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Re: [microsound] Deleuze Influence on Post Digital Music



Hi -

And, for those who don't read French, the
Altavista.com translation (in the spirit of glitch, I
left it untouched).

Jethro

****

I would like to make a first remark on the method
employed. Pierre Boulez chose five works: the
relationship between these works is not reports/ratios
of influence, dependence or filiation, not either of
progression or evolution from one work to another.
There would be rather virtual relationship between
these works, which are released only from their
confrontation. And when these works are confronted
thus, in a kind of cycle, draws up a particular
profile of musical time X It is not thus at all a
method of abstraction which would go towards a general
concept of time in music. Swell could have chosen
another cycle obviously: for example a work of Bartok,
one of Stravinsky, one of Varèse, one of Berio... It
would then be released another particular profile of
time, or the particular profile of another variable
that time. Then one could superimpose all these
profiles, to make true charts of variations, which
would follow each time of the musical singularities,
instead of extracting a general information from what
is called of the examples. However in the precise case
of the cycle chosen by Swell, which one sees or hears,
these is a time not pulsated (which) emerges from
pulsated time. Work I shows this release, by a very
precise play of physical displacements. Works II, III
and IV show each time an aspect different from this
time not pulsated, without claiming to exhaust all the
possible aspects. Finally V (Casing), shows how time
not pulsated can give again a variable pulsation of a
new type. Eh well, the question it would be to know in
what consists this time not pulsated, this floating
time, about what Proust called "a little time in a
pure state". The first case, most obvious of this
time, it is that it is one duration, i.e. a released
time of regular or irregular measurement. A time not
pulsated thus puts to us in the presence of a
multiplicity of durations, hétérochrones, qualitative,
not coinciding, noncommunicating: one does not walk
measures some, not more than one does not swim or
flies in measurement. The problem then, it is how
these durations will be able to articulate itself,
since one deprived oneself in advance of the very
general traditional solution which consists in
entrusting to the Spirit the responsibility to impose
a measurement or a metric rate common to these vital
durations. Since one cannot resort any more to this
homogeneous solution, it is necessary to produce an
articulation by the interior between these
rates/rhythms or durations. It is for example that the
biologists, when they study the vital rates/rhythms of
periods 24 hours, give up articulating them to an even
complex common measure, or on a sequence of process,
but call upon what they call what they call a
population of molecular oscillators, oscillating
molecules, put in coupling, and who ensures the
communication of the rates/rhythms or the
transrythmicity. However it is not at all a metaphor
but of speaking in music about sound molecules, put in
coupling of races or groups, of agreement, which
ensure this internal communication of the
heterogeneous durations. All to become molecular
music, which is not only related to the electronic
music, will make possible, although the same type of
elements crosses heterogeneous systems. This discovery
of the sound molecules, instead of the notes and of
the tone pure is very significant in music and is done
in a very clear way according to such or such
behavior. For example rates/rhythms not rétrogradables
of Messiaen. In short, a time not pulsated, it is a
made time of heterogeneous durations, whose
reports/ratios rest on a molecular population, and
either on a unifying metric form. And then there would
be a second aspect of this time not pulsated, which
relates to this time the report/ratio of time and the
individuation. Generally a individuation is done
according to two co-ordinates, that of a form and that
of a subject. The traditional individuation is that,
somebody or of something, as equipped with a form. 
But we know all and we live all in other types of
individuation where there is neither form no more nor
subject: it is the individuation of a landscape, or
well of a day, or well of an hour of the day, or well
of an event. Midday-midnight, midnight the hour of the
crime, which terrible five hours of the evening, the
wind, the sea, energies, are of the individuations of
this type. However, it is obvious that the musical
individuation, for example the individuation of a
sentence, is much more this second type that first.
The individuation in music would raise problems as
complex as those of time and in connection with time.
But precisely, these paradoxical individuations which
are done neither by specification of the form nor by
assignment of a subject are themselves ambiguous
because they are capable of two levels of hearing or
comprehension. There is a certain listening of that
which is moved by a music, and which consists in
making associations: for example one makes like Swann,
one associates the small sentence of Vinteuil and the
Wood of Boulogne; or well one associates groups of
sounds and groups of colors, even if it means to
utilize phenomena of synesthesia; or well even one
associates a reason to a character, as in the first
hearing of Wagner. And it would be a wrong of saying
that this level of listening is grotesque, one has for
it all need, y compri Swann, including Vinteuil, the
