Shanghai again …
6 days in Shanghai, now at Pudong Airport, waiting to go to Hong Kong. Although I’ve been to this airport about 5 or 6 times in the last few years, this is the first time I’ve noticed that it’s right by the sea. The picture shows looking out past the loading area for planes, to the open sea beyond. Who knew? Various hearing adventures this trip, which I’ll spend this post talking about.
I was here to attend an Electroacoustic Music Studies Network (EMS) conference, and I really shouldn’t react the way I do. I should probably just accept what I find at academic conferences like this, but I have a hard time containing myself. Basically, we have a bunch of European and American composers of a very specialized type of music, talking about each other’s music and the music of their teachers. And no one but me seems to be bothered by how insular and self-serving the whole thing is. Although there were several pieces on the concerts which were quite lovely, there were also quite a few which sounded completely hackneyed and like they were written according to a formula of how this particular music should be written.
Even worse, the papers were often talking about a kind of orthodoxy which says that one must follow the prescriptions of the founder of acousmatic music, Pierre Schaeffer, in order to do things “properly.” And I just don’t get it. What does this have to do with creativity and the act of composing music and presenting it to an audience? I spoke with Robert Normandeau, a composer who seems to buy into the orthodoxy, but also writes some quite beautiful music, about trying to strike up a dialog about these issues, and even though we didn’t really begin anything at the conference, perhaps we will over email, or elsewhere.
I chide myself for these complaints … why should I complain about these insular attitudes if it is a comfortable environment for the people who subscribe to it? In as much as it seems to me a little bit like a religious belief for some of the people at the conference, you’d think I’d leave it alone, just as I wouldn’t think of arguing with anyone about their religious beliefs, regardless of what I think about them. But this is a little different, because it’s talking about music and music technologies, which I feel very engaged in, and very passionate about. So maybe the answer for me is just to avoid these kinds of events, which is what I’ve actually done for many years …
One way that this is strange for me is that one of the features of “electroacoustic” music as defined by EMS seems to be an avoidance of melody, harmony and metrical sense. So, the entire theoretical focus is on how to classify and organize the traditionally “extra musical” sound features which remain. Which ends up with a strong focus on the “morphology” of “space” and “spectral” identity. Which means, how do sounds move in a 2 or 3 dimensional space, and how do you classify timbres. All this in order to permit analysis of the work in an academic setting.
But for me, the question comes up: what do I do with this spatial morphology if I can’t hear the location of a sound? Is this music something I’m specifically excluded from because of my limitations? Or, is there some way for a listener with my limitations to hear and appreciate the music even if the spatial information is inaccessible? If I listen to music by Gabrielli or of Henry Brandt, it isn’t necessarily inaccessible because I can’t hear antiphonal effects. I do of course miss something, but the music still contains enough emotional content that it can reach me and move me even if I miss that spatial parameter of location. Somehow, this doesn’t seem to be the intent of the “acousmatic” composers.
There’s also a kind of catechismic espousal of one of Pierre Schaeffer’s dicta that “acousmatic listening” involves divorcing a sound from it’s source, from the physical object which creates the sound. It makes the music more “pure.” It also seems, and has always seemed, patently stupid to me. The primary interest I find in sampled and processed sounds is in the relationship to the physical source of the sound, and the complex layers of meaning that arise from this recognition. Why on earth would I want to make something so “pure” that it loses this dimension? There’s enough about music which is abstract, that I always want to hold on to those things which make the meaning more tangible and concrete (pun intended).
Although by being diligent about attending the conference I didn’t really get to make any new explorations of Shanghai this time, I did at least get a chance to play a concert at a club with my young Shanghai buddies, WANG Changcun, Mai Mai, and Xu Cheng. It was really refreshing, after several days of totally cerebral discussions about an extraordinarily conservative and proscribed musical genre to hear each of their solo sets: Wang Changcun played some very rhythmic deconstructed samples, Mai Mai played a drone e-bow guitar, sort of a la David First in NYC. And Xu Cheng did another sort of sample deconstruction piece, noisy and interesting. And quite different from Wang Changcun’s. A bit of a breath of fresh air for me.
One last interesting thing … I sort of didn’t notice my ear. Maybe it’s because the sound system was mixed to mono, like most club systems. At least that’s what the sound guy told me, since I couldn’t tell. But basically, I just set up, and played. I was really into the music, and the 45 minutes or so of playing just went by, and I hardly noticed it at all. Felt like it went well, and I just didn’t notice the distortion in my ear or anything. Not that it wasn’t there, but it just didn’t matter.
Comments
Neal,
I think that you make a fair point. As a non-musician who enjoys modern classical and electronic music, I do think that the world of professional composers (and artists in general) has a sort of hermetic quality, which excludes non-professionals. More importantly, though, it makes those on the inside seem a bit absurd when they condescend to outsiders who disagree with the values placed upon the music by the insiders.
When I listen to music, ultimately, what matters to me is “Do I like this? Is it interesting?” Knowing, either consciously or viscerally, that there is a complex structure behind the sound is nice, but it’s not essential to my appreciate – I like classical music before I understood how the masters manipulate melody, harmony and counterpoint.
To toss a bomb, I do think that what is exciting about electronic generation of sound is the removal of any restrictions upon the composition of music. To remove the set of rules that we used to possess (dictated by the limits of our sound-generating instruments) and replace them with a new set of rules (i.e. sound must be divorced from it’s generator) is either folly or weakness.
To me, it reflects one of two possibilities:
1. The vast space of opportunity is too daunting for all but a few. In order to step into this space and create a work of art, a less talented individual needs to restrict the space into something smaller and more comprehensible
2. The potential of the space can best be explored or learned by trying out sub-spaces. Imposing arbitrary rules upon the space and then seeing the effect of these rules upon the resulting musical experience is a device for learning how to use the space.
The first possibility seems like a refuge for the average. By establishing a world of rules and turning them into dogma, the average composer can create a shield to defend themselves against comparison with the exceptional composer.
The second possibility suggests that it is still the time of learning. Perhaps the criticism, then, is that the resulting works really are academic exercises, and it ought to be acknowledged that they are limited exercises in an infinitely wonderful space.
When I think about modern music, the one thing that I try to keep in mind is that we haven’t had the benefit of the filter of time to eliminate the dull, the boring and the bad music from our experience. I wonder, if we were in the 18th or 19th century would have the same feeling, and is it only that the passage of time has left us with the best of those ages.
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