In the project Extended Composition, the artistic researchers are making music along musics borders. There are grey areas on the fringe of music, this is where it meets dance, performance and other disciplines. This is an area that makes me ask, what is music?
In order to shed some light on the issue I will discuss some of music's borders as I perceive them today. In the following text I will look closer at music and sound art, music as exclusively sonic, music and the institutions and finally musical composition as seen in Bly. This text follows in the path of previous discussions on the topic, first published in my Ph.D. reflection. Organised Time.
I will start and end this text arguing that music is an artform with its techniques and sound is currently the most popular medium, yet, not the only available medium.
The idea of what music is has changed radically over the last hundred years. Music has moved from being that which could be described in terms of rhythm, melody and harmony, to being what we listen to with the intention of hearing music. This
observation is credited to Luciano Berio (Definition of Music 2016). This attitude towards the act of listening, and underlining of bodies and subjectivity, might as well have been attributed to Max Neuhaus, it is an immanent reflection in his series of works Listen (Neuhaus 1966–70's).
In the courses on the history of modern music, I was taught that Edgard Varèse spoke of music as organized sound, a radical definition in itself in the early twentieth century. He was inspired in his definition by the nineteenth century philosopher Jósef Maria Hoene-Wronski, who spoke of music as being the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sounds (Oulette 1968, 17). My understanding of it presupposes intelligence as being information. Music then becomes the corporealization of the information that is in sound. How do I bring about the information that is in sounds? My answer would be that I listen and interpret. So, in my reading, Wronski’s understanding of music emphasizes the subject and its interpretation as constitutional. Wronski also includes any kind of emblematic or conceptual reading of a sonic matter since this is also available information in sound. Let me underline that this is my highly subjective understanding in 2022. Varèse used the word organized and put a stronger focus on the sounds and their organization. Either way, Varèse’s definition has had a powerful influence.
In the forties and fifties John Cage developed his ideas of music is in all sounds and all sounds can be in music (Licht 2007, 12), a line of great iconoclasm and a leveling of hierarchies amongst sounds. Cage brought everyday sounds into the concert hall and left their organization to chance operations, questioning the roles of musicians and composers as well as the border between one´s kitchen and the concert hall, hitting a casserole was suddenly as worthy a sound as the tone of a Stradivarius violin.
During the twentieth century humans gained a very different understanding of ourselves and our place in the world, and also the world’s place in us. Objectivity is exchanged for subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. As a consequence, increasingly larger parts of the world seem to move into our heads. It seems to me that “the way I see it” becomes a legitimate argument. Another shift in being human in a world has occurred as we entertain other perspectives than the anthropocentric. Is there a music not made by humans? Is it out of reach for our sensory apparatus? Christina Kubisch suggests this in her Electronic Walks (2003 and in progress). This is discussed further below.
The beautiful result of “they way I see it” and music is in all sounds… is that we can listen music into a sonic matter. The act of listening can constitute a music. And taking it further, Kubisch seems to suggest that we are eavesdropping on the music that exists outside of our perceptual reach.
Music and sound art
Music and Sound art are more often than not found in the same festivals, some music academies even teach sound art. The issue at stake in this text is the understanding of sound art as something other than music, which I believe to be wrong. I believe that sound art is a development in music, an expansion of what music can be. The distinction is important because the world of music is conservative enough as it is, if we also start defining experimental practices as something other than music, we lose important perspectives on music.
Where does the term sound art come from, and what does it cover that music cannot?
The term sound art dates back to William Hellermann´s Sound Art Foundation, founded in 1982, which primarily seemed to work with experimental music or new music (Licht 2007, 11)
Sound art has been applied retroactively to noise music, sampling and various forms of musical collage. (Licht 2007, 12)
To illustrate the challenge, I will discuss three examples of what is considered sound art today: a very early musical collage, a work based solely on listening and a site evoking work. I consider these to be important new works of music.
Walter Ruttmann (1887–1941) made Wochenende in 1928–30 (Ruttmann 1930). Ruttman was an experimental film director whom had made Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) a sort of homage to city life in Berlin. Many things are striking about this film, but of particular interest to me is the way it is cut. There is a distinct rhythmic layer in the cutting. The idea of the symphony and associations to music that follow is really activated through the cutting. The cutting underlines form and medium. And as it turns out: Ruttmann was in a milieu of painters, poets and musicians who saw in the new media a possibility to expand the limits of the fine arts. They described their abstract films as visual music, seeking to achieve a similar experience in the visual as in music.
