Field recordings

Went to a talk today between LCC sonic art lecturer Salomé Voegelin and artists Jennie Savage and Peter Cusack. Cusack showed his Favourite London Sound project (which has now expanded to many other cities around the world), and got me pondering field recording practice and how it can be understood to correlate with other forms of sonic art.

It seems to me that field recording is much like photography - some of it is artistic, and some isn't (journalistic). The line between the two is often blurred severely. Similarly, field recordings are used functionally, as well as being archival material. What I find particularly interesting is the new(ish) kind of artistic field recording exemplified by labels like and/OAR. This kind of practice seemed worlds away from the documentary style of Cusack; figuring out why this is is a bit of an issue.

The first reason seems to me to be to do with the recording's position relative to its source location. Artistic field recording on CD is necessarily removed from its source; Cusacks sounds were directly linked to their sources by the means of a map. Voegelin suggested this added a temporal element to what was essentially a static visual image; and beyond that the location is 'evoked' through a combination of the sound and the view from above.

The second reason seems to be the motivation lying behind the work. I assume that most of the work on and/OAR exists because it sounds interesting (or at least, the sound is judged on an aesthetic plane somewhat removed from its source context) - the idea being here that when the sounds of an environment are appropriated into an aesthetic structure they obtain a further reality, separate from the 'actual' reality they depict. This 'imaginary' structural reality of the work may or may not incorporate aspects of the 'actual' context; needless to say, aesthetic judgement usually operates on a different plane to socio-political assessment of a situation (the latter occasionally being incorporated into the former). Cusack, on the other hand, is not particularly interested in the aesthetic worth (from his point of view) of the recordings - at least, not as long as this aesthetic worth can be considered any different from the information present in the recordings of the source they depict. Cusack's aesthetic then is, literally, documentary - the 'beauty' of 'beautiful' information given to the listener through sound about a surrounding. This beautiful information is also conveyed through interview on several occasions - with participants describing unrealised sounds in their memory.

Though Cusack showed a devotion to sound (and has done his entire career), what was evident from this project was its larger social implications. It is rather inappropriate to call the Favourite London Sound project an 'artwork' - at least, it seems to me to be so. Cusack would say that this probably was unimportant to him - indeed, he seemed indifferent to whether he was actually an artist at all.

I do sympathise with Cusack's position (particularly when it aligns with my own sonic taste, as in his recording of a Nightingale by a electricity substation, or recordings of Old Jerusalem), but I came away from the talk wondering whether my own, largely removed aesthetic sense (which I use to measure and judge sounds I hear, things I look at, or for that matter any sensory experience) was inadequate because of its isolationism. My tendency to divide experience into aesthetic and non-aesthetic was artificial... (but I mean, let's face it, you can't judge everything all of the time, there's too much experienced by the human brain, you have to take a break!).

Improvisations

Have made a slightly more elegant page for some recent improvisations:

http://ldunn.tumblr.com/

Hope it's interesting. Maybe will continue updating this blog but who knows. I've not been particularly good at doing it anyway!

Ablinger

Haven't written in a while; thought I didn't really have much to say, as well as my computer dying recently. Fortunately a new mac is at hand. But, did get a chance to hear some CDs, of which I will write a bit about.

Peter Ablinger - Voices and Piano

Kairos 0013082KAI

From when I came across him last year or so, I've always liked Ablinger. There is something about his approach - a conceptual approach - which is unusual among Composers (with a C). Despite what Composers have done to musical form, the concert form itself remains particularly rigid; even after fifty years of post-Cagean Experimental music, even after Punk, Merzbow, East German Concert Installations of the eighties. I sort of hope that Sound Art, as well as the recent trends in relational art (Carsten Hoeller, Rirkrit Tiravanija) will help to break down those barriers. They may be exactly the barriers that alienate New (classically oriented) Music from those outside the inner circle. (Alex Ross has various gripes about concert ritual, some of which are related to these ideas.)

