[-empyre-] relational objects

[Marc Lafia]

Great post Norah, here is an excellent essay on modes of composition,  
authorship, the
event of music which can open up this thread.

found here
http://www.artandculture.com/feature/631





posted on 06.08.09
The Continuum Of Indeterminacy In Music [edit] [delete]
by Adam Scott Neal

This entry is adapted from my MA thesis at Queen's University Belfast.  
The complete thesis and bibliography is available here: http://www.adamscottneal.com/laptop_paper.pdf

Pictured: excerpt from Morton Feldman's Projection IV (Behrman, 1965,  
p.62)

2.1 The continuum of determinacy

In Silence, Cage (1968) mentions Bach’s The Art of Fugue as an example  
of music which is indeterminate in performance; the rhythm and pitch  
structures are determined but dynamics and timbre are not. In any  
composition, the performer ‘fills in color where outlines are given;’  
in other words, they must interpret the outlines presented by the  
composer. Each composition contains a different amount of determinacy,  
and therefore allows a different amount of interpretation.

Eco’s (1989) conception of the composer-performer relationship was  
that a composer offers the performer a work ‘to be completed.’  
According to Reynolds (1965), the composer’s job is to propose an  
‘occasion for experience.’ The complexity of the conditions which the  
composer proposes varies from composer to composer and from work to  
work. The less determined the proposal, the closer the experience  
resembles improvisation. Composition and improvisation are closely  
related, and many have said that composition is “slow-motion  
improvisation.” Since his process is relatively slow, the composer can  
reflect on what has passed and what will come, while the improviser  
must always concentrate on the moment. As opposed to a fully  
improvised performance, in a performance of a composed or “closed”  
work, the composer can reinforce the temporal and aural relationships  
between events (Sarath, 1996). Between the extremes of determinate  
composition (especially fixed-media) and free improvisation is a  
continuum that includes pieces in which a rigid structure allows some  
improvisation, and pieces in which a basic structure reinforces the  
relationships of improvised events.

2.2 What constitutes a work?

Where on this continuum does a piece cease to be a “work” and instead  
become an “improvisation?” Dahlhaus (paraphrased in Lewis, 1996) wrote  
of several characteristics that must be present for a piece of music  
to be considered a composition (or “work”): a fully worked-out  
structure, fixed in written form, with the intention of performance,  
which contains the essential identity of the piece. The term  
‘identity’ is also noted by Benson (2003) and Levinson (1980), both  
explaining that a work has an ideal quality which is recognizable in  
each performance but is never fully realized. Borrowing from the work  
of Charles Peirce, Benson notes that a work is a type and that all  
performances of that work are tokens, or incomplete realizations. The  
score can help judge the correctness of a performance, but due to the  
nature of notation itself, performances are destined to be incomplete  
or incorrect. The performer must interpret how to execute a set of  
instructions encoded ‘more or less completely’ by the composer  
(Alperson, 1984).

Since the 1950s, many more works have fallen into the ‘less  
completely’ category. In the ‘open works’ cited by Eco (Stockhausen’s  
Klavierstück XI, Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata, and Pousseur’s  
Scambi),structures are not completely determined, yet these are still  
considered ‘works.’ If it is not the structure which determines the  
identity of a work, it must be some other factors. Perhaps it is the  
decision to include and discard certain sounds (instruments, for  
example). Emmerson (2000) writes about the ‘fixity of personnel,’ a  
concept unique to Western music (as is the nature of a ‘work’ in the  
first place). Despite this concept, some works are written  
deliberately for open or indeterminate instrumentation. Perhaps the  
identity of the work is merely the directions for its realization.  
Arthur Danto considers the current period of art to be ‘post- 
historical’ and writes that art is now concerned primarily with  
concepts and the methods used to present these concepts. Thus, a  
composition is no longer limited simply to its sound or its structure;  
the idea of a compositional work could include rule-based  
improvisation frameworks, computer interface design, or other means  
for directing the creation of sound (Hamman, 2000).

2.3 Increase of determinism in music: Notation

Western Art music is unique among the world’s musics primarily because  
of its use of written notation. Originally simply a mnemonic device to  
aid performers, notation has gradually become more specific, enabling  
composers to demand more or less specific actions (Bailey 1993).  
Notation allowed composers to determine vertical sonorities (McLean,  
1982) and gave composers time to reflect on the local and global  
relationships between these sonorities. By virtue of being able to  
reflect on all events in a piece, composers have been able to create  
complex harmonic and temporal structures. This contrasts greatly with  
other music; for example, Indian music emphasizes improvisation and  
therefore emphasizes the present over the relationships between past  
and future (Sarath, 1996).

