Eyes Closed
Stemming from an interesting conversation I had with a colleague composer who normally listens to music with eyes closed, as his preferred way, I did listen several times during my work to these pieces or excerpts of them in such a way, partly as yet another testing experience.
I usually do not close my eyes when listening to music, even less while still at work. (Probably because my natural tendency to a visual imagination would already be too much reinforced). Cancelling one of our perceptual windows certainly enhances the others. Vision and audition are strongly intermingled, so complete darkness or having eyes closed potentiate extraordinarily our ear and the visual imaginary accompanying our auditory perception. This is, however, a very special situation, which can even cause some discomfort to certain people when in a public situation. Enhancing the aural by dimming down light to achieve a comfortable penumbra, both for work as for concerts, is my choice, for it is the music and not the situation that has to pervade and stand up in the afterthought. Music belongs to the social world, and closing eyes throws us into the individuality; it is not a question of degree, it is a huge leap.
Because of the abstract nature of its sounds, electroacoustic music, in particular, finds special dimensions through this listening approach. For these particular experiences what I tried to do was to leave my mind in blank. With music one knows well, as was the case, the natural tendency is to drive the listening experience, and I wanted to remain as open as possible. What was surprising and at the same time reassuring, was that the internal dynamicity of the spatial behaviour of sound objects, almost subliminal under normal circumstances, made the brain create visual mappings to match what was heard producing some really wild results. Although my actual sensations were highly subjective, and therefore of no practical consequence from the compositional point of view, it was really an interesting experience. Somehow it seemed to confirm that the brain was indeed capturing the spatial essence of these sounds and trying to make up something from that perception.
The concert
The loudspeaker is a fundamental element in electroacoustic music, it is the source of sound. Different types, qualities, sizes, and different orientations, heights and general dispositions have been an essential consideration for composers along the history of this music. To enrich qualities and open up spatial possibilities are compositional potentialities whether arising from performative or structural considerations. The loudspeaker is, however, a bulky object, and has necessarily become also a main element in the mise-en-scêne of electroacoustic music concerts.
I had said above that our goal was not that of a flashy show, and yet the concert situation for this music demanded such special devices and special setups that it might have seemed a search for a vain originality; a collection of rare settings as if a freaks show. Further on, every different setup tended to suggest a different optimal audience placement, and indeed all concerts during the project required a change of seat-plan in the pause, while to have one sole change was always a compromise solution. True, we were presenting compositions realized during the project, and the must of research was to explore in the landscape of possibilites, so each one of the pieces was naturally searching for something special, particular, different.
Working with the plastic sound object, with surfaces and bodies, dictates special dispositions and a substantial number of loudspeakers. Each potential "place" requires a set of speakers in some arrangement following certain particular properties. The music will be using different "places", here and there, above or below, and you need to be able to make transitions, abruptly and smoothly: movements with all the delicacies and the variations that such gestures may have. This is the great potential richness of this approach, far from the concepts of "surround" or virtual immersiveness, in that the composer can really work with sound as if it were matter moving in space.
It is only fair to mention that this richness is also its most dangerous enemy, for the concert production becomes terribly demanding. A problem, which sometimes I see as a huge, almost insurmountable, question.
The design of the spatial dimension of sound and a perception of materiality have constituted the driving force for almost all activities in this project, and did become therefore an intrinsic aspect in the conception of the flow of music. Something as particular and, from a certain perspective, as new, demands naturally its own rules, its own exploration sphere, its discursive context, its musical raison d'être. Something as subtle, and at the same time as natural, may still pass unaware to certain ears, however fundamental might it be to the essence of the musical composition.
Several times, in other texts of this presentation, I have mentioned our concern with perception. One strong reason being that it would have been pointless to work on the design of something which could not be perceived. At the same time, by concentrating on such a special aspect of the constitution of sound, we were implicitely pushing our listening to a refined attention in that direction. The goal was not to achieve an experience like a circus of mirage illusions –movie-like effects–, but an abstract new element in the musical discourse. Net but subtle, flexible and potentially rich in nuances and possible manipulations.
If we consider what the idea of the plastic sound object is searching for, we will realize that,being not a virtual perception, it is still a construct of our minds, not because we cannot perceive the spatial extension of sound, but because we cannot map it into a real body. We usually do not assign an inner spatial extension to sound, even if our senses use its intrinsic spatiality to understand the world. It is not infrequent to perceive sound with a surfaced dimension, like when a board or a membrane vibrate, but we see or imagine the body that produces it; sound remaining, as it were, out of space. The question is not far from all those visual metaphores that music, particularly during the twentieth century, has been using. Texture, colour, now substantially reinforced through a perception of corporality which enhances the material quality, are metaphores. The challenge is to strictly compose with sound, and not with the suggestions and images that it may arouse.