type-setter. But on a level more tended, it is not any
more the sound which returns to a landscape, but the
music develops a sound landscape which is interior for
him: it is Liszt which imposed this idea of the sound
landscape, with a ambiguity such as one does not know
more if the sound returns to an associated landscape
or if, on the contrary, a landscape is interiorized so
much in the sound which there exists only in him. One
would say some as much for another concept, that of
color: one could regard the sound-color ratio as a
simple association, or a synesthesia, but one can
consider that the durations or the rates/rhythms are
in themselves of the colors, of the properly sound
colors which are superimposed on the visible colors,
and do not have the same criteria nor the same
passages as the visible colors. One would say of it as
much still third, that of character: one can consider
in the opera certain reasons in partnership with a
character, but Boulez indeed showed how the reasons at
Wagner do not join only to one external character, but
changed, had an autonomous life in a time floating not
pulsated, where they became themselves interior
characters. These three concepts very different of
sound landscape, of audible colors, rhythmic
characters, are for us examples of individuation,
processes of individuation, which belong to a time
floating, made hétérochrones durations and
oscillations molecular. Lastly, there would be a third
character. Time not pulsated is not only a time
released of measurement, i.e. a duration, not only
either a new process of individuation, released from
the topic and subject, but finally that it is the
birth of a released material of the form. In a certain
manner, the European classical music could be defined
in the report/ratio of an auditive hardware gross and
of a sound form which selected, took on this hardware.
That implied a certain hierarchy matter-life-spirit,
which went from simplest to most complex, and which
ensured the domination of a metric rate like the
homogenisation of the durations in a certain
equivalence of the parts of sound space.  It with what
one assite, on the contrary, in the current music, it
is with the birth of a sound material which is not any
more a matter simple or undifferentiated, but a very
elaborate material, very complex; and this material
will not be subordinated any more to a sound form,
since it will not need any: it will be charged, for
its account, with making sound or audible of the
forces which, by themselves, are not it, and the
differences between these forces. The material couple
sound gross-forms, replaces very an other coupling
sound material unperceivable elaborate-forces that the
material will make audible, perceptible. Perhaps one
of the first cases more striking would be in the
dialogue of the wind and the sea of Debussy. In the
cycle suggested by Swell, it would be part II, modes
of values and intensity, and part IV, Eclat. A very
complex sound material is charged to make appreciable
and perceptible of the forces of another nature,
duration, time, intensity, silences, which are not
sound in themselves. The sound is not that a means of
capture for another thing; the music does not have as
a unit the sound any more. One cannot fix a cut in
this respect between classical music and modern music,
and especially not with the atonal or serial music: a
musician makes material of all, and already the
classical music, under the sound couple matter-form
complexes, made pass the play of another couple, sound
material nonsound elaborate-force. There is no cut but
rather one bouillonement: when, at the end of the
XIXème century, were made attempts at generalized
chromatism, of released chromatism of the temperament
(....), the music made increasingly audible what
worked it from time immemorial, of the nonsound forces
like Time, the organization of time, the quiet
intensities, the rates/rhythms of any nature. And they
is there that nonthe musicians can, in spite of their
incompetence, to meet most easily with the musicians.
The music is not only the business of the musicians,
insofar as it makes sound of the forces which are not
it, and which can be more or less revolutionists, more
or less conformists, for example, the organization of
time. In all the fields, we finished believing in a
hierarchy which would go from simple to the complex,
according to a scale matter-life-spirit. It may be on
the contrary that the matter is more complex than the
life, and than the life is a simplification of the
matter. It may be that the rates/rhythms and that the
vital durations are not organized and are not measured
by a spiritual form but hold their articulation of the
inside, of molecular processes which cross them. In
philosophy also we gave up the traditional coupling
between an undifferentiated thinkable matter, and
forms of thought of the categories type or great
concepts. We try to work with very elaborate materials
of thought, to make thinkable of the forces which are
not thinkable by themselves. It is the same history
that for the music when it works out a sound material
to make audible of the forces which are not it in
themselves. As music, it does not act more than one
absolute pitch, but of an impossible ear which can be
posed on somebody, to briefly occur with somebody. As
philosophy, it does not act more than one absolute
thought such as traditional philosophy desired the
incarner, but of an impossible thought, i.e. making of
a material which makes thinkable of the forces which
are not it by themselves.  



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