What The Future Sounded Like
September 6, 2010 6:23 PM Subscribe
What The Future Sounded Like (1 2 3) is an excellent documentary about the birth of electronic music.
"Documentary about the the people of EMS (Electronic Music Studios) a radical group of avant-garde electronic musicians who utilized technology and experimentation to compose a futuristic electronic sound-scape for the New Britain.
Comprising of pioneering electronic musicians Peter Zinovieff and Tristram Cary (famed for his work on the Dr Who series) and genius engineer David Cockerell, EMSs studio was one of the most advanced computer-music facilities in the world. EMSs great legacy is the VCS3, Britains first synthesizer and rival of the American Moog. The VCS3 changed the sounds of some of the most popular artists of this period including Brian Eno, Hawkwind and Pink Floyd."
"Documentary about the the people of EMS (Electronic Music Studios) a radical group of avant-garde electronic musicians who utilized technology and experimentation to compose a futuristic electronic sound-scape for the New Britain.
Comprising of pioneering electronic musicians Peter Zinovieff and Tristram Cary (famed for his work on the Dr Who series) and genius engineer David Cockerell, EMSs studio was one of the most advanced computer-music facilities in the world. EMSs great legacy is the VCS3, Britains first synthesizer and rival of the American Moog. The VCS3 changed the sounds of some of the most popular artists of this period including Brian Eno, Hawkwind and Pink Floyd."
Nice--though of course electronic music predates the 20th century, as "the sound of the future" in electronic music was first presented in the form of the massive Telharmonium in the late 1890s.
posted by DrMew at 7:27 PM on September 6, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by DrMew at 7:27 PM on September 6, 2010 [3 favorites]
I love when the talk show host, with a smug smirk, challenges his "definition of music," and keeps smirking through the answer.
posted by John Cohen at 7:46 PM on September 6, 2010
posted by John Cohen at 7:46 PM on September 6, 2010
I love when the talk show host, with a smug smirk, challenges his "definition of music," and keeps smirking through the answer.
Yeah, that guy was a real knucklehead. Typical. The definition his interviewee gave, "in it's simplest definition, music is organized sound" was absolutely spot on.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:53 PM on September 6, 2010
Yeah, that guy was a real knucklehead. Typical. The definition his interviewee gave, "in it's simplest definition, music is organized sound" was absolutely spot on.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:53 PM on September 6, 2010
"in it's simplest definition, music is organized sound" was absolutely spot on.
For very loose definitions of the word "organized" and "sound" or else one runs the risk of leaving out much of the music of Cage (and others). Which might have been your intent anyway.
The definition I prefer is "that toward which one has an aural aesthetic experience" which places the definition smack between one's ears (i.e., the brain).
posted by bfootdav at 8:07 PM on September 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
For very loose definitions of the word "organized" and "sound" or else one runs the risk of leaving out much of the music of Cage (and others). Which might have been your intent anyway.
The definition I prefer is "that toward which one has an aural aesthetic experience" which places the definition smack between one's ears (i.e., the brain).
posted by bfootdav at 8:07 PM on September 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
Music is sound, period, both organized and not. Music is any sound somebody finds interesting. Usually it is highly organized and structured, or at least has some degree of central motif, but none of it is required.
I'd like to hear pure electronic music--music composed by a robot.
posted by Camofrog at 8:16 PM on September 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
I'd like to hear pure electronic music--music composed by a robot.
posted by Camofrog at 8:16 PM on September 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
The definition his interviewee gave, "in it's simplest definition, music is organized sound" was absolutely spot on.
hmm - do the shaggs qualify as organized sound?
posted by pyramid termite at 8:34 PM on September 6, 2010
hmm - do the shaggs qualify as organized sound?
posted by pyramid termite at 8:34 PM on September 6, 2010
For "pioneering electronic music" try Russolo's Art Of Noises performance in 1914, Joseph Schillinger's First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestraor of 1929, or Cage's Imaginary Landscape Number One from 1939. The various composers at the WDR studios in Cologne were doing electronic music, with a studio dedicated to that purpose, at the time cited for Tristram Cary's earliest work.
The folks profiled in the video are the pioneers of British electronic music, and the Brits were not that early on the scene. The British artists are worth the attention, but I don't think inflating their importance does anyone a favor.
posted by idiopath at 8:35 PM on September 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
The folks profiled in the video are the pioneers of British electronic music, and the Brits were not that early on the scene. The British artists are worth the attention, but I don't think inflating their importance does anyone a favor.
posted by idiopath at 8:35 PM on September 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
Surely they mean: "Music is just organised noise, and noise is poison to the mind".
*queues FA for post-work viewing*
posted by pompomtom at 8:49 PM on September 6, 2010
*queues FA for post-work viewing*
posted by pompomtom at 8:49 PM on September 6, 2010
hmm - do the shaggs qualify as organized sound?
You kidding? Their music is incredibly complex--they aren't playing together in the usual sense, but they're all doing stuff. Sort of Beefheartian.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:52 PM on September 6, 2010
You kidding? Their music is incredibly complex--they aren't playing together in the usual sense, but they're all doing stuff. Sort of Beefheartian.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:52 PM on September 6, 2010
Looking forward to watching this either on youtube or elsewise.
posted by immlass at 8:57 PM on September 6, 2010
posted by immlass at 8:57 PM on September 6, 2010
Yes, the Shaggs and Cage each challenged the conventional definition of music as "organized sound," albeit only the latter consciously did so (while giving a nod to the subconscious, the meta-conscious - unless I'm making that one up, I dunno.).
