New Media Production 2
MUMT 303
Week 2
Sven-Amin Lembke
John Cage (1912-1992)
John Cage
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American composer
significant influence on all fields of art
pioneer of ...
‣ non-standard use of musical instruments
‣ chance/aleatoric music
‣ experimental music
John Cage
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non-standard use of musical instruments ...
prepared piano
‣ objects attached to piano strings (preparation),
altering their sound
‣ preparations with bolts, screws, rubber ...
‣ enhancing timbral capabilities of the piano
‣ emphasis of piano as percussion instrument
John Cage
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prepared piano
e.g. Sonatas and Interludes 1948
‣ Sonata V
John Cage
John Cage
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aleatoric/chance music ...
extensive study of Indian philosophy and Zen
buddhism
employed chance-governed I-Ching to compose
musical material
e.g. Music for Changes 1951
attempt to withdraw composer’s intentions from
musical material
John Cage
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Cage later realized that even through aleatoric
operations the order is predetermined in notation
developed concept of indeterminacy in music
e.g. Indeterminacy - Ninety stories by John Cage, with
Music 1959
employing independent streams of action, timing,
context
complete indeterminacy in 4’33” 1952
John Cage
John Cage
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experimental music ...
Cage describes music as
“purposeless play [...] [which is] an affirmation of life
--- not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to
suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way
of waking up to the very life we’re living.”
video: interview from Listen 1992 by Miroslav
Sebestik
video: Water Walk performance in TV game show
Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995)
Pierre Schaeffer
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French electronics engineer, acoustician, composer
founder of musique concrète
very first works: Cinq études de bruits 1948
Pierre Schaeffer
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from Cinq études de bruits 1948:
Étude aux chemins de fer (study in locomotives)
‣ field recordings taken at train depot of Gare des
Batignolles in Paris
‣ created completely with audio technology
‣ requiring no performers
‣ based completely on non-musical sounds
removed sounds from original contexts and placed
them in a new ones
Pierre Schaeffer
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“This determination to compose
materials taken from an existing
collection of experimental sounds,
I name musique concrète to make
well the place in which we find
ourselves, no longer dependent
upon preconceived sound
abstractions, but now using
fragments of sound existing
concretely and considered as
sound objects defined as whole.”
Pierre Schaeffer
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objet sonore
‣ building block of musique concrète
‣ inherent qualities of sound itself and not what it
refers to
approach: capture a sound, make it accessible and
reproducible anytime
earliest work done with phonographs employed two
major techniques:
‣ locked groove (sillon fermé)
‣ cut bell (cloche coupée)
Pierre Schaeffer
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Symphonie pour Un Homme Seul 1950:
‣ in collaboration with Pierre Henry
‣ more mature composition, no longer a ‘study’
example movements:
‣ Valse
‣ Scherzo
Pierre Henry (1927-)
Pierre Henry
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French composer
pioneer of musique concrète
early collaboration with Schaeffer
adaptation of musique concrète in modern pop
culture ...
‣ Psyché Rock from Messe pour le temps 1967
‣ basis for theme song of TV show Futurama
Pierre Henry
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After decades of friendship and working together ...
Echo d’Orphée pour P. Schaeffer 1988
based on material both of them had collaborated on in
the 1950s
‣ Orphée 51 and Orphée 53
examples
‣ Clavecin sarcastique
‣ Jazz et plaintes
Acousmatic music
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the term acousmatic coined by Schaeffer
‣ refers to sounds one hears without seeing their
cause/sources
‣ etymological origin from Greek word akousmatikoi
‣ akousmatikoi were students of Pythagoras who only
heard his teachings from behind a veil, with the
purpose of avoiding that his presence would
distract from the content he was teaching
musique concrète evolved into also being called
acousmatic music or electroacoustic music
Acousmatic music
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established tradition throughout the last 5 decades
e.g. Chion, Bayle, Dhomont, Lopez, Parmegiani,
Ferrari, Piché, Normandeau
production oriented at suppression of original context
‣ smearing/masking of origins
presentation of music minimizes external references
‣ darkened rooms
‣ multiple loudspeakers / spatialization
‣ live mixing, adapting to room acoustics
Acousmatic music
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“The musical process moves from the concrete (pure
sound matter) and proceeds towards the abstract
(musical structures) hence the name musique
concrète --- in reverse of what takes place in
instrumental writing, where one starts with concepts
(abstract) and ends with a performance (concrete).
