Category 2
Indoors, Live Soundscape, Live Instrument
This category immediately poses the question of: how can a piece be indoors but have a live soundscape? Usually the purpose of an indoor venue is to shelter the performance from unwanted sounds in a neutral and specially-designed acoustic. However with any established purpose there are artists who question or circumvent such function. The revolutionary 4'33” by John Cage (1912-1992) highlights the incidental sounds within the supposedly quiet concert hall, and other pieces aim to further break open the closed-ness of classical concerts.
Performance instructions under A. Theatre Space read:
“Sound(s) to be produced at any point on the lines outside the theatre space (extend lines where necessary). Open door(s) pertaining to a given point.
(Sound production may be understood as simply opening doors.) Intersection of second circle = sound in total theatre space (public address system) or at any specific point on the produced line within the space. Two or more points may be taken as a sound in movement. (Open pertinent doors) Movement is also indicated by using transparent map in addition. A single notation will then give two points in space. Several of these may be associated with one sound.”
This type of piece is highly performer-driven and requires extensive preparation in the performance space to draw the map, create connection points and find the physical ways to let in the sounds from the outside, even going as far as using telephone or other transmission lines. The one constant is that the performance will always sound different, even when repeated by the same performers, and musicians must be creative in realizing the instructions. Cage provides further flexibility in that performers could open windows when doors are not available, and in a smaller space such as an apartment the term “outside” may change to meaning “other rooms”.
Cage's Variation IV leaves much of the composition and other decisions up to the performer. For some composers this may be too much freedom and they may notate more of the music or instructions for more control. For example, a piece created thirty years later that brings outdoor sound into the concert hall also contains a fully-notated piano score that arguably could stand alone. Christopher Fox (b. 1955) composed a three-movement work for piano and field recording, More things in the air than are visible..., in which live soundscape becomes an integral part of the closing movement. The basic structure is two short opening movements (5 and 4 minutes) plus a longer closing third movement (14:40 minutes). Fox described his dual approach to studio technology as using “sequenced synth pre-sets” in the first part, and “unedited real-time field recordings...(found materials again, however)” in the third part of the same piece.1 In this composition the notated piano part is clearly in the foreground. Movement I. is about resonance of the piano. There is a rhythmic high ostinato (electronic sequence) with loud staccato piano chords that highlight the piano's resonance with each struck chord. The material (and focus on harmony) stays consistent for the entire movement, which is also true for the following; Movement II. is a high-energy harmonic study with broken chords, sometimes in tremolos or arpeggios or with polyrhythms between the hands. The live transmission enters here in the final seconds to anticipate the last part. Movement III. continues the focus on harmony with contrasting slow, calm vertical chords in the mid- to low-register. Notable is the last fifty seconds of field sound as the piano has disappeared.
I listened to pianist Ian Pace's CD “More Light: Ian Pace plays the music of Christopher Fox” (2013)2 In this recording, bird song from the field recording begins at the very end of the second and bridges the connection to the third movement. I suspect that the field recording was spliced for the CD project, since events are spaced apart with nice timing, but they could ostensibly have happened in this way. Because of the continuous nature of the audio and its unassuming content of instantly recognizable everyday sound: birds, dogs and their walkers, busses and cars, I originally designated its function as background material. However, because the piano part is also slow and consistent, the listener's focus calmly shifts between both, the hierarchy changes over time. Sometimes the piano becomes the background as new events grab the listener's ear, such as the brakes of a bus, a siren, or a sudden dog bark. Since the idea of the piece is to use found material from outside of the venue, Fox did not transcribe elements (as possible in a fixed tape) but chose to layer them.
As mentioned earlier, Fox's concept is for the performer to make a field recording/live transmission outside of the venue and bring the sound into the concert hall. Listening to the CD rather than I live performance, I had dual images of a pianist in a concert hall and the outdoors (a piano wheeled outside), as well as the idea of someone listening to a piano piece with earbuds on the street. The two layers are so concrete that my mind attempted to create one physical space for both to exist together. Since the piece starts as a pure piano piece, I experienced what would by Schafer be called schizophonia, the splitting of the sound from its original source, when the soundscape entered the mix.3 For my experience, Fox's work is a piano piece that then opens up to the world of incidental sounds around it. Many other works mentioned in this research paper use the field recording as starting point, by contrast.
1 Cage, John. Variations IV. Edition Peters. 1963.
2 Used by permission of the Publishers from ‘Christopher Fox’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music edited by James Saunders (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 261–269. Copyright © 2009 http://www.james-saunders.com/interview-with-christopher-fox/, accessed Nov. 14, 2015.
3 Recording by Ian Pace on Metier, MSV CD92022: Recorded on 7 & 8 March 1998 at Christ's Hospital, Horsham, U.K. in the presence of the composer. It was originally commissioned by Philip Mead with funds from the Yorkshire and Humberside Arts Board and premiered by him in a MediaMix concert, York University, on 11 March 1994. The title is a quotation from Ben Okri.
4 Schafer, p. 90.
As a side-note: piano, especially when played traditionally without inside preparation, is a good example of an instrument easily recognizable and very difficult to blend with environmental sounds.
In 1963 Cage did exactly this with his Variation IV, by calling for windows/doors to be opened or other live transmission of the surrounding soundscape. One of his very free pieces without a specified performance duration, it is scored for “any number of players, and sounds or combinations of sounds produced by any means, with or without other activities”.4 The performers must draw a map of the performance space and place on it a transparency by Cage with three circles and nine dots in a grid. Some dots and circles will fall on the inside of the map or outside of it, and from a placed circle one draws to each of the points straight lines, along which the sounds should be produced. He provides five options for performance spaces: A. Theatre Space (Auditorium With Doors), B. Building With One Or More Floors, C. Apartment or Suite, D. Closed Space (Cave), E. Outdoor Space (Any Amount).