Anyway, making electronic music and film in the 60's and 70's compared to making it today very much reminded me of the discrepancy of the process of filmmaking - especially editing. In both art forms, it was very much hands on, and very much analog in terms of what one did with one's hands...something that would have its effect on the nature of electronic music, and, to a lesser extent, on the nature of film editing. Some of this is easy to hear/see. Some of it I have personal experience with/opinions about, but would be harder to explain. Part of it was that the process was so much more difficult, so more conceptualization had to occur prior to the putting together of the film/electronic music piece to minimize the time-consuming labor. Paradoxically, the hands-on nature of the process (splicing tape/film, for example) made the product a little more linked to traditional forms of the arts, historically tied to mind/body coordination.
posted by kozad at 9:00 PM on September 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
Anyway, making electronic music and film in the 60's and 70's compared to making it today very much reminded me of the discrepancy of the process of filmmaking - especially editing. In both art forms, it was very much hands on, and very much analog in terms of what one did with one's hands...something that would have its effect on the nature of electronic music, and, to a lesser extent, on the nature of film editing. Some of this is easy to hear/see. Some of it I have personal experience with/opinions about, but would be harder to explain. Part of it was that the process was so much more difficult, so more conceptualization had to occur prior to the putting together of the film/electronic music piece to minimize the time-consuming labor. Paradoxically, the hands-on nature of the process (splicing tape/film, for example) made the product a little more linked to traditional forms of the arts, historically tied to mind/body coordination.
posted by kozad at 9:00 PM on September 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
You kidding? Their music is incredibly complex
i think a lot of that is due to the randomness caused by their lack of traditional skill - which, of course, makes them so fascinating to listen to
my point is that they weren't able to organize their music in the way they would have liked to - so, like cage, i think one has to allow for the possibilities of unorganized sound being music
posted by pyramid termite at 9:07 PM on September 6, 2010
i think a lot of that is due to the randomness caused by their lack of traditional skill - which, of course, makes them so fascinating to listen to
my point is that they weren't able to organize their music in the way they would have liked to - so, like cage, i think one has to allow for the possibilities of unorganized sound being music
posted by pyramid termite at 9:07 PM on September 6, 2010
kozad: Cage was interested not in the subconscious but with the complete absence of human will or desire (what he called chance, though the mathematician/composer Xenakis contended that he was misusing the term). The 1960s and 1970s were when digital computer music started to get a foothold, and people started writing programs and punching cards instead of handling recorded mediums and analog equipment (though the majority of electronicists were still handling hardware and physical recorded mediums well into the late '90s). Try the 1910s through the late '40s or so for omnipresent grounding in hardware and recorded medium.
posted by idiopath at 9:11 PM on September 6, 2010
posted by idiopath at 9:11 PM on September 6, 2010
there are a couple of freeware emulations of the vcs3 - cynthia and the KX-SYNTH-X16-V3
although many claim they don't quite touch the original hardware synth
posted by pyramid termite at 9:17 PM on September 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
although many claim they don't quite touch the original hardware synth
posted by pyramid termite at 9:17 PM on September 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
Music is sound, period, both organized and not.
Or, as I've heard it put, music is whatever works. The rest is just noise.
posted by philip-random at 11:10 PM on September 6, 2010
Or, as I've heard it put, music is whatever works. The rest is just noise.
posted by philip-random at 11:10 PM on September 6, 2010
Music is sound, period, both organized and not
Then where does this leave Cage's 4'33''? That's why I like my definition, it puts everything on whether you're having an aesthetic experience and if you are having that experience while focusing your aural attention toward it.
posted by bfootdav at 11:24 PM on September 6, 2010
Then where does this leave Cage's 4'33''? That's why I like my definition, it puts everything on whether you're having an aesthetic experience and if you are having that experience while focusing your aural attention toward it.
posted by bfootdav at 11:24 PM on September 6, 2010
When the answer is so close to being infinitely broad, what is the value of the question?
posted by mhjb at 11:43 PM on September 6, 2010
posted by mhjb at 11:43 PM on September 6, 2010
c.f. Q. What is the meaning of life? A. Why do you ask?
posted by mhjb at 12:39 AM on September 7, 2010
posted by mhjb at 12:39 AM on September 7, 2010
Then where does this leave Cage's 4'33''?
I believe the intent is that the environment provides the ambient sound that becomes the work as it is not played.
posted by Camofrog at 6:26 AM on September 7, 2010
I believe the intent is that the environment provides the ambient sound that becomes the work as it is not played.
posted by Camofrog at 6:26 AM on September 7, 2010
Then where does this leave Cage's 4'33''?
As organized sound. Cage's act of organization consisted of his defining its temporal value into minutes and seconds.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:30 AM on September 7, 2010
As organized sound. Cage's act of organization consisted of his defining its temporal value into minutes and seconds.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:30 AM on September 7, 2010
I believe the intent is that the environment provides the ambient sound that becomes the work as it is not played.
and
As organized sound. Cage's act of organization consisted of his defining its temporal value into minutes and seconds.
The reading of 4'33'' I make is that Cage would never claim ownership of the ambient sounds. That they occur is perfectly fine as is this case with all his music but they are not written into his composition. What is written in are the instructions to be silent. If people focus on the ambient sounds then I think this would have pleased Cage but even so isn't a requirement for listening to the piece.
So yes it is organized (though Cage specifically instructs performers that they don't have to follow the 4'33'' structure that just happened to occur for the first performance -- any length of time derived in any manner would be fine) but there's no sound (written in at least nor are there instructions to the audience to listen for ambient sounds). But then also it's not consciously organized which is what I assumed the organized part of "organized sound" was referring to.
Also, the documentary was really good. I was far more aware of the goings-on in the American electronic scene so this was a nice education.
posted by bfootdav at 7:36 AM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]
and
As organized sound. Cage's act of organization consisted of his defining its temporal value into minutes and seconds.