Consequently, musique concrète [...] asks of its
listeners that they unprogram their hearing
(accustomed to the matrix of pitch, scales, harmonic
relations, instrumental timbres, etc.) and develop an
attitude of active listening based on new criteria of
perception.” - Francis Dhomont
Acousmatic music
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Groupe de Recherche Musicales (GRM) 1958 in Paris
‣ formerly Groupe de Recherche de Musique
Concrète founded in 1951
François Bayle developed Acousmonium in 1974
Michel Chion (1947-)
Michel Chion
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French experimental music and musique concrète
composer and film maker
developed idea of three modes of listening
‣ causal listening
‣ semantic listening
‣ reduced listening
Michel Chion
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Causal listening
‣ “listening to a sound in order to gather information
about its cause or source”
‣ source identification or recognition
‣ employing spatial hearing and/or recognition based
on prior experience
‣ most deceptive, used as such in film sound design
‣ examples: pen falling on floor, identifying a person
based on voice timbre
Michel Chion
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Semantic listening
‣ listening in terms of extracting higher-level
information (semantic, lexical meaning)
‣ related to speech perception
‣ e.g. acoustic signal - phoneme detection - word
recognition
‣ pronunciation differences ignored due to categorical
equivalence of certain phoneme groupings
‣ even applies to other language-related forms of
acoustic representation like morse code
Michel Chion
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Reduced listening
‣ term coined by Schaeffer
‣ listening to sound traits, not their cause or meaning
‣ mode of listening intended by musique concrète
‣ specialized way of listening that has to be acquired
‣ determining attributes of sound:
such as pitch, loudness, timbre, roughness,
brightness
Michel Chion
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Reduced listening
‣ Chion argues that acousmatic presentation might
initially even hinder reduced listening
‣ modes of listening may occur concurrently
‣ repeated hearings necessary to gradually focus on
reduced listening
‣ repeated hearings also needed to compile all
descriptive elements a sound contains
R. Murray Schafer (1933-)
R. Murray Schafer
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Canadian composer, writer, music educator and
environmentalist
in the 1960s established soundscape and acoustic
ecology studies at Simon Fraser University
founded the World Soundscape Project
book author of The Soundscape - Our Sonic
Environment and the Tuning of the World 1971
R. Murray Schafer
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Acoustic ecology
study of the relationship between individuals and
communities and their acoustic environment
aims at improving found imbalance
R. Murray Schafer
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Soundscape
sonic environments we find ourselves in
can be further analyzed in perceptual and symbolic
levels: foreground, background, keynote, soundmarks
or signature sounds
soundscape composition
‣ recorded sounds always embedded in their original
context
R. Murray Schafer
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schizophonia
‣ “split between an original sound and its
electroacoustical transmission or reproduction”
‣ schizo & phone Greek for split & voice
‣ intentional closeness to schizophrenia to imply
aberration and drama
‣ original sounds tied to source, but uprooted from
their origin though electroacoustic replication
‣ e.g. radio
‣ in opposition to idea of objet sonore
R. Murray Schafer
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lo-fi vs. hi-fi environments
‣ modern day characterized by low-fidelity
soundscapes: high-density and overlapping of
sounds in temporal and frequency domains
‣ pre-industrialized or rural high-fidelity soundscapes:
high degree of transparency, clarity
‣ seeking protection from lo-fi noise pollution by using
acoustic perfume, e.g. portable music, radio, TVs
R. Murray Schafer
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aims of the soundscape movement
‣ encourage sensitization to acoustic surroundings
‣ ear-cleaning
‣ sonological competence
‣ sound-walks
Soundscape compositions
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composers
R. Murray Schafer
‣ Vancouver Soundmarks
‣ The Music of Horns and Whistles
Hildegard Westerkamp
Barry Truax
David Dunn
‣ Mimus Polyglottos