Notation is not particularly deterministic, and over the past few  
centuries, composers have sought to make notation more deterministic.  
Notation can fix some elements of performance, primarily pitches and  
rhythms, but other factors, such as tempi and dynamics, are often left  
to “musicianship.” Traditionally, the mark of a good musician was his  
ability to “breathe life” into the music, but over this development of  
increasingly deterministic notation, the mark of a good player became  
his ability to execute the notation accurately, and nothing more  
(Behrman, 1965). This romantic-modernist view stems from the increase  
of determinacy in notation, which in turn stems from the increasingly  
higher status given to composers in the 19th century. Composers  
created works which had ideal existences; thus, composers were deemed  
more important than the musicians who merely performed the works  
(Benson, 2003).

2.4 Composer-as-god: Beethoven through modernism

The romantic idea of an artist or composer is that he is a genius, or  
a god. Benson (2003) traces the idea of the artist-genius to Immanuel  
Kant, but names Beethoven as the idea’s first proponent in music.  
Benson compares Beethoven with his contemporary, Rossini, who had a  
different opinion about the nature of a “work.” Beethoven viewed his  
works as ‘inviolatable texts’ which were to be interpreted exactly.  
Rossini viewed his works as simply ‘recipes for performance’ which  
only truly came to life during a performance. It is unsurprising that  
Beethoven’s scores are more detailed than Rossini’s scores, but as  
Benson notes, performers are no more obligated to accurately follow  
Beethoven’s score.

Since the traditional view of composing is “a godlike activity in  
which the artist brings into being what did not exist beforehand –  
much as a demiurge forms a world out of inchoate matter” (Levinson,  
1980), a certain level of authority is bestowed upon composers, rather  
than the musicians who bring their works to life. After Beethoven, the  
perception of a composer’s work changed from acting as a recipe for  
experience to acting as an arbiter of correctness in that experience.  
At the same time, conservatory musical education began to emphasize  
correctness over creative interpretation, causing many future  
musicians to be quite self-conscious about their interpretations and  
performances (Moore, 1992).

Playing incorrectly would violate the intentions of the composer-god.  
After all, the work belongs not to the players, but to the composer,  
its creator. This attitude is perhaps inevitable in Western capitalist  
society. As Emmerson (2000, p.125) explains:

“Our western world is obsessed with ownership; copyright and royalties  
are a central plank of the system of remuneration for composers. This  
was made easy through notation (the score – an object) and, later,  
recording (initially an object but now, problematically, simply ‘a  
stream of binary information’). Performances were more important as  
purveyors of these objects, than they were valued uniquely in  
themselves.”

The goal of composers was to notate so accurately that performers  
would have no questions (or freedom). The trend toward complete  
determinism, or complete composer control, reached its apex in the  
20th century.

2.5 The Apex: Electroacoustic music

The most indeterminate aspects of music notation are timbre, dynamics,  
and tempi. These elements of music have traditionally be interpreted  
by performers, but  with the advent of electroacoustic music,  
composers could control all of these aspects of a work without the  
intervening medium of a performer. The piece could simply exist,  
exactly as the composer had imagined and created it. For some,  
recording technology supplanted the need to notate for a future  
performance. The composer could take the sounds themselves and stitch  
them together exactly as he would like. Although the earliest  
recordings were representations of past performances, after the  
development of musique concrète in the 1940s, the recording became  
compositional material. In the end, the recording became the music  
itself; the music existed in a fixed form (Grossman, 2008).

One might suppose that electroacoustic music (and much pop music,  
which also uses sampling and synthesis extensively) could lead to the  
death of the performer. Earle Brown (1986) dismisses this idea,  
writing that electronic music exists because of an unlimited world of  
timbre, space, and density, not super-human accuracy; humans are not  
obsolete. Truax (1998) justifies the practice of electroacoustic  
music, saying that the use of technology simply gives a composer “new  
perceptual experiences and new compositional ideas, things that could  
not be achieved in any other way.”  Still, tools such as the computer  
allow composers to create sounds which will be, as Varèse said,  
‘obedient to [their] thoughts’ (Varèse 1967).

  2.6 Reaction: Indeterminate works

In the 1950s, while highly deterministic music was in vogue (notably  
total serialism), a small group of composers was interested in  
indeterminacy. Their aim was to leave some of the decision-making  
process to the performers (or to chance) in hopes of creating a more  
collaborative work (Lewis, 1996). This idea was radical at the time,  
since indeterminacy and chance “invade some of the most tender areas  
of the artistic ego: craft, expressiveness, and  
individuality” (Reynolds, 1965, p. 136). Indeterminacy did not fit  
with the prevailing Kantian view of the composer as a god-like creator  
of ideal objects. However, as Eco (1989) points out, these musical  
objects have always been, to some degree, open to interpretation by  
the performers or by the audience. These indeterminate, “open” works  
more accurately reflected the modern aesthetic of visual arts, in  
which the ideal is to view a work from multiple perspectives. Eco  
compares music which enforces one viewpoint to medieval paintings,  
which similarly enforce a particular perspective.