The reading of 4'33'' I make is that Cage would never claim ownership of the ambient sounds. That they occur is perfectly fine as is this case with all his music but they are not written into his composition. What is written in are the instructions to be silent. If people focus on the ambient sounds then I think this would have pleased Cage but even so isn't a requirement for listening to the piece.
So yes it is organized (though Cage specifically instructs performers that they don't have to follow the 4'33'' structure that just happened to occur for the first performance -- any length of time derived in any manner would be fine) but there's no sound (written in at least nor are there instructions to the audience to listen for ambient sounds). But then also it's not consciously organized which is what I assumed the organized part of "organized sound" was referring to.
Also, the documentary was really good. I was far more aware of the goings-on in the American electronic scene so this was a nice education.
posted by bfootdav at 7:36 AM on September 7, 2010 [1 favorite]
Eno really shaped my notions of how to make electronic music, talking about his VCS3 (actually Synthi AKS), when he said he'd take it in for service, but leave notes for the technicians not to fix certain flaws. There was this complaint about electronic music around the time Moog records were proliferating that electronic music was cold and sterile and soulless, but you didn't really have that problem with EMS gear.
One of the great things about EMS instruments was not that they were great instruments, but rather that they weren't great instruments in some major ways, and introduced all sorts of chance processes by virtue of being almost uncontrollably unstable. When I'm designing my instruments (mostly built in software), I used stacked low frequency oscillators set to random frequencies (and often modulating other random LFOs) to introduce uncertainty, albeit in a constrained, musically-useful way.
I'm working with a set of Nord Micro Modulars, which are fvcking brilliant little DSP-based machines that more or less condense a wall of synthesizer modules into a little freestanding red box the size of a trade paperback, and they'll do anything a VCS3 will do, but better and more than once (a patch doesn't randomly alter itself), which is both a good thing and a bad thing. I get the little gear bug sometimes and think I'd like to save up and have the fetish object that an EMS is, until I remember how stomach-churning it was to play out in my early days with gear that was unstable, unreliable, and prone to breaking parts that can't ever be replaced (i.e. Ensoniq floppy drives and Curtis Electromusic filter ASICs). The VCS3 is squarely in that arena, I think, with some key parts that can't be sourced for love or money these days, so it'd have to be a studio queen, and I get bored too easily when I can't play out.
As a perverse little side note, I'll point out a lovely corruption of a thing: the Ionic Performer, a controversial American-made adaptation/repackaging/something-else that takes the VCS3 architecture and substitutes a billion pushbutton switches for the pins. When I discovered, completely casually, that the son of the developer of the thing was a friend of my sister's a few years ago, I was completely floored. Not a chance in hell of me ever finding one for myself, but it's an interesting connection, and a really interesting take on the VCS3.
I'm too spoiled by the stability (and ability to do something more than once) of my digital machinery these days to go back, but I take lessons from the human interface and the way that chance processes can make composed music richer and with more depth.
posted by sonascope at 9:30 AM on September 7, 2010
One of the great things about EMS instruments was not that they were great instruments, but rather that they weren't great instruments in some major ways, and introduced all sorts of chance processes by virtue of being almost uncontrollably unstable. When I'm designing my instruments (mostly built in software), I used stacked low frequency oscillators set to random frequencies (and often modulating other random LFOs) to introduce uncertainty, albeit in a constrained, musically-useful way.
I'm working with a set of Nord Micro Modulars, which are fvcking brilliant little DSP-based machines that more or less condense a wall of synthesizer modules into a little freestanding red box the size of a trade paperback, and they'll do anything a VCS3 will do, but better and more than once (a patch doesn't randomly alter itself), which is both a good thing and a bad thing. I get the little gear bug sometimes and think I'd like to save up and have the fetish object that an EMS is, until I remember how stomach-churning it was to play out in my early days with gear that was unstable, unreliable, and prone to breaking parts that can't ever be replaced (i.e. Ensoniq floppy drives and Curtis Electromusic filter ASICs). The VCS3 is squarely in that arena, I think, with some key parts that can't be sourced for love or money these days, so it'd have to be a studio queen, and I get bored too easily when I can't play out.
As a perverse little side note, I'll point out a lovely corruption of a thing: the Ionic Performer, a controversial American-made adaptation/repackaging/something-else that takes the VCS3 architecture and substitutes a billion pushbutton switches for the pins. When I discovered, completely casually, that the son of the developer of the thing was a friend of my sister's a few years ago, I was completely floored. Not a chance in hell of me ever finding one for myself, but it's an interesting connection, and a really interesting take on the VCS3.
I'm too spoiled by the stability (and ability to do something more than once) of my digital machinery these days to go back, but I take lessons from the human interface and the way that chance processes can make composed music richer and with more depth.
posted by sonascope at 9:30 AM on September 7, 2010
I really love this quote from Tristram that closes the documentary:
"I think that what we can do now with computers is start again with exactly the same aims that EMS had. [...] To be able to analyze a sound, put it into sensible musical form on a computer, to be able to manipulate that form, and recreate it -- in a musical way. [...] I just wish I could find somebody to work with."
Can anybody point me to some modern electronic concert music worth listening to? While electronic music has really taken off in the last twenty years or so, I kind of feel that the revolutionary promise of people like these, not forgetting Raymond Scott, was never really realized. Hearing this rather avant-garde early electronic music (is 'electronica' still ill-regarded?) kind of makes me itch -- makes me want to hear someone pushing the limits in precisely the way Tristram describes in the above quote.