In his concert works (i.e. those other than his installations) Ablinger seems to do something elusive; to provide an objectified aesthetic sense that's like a conceptual art installation. It's a bit like the pieces are surrounded by the white space that permeates art galleries. Voices and Piano is no exception, though I think the nature of Kairos' CD may contribute (maybe negatively) to this effect. Nevertheless, I think it's unclear whether Ablinger's work is music or sound art, or whether there is a difference. I think what most people would be happy to say is that 'someone talking - just talking - isn't really music'. For all practical purposes, when you listen to the news on radio 4, it's not music. But it's all a question of contextualisation as far as I can see - presumably the news could be presented as music (in a concert environment with a programme note), or conceptualised as music in an individual way (listening for pitch/rhythmic/timbric quality as opposed to meaning). Similarly, through the addition of piano accompaniments, which are 'expansions' of the voices, Ablinger is 'recontextualising' voices by juxtaposition. Maybe its this that contributes to my perceived gallery-like 'white space'.

The CD is by no means aesthetically perfect to my ear - portions drag - but I think there are enough moments to satisfy (more than most new composition I hear, incidentally). These moments are, for example, where some important word is obscured by the piano, and the sense of a sentence lost (or even refuted); or when there is a nice juxtaposition of one texture leading into another; or the organisation of speakers themselves. There are some gorgeous compositions in there, Apollinaire for example, or Mother Theresa. Sartre is also particularly great.

Although, the other thing that is questioned is the presence of 'composition' in the pieces. As with his works Quadraturen ('Squarings'), there is the presence of quantisation in these pieces, as well as music as a form of analysis of sound. There is an algorithmic element which also suggests a 'hands off' compositional approach - as in truly Experimental music. Quadraturen were often composed with assistants, who programmed the Max/MSP patch(es) or realised the mechanical display, and in some cases produced the score. Ablinger says of Quadraturen V: 'Music': 'I have not written a single note (- and I am proud of that)' (this piece happens to be, in my opinion, terribly beautiful; and a cogent argument for algorithmic composition). Hence the presence of conceptual art/sound art - the Quadraturen pieces, even the ensemble/orchestral ones, are processes, not texts (or processes as texts if the traditional work-concept is retained). They turn the human beings into machines for reproduction of a process. They are part of the 'little factory'. One gets the sense that Hodges (piano on the Kairos recording) is in a similar position - and yet all of these pieces seem 'composed'. I suspect that Ablinger set up machines which would produce notes for him, but still decided which he thought 'worked', and which didn't. Or, at least, he was participant (or overseer) of a process.

Though I don't think it is Ablinger's most exciting work, I think this disc is great, and raises a ton of interesting questions, and provides some great moments.

Bach fugue in F#min

How about this for an elegant visualisation of pitch sets - a tetrahelix of trichords!

From here: http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.07.13.4/mto.07.13.4.reed_bain.html

Summary: First term at Cambridge

Seeing as, bizarrely, anyone who Googles my name can get at this blog, I thought I should summarize my doings up until this point. Also it's 2010, and (supposedly) this could mark a juncture in things. Additionally, I rarely post anything here; so here goes.

Oxbridge can be an intimidating place to anyone outside of it. I know this because I live in Oxford and now go to Cambridge university. This ever-so-slightly awkward situation allows me to see Oxbridge (as the differences between the universities are really negligible) are from both the point of view of both a Townie and a Student.

Both universities are increasingly interested in 'outreach', as can be seen from their prospectuses which emphasise the 'cosmopolitan' and apparently multicultural nature of their constituent colleges. Actually, most students at both places are white and middle/upper-class. In my year at Corpus there is one black student. Additionally there are people from abroad (who have to pay a lot of money to come here, so some of them are on exchange which can ease the monetary load); lots of people (at Corpus) from Northern Ireland, but conspicuously only one student from Scotland.

As far as I can tell, in my year at Corpus very few people come from true comprehensives (I did). Most come from independent, grammar or public schools. One intriguing thing I noticed when asking people was that some students who came from a big public school (like Eton) would pause very slightly before saying this, suggesting there is a certain amount of guilt (either real or unconscious) associated with attending such a school. Who could blame them, with the amount of goading public schools get in the mainstream media. Considering our next government will be most likely made up of old Etonians (pretending not to be, of course) the state of affairs will soon become much stranger.

