Re: IED defends himself

[John M. Relph <relph@presto.ig.com>]

Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa
Subject: Re: IED defends himself
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Andrew (IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu) writes:
>For what it's worth, his contention was that Kate's _attitude_toward_
>the act of making music itself was new and different, in that she was no
>longer trying to "translate" into relatively well-established terms
>the original music she had conceived. Instead she was trying to
>reproduce _directly_ the ideas in her head.

>...transcendent musical conceptions originating in the
>mind...

Ferruccio Busoni said:

      "Every notation is, in itself, the transcription of
    an abstract idea.  The instant the pen seizes it, the
    idea loses its original form."
      [_Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music_, c. 1907]

So I can see where Kate would want to be able to transcribe directly the
ideas in her head onto the recording medium.  Varese had much the same
attitude, as shown here:

      I find myself frustrated at every moment by the
    poverty of the means of expression at my disposal.
      I myself would like, for expressing my personal
    conceptions, a completely new means of expression.
      A sound machine (and not a machine for reproducing
    sounds).  What I compose, whatever my message is, would
    then be transmitted to my listener without being
    altered by interpretation...
      [Edgard Varese, c. 1933, in _The Recording Angel_,
       Evan Eisenberg, 1987]

This "sound machine" that Varese desired is obviously the forerunner to
the modern synthesiser.  Eisenberg asserts that a musical laboratory,
also envisioned by Varese, was fully available only in 1977 at Pierre
Boulez's IRCAM.  However, Varese was given an early Ampex tape machine
in the early fifties, and he began splicing (by hand) the tape portions
of his piece _Deserts_, for winds, piano, percussion, and tape.
Eisenberg further asserts that although Ussachevsky and Stockhausen had
been producing electronic music experiments at this time

      Varese, by contrast, had been making electronic music
    in his head for half a century; the moment the tools
    were put in his hands he knew what to do with them.
    _Deserts_ expresses all the emptiness of those fifty
    years of history in a language exploding with their
    fullness...  Stockhausen's _Gesang der Junglinge_ of
    1956 was perhaps the first worthy successor of
    _Deserts_, and Morton Subotnick's _The Wild Bull_ of
    1971... perhaps the most popular...
      [_The Recording Angel_]

I think that perhaps Kate wasn't the first composer to be able to put
the ideas in her or his head directly onto tape.  I would argue that
Frank Zappa was also doing this before Kate, but Zappa also chose not to
devote himself entirely to this, as Kate has -- Zappa wanted to be able
to do the live show, and thus chose to limit himself with the
capabilities of the live rock band.  Although he did take those
recordings and add many overdubs in the studio to produce a different
kind of musical experience than the live, he was not performing musical
alchemy.

My other concern is expressed fairly well by the Talking Heads' song
"Seen and Not Seen":

      He would see faces in movies, on T.V., in magazines,
    and in books...  He thought that some of these faces
    might be right for him...  And through the years, by
    keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in his mind...
    Or somewhere in the back of his mind... That he might,
    by force of will, cause his face to approach those of
    his ideal...
      He imagined that this was an ability he shared with
    most other people...
      ALthough some people might have made mistakes...
    They may have arrived at an appearance that bears no
    relationship to them...  They may have picked an ideal
    appearance based on some childish whim or momentary
    impulse...  Some may have gotten half-way there, and
    then changed their minds.
      He wonders if he too might have made a similar
    mistake.

	-- John