I'm pretty ill-informed about the kinds of thing I just described, but I don't really mean things like Merzbow -- that's a completely different aural destination.
posted by Zero Gravitas at 6:46 PM on September 7, 2010
"I think that what we can do now with computers is start again with exactly the same aims that EMS had. [...] To be able to analyze a sound, put it into sensible musical form on a computer, to be able to manipulate that form, and recreate it -- in a musical way. [...] I just wish I could find somebody to work with."
Can anybody point me to some modern electronic concert music worth listening to? While electronic music has really taken off in the last twenty years or so, I kind of feel that the revolutionary promise of people like these, not forgetting Raymond Scott, was never really realized. Hearing this rather avant-garde early electronic music (is 'electronica' still ill-regarded?) kind of makes me itch -- makes me want to hear someone pushing the limits in precisely the way Tristram describes in the above quote.
I'm pretty ill-informed about the kinds of thing I just described, but I don't really mean things like Merzbow -- that's a completely different aural destination.
posted by Zero Gravitas at 6:46 PM on September 7, 2010
I don't understand all this concern about the one borderline example of 4'33". Why not just say it was a conceptual art piece about the nature of music and not exactly "music" in the normal sense of the word?
posted by John Cohen at 7:41 PM on September 7, 2010
posted by John Cohen at 7:41 PM on September 7, 2010
Cage certainly didn't regard his music as "conceptual art" and I don't either. He wasn't making a statement about the nature of music but creating a new music. As for "not exactly 'music' in the normal sense of the word" I agree. The question is should the definition of music be expanded to accommodate this piece? I say yes but there are a significant number of people within the academic world of music (based on the schools I went to) who would disagree. They were a minority but they were significant.
posted by bfootdav at 11:31 PM on September 7, 2010
posted by bfootdav at 11:31 PM on September 7, 2010
I say yes but there are a significant number of people within the academic world of music (based on the schools I went to) who would disagree. They were a minority but they were significant.
Frankly, I don't see why it matters what percentage of academics would take one position or another. "Music" should be defined by how normal people's actual listening experiences, not by academics who want to display their interest in the avant garde. You're free, of course, to create a secondary definition of "music" as an academic term of art specifically to embrace a conceptual piece that exists to make a philosophical statement rather than to provide listening enjoyment. But I see no reason to alter the normal meaning of a word in response to one experiment that was deliberately playing with the borderline of music and non-music. In fact, I'd argue that it's a positive thing if one's definition of music leaves 4'33" in an uncomfortable grey area. That's the very nature of the piece.
You mention you went to music school. Well, I went to philosophy school, and philosophy is very relevant here. On the first day of one of my classes, the prof led us in a discussion of the definition of "chair." We ended up defining it along the lines of: "a thing that's designed to have people sit on it." Someone pointed out that there's a full-size sculpture of a chair with spikes all over it. Shouldn't we include this within our conception of "chair," and doesn't that contradict the definition of a chair as something designed to be sit on, since you can't sit on the spikes? Well, the class swiftly rejected this and moved on. We weren't about to alter our definition of a word that refers to an extremely common, useful thing -- a chair -- just to demonstrate our awareness of a specific modern artwork. The artist deliberately created a piece at odds with our everday concepts. Congratulations to the artist if he can garner attention and acclaim in this manner -- but I'll stick to my everyday concepts, thankyouverymuch.
posted by John Cohen at 7:03 AM on September 8, 2010
Frankly, I don't see why it matters what percentage of academics would take one position or another. "Music" should be defined by how normal people's actual listening experiences, not by academics who want to display their interest in the avant garde. You're free, of course, to create a secondary definition of "music" as an academic term of art specifically to embrace a conceptual piece that exists to make a philosophical statement rather than to provide listening enjoyment. But I see no reason to alter the normal meaning of a word in response to one experiment that was deliberately playing with the borderline of music and non-music. In fact, I'd argue that it's a positive thing if one's definition of music leaves 4'33" in an uncomfortable grey area. That's the very nature of the piece.
You mention you went to music school. Well, I went to philosophy school, and philosophy is very relevant here. On the first day of one of my classes, the prof led us in a discussion of the definition of "chair." We ended up defining it along the lines of: "a thing that's designed to have people sit on it." Someone pointed out that there's a full-size sculpture of a chair with spikes all over it. Shouldn't we include this within our conception of "chair," and doesn't that contradict the definition of a chair as something designed to be sit on, since you can't sit on the spikes? Well, the class swiftly rejected this and moved on. We weren't about to alter our definition of a word that refers to an extremely common, useful thing -- a chair -- just to demonstrate our awareness of a specific modern artwork. The artist deliberately created a piece at odds with our everday concepts. Congratulations to the artist if he can garner attention and acclaim in this manner -- but I'll stick to my everyday concepts, thankyouverymuch.
posted by John Cohen at 7:03 AM on September 8, 2010
Ideally academically trained musicians will have a far wider exposure to music, and more importantly, be forced to think about music in ways that lay people never consider. It's our life, hopefully we treat it like that.
But more to the point, what about pieces that use completely random processes to select the notes to be played? I would think the "normal meaning" of the word music would not include those works. Now we're talking thousands of published works and tens of thousands unpublished. Or pieces whose notes are consciously determined but the order/duration of how they're played is left up to non-conscious random processes (again thousands and tens of thousands). Or pieces that use non-conventional instruments (sirens, radios, jackhammers, electronic sounds)? At one time, and I would think this still holds for a lot of people, if a piece didn't conform to Western European ideas of harmony and tonality (e.g., Schoenberg's early atonal pieces not to mention twelve-tone music) it wasn't considered music.
Now it's not just one piece in a gray area but thousands upon thousands of pieces.
