Re: [microsound] Deleuze Influence on Post Digital Music

[The pHarmanaut <pharmanaut@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Who authored this?

Thanks!
-=Trace

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jethro" <jethrokins@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "microsound" <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 11:21 AM
Subject: 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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