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?
Hi Malcolm, you wrote:
>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.
I’ll see if i can find some more on Badings and Boerman. Let me know
what you are looking for, specific questions, composition lists, texts ?
>As Pete kind of mentioned, we live in a fully matured electronic
>world nowadays …..
Yes, it’s interesting that you both characterize it that way. But i wonder
how mature our electronic music (and our electronic world) really is.
How should we measure such maturity ? I mean, look at the history of
the organ, from the ancient hydraulos to the mediaeval positif and regal
and onwards to the great French organs of the late 19thC. Do you think
that Tielmann Susato, Bach or Cesar Franck and Louis Vierne doubted
their instruments were immature ? And what about a musical form as the
string quartet, when do we speak of it as a matured mode of expression,
compare Haydn with Bartok ? Maybe, and this is a question i want to
propose, is electronic music (and our whole technological and electronic
world) still in it’s infancy ? Dare we admit that, even after one century
of adventures and inventions, electronic music is still in it’s
experimental phase ?
Characteristic of experimental phases is that the ‘playing field’ is full of
limiting factors, excesses, thresholds and loops. And all these elements
have their specific inpact on the development. One thing that strikes me
as very important for the development of electronic music is the lack of
formalisation and standardisation of the instrumentarium (the instrument
as Zeug). What pure electronic instruments do we really have nowadays ?
The ever so popular (moog) synthesizer ? Of course there are the studios,
the countless studios all over the world. But these are mostly private and
equiped with an immense diversity of electronic facilities. The inventors
and builders (i.e. also the initial users) of these studios are the
Stradivari
of electronic music and less the Paganini, so to speak. You know, i think
that most composers want control, but with the actual state of affairs in
the landscape of electronic music the possibilities are too large (and thus
too limited). Who, as contemporary composer, has the complete or in any
case enough skilled overview to compose in the electronic vocabulary he
or she wants. Music, and this is something that is seldomly understood, is
a deeply conservative and slow progressing phenomenon. The possible
sounds and melodies that can still be composed for the organ or violin
are not even near exhaustion and we think that electronic music is in it’s
mature stage ? In our modern conservatories (sic) the study of electronic
music is not a main course, it is still the place for freeks and technos in
the basement. But some day, i hope, a future Mozart will write his opera
“Die Entfuehrung aus dem Matrix” for full electronic orchestra and ditto
choir and vocalists … and the audience will be amazed 
cheers,
Jan