Art in research
In Artistic Research art-works are or may be a part of its outcome [4]. In general, they cannot be thought as mere examples, neither should they be considered directly as results. Art-works provide other perspectives, knowledge within their own proper domain about the researched items. Convoluted multi-dimensional statements about the topics in study, while remaining anyhow the universe in itself a work may claim to be. During this project, making music has been part of the research.
This section gives information about the musical pieces composed during The Choreography of Sound project. Some pieces, some sections look more in the direction of the sound-object itself, others are more concerned with the musical flow embracing this type of objects. Chicken and egg; the music that makes of that sound-perception a necessity, the sound-conception demanding a music that fully embraces its nature. Apparently, one first has to achieve a certain level of internalization before being able to conceive that which rules form and behaviour, but, at the same time, there are forces coming from the imagined, from the inner ear or from abstract thought, building form and expecting its substantiation through a special perception.
This documentation is not meant as a listening guide to the works, but as a guide to their contribution in the frame of this research.
Nothing can replace, however, the actual listening of the pieces in the concert hall.
[4] There will always be, certainly, an artistic activity associated to this kind of research, but the actual mechanisms of manufacture and completion of an art-work may well fall beyond the project allowances. Creation has its own requirements, its time developments, its idyosincrasies, perhaps difficult to merge into a frame driven by other/broader goals and expectations.
Model Listener
A musical piece in a concert is a self-referential entity, open to the understanding and appreciation of each individual in the audience. Some will be able to discern its internal mechanisms, some will be able to place it within a broader context, most will ‘just’ listen to it from an intuitive approach, and everyone will supply their own references to comprehend and appreciate. Every person, every new listening experience brings in other perceptions, new dimensions into the work. Listening is not a passive act, it is, quite on the contrary, a strong interaction between the inclinations, moods and capabilities of each individual with the inherent demands/suggestions that a work may implicitely provide as to how to listen to it.
We may lean on the concept of Eco's Model Reader and talk of that of a Model Listener embedded in the conception of the musical piece. The Model Listener would be "able to deal interpretively with the [contents] in the same way as the author deals generatively with them"[1]. "Cooperative movements which, as Barthes later showed, not only produce pleasure, but also, in certain priviliged cases, 'la jouissance' "[2]. The work itself estimulates and regulates interpretative freedom.
Pure electroacoustic music lacks the visual indices that performers supply, lacks, in general, the power of 'actualization' that interpretation and performance bring forth. Thus, electroacoustic music is more like a literary text in the relationship it creates between author-generator and interpreter-auditor. No intermidiary stages; the text, the music being the sole object of interaction. Time, however, is part of the substance of music and music must flow through; no way to go back to that last sentence and savour anew. The auditor builds with the memories, the evocations, the resonances that statements, events, gestures leave, affecting and in turn being affected by all that follows while constructing in the inner-self an object of aesthetic contemplation [3].
[1] Umberto Eco: The Role of the Reader: Explorations In the Semiotics of Texts; ed. Thomas Sebeok, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979, p. 7
[2] Umberto Eco: Laector in Fabula; Editorial Lumen, Barcelona. 1993, p. 13
[3] See : Carl Dalhaus: Esthetics of Music; Cambridge University Press, New York. 1982.
Performance
We should not underestimate, anyway, the enacting potentiality emerging from the relatively subtle performing operations that electroacoustic music generally allows for. In the case of the musical pieces here documented, in which diffusion, properly speaking, cannot be contemplated, it is only the relative balance of dynamics that allow for such a performing action. But this molding of sonorities through dynamic balance is a powerful means to underline structural and expressive aspects, particularly when the music is constructed so that relative balances of internal structures are accesible at the concert moment, and specially so when dealing with low and extremely low dynamic levels.
The pieces here presented, such as they have been conceived, can be said to be partially open, in that every time they are played their actual rendering will be different. This is the result of random choices within a set of rules that leave some margin of freedom. This openness affects very different aspects of the composition, the exact time-structure of a section, the dynamic contour of another, frequency, colours and so on. It is not the result of a true interpretation, neither can we say to be that of performance; both require human intervention. And yet, being a possible realization according to the logic of the construction, we could as well understand it as any of them. Algorithmic performance, as we may call it, which, as already mentioned elsewhere in this documentation, seems to point into a new direction in the performance of electroacoustic music.