Let's also look at your analogy. Instead of a chair, let's define a philosophical term, say "categorical imperative". Lay people can certainly understand the basics of what that means but should they provide the definitive meaning for it? Wouldn't, perhaps, philosophers be better equipped to capture the nuances, controversies, the evolution of the term, etc. better than the average Joe? A counter to this might be that music is universally accessible but that strictly philosophical terms are not, but I would say that just because everyone has access to music doesn't mean they've taken the time to learn to think critically about it (the nature of, definition of, etc.)
More about your chair, I would think the conclusion of that exercise would be the impossibility of defining anything or, better, grounding any such definition.
Anyway I think what it really comes down to is should the definition of music include what significant numbers of people think of as music (descriptive) or be something that intentionally leaves out thousands of works that significant numbers of people think is music (prescriptive). Since there are no "aesthetic emergencies" (Cage there) unlike with, say, how we define poison, I vote for a descriptive/inclusive definition.
A couple more things, I didn't know of a single professor at the schools I went to who wanted to "display their interest in the avant garde". In fact almost all of them disliked what would be called avant garde and yet all but one or two of them accepted 4'33'' as music. The point is that it was not an avant garde agenda at work. Also I take exception to your phrase "a conceptual piece that exists to make a philosophical statement rather than to provide listening enjoyment". 4'33'' is not a conceptual piece at least not as defined by Cage and many other musicians, composers, and so on. And Cage most certainly intended it to provide listening enjoyment. Whether most people are able or willing to make the kind of mental switch necessary to enjoy that piece is something else, but Cage was certainly hopeful that people would be willing to make that jump.
posted by bfootdav at 9:11 AM on September 8, 2010
But more to the point, what about pieces that use completely random processes to select the notes to be played? I would think the "normal meaning" of the word music would not include those works. Now we're talking thousands of published works and tens of thousands unpublished. Or pieces whose notes are consciously determined but the order/duration of how they're played is left up to non-conscious random processes (again thousands and tens of thousands). Or pieces that use non-conventional instruments (sirens, radios, jackhammers, electronic sounds)? At one time, and I would think this still holds for a lot of people, if a piece didn't conform to Western European ideas of harmony and tonality (e.g., Schoenberg's early atonal pieces not to mention twelve-tone music) it wasn't considered music.
Now it's not just one piece in a gray area but thousands upon thousands of pieces.
Let's also look at your analogy. Instead of a chair, let's define a philosophical term, say "categorical imperative". Lay people can certainly understand the basics of what that means but should they provide the definitive meaning for it? Wouldn't, perhaps, philosophers be better equipped to capture the nuances, controversies, the evolution of the term, etc. better than the average Joe? A counter to this might be that music is universally accessible but that strictly philosophical terms are not, but I would say that just because everyone has access to music doesn't mean they've taken the time to learn to think critically about it (the nature of, definition of, etc.)
More about your chair, I would think the conclusion of that exercise would be the impossibility of defining anything or, better, grounding any such definition.
Anyway I think what it really comes down to is should the definition of music include what significant numbers of people think of as music (descriptive) or be something that intentionally leaves out thousands of works that significant numbers of people think is music (prescriptive). Since there are no "aesthetic emergencies" (Cage there) unlike with, say, how we define poison, I vote for a descriptive/inclusive definition.
A couple more things, I didn't know of a single professor at the schools I went to who wanted to "display their interest in the avant garde". In fact almost all of them disliked what would be called avant garde and yet all but one or two of them accepted 4'33'' as music. The point is that it was not an avant garde agenda at work. Also I take exception to your phrase "a conceptual piece that exists to make a philosophical statement rather than to provide listening enjoyment". 4'33'' is not a conceptual piece at least not as defined by Cage and many other musicians, composers, and so on. And Cage most certainly intended it to provide listening enjoyment. Whether most people are able or willing to make the kind of mental switch necessary to enjoy that piece is something else, but Cage was certainly hopeful that people would be willing to make that jump.
posted by bfootdav at 9:11 AM on September 8, 2010
Zero Gravitas: "Can anybody point me to some modern electronic concert music worth listening to? While electronic music has really taken off in the last twenty years or so, I kind of feel that the revolutionary promise of people like these, not forgetting Raymond Scott, was never really realized."
The problem is that to a large degree the success of an experiment is judged now by the responsiveness of an audience, and audiences only like what they have heard before (see the troves of emulations of existing instruments and even archaic synthesizers). On the other hand experiments should fail frequently or you are not really experimenting.
Some recommended listening for electronic concert music, in no particular order, off the top of my head, with some of my favorites left out and some things I planned on listening to soon inserted:
Trevor Wishart
Asmus Tietchens
Curtis Roads
Iannis Xenakis
James Tenney
Kim Cascone
John Chowning
Gordon Mumma
Alvin Lucier
Herbert Brün
Yasunao Tone
posted by idiopath at 12:25 PM on September 8, 2010
The problem is that to a large degree the success of an experiment is judged now by the responsiveness of an audience, and audiences only like what they have heard before (see the troves of emulations of existing instruments and even archaic synthesizers). On the other hand experiments should fail frequently or you are not really experimenting.
Some recommended listening for electronic concert music, in no particular order, off the top of my head, with some of my favorites left out and some things I planned on listening to soon inserted:
Trevor Wishart
Asmus Tietchens
Curtis Roads
Iannis Xenakis
James Tenney
Kim Cascone
John Chowning
Gordon Mumma
Alvin Lucier
Herbert Brün
Yasunao Tone
posted by idiopath at 12:25 PM on September 8, 2010
But more to the point, what about pieces that use completely random processes to select the notes to be played? I would think the "normal meaning" of the word music would not include those works.
