A phenomenology of electronic music
May 11th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: a phenomenology of electronic music :: perhaps a phenomenology of discursive practices as well as electronic musics? :: A phenomenology of electronic music :: perhaps a phenomenology of discursive practices as well as electronic musics?
On 05/05/2008, at 9:22 AM, Jan Straathof wrote:
> Stockhausen is very spiritual,
> maybe even very Heideggerian, in intention and scope. Stockhausen is
> a musical onmivore, he is (or better let himself be) influenced as
> much
> by new electronics as by mediaeval chants, by modern jazz as by
> ancient
> chinese instruments.
He was also very contemporary and a crowd puller right up until his
recent passing. I like his debate with Afex Twin etal re change vs
repetition. There’s a temporalizing aspect to his post-serialist
compositions that I do find very Heideggerean/Husserlian, and his
eclecticism seems typical of the electronic approach to music as a
whole - whether that’s yesterday’s “serious” avant-garde or today’s
popular adepts. I find electronic music in general, but especially
during the necessarily experimental phase of the development of the
modern electronic technology that enabled it, an interestingly
technological affair, also in the Heideggerean sense. There was a
sense of adventure that has been lost in today’s world of mature
electronic digital technology which does “everything” so easily.
> I also have 4 cds with Pierre Schaeffer’s “Oeuvre
> Musicale”, his compositions of musique concrete have alway fascinated
> me.
Heh, I think I agree with Pierre’s late criticism of his own
compositions - they’re a failure musically speaking. But historically
I still find them fascinating and they are a technological triumph.
The young music students I teach however don’t share the fascination,
they’re all used to lap tops and don’t understand the wonder of being
able to take noise from the world around them and turn it into music.
I’ve got them creating acousmatic works this semester though and have
been aurally training them to just shut up and listen (ala Cage’s
4′33″ but in shopping centres, at home, in parks etc) and take field
recordings … I think the wonder may just be starting to filter
through their heavily sedimented cultural and music conditioning.
I do however like his methodology, not so much the dogma of musique
concrete but his more technical/philosophical approach to the concept
of music as acousmatics, pdf linked here in the anglo:
http://tinyurl.com/5rypmw
It’s an acoustician’s approach to sound, a modern technological
approach, and a how-to listen rather than a music style, influenced
by the French take on phenomenology but one that I agree with and
would like to develop in terms of aesthesis and Zeitlichkeit.
> John Cage i also like
> alot, for years he came to Holland to perfrom on a festival
> dedicated to
> him. He would then play his newest compostions and lecture about the
> zen philosophy behind it. There was a kind of cultstatus created
> around
> him, i didn’t dig that. But his sonatas & interludes for prepared
> piano is
> still one of my favorite modern piano pieces.
I prefer his noisy electronic pieces for Cunningham but that’s just a
matter of taste of course. Cage and Stockhausen are handy icons
though as they represent indeterminacy and determinism in the
electronic approach to composition. Both methods freed them from the
strictures of their received music traditions and both have that
temporalizing freedom that’s so characteristic of the early avant garde.
> With regard to electronic music in general there so much that i don’t
> know where to begin.
It’s huge of course, we’re talking of a century long music tradition,
and I’ve played many of the composers you mention in our first year
program for the music students along with the early US tape and synth
composers such as David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, Robert
Ashley, Steve Reich etc. Stockhausen’s Hymnen is my favourite of his
earlier electronic works, up there with Laibach’s Volk! I’m not too
familiar with Henk Badings (echoes of Heidegger’s post war trauma?)
and Jan Boerman and would be interested to hear more about the Dutch
oeuvre if you can excuse my anglo-centric ignorance. They’d be a
great pair to teach as well given their typically different
backgrounds, science and classical music, another strangely
technological characteristic of the eclecticism of the electronic
approach to music.
> You know the
> problem i have with a lot of modern electronic music is that it
> is …..
> interesting, i.e. in the sense of technically ‘interesting’, but it
> seldomly sounds good. What i often hear are wierd, brute, agitated and
> outlandish
> timbres and rhythmic structures, but where is the acoustic beauty ?
I know what you mean, especially with a lot of digitally composed
material nowadays there can be a brittle harshness and almost
surgical precision that comes from simply using computer technology.
As far as the more experimental genres go I do enjoy the beautifully
chaotic repetition of Toshimaru Nakamura, as well as Christian
Fennesz and the Aussie Robin Fox to name a few. Venetian Snares
anyone? Not to forget Sonic Youth who cross over the experimental and
mainstream divide.
As Pete kind of mentioned, we live in a fully matured electronic
world nowadays and I can hear Cage/Stockhausen inspired avant garde
noise everywhere, often mediated via the Eno, Fripp, Cale and co
generation, whenever I hear a decent radio station or jukebox playing
the more creative original mainstream music. From 60’s LSD Beatles
era music (I agree with Alvin Lucier though, can’t stand the
Beatles!) to Arch Enemy’s death metal (Angela Gossow ROX!) The early
methods and the technology haven’t disappeared they’ve just been
incorporated into the wider body of electronic/electroacoustic music
even if the styles are often radically different … the origin of
electronic music has been forgotten, or is constantly erased, in lieu
of its progeny.
> With
> Jan Boerman’s “Kompostie 1972″ that is different, it is a truly
> beautiful
> piece, the work sounds very light and with its warm tone-colours,
> highly
> spontaneous, sunny and optimistic. Music to melt the icy waters of
> modernity.
Yes well you know my take on those waters, they’re already melting
due to global warming which is just another symptom of the ongoing
peak of our modern technological civilization. The grand sweep of
techne is also what I’m interested in here, how our fully matured
modernity lays the ground for today’s electronic music. But these are
the big phenomenological themes - techne, aesthesis, Zeitlichkeit/
Temporalitaet and modern technological humanity. Electronic music as
an art form is intriguing for me as it follows the grand sweep of
late 19th and 20th C history. It’s a truly modern expression of the
technological Zeitgeist in a dynamic temporal form that necessarily
evades rational analytic categorisation much like being qua being.
Cheers,
Malcolm
***************************
Dr Malcolm Riddoch
Music Technology
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)
Faculty of Education and Arts
Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford St, Mount Lawley
Perth, Western Australia
