Part I Context
2.5 Conclusions
tools and computers are made with stones, minerals and metals whose voices we should reveal as we do with the wood and copper of musical instruments: they amalgamate with our fingers, they are nature.
7. Acceptance of Death.
From a certain point of view, improvisation is the highest mode of mu- sical activity, for it is based on the acceptance of music’s fatal weak- ness and essential and most beautiful characteristic-its transience. The desire always to be right is an ignoble taskmaster, as is the de- sire for immortality. The performance of any vital action brings us closer to death; if it didn’t it would lack vitality. Life is a force to be used and if necessary used up. “Death is the virtue in us going to its destination” (Lieh Tzu).45
Through this idea, Cardew seems to reach a new stage concerning the ethics of improvisation, its ontological foundations, its goals and its meanings, to which he is addressing a new set of questions. If by improvising with sounds we can return to the fundamental question of life and death, then improvisation is definitely a tool to inquire and investigate our understanding, perception and relation to the world. Trascendental listening expands Sonic improvisation to another dimension, as a tool to question our beliefs and to strive to illuminate the truth. When I play music as if it were the last time before disappearing forever, my playing is totally different. I feel the power of all those vibrations going into the air telling everybody around me my most secret and deep thoughts, ideas, emotions and dreams. I cannot leave this world before playing my last note!
By commenting on Cardew’s ideas of improvisation, I wanted to illustrate how the understanding of improvisation and listening can be enhanced by including metaphysical questions of our beings, our environment and our raison d’être. Transcendental listening implies comprehending sonic improvisation as an in- strument for self-discovery through self-observation and self-criticism, an active learning experience that can bridge and bring us closer to our humanness and soul.
2.5 Conclusions
In this chapter, I have proposed to analyze sonic improvisation via three modes of listening that change the perspective or focus the interest on different aspects of improvisation. My analysis, without pretending to be exhaustive, included three approaches. The first of these was the cognitive view with its structural listening
in which the main preoccupation is how the creative process of improvisation is carried out and the set of cognitive operations to process the perceptual stimulus and ideas in a spontaneous sonic creative situation. This view reveals important aspects and understanding of the way improvisers work and generate ideas but remains silent on the meanings that musicians attach to their activity in social contexts. The second, the socio-political view with its holistic listening, calls our attention to historical frameworks and the importance of improvisation as a tool to research human behaviors and social interactions. This view must be tempered to not be confused or amalgamated with politics. The third view, the metaphysical perspective combined with transcendental listening, is an attempt to elucidate aspects of improvisation that seem to capriciously escape the rational and analytical mind.
Other theorizations on listening modes underline and stress differently the di- mensions suggested here. For example, the ecological acoustics developed by Eric Clarke as an effort to apply James Gibson’s ecological perceptual theory to music with the listening experience as the pivotal piece informed/informing the environ- ment can be seen as a form of holistic listening. Also, the ear cleaning of Murray Schafer, a practice that strives to raise consciousness of the surrounding sounds and ultimately of all sounds. The ideas advanced by Schafer resonate with the proposal above of listening as an active experience to study reality. Starting from a subjective silence and centering the listening act as the working tool, Schafer promotes active participation, experimentation, improvisation and analysis. The concept of reduced listening as explained by Michel Chion is the name given by Pierre Schaeffer “to the listening mode that focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and of its meaning” in contrast to casual listening and semantic listening.46 The reduced listening is a clear cognitive effort to un-
derstand the nature, perception and sensuality of the sounds, a journey into the intimacy of the sonic matter. It will relate, then, to the structural listening pro- posed above. In the same vein, Denis Smalley uses the term spectromorphology as a tool for describing and analyzing listening experience. “Spectro-morphology is an approach to sound materials and musical structures which concentrates on the spectrum of available pitches and their shaping in time”.47 A profound analysis
of the objective and subjective properties of sounds.
Building on the phenomenological bases of Pierre Schaeffer’s reduced listening Lasse Thoresen has developed a method of analysis called Aural Sonology.48 In
this method through a process of repeated listening combined with provisional
46Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press, 1994. 47Smalley, Denis. “Spectro-Morphology and Structuring Processes.” In Collected Work:
The Language of Electroacoustic Music. Published by: New York, NY: Harwood, 1986. 61-93.
48Thoresen, Lasse, and Andreas Hedman. Emergent Musical Forms: Aural Explo-
rations. Department of Music Research and Composition, Don Wright Faculty of Music, University of Western Ontario, 2015.
2.5 Conclusions 35
analyses steps, the listener builds a comprehensive representation of the whole music piece under analysis, from the sound objects, through patterns descriptions and identification of forms. Thoresen argues that this method avoid a reductionist perspective elucidating structuralist and semiotic information embedded in the logical relationships within musical elements. Aural Sonology can potentially be an excellent tool for the analysis of recorded improvisations to extract and relate sonic qualities to formal traits either to be further studied by setting up more guided improvisations or by keeping track of reaching the desired outcome, for example achieving formal thinking while improvising or revealing the individual and common listening intentions.49
Finally, Pauline Oliveros, in an approach influenced by Asian contemplative prac- tices, coined the term deep listening. Deep listening is a practice rooted in sonic meditations or “systematically working to train attention in both mindfulness and awareness” though sound.50 The purpose of this practice is “to heighten and ex-
pand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible”. Oliveros developed her technique into a teach- ing, creative and improvisation method that includes listening exercises while asleep and dreaming. Deep listening is reported by the practitioners as a tool for revelation and transformation.51 Because of the confrontation with metaphysical
aspects of the listening experience, deep listening can, to a certain extent, be identified with the ideas of transcendental listening exposed in this chapter. These three approaches and understandings of sonic improvisation as a research tool reveal why the discipline should be supported, cultivated and promoted in universities and academies to contribute to the development of contemporary music and musicianship.
49Thoresen, Lasse. “Exosemantic Analysis Analysis Of Music-As-Heard.” The Electroa-
coustic Music Studies Conference, Stockholm, 2012
50Oliveros, Pauline. “Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice.” Edited by Lance
W. (Reviewer) Brunner. Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 62, no. 3 (2006): 715–18
3
Musicianship and Electroacoustic Music
Performance
In this chapter, I view the concept of musicianship through the lens of electroa- coustic music performance. Traditional views of musical expertise and musician- ship can be expanded through a rethinking of the skills and values necessary to perform and improvise in settings involving electronic instruments. After review- ing some of the basic ideas and views about musicianship in the context of west- ern music, I will attempt a definition of musicianship that embraces contributions from electroacoustic music. I argue that sound amplification, recording, synthe- sis, spatialization, broadcasting and cybernetics can be considered fundamental ingredients in the development of contemporary electroacoustic musicianship; I also argue that they form a conceptual core integrating a variety of performance practices in electroacoustic music.