No, I disagree, I think it'd be ridiculously stuffy to exclude random techniques from the definition of "music." Ian MacDonald has an entry for the word "random" in his book on the Beatles, Revolution in the Head, where he describes how they used random processes to create their music. It's still "organized sound" in the sense that the listener brings organization to these sounds. And the musicmakers still have to put some limits on the randomness (e.g. choosing which tones to use, setting a tempo, choosing how many layers of sound to use, choosing to release a recording where the randomness turned out interesting). This is still within the realm of creating sounds that people like to listen to for their own sake, which is roughly my definition of music. That doesn't have much to do with whether we should put the "music" label on a piece where all sound is explicitly absent (particularly since the composer has specified that any incidental/ambient noise is OK but not to be considered part of the piece).
Let's also look at your analogy. Instead of a chair, let's define a philosophical term, say "categorical imperative". Lay people can certainly understand the basics of what that means but should they provide the definitive meaning for it?
The very fact that you would want to compare the task of defining "categorical imperative" to the task of defining "music" shows the difference in our approaches. "Categorical imperative" was brought into existence by Kant. To define it, you're inevitably going to be looking to Kant -- a notoriously difficult and complex philosopher -- as a reference point. The categorical imperative begins and ends in the world of academic theory (as everyone taking an Ethics 101 class learns when they stop and think about the famous "you're hiding Jews in your basement during the Holocaust" hypo). To ask a random layperson on the street about it would be pointless unless they happen to have studied Kant. With music, on the other hand, the whole reason anyone considers it worth studying in the first place is because of how important it is to all sorts of people's lives. I don't know of any specialized, academic meaning of the term in academia that's different from the everyday meaning of the term. So I see no inherent reason to assume an academic probably has a better definition of "music" than a layperson.
Now, that's not necessarily the case. By analogy, if you were to assume that any legal term that seems to be plain English has the same meaning as the plain English word, you'd run into some serious misunderstandings of the law. For instance, we all use the word "cause," but it's really important for a jury to take seriously the judge's instructions to apply a special, legalistic meaning of "cause" and not the plain English definition. I just don't know of any strong reason to have such a double meaning with "music" -- and I don't consider the borderline instance of 4'33" a strong reason. I consider it literally worthy of a footnote and not much more.
As to the rest of your comment, it seems like you're largely responding to my specific word choices, like "conceptual" and "avant garde." I'm surprised you don't think these are accurate descriptions of 4'33", but even if you wouldn't have chosen those words, I think you can still see my points. There's a limit to how precise I'm going to be when I'm taking a few minutes to type up a comment on an old-ish Metafilter thread. I'm not writing a treatise -- I'm just trying to put a basic idea out there. People can take it or leave it, but the fact that I might not have made the most artful choice of words is ancillary.
posted by John Cohen at 1:20 PM on September 8, 2010
No, I disagree, I think it'd be ridiculously stuffy to exclude random techniques from the definition of "music." Ian MacDonald has an entry for the word "random" in his book on the Beatles, Revolution in the Head, where he describes how they used random processes to create their music. It's still "organized sound" in the sense that the listener brings organization to these sounds. And the musicmakers still have to put some limits on the randomness (e.g. choosing which tones to use, setting a tempo, choosing how many layers of sound to use, choosing to release a recording where the randomness turned out interesting). This is still within the realm of creating sounds that people like to listen to for their own sake, which is roughly my definition of music. That doesn't have much to do with whether we should put the "music" label on a piece where all sound is explicitly absent (particularly since the composer has specified that any incidental/ambient noise is OK but not to be considered part of the piece).
Let's also look at your analogy. Instead of a chair, let's define a philosophical term, say "categorical imperative". Lay people can certainly understand the basics of what that means but should they provide the definitive meaning for it?
The very fact that you would want to compare the task of defining "categorical imperative" to the task of defining "music" shows the difference in our approaches. "Categorical imperative" was brought into existence by Kant. To define it, you're inevitably going to be looking to Kant -- a notoriously difficult and complex philosopher -- as a reference point. The categorical imperative begins and ends in the world of academic theory (as everyone taking an Ethics 101 class learns when they stop and think about the famous "you're hiding Jews in your basement during the Holocaust" hypo). To ask a random layperson on the street about it would be pointless unless they happen to have studied Kant. With music, on the other hand, the whole reason anyone considers it worth studying in the first place is because of how important it is to all sorts of people's lives. I don't know of any specialized, academic meaning of the term in academia that's different from the everyday meaning of the term. So I see no inherent reason to assume an academic probably has a better definition of "music" than a layperson.
Now, that's not necessarily the case. By analogy, if you were to assume that any legal term that seems to be plain English has the same meaning as the plain English word, you'd run into some serious misunderstandings of the law. For instance, we all use the word "cause," but it's really important for a jury to take seriously the judge's instructions to apply a special, legalistic meaning of "cause" and not the plain English definition. I just don't know of any strong reason to have such a double meaning with "music" -- and I don't consider the borderline instance of 4'33" a strong reason. I consider it literally worthy of a footnote and not much more.
As to the rest of your comment, it seems like you're largely responding to my specific word choices, like "conceptual" and "avant garde." I'm surprised you don't think these are accurate descriptions of 4'33", but even if you wouldn't have chosen those words, I think you can still see my points. There's a limit to how precise I'm going to be when I'm taking a few minutes to type up a comment on an old-ish Metafilter thread. I'm not writing a treatise -- I'm just trying to put a basic idea out there. People can take it or leave it, but the fact that I might not have made the most artful choice of words is ancillary.
posted by John Cohen at 1:20 PM on September 8, 2010
I do not think that the Beatles' use of random techniques comes anywhere close to what I'm talking about with Cage et al. (with the possible exception of Number 9 which I'm sure a lot of people do not regard as music, though I'm not sure if it even used random techniques?). Take for instance Cage's Imaginary Landscape #5 which is essentially 12 radios each tuned to its own randomly changing frequencies with randomly changing volume levels. I seriously doubt our average lay definition of music would include this piece (for a variety of reasons, one of which being the random nature of it). And again, that's just one of thousands of such published scores.
