Losing
Control: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950
Indeterminacy and Chance - John Cage
Published: March 1,
2002
Although one can observe indeterminate moments in
many works of the performing arts throughout the centuries,
"indeterminacy" was not part of the musical vocabulary
until the late 1950s. It was mainly used in mathematics, physics,
biology, linguistics, philosophy, and jurisprudence and it
means "having inexact limits," "indefinite,"
"indistinct," "unsettled." John Cage was
one of the first to use the word "indeterminacy"
in musical contexts and used indeterminacy as a compositional
dimension with regard to performance. In his 1958 essay, "Indeterminacy"
he presented and explained compositions indeterminate with
respect to their performance such as Bach's Art of the Fugue
which lacks specific instrumentation. One of Cage's most significant
indeterminate compositions is his Concert for Piano and Orchestra
(1957/58) which is a collection of individual parts consisting
of ambiguous notations, and no score. The number of passages
to be played, the order of the sections and the duration of
the whole work, for instance, are left to the performers'
choice. One could assume that the indeterminate graph notations
might allow for some improvisation. But Cage objected to improvisatory
techniques strongly: "Improvisation… is something
that I want to avoid. Most people who improvise slip back
into their likes and dislikes and their memory, and…
they don't arrive at any revelation that they are unaware
of."(1) His indeterminate pieces ask the performer for
responsibility, discipline, and compositional decisions within
the framework that Cage designed. Cage is well-known for his
use of chance operations (for instance by tossing coins) which
are part of his compositional processes and come into focus
after defining materials and designing systems and rules for
the application of chance procedures. Yet chance operations
and indeterminacy are two different things, as Cage explains:
"Bringing about indeterminacy is bringing about a situation
in which things would happen that are not under my control.
Chance operations can guide me to a specific result, like
the Music of Changes. An example of indeterminacy is any one
of the pieces in a series called Variations which resemble
cameras that don't tell you what picture to take but enable
you to take a picture…"(2)
For a long time Cage viewed his concepts of chance operations
and indeterminacy as not compatible with improvisation. Yet
in the seventies he reconsidered improvisation: "Chance
operations are a discipline, and improvisation is rarely a
discipline. Though at the present time it's one of my concerns,
how to make improvisation a discipline. But I mean doing something
beyond the control of the ego."(3) Cage's goal was to
free improvisation from taste and memory, likes and dislikes.
In pieces like Child of Tree (1975), Branches (1976) or Inlets
(1977) the players have to make discoveries with unfamiliar
materials such as plants or conch shells. In the case of Inlets,
for three performers with partly filled conch shells and a
fire live or recorded the players moving and turning the conch
shells have no control over the occurrence of the gurgles
and their rhythms.
Cage called this new improvisational concept "structural"
improvisation and explained: "What delights me in this
thing… is that the performer, the improviser, and the
listener too are discovering the nature of the structure…
Improvisation… that is to say not thinking, not using
chance operations, just letting the sound be, in the space,
in order that the space can be differentiated from the next
space which won't have that sound in it."(4) This definition
of improvisation which seems to have nothing in common with
the conventional idea of improvisation actually comes very
close to its etymological meaning: "to bring forward
the unforeseeable," it comes also close to the notion
of "creating sounds extempore without any preparation."
Incidentally the score of Inlets is one of the few indeterminate
notations by Cage allowing for improvisation. What did Cage,
whose works are often declared as aleatory pieces, actually
think about aleatory? He rejected it. When asked about his
view of aleatory, he stated that, Pierre Boulez brought it
up in his polemic essay "Alea" (1957) to distinguish
between the right and the wrong use of chance operations,
the wrong use being Cage's approach.(5)
Aleatory - Pierre Boulez
Published: March 1, 2002
The concept of "aleatory" was preferred by European
composers, among them Pierre Boulez, Witold Lutoslawski and
Franco Evangelisti. It was first used by Werner Meyer-Eppler
in the context of electro-acoustics and information theory
for describing a course of sound events that is determined
in its framework and flexible in detail.(6) Aleatory, a word
derived from the latin alea, has many different meanings such
as dice, game of dice, risk, danger, bad surprise, and chance.
Most composers using aleatory referred to the meaning of chance,
but some composers referred to meanings like risk (for instance
Evangelisti) and dice (Henri Pousseur composed a piece called
Répons pour sept musiciens, 1960, where performers
throw dice for sheets of music and cues, a procedure similar
to pieces by Kirnberger or Mozart in which the order of the
measures is determined by throwing a dice.). Many composers
thought they dealt with chance and created chance compositions
when they allowed for greater performance flexibility. None
of them used chance operations as Cage did. Since many composers
were skeptical about "pure" chance and mere accident
they came up with the idea of "controlled chance"
and "limited aleatorism" (preferred by Lutoslawski).
In his Third Piano Sonata (1955/57), for instance, Boulez
tried "to absorb" chance, that is "controlled
chance" for the first time. While composing that piece
he intentionally allowed for certain "automatisms"
or variability in serial structures. And he introduced some
limited liberties with respect to performance such as the
flexible order of sound events (mobility) and multiple combinations
of certain structures, similar to Stockhausen's Klavierstück
XI (1956). Inspired by literary works of Mallarmé and
Joyce, Boulez compared his sonata to a labyrinth where the
performer can choose different ways to get through the piece.
