this point) and composition is perhaps in some sense inescapable, and improvisation oils the compositional machine? Technique is composed, as is the choice to subvert it, the space you play in is composed, the way you work through gestures that are in a variety of ways linked to those that precede them, is composing out of the body.
This is especially the case when computers are involved, where the parameters and potentials for interaction are limited by or filtered through decisions that were taken prior to the performance of a piece. Is this not composition, prescriptive decisions that impact upon performance in one way or another?
March 22nd, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Hi Will,
Could you expand on your concept of “real time” a little?
I very much like what you wrote about performance being essential to music and that composition is perhaps inescapable, this resonates with always finding something “alive” in every musical situation, no matter how contrived or seemingly limited.
Transcendence, ooops, yeah, did I really write that? Precedes…agreed, you’re quite correct. The jazz comment was just a dig at the fact that, as I see it, very little real improvisation happens in most jazz… not wanting to open a can of worms.
I like the notion of music making, and find it useful in avoiding some of the baggage that automatically accompanies composition, performance and improvisation. But this is also only really useful when describing my own practice, and is a blatant attempt to resist over easy compartmentalisation of my work… and avoid the questions of “are you a composer or a performer? Obviously the categories do exist and we should not ignore them…
Somehow, I don’t want to be associated with the term “performer”, too many connotations of performing something or someone else/other, but I’m not quite comfortable considering myself a composer. For me, the notion of musical composition has nothing to do with action, of course this is grammatically incorrect: compose, perform and dance are all verbs, but music is most often considered a noun. We rarely hear “they are going to music”, whereas as “they are going to dance” is fine, and would be understood whether a rigorously choreographed contemporary ballet, contact improv, or just heading out to a club. As far as I am aware most choreography starts with the “action” of dance itself, Labanotation was developed to record, but rarely (?) is used as a starting point to predefine movement. What I find interesting here is that there appears to be no “other place” for dance, nowhere else for creativity to inhabit than the action itself, unlike with music, where I am tempted to consider composition as that “other place”…
Just last week, I did some brief work with Peter Wiegold and Gretchen Schiller, working with a conductor and dancer was a lot of fun, and had I realised the reputation of Peter Wiegold is as a conductor, then I might not have suggested that we “negotiate freely”. But that is what we did, negotiating roles, conducting movement via sound whist also being conducted myself, using improvisation to probe and provoke but celebrating the inevitable gestures of defiance that emerged in all directions. I guess conducting could always already be considered dance, but until this emerged before my eyes I had not thought of it as such.
Physical Presence and Interaction: How does this relate to notions of composition/performance/music making/improvisation? Physical presence appears to go hand in hand with performance, and composition could be linked straight to interaction? But how does the idea of interaction, which is predicated on real time negotiation and demands at least an illusion of physical presence actually relate to composition? Is this just one more instance where I need to readjust and more openly consider composition as action? Hmmm. Of course one can prepare, and have strategise that pre-empt the actual action and interaction of music making, and both this pre preparation and the actual negotiation itself can be considered as composition, but they are also different…
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Hi John, there is some interesting stuff in there.
I’ll get to the ‘real time’ issue in a shortly, but for now I think it’d help if I started right at the beginning, and refer to my own practice:
I have been thinking about these issues for a while, mainly due to the fact that I’ve been trying to get a bit more active and make more work.
As most of the work I do involves a fair amount of computer programming, I was trying to look at how much I consider myself a composer. This is an issue for me as nearly all the work I do is collaborative, and any solo work is ‘real time’, or improvised in some sense. But then, as I have said, code, for performance purposes works as a kind of score, it outlines possibilities, filters action and so on. This increases the more indeterminacy is built into a program and I like to make use of aleatory operations to free my hands up, allowing me to move further away from the computer during performance. This is both a compositional and performance decision.
The decision has become a kind of essential factor for me where composition is concerned: the decision to do this or that in performance, or to precisely automate or plan out a series or functions (parameters for DSP or something, the values assigned or retrieved from controllers), and to leave another up to chance is is compositional decision.
Composing, with regard to my own practice, involves a prescriptive element (code) which must be negotiated in performance. The use of real-time processing, as opposed to performing with ‘tape’, allows this to be a more dynamic interaction. The use of environments like SuperCollider also allow a further negotiation with the code as it can be changed during performance. If I don’t like where something is going, the code can be changed. This means I am rethinking compositional decisions, which I may have made up to a year ago, during performance. I have come to thin of this as a model for performance of any kind, especially improvised practice. For example, the choice to subvert stylistic idiom in performance, an idiom that the performer may well have carefully nurtured for decades, is a compositional decision as the effect it will have on the performers practice cannot be constrained to that particular performance. Every such decision appears as a kind of inscription into the idiomatic ground upon which individual performance takes place.
I use real time in a very idiosyncratic manner, meaning that decision making and processing of data or information is happening in real time, rather than being presented in a fixed form, as in a recording. Real time processing allows for an increased degree of intervention, at the level of performance as well through reinterpretation of the code which ‘mediates’ performance.
This is not necessarily specific to computational processes. There is of course Nono’s “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” which Mieko Kanno performed in Durham a while back. The performer moves around the performance space, choosing which score to play from and how much of it to play, as a way of intervening with the recoded sound which accompanies the performance.
This is kind of what I am hoping to be working on at Culture Lab (AHRC permitting). Sound and Sensation in Interactive Environments is the working title of the project. I want to look into performance, exhibition and architectural space, and how code mediates negotiation with such spaces….
I think that’s enough for now… I’ll have to reread your post later… let me know if I missed out something vital from your last lot of questions, I’m hungry now. I think we are getting somewhere close to understanding each other on this.
cheers.