The point of the "categorical imperative" analogy is should a subject be defined by those who have devoted their lives to the formal study of that subject or should it just rely on whatever folk-definitions people acquire throughout their lives? (I was going to say "uncritically acquired" which I think is probably the case but not necessary for our purposes). The academically trained musician is exposed to more types of music, is exposed to music theory both conventional and non-conventional, is (hopefully) taught to think about music, its nature, and so on, all of which goes well beyond what the lay-person engages in. I think we'll always have the lay-definition and that's fine and we should be aware of it, but perhaps the more thoughtful among us strive for something deeper, more nuanced, and, if this word really applies, more accurate.
I do agree that 4'33'' is avant garde, what I take issue with is the use of "conceptual" which has a very specific meaning within the world of art and music. I can certainly see where one might think of the piece as being conceptual but I, and this comes from Cage's own writings on the subject as well, disagree with that assessment entirely. If you had a more general/non-art specific meaning of "conceptual" that you were using then my bad. It's an argument that comes up a lot and people get touchy when discussing "conceptual art" (it's often used as a way to dismiss witnessing an installation or performance because of the claim that it's the concept that matters. For Cage, and many, many others, witnessing the performance was very much the point and the concepts involved were secondary at best).
posted by bfootdav at 2:04 PM on September 8, 2010
The point of the "categorical imperative" analogy is should a subject be defined by those who have devoted their lives to the formal study of that subject or should it just rely on whatever folk-definitions people acquire throughout their lives? (I was going to say "uncritically acquired" which I think is probably the case but not necessary for our purposes). The academically trained musician is exposed to more types of music, is exposed to music theory both conventional and non-conventional, is (hopefully) taught to think about music, its nature, and so on, all of which goes well beyond what the lay-person engages in. I think we'll always have the lay-definition and that's fine and we should be aware of it, but perhaps the more thoughtful among us strive for something deeper, more nuanced, and, if this word really applies, more accurate.
I do agree that 4'33'' is avant garde, what I take issue with is the use of "conceptual" which has a very specific meaning within the world of art and music. I can certainly see where one might think of the piece as being conceptual but I, and this comes from Cage's own writings on the subject as well, disagree with that assessment entirely. If you had a more general/non-art specific meaning of "conceptual" that you were using then my bad. It's an argument that comes up a lot and people get touchy when discussing "conceptual art" (it's often used as a way to dismiss witnessing an installation or performance because of the claim that it's the concept that matters. For Cage, and many, many others, witnessing the performance was very much the point and the concepts involved were secondary at best).
posted by bfootdav at 2:04 PM on September 8, 2010
If 4'33" isn't conceptual art, what is? Why don't you think it's "conceptual"? Just saying you don't think a certain piece isn't part of a certain genre doesn't really tell me anything. Anyway, I maintain that we're pretty much disagreeing over the wording of some internet comments.
Aside from that, we're both just going over and over 2 basic differences between you and me:
1. You seem to look up to academics as the arbiters of what it is they're studying.
I don't. I think intelligent laypersons are often wiser about things that happen to be the subject of academic study. It depends on how much direct experience you have with something in life. I consider it relatively trivial whether someone is in academia and/or has learned to think theoretically -- in fact, in my experience in philosophy classes, people who have been taught to think theoretically are often at a distinct disadvantage in perceiving the world correctly.
2. You seem to think the question of whether 4'33" is included in the definition of "music" is an important test of the validity of that definition. Thus, if I define music in a way that wouldn't include 4'33", you'd consider my definition inadequate based on that one piece alone.
I disagree. Oh, I think it's fine to scrutinize a definition by asking where borderline cases would fall. But once you notice a clash between a definition and an example, there's an open question about whether the example should be considered to fall under the definition. There's no formula for this -- it's a question of balancing. How much do I care about my definition of music that includes "sound" as an essential element? And how much do I care about whether 4'33" is labeled with the word "music" (rather than, say, "art")? The answer is I care much, much more about the former than the latter. For one thing, 4'33" is just a single grey-area piece, and I'm not disturbed by the existence of grey areas. For another thing, Cage was asking for it: he made a conceptual piece that doesn't fit most people's definition of music, and guess what -- people are going to disagree about whether it counts as "music."
One place where we might agree is: I do think that silence should be recognized as a possible component of music. It'd be too pedantic to say that silence in the middle of a piece of music isn't part of the music. Why do I care more about having these gaps considered music than I care about 4'33"? Because 4'33" is just one piece, and there are lot more pieces of music with momentary silences. Haydn's string quartet's, Jane's Addiction's "Stop," George Michael's "Faith," and on and on. Also, it's easier to explain how these gaps are still music even if they're not sound (excluding ambient/incidental noise). They're still part of an overall listening experience. During the gap, the astute listener is remembering the sound that just ended and anticipating the sound to come. So it's still part of "organized sound," as the guy in the video said. This requires a little more analysis, but not an upheaval to our intuitive, common-sense definition of music. I'm not willing to overturn our intuitive definition in order to give recognition to a single John Cage experiment. I take it that you are, and it's your right as an individual (not as someone who's been music school) to define a word however you want.
posted by John Cohen at 3:29 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
Aside from that, we're both just going over and over 2 basic differences between you and me:
1. You seem to look up to academics as the arbiters of what it is they're studying.
I don't. I think intelligent laypersons are often wiser about things that happen to be the subject of academic study. It depends on how much direct experience you have with something in life. I consider it relatively trivial whether someone is in academia and/or has learned to think theoretically -- in fact, in my experience in philosophy classes, people who have been taught to think theoretically are often at a distinct disadvantage in perceiving the world correctly.