Yet, unlike in Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI, Boulez's
choices are much more limited. Stockhausen actually wants
the performer to play the sections he accidentally looks at.
In some earlier works Boulez aimed at the appearance of improvisation
and spontaneity when he, in regard to some sections of his
Livre pour quatuor (1948/49) and Le marteau sans maître
(1953/53), asked the performers to make it sound improvised,
so that one does not hear the hard work, but experiences an
impression of flexibility.(7) This reminds one of efforts
to construct and suggest improvisation in such forms as the
impromptu, toccata, or fantasia. However, in 1957 Boulez explored
improvisation further as he composed his Improvisations sur
Mallarmé I, II and III. Each of the three pieces presents
one of Boulez's interpretations of improvisation. The first
represents the zero point of improvisation and therefore offers
the performer no liberties. The second improvisation includes
certain flexible tempos. The third piece which is the culminating
point of improvisation offers choices between various melodic
lines, alternative passages which can be performed with or
without a vocal part. Yet Boulez withdrew this daring score
of 1959, revised it, and eliminated most aspects of mobility.
Boulez's concepts of controlled chance, aleatory, and improvisation
coincide and refer to a dimension of flexibility in music
(if some of his so-called improvisation is not bare construction
and make-believe). Boulez, doubtless, rejects all the other
types of improvisation in contemporary music, in particular
"free" improvisation. He considers the latter a
psycho-drama consisting of indifferent sound events since
the memory cannot mix certain elements.
Open form - Earle Brown
Published: March 1, 2002
A further concept which came up in the late fifties was "open
form" or "musique informelle." Open means "unfinished,"
"indeterminate," "accessible," "available,"
or "liberal." Since form, a word rooted in visual
imagination, means shape, outline, or mold which gives shape
to materials, the expression "open form" seems contradictory
and abstract. When consisting of mixed formal elements, works
of the past by Mozart and Charles Ives, for instance, were
declared to be pieces with open form (Adorno, Wolff).(8) Certain
serial compositions, often accused of being devoid of form,
were considered harbingers of open form. Their form seemed
to be the result of chance. Yet, "open form" refers
rather to a certain degree of indeterminacy in a work, notation,
structure, content, material, and only rarely to the traditional
concept of form. Open form mostly points toward the interchangeability
of parts with determined details (Stockhausen, Klavierstück
XI) or to the variability of details whereby the course of
the piece is determined. Henry Cowell actually can be considered
a pioneer of open form techniques. The five movements of his
Mosaic Quartet of 1935 can be played in any desired order.
Earle Brown was among the first to claim the term open form
for a number of his compositions. Influenced by Alexander
Calder's mobiles, he aimed at a great mobility of musical
elements. He also attached considerable importance to spontaneity
and improvisation since he had a jazz background. Brown's
open form piece December 1952, part of the seven-piece set
Folio (1952-53), provides one of the earliest and most famous
examples of graph scores. The notation of December 1952 is
ambiguous. Horizontally and vertically arranged thin and thick
lines offer the performer extremely little information. The
musical content, material, structure, form and instrumentation
are not fixed and musicians, according to Brown, " "[have
to improvise] the sound materials relative to the very simple
graphic implications of the score."(9) Later Brown questioned
whether "open form" was an adequate term for this
approach or whether he should have called it "solo or
collective improvisations based on graphic implications"
since the content was not fixed.(10)
December 1952 is not representative of Brown's approach to
open form. Numerous compositions written after the Folio pieces
such as Twenty-five Pages for piano (1953) or Available Forms
I and II for orchestra show more or less worked-out segments
of which the order is left open. After 1953 Brown incorporated
opportunities to improvise only occasionally as in String
Quartet (1965) and Centering for violin and chamber orchestra
(1973).
Brown explored open form possibilities extensively and improvisation
to a certain degree, yet he dissociated himself from concepts
of aleatory and chance. In an interview he stated: "I
don't use chance! Do you think Indian music is chance-music?
Do you think jazz is chance-music? … When you conduct
my open-form pieces, you are not doing it by chance. You're
doing it because you want the next thing to happen. Because
you think it's right. And that's what an improviser does.
It's what a composer does who writes closed-form music: but
he does it in his room upstairs, rather than doing it on stage…
There's a huge difference between improvisation (spontaneous
decisions) and chance. Chance really has to be an exterior,
objective thing."(11)
Experimental music - Richard
Teitelbaum Published: March 1, 2002
Besides indeterminacy, aleatory, and open form, in the fifties,
the concept of experimental music came into focus. Yet, "experiment"
and "experimental" were used much earlier as negative
descriptions for new compositions that did not correspond
to conventional ideals. The word "experiment" indeed
connotes risk, trial, unexpected and preliminary outcomes,
failure, success, skepticism, and pragmatism. It also refers
to scientific research and proof. Since about 1950 experimental
music has served as a general term for electro-acoustic music
emphasizing the relationship of musical composition and scientific
research. The musical experiment can refer to pre-composition,
composition, performance, and the act of listening. Improvisations
and musical experiments, however, not only share common connotations,
but they are often and in various ways related to one another
(if, for instance, their outcome is unpredictable).
For composers like Cornelius Cardew, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin
Curran, and Richard