(sfsound.org 2016)
Following its success, the Berlin Radio Hour wanted something similar. For this project Ruttmann utilized a Tri – Ergon system of sound on film which was patented in 1919 (Tri-Ergon 2016). Here Ruttmann takes the musical component even further. He makes a 10 minute film without pictures, It´s only sound! The work is comprised of recorded sounds from the city, music and voices. Judging from the rhythmic contrasts and abrupt collage –
style composition I am guessing that the Tri -Ergon system for sound on film could be cut and re – organized. Also here, the underlining of form and medium is brought about through the rhythm of the cutting. In addition, Ruttmann uses a strong uniting force known from verse and music, namely repetition. The result is stunning. Ruttmanns film without pictures is a very
early example of recording technology used to make music. To my ears today, it is not
even controversial to call this a piece of music. This happened 10 – 15 years prior to Pierre
Schaeffers efforts. Schaeffer was of course much more methodical, still Ruttmanns piece
was first and it displays an inherent understanding of the role of the media in composition
and when it comes to new media, the issue of who was first is important. In that work,
both the history of music and the history of the music of that medium is being relayed. It is
a very early example of sampling and musical collage, and an indication of the relation
between music, understood as sonic, and film, how they have grown into a common
rhythmical artform of cutting displayed in most modern film; suspensions and anticipations,
montage technique and canned theatre all at once.
Max Neuhaus (1939 – 2009) and his series of works Listen (1966 – 70 )is another interesting example of music. It is also an example of how the musical discipline behaves
towards its most experimental practitioners. Neuhaus was a percussionist. He knew the
work of Cage, taking everyday sound sources into the concert hall and treating them as
musical buildingblocks. To Neuhaus, the next logic step was to take the music out of the concert hall. And he did this in a remarkably radical way. Neuhaus staged himself as a sonic tour – guide. He stamped the work Listen on the hands of the audience and guided them through the city from one interesting place of listening to another. Standing under the Brooklyn Bridge would be one such spot. To me, Neuhaus demonstrated how to listen is to create a music. Listen is an inquiry into how the subject and its urban sonic surroundings constitute a music together.
Christina Kubisch (f.1948) work Electric walks (Kubisch 2003 and in progress)
Electrical Walks is a public walk with special, sensitive wireless headphones by which the acoustic qualities of aboveground and underground electromagnetic fields become amplified and audible. The transmission of sound is made by built-in coils which respond to the electromagnetic waves in our environment…. … wireless internet, neon advertising, public transportation networks, etc. create electrical fields that are as if hidden under cloaks of invisibility, but of incredible presence.
In this work the Kubisch is a facilitator. The magnetic headphones are keys to a hidden sonic world and the audience find themselves walking within a music. The work has no beginning or end, other than that one might make for oneself. The music is distributed in space, and form is given to the music through choosing where to walk. It’s a work that sparks thoughts on scale, subjectivity and most importantly, site. The works started in 2003, its fairly recent and made in a world where the term sound art is established. Still, I cannot help to think how important this work would be if understood as music. The work contributes with a notion of music as a place one can walk within, and even more exciting, something continuous that we can tap into. It challenges the idea of music as instances with beginnings and ends, also the music is not tailored for our ears, we need technology to translate for us. With this extension Kubisch shows us how music can be non-anthropocentric.
Both Neuhaus and Kubisch add to a body of knowledge about sound and site, a trajectory from the st. Marcus church (not a cathedral until 1807 (Stolba 1990, 230)) in Venice where
Villaert and Gabrieli wrote their site specific, antiphonal music 450 years ago. These
composers remind us how site is always a part of the music. Vilaert and Gabrieli through
utilizing acoustics and letting site in on a score level. Kubisch by having the site be
the instrument and our movements make the music. Kubisch makes this knowledge of
the link between site and sound explicit.
The above are three examples of why I argue the importance of understanding sound art
as new music. Sound art is continuously exploring what music can be. It is a mistake to
think that sound art is a different artform. As Neuhaus puts it, it is essentially new music
(Licht 2007, 10), a distinction of music.
My concern is this, if sound art such as these three examples is not defined as music by
the major institutions within the musical discipline then the borders of the musical discipline
are not outlined correctly, the map is false so to speak. We shut of a corrective perspective
and a lot of good ideas. The consequence is that the ordinary becomes the radical
because we keep closing the doors on those who venture too far. This strict way of tending
the borders of music threatens possible developments. I sense that it is important to have
a more complete development of a field of knowledge that is being researched and
produced. Perhaps it might be fruitful to talk about different musics.
In the examples above, the Ruttmann film without pictures, Neumann demonstrating how to listen can constitute a music, and Kubisch unveiling a music not available to our senses. These are outstanding examples of the close relation between experimental music and the love of new knowledge.
Music and the sonic
Both organized sound and what we listen to with intention of hearing music assume that music is sonic. However, technology is pointing in a different direction. It is speculated that the technology of musical notation is as old as 4000 years. An example of a cuneiform writing
on a clay tablet was discovered in Syria in 1950. It contained a hymn to Nikal, the moon
god, and instructions for performing it (Stolba 1990, 5). With the introduction of musical
notation music evolved and developed its silent side. In the symbolic order of musical notation, so – called structural listening can take place in the mind through intelligent score reading without the presence of an external sound source.
(Ernst 2016b, 24)