2. You seem to think the question of whether 4'33" is included in the definition of "music" is an important test of the validity of that definition. Thus, if I define music in a way that wouldn't include 4'33", you'd consider my definition inadequate based on that one piece alone.
I disagree. Oh, I think it's fine to scrutinize a definition by asking where borderline cases would fall. But once you notice a clash between a definition and an example, there's an open question about whether the example should be considered to fall under the definition. There's no formula for this -- it's a question of balancing. How much do I care about my definition of music that includes "sound" as an essential element? And how much do I care about whether 4'33" is labeled with the word "music" (rather than, say, "art")? The answer is I care much, much more about the former than the latter. For one thing, 4'33" is just a single grey-area piece, and I'm not disturbed by the existence of grey areas. For another thing, Cage was asking for it: he made a conceptual piece that doesn't fit most people's definition of music, and guess what -- people are going to disagree about whether it counts as "music."
One place where we might agree is: I do think that silence should be recognized as a possible component of music. It'd be too pedantic to say that silence in the middle of a piece of music isn't part of the music. Why do I care more about having these gaps considered music than I care about 4'33"? Because 4'33" is just one piece, and there are lot more pieces of music with momentary silences. Haydn's string quartet's, Jane's Addiction's "Stop," George Michael's "Faith," and on and on. Also, it's easier to explain how these gaps are still music even if they're not sound (excluding ambient/incidental noise). They're still part of an overall listening experience. During the gap, the astute listener is remembering the sound that just ended and anticipating the sound to come. So it's still part of "organized sound," as the guy in the video said. This requires a little more analysis, but not an upheaval to our intuitive, common-sense definition of music. I'm not willing to overturn our intuitive definition in order to give recognition to a single John Cage experiment. I take it that you are, and it's your right as an individual (not as someone who's been music school) to define a word however you want.
posted by John Cohen at 3:29 PM on September 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
(ah, I do realize it should be string quartets, not quartet's)
posted by John Cohen at 3:35 PM on September 8, 2010
posted by John Cohen at 3:35 PM on September 8, 2010
I think any definition of music should reflect what musicians think of as music. So even if only a minority of musicians think 4'33'' is music that's enough. If what musicians think is music is rejected by the definition of music then the definition needs to change. I think that's the simplest way to make my argument. (And notice this one doesn't require academic musicians but applies to all of them).
Wikipedia has a nice article on conceptual art. The basic idea is that the aesthetic enjoyment of a piece of conceptual art comes from the thoughts you have when thinking about the piece and not from having to experience it. In fact the experience is almost an afterthought. Cage stated repeatedly throughout his writings that his music was meant to be experienced. He wanted people to sit in a performance hall (or anywhere for that matter), listen to the silence, notice that there was indeed no silence, and hopefully come to accept the situation and appreciate on various levels what these sounds were. Cage wanted his music heard in the same way Bach would have wanted for his music.
posted by bfootdav at 8:22 PM on September 8, 2010
Wikipedia has a nice article on conceptual art. The basic idea is that the aesthetic enjoyment of a piece of conceptual art comes from the thoughts you have when thinking about the piece and not from having to experience it. In fact the experience is almost an afterthought. Cage stated repeatedly throughout his writings that his music was meant to be experienced. He wanted people to sit in a performance hall (or anywhere for that matter), listen to the silence, notice that there was indeed no silence, and hopefully come to accept the situation and appreciate on various levels what these sounds were. Cage wanted his music heard in the same way Bach would have wanted for his music.
posted by bfootdav at 8:22 PM on September 8, 2010
Idiopath's law:
Any discussion of art music composed in the 20th century, if continued long enough, will devolve into an argument about whether 4'33" is music.
posted by idiopath at 2:57 AM on September 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
Any discussion of art music composed in the 20th century, if continued long enough, will devolve into an argument about whether 4'33" is music.
posted by idiopath at 2:57 AM on September 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
Also, my take on that question: Music is a ritual.
The fact that 4'33" has sheet music, is preceded by a bow, and requires a musician sitting down in front of an instrument, all make it music.
On the other hand, that mp3 of a Beatles song playing on your ipod is not music, it's just a way to avoid engaging with other people.
posted by idiopath at 3:10 AM on September 9, 2010
The fact that 4'33" has sheet music, is preceded by a bow, and requires a musician sitting down in front of an instrument, all make it music.
On the other hand, that mp3 of a Beatles song playing on your ipod is not music, it's just a way to avoid engaging with other people.
posted by idiopath at 3:10 AM on September 9, 2010
that mp3 of a Beatles song playing on your ipod is not music, it's just a way to avoid engaging with other people.
That's funny, I thought it was a means of engaging with four other people. That would be John, Paul, George and Ringo. Actually, George Martin would make it five.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:45 AM on September 9, 2010
That's funny, I thought it was a means of engaging with four other people. That would be John, Paul, George and Ringo. Actually, George Martin would make it five.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:45 AM on September 9, 2010
Good thing those guys are all dead.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:18 PM on September 9, 2010
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:18 PM on September 9, 2010
No, no, only Paul is dead. Haven't you been paying attention?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:45 PM on September 9, 2010
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:45 PM on September 9, 2010
Oh, no, I'm glad Paul's dead, too.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:09 AM on September 10, 2010
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:09 AM on September 10, 2010
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