These composers became interested in creating musical works which  
potentially had radically different realizations from performance to  
performance. For Earle Brown (1986, pp. 192-3),

“the most fascinating aspect [of composition] was the ambiguous  
relationship existing between the artist and the work, and the  
delicate balances one had to deal with between subjective-objective  
contact with the work; between freedom and control; explicit-implicit  
notations; and between compositional necessity and performance reality  
as an intimate collaborative process. I wanted (and still want) very  
much for the work to have a ‘reality’ of its own in addition to the  
specific controls imposed by myself and by the performer.”

Brown’s artistic ego was not diminished by allowing performers to  
inject decisions into his works. The instructions and suggestions he  
makes form the identity of the works, for they elicit certain  
reactions and decisions from the performers.

Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff are often unfairly  
grouped with John Cage (Thomas, 2007; Welsh, 1967). Cage was the most  
prominent proponent of indeterminate music, but his methods differed  
greatly from the other three composers. The works of Cage are  
indeterminate in their composition, while the works of the other three  
composers are indeterminate in performance (O’Grady, 1981; Thomas,  
2007). In Music of Changes, Cage used the I Ching to create the score,  
but intended for the performer to realize the score faithfully, in the  
traditional manner. Cage enjoyed unique performances with unique  
sounds, and some of his works required creativity on the part of the  
performer, such as choosing instruments or choosing how to interpret  
the notation. Interestingly, Cage generally rejected outright  
improvisation, especially when it was similar to the improvisation  
found in ‘hot jazz’ (Kutschke, 1999; Lewis, 1996).

Hoogerwerf (1976) contrasts traditional determinate music with  
indeterminate music by comparing the thoughts of Stravinsky with Cage.  
In contrast to Stravinsky, Cage hoped to relinquish control when  
selecting sounds, and saw that the uncontrollability of chance  
reflected and affirmed the uncontrollability of everyday life.  
Stravinsky believed in the composer’s individual expression; by  
choosing and controlling elements, a composer deliberately sets a work  
of art apart from everyday life.  By choosing not to set his work  
apart from life, Cage’s approach reflects a modern view that is  
observational, experimental, and scientific (Kutschke, 1999).

The other composers mentioned above shared an interest in  
indeterminacy but approached it in different ways. Like Cage, Feldman  
did not favor improvisation. After experimenting with open “graph”  
scores in which he gave only minimal directions for tessitura, Feldman  
decided to dictate the pitches he desired (Thomas, 2007). Still, he  
left rhythm free, allowing flux within the ensemble and performances  
which would always be unique compared to each other, yet still share a  
‘family resemblance’ (O’Grady, 1981).

The works of Earle Brown and Christian Wolff emphasize the  
interactions of performers over matters of time and pitch. Brown  
compares his music to mobiles, and he allows musicians to reassemble  
his materials as they please. In Available Forms and Mobiles I and II,  
the decisions are made by the conductor, but in other pieces, such as  
December 1952 from Folio, performers see a graphic score which can be  
interpreted in various ways (Welsh, 1967). Similarly, much of Wolff’s  
music is based on a system of visual cues which help players determine  
how to coordinate attacks and releases (Behrman, 1965). The focus of  
the piece is social rather than musical, and has a much more  
democratic point of view than traditional, dictatorial composition  
(Nelson, 1989).  Still, the composer’s voice is not lost, since the  
types of interactions used by the composer become recognizable as his  
‘signature moves’ (Behrman, 1965). Also, listeners can perceive the  
structures he has created in traditional terms, such as contrast,  
balance, and repetition (O’Grady, 1981).

2.7 Indeterminacy in electroacoustic music

For much of the history of electroacoustic music, composers have  
sought ways to enliven the listening experience – essentially adding  
indeterminacy. Two notable manners for accomplishing this were to  
create pieces for an instrument accompanied by a recording, or to  
actively diffuse the sound in the space during a concert (Chadabe  
1997). In 1957, Belgian composer Henri Pousseur composed Scambi, a  
tape piece in which the form could be rearranged like the Boulez Third  
Piano Sonata and the StockhausenKlavierstück XI (Lansdown Centre,  
2008). Performance (instrumental or diffusion) and open forms add  
indeterminacy, interest, and life to otherwise fixed works.

