Re: [microsound] the ultimate incorruptible: cage/ cardew/christou/amm & beyond

[jeff gburek <tsazmaniac@xxxxxxxxx>]

my more point to point reply got lost. so i am just
winging to a more general paragraph. it good some
listers are pointing to cagean precision as opposed to
this misconception/cliche that "all i need to do is
open my window to hear a john cage concert". it also
points out the conservative aspect of cage. a more
blown open indeterminate framework was suggested by
cardew, especially in treatise. the problem of the
interpreters role in social hierarchy goes further
than a temporary loss of control in the ecstasy of
sound during a concert. the conspet of leadership
learned in secondary school bribgs from me the
nietzschean reply: those who cannot think for
themselves in our society become default followers.
this is also just a way of saying that leadership
concepts need to be shaken vigorously and often. i was
speaking with robin hayward (berlin resident, tuba
polayer) yesterday about his participation in
performances of jani christou's work. he said there
was lot of improvisation involved. but i think it is
also directed by the thematics of a christou piece. in
the case of cardew i see a different model, wherein
the composer refuses to direct the interpreters,
except in those cases when he himself was one of the
interpreters. leadership in this sense is
disintegrated, dissolved in the medium of collective
interpretation. there is never a loss of the problem.
the problem is for the process of immanence and
interpretation. the ideas of what comes in the
foreground or background of imrpovised music have been
played out by AMM in their long career. the issue
though of how the social hierarchies of the new music
world (so resembling those of the classical world as
to be quite distrubing, even for some of the musicians
i speak to) how these are grafted onto the the world
of later indeterminate music and improvisation is also
fairlyy complex and different each time. but also
never a non-problem, as these things reflect other
aspects of our society that need to continue to
undergo change.
best, jeff gburek  

--- nick knouf <nknouf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mar 16, 2006, at 7:36 PM, mat.the.w wrote:
> > I'd like to point out that Cage's compositional
> technique is just  
> > as precise
> > and controlled as Schoenbergs, if not more.
> 
> Exactly.  I recently attended a concert that
> featured a performances  
> of "Variations II", the piece that uses transparent
> sheets of  
> plastic, dots, and lines; the details of the
> performance are  
> determined by the distance of the dots from the
> line.  So what first  
> appears to be random is in fact highly precise.
> 
> On Mar 16, 2006, at 4:47 PM, erik schoster wrote:
> > I'm not such a pessimist that I think very
> beautiful or aesthetic  
> > things
> > can't happen in a traditional context, or that
> it's impossible to  
> > preserve
> > your agency as a listener in a performance
> situation (if that's the  
> > goal -
> > maybe the goal is to completely submit, or
> something in between...)  
> > but i
> > think it's worth discussing, since i dont' see
> that power  
> > relationship ever
> > going away.
> 
> I want to latch on to the uses of the words "submit"
> and "power".   
> While I understand the general thrust of the points
> here, I think our  
> conceptualizations of these two words leads to a
> certain distaste of  
> more Western-traditional methods of presenting
> music.  To me, power  
> relations in music connote specific situations where
> there is an  
> extremely clear division between the roles of the
> performer and the  
> listener, and a series of social rules that prevent
> particular  
> actions on the part of one group (I'm looking at
> you, traditional  
> classical music concert).  Yet even for happenings
> of sound that fit  
> into this category, there are particular times in my
> life, as I'm  
> sure for others on this list, that such a happening
> is the most  
> appropriate means of experiencing the sounds. 
> Perhaps my  
> participation is being a conscientious listener of
> the event; that's  
> the extent of the participation.  Is this
> submission?  Maybe, but if  
> it is, it's *conscious* submission, a choice on my
> part to exchange  
> some of my power (to listen in a certain way, act in
> a certain way,  
> etc.) for the chance to experience someone else's
> power over me.
> 
> This reminds me of a thought I had back in secondary
> school, where I  
> would hear about how we all needed to be leaders;
> yet if we're all  
> leaders, who are the followers?  Who do we lead?
> 
> So I think the question is not about making the
> power relationships  
> go away; in fact, I think that would be extremely
> detrimental.  In my  
> likely-idealistic view, if we're aware of these
> relationships, if we  
> enter into them willingly and know what we want to
> expect as a result  
> of the experience, then the fact that we've ceded
> power to someone  
> else, for a short period of time, becomes a
> non-problem.
> 
> nick
> 
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail:
> microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For additional commands, e-mail:
> microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> website: http://www.microsound.org
> 
> 


j.ff gbk

http://www.futurevessel.com/orphansound/

http://www.mattin.org/desetxea.html

http://www.djalma.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org