I try not to judge people on what kind of upbringing they have, but in reality it's very difficult not to. There is good reason to believe that there is less social mobility in this country than there was in the years just after the war.

So far, so obvious. But my experience of the first Michealmas term has been generally speaking very positive. I don't think I've humiliated myself too much, I have a nice room, and there always seems to be something to do. Food is generally okay. I've started acting in plays (the Cambridge drama scene is vibrant and littered with productions of big, difficult, canonical classics of the twentieth century, and Shakespeare), and recently landed the part of Macbeth. Extraordinary, I know, and I can't quite come to grips with it myself. Still. There is also good comedy, and the Footlights' pantomime sold out all of its dates within hours.

I also have come right in the middle of the apparent reform of the Music Faculty, which is facing difficulties like many of the institutions that make up the conglomerate university. The course, redesigned in the 70s by Sandy Goehr, is showing it's age. The somewhat tentative links between the lectures and their supervisions is sometimes fraught, and often we are asked to write essays about things we haven't yet been lectured about. Consequently I don't go to many lectures, even though (unlike other humanities subjects) they are apparently compulsory. Even more annoying, this year there are so many undergrads that if they do all turn up to a lecture, lecture room 2 isn't big enough to fit them all in. The inevitable latecomers have to find a spare chair, and, if they're lucky, a music stand to write on.

My fellow corpus student, Maria Helmling, has been campaigning for some time for change in the Music Faculty and has achieved a great deal. The first is the opening of a coffee bar used by students and staff before and in between lectures, a very welcome sight. The other, and sadder tale, is the newly opened Music Faculty common room, which never has anybody in it. It replaces the 'Ethnomusicology Room', which was apparently so useless the management seemed happy to replace it with a room with nothing in it apart from squashy bean bags and unread copies of Varsity. I hope it does get used, as often after lectures I find myself lonely in my room in College (as I suspect other music students do also).

2009 also saw the establishment of the AHRC Research Centre for Music Performance as Creative Practice, and the installation of 'New Musicology' mainstays Nicholas Cook and John Rink at the faculty. The programme has a couple of million to plow its way through nothing less than our current understanding of music performance. Quite what the results will be (other than written up observations and interpretations of how musicians work and perform) I don't know. I think part of the object might be to try and resolve the rather embarrassing situation that everybody in day-to-day life knows what music looks and sounds like, but Academia still hasn't quite decided what it is. Not unsurprisingly, the wider your remit becomes, the weaker the definition of what music is. (I was tempted, rather shamefully, to put inverted commas around the last word in that sentence.)

Perhaps in a Faculty so dedicated to funding new research into performance, one might assume the teaching would lean so too. Not so, as so far, genuinely enlightening lecturing has been hard to come by. Martin Ennis' entertaining teaching of Counterpoint (yes, you did read that right) is probably the best highlight. Nicholas Marston's well-intentioned yet misguided attempts at providing the 'friendly face of analysis' don't do too well. His non-Shenkerian motivic voice-leading analyses (conspicuously featuring Mr. Schoenberg at the centre) are pretty confusing, which showed up prominently in my essays. Analysis is presented as a series of 'coulds' and 'maybes'; very little appears falsifiable, and I am under a suspicion that when I get to it, Shenkerism will smell of circularity. But since nobody will actually teach it to me I guess I'll have to remain ignorant.

Like many of the other university bodies and faculties, the Music Faculty is in debt. It has taken to hiring out the concert hall to an evangelical church, much to the horror of music students and members of CUMS; but the fact is the Faculty has to look for spare cash wherever it can. The University Library recently announced that it might take a sponsor for extra cash. Similar outbursts of horror: 'The Tesco Cambridge University Library' etc. The best one I read was the foot-in-mouth 'Oxford University Press Cambridge University Library'.

But so much for this grumbling (one term is not justification for the level of grumbling I seem to have reached). I think there definitely are good things about the faculty - one of them being a collection of stellar musicologists. It's conservative collection, but bizarrely, revisionist at the same time. Many of them are approachable and cheerfully engaging people who, while they obviously have more important things to do, don't seem too put out by the prospect of delivering a lecture to a roomfull of undergrads.