In the mid-1970s, The League of Automatic Music Composers began a  
different approach by using computers to create music during a   
performance. According to Gresham-Lancastre (a member of the League’s  
offspring, The Hub), their music grew out of the experimental  
tradition of Cage and others who used or created new instruments and  
thus were forced to devise new notation or instructions for using  
these instruments. For the League/Hub performances, the players  
generally adapted “solo” compositions for the group performance; they  
determined whose data could be sent to whom in order to make  
interesting results. Bischoff and Brown (2008) describe a typical  
performance situation:

“Gold’s station executed circular readings at audio rate of a virtual  
3-D landscape that resulted in looping patterns of tuned noise . . .  
Horton’s algorithm spun a thread of continuous melodic invention built  
from just-intoned pitch relations, and Bischoff’s machine played a  
punctuating role as it looked for chance tunings between Horton’s  
melodies and Gold’s timbres, beeping in agreement when it detected  
them.”

Gresham-Lancastre (1998) considers the most important contribution of  
these groups to be the idea of a machine that invites participation  
but allows for intricate algorithms. Computers were super-instruments  
with which a performer could interact but with which a performer could  
create a higher level of complexity than he could with other  
instruments. The way of working started by the League and the Hub  
continues today with laptop performance; it brings together  
algorithmic computer music and improvisation.

As stated in the introduction, free improvisation and manipulations of  
algorithms do not have to be the only possibilities for live computer  
music. Works could be composed in which the performers recreate a  
score, in the manner expected by late romantic and modernist acoustic  
composers. Due to the precision of computers, these pieces could be  
realized exactly as intended, basically eliminating the need for  
performers. However, imprecise human interpretation can add interest  
to the work, both to the performance and to the piece’s overall  
identity.  According to Garnett, by performing a piece many times, the  
identity of a work becomes clouded and unfixed. Because it is unfixed,  
the work can adapt to changing contexts and therefore have a longer  
life. He cites this adaptability as the primary reason for the  
longevity of Western classical music (Garnett, 2001). Likewise,  
Alperson writes that when a performer interprets a work, he comments  
on the work; the work is imbued with new possibilities, but retains  
the essence of the original (Alperson, 1984).




































































































































































































































































































































On Jun 9, 2009, at 9:36 AM, Norah Zuniga Shaw wrote:

> This is a fantastic discussion this month. Thank you to all the
> contributors. I'm thinking about two things that may be relevant.
>
> First, in relation to the idea of a trace, in our work we've been  
> interested
> in the idea of a generative trace (meaning that the trace generates
> creativity more than preserves a past present). Davin and others  
> speak of
> the idea of an original and of the "gap of difference between the  
> event and
> the representation." Perhaps the decoupling of trace and original is  
> of use
> here. This also decouples the idea of a trace from the idea of  
> document.
> Even more traditional dance scholars who work on reconstruction of
> historically important pieces have begun to question the existence  
> of "an
> original." What is the essence (yikes, not a great work) or better  
> said,
> what within a moment, a dance, an experience can be traced and  
> represented
> and created a new with change being a central value, not stasis?
>
> Others note a desire for a "moment without feedback, without a  
> document,
> without a traceable trace." I understand and would say that this  
> constitutes
> the majority of my experience as a dancer. For those of us in dance,  
> this
> moment with out a traceable trace is the norm and while there is  
> beauty in
> it, it also holds our field in perpetual obscurity. But, in our  
> field, the
> endless, perhaps even Sissyphean effort to recreate past moments,  
> while
> important, has limited the scope of our inquiry. What has been  
> liberating
> for us in our work on Synchronous Objects has been the decoupling of  
> the
> ideas of trace and document. What if we do not try to recreate the
> experience of the live performance but instead trace the principles,  
> events,
> ideas, and possibilities inside the event and re-present these  
> principles
> with the intent not of documenting but of sharing (creating  
> relationships)?
> This also relates to the issue of "the object" that is flying around  
> a bit
> this month and last. We in western cultures tend to think primarily of
> objects as commodities but they are of course also generators of
> relationships. Perhaps some of this is useful.
>
> Secondly, I'd love to hear from this month's contributors and others  
> on the
> list about relationships between participatory art and participatory
> pedagogy and perhaps even some of the rhetoric around cyberlearning  
> these
> days. I'm finding really productive connections between my research  
> in this
> area and my teaching and I'd love to hear from others about this as  
> well.
>
> Thanks
> Norah
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Norah Zuniga Shaw
> Director for Dance and Technology
> Department of Dance and
> The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design
> The Ohio State University
> T: 614.247.7379 Dance
> T: 614.292.5996 ACCAD
> http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20090609/64131233/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: lightbox.png
Type: image/png
Size: 16926 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20090609/64131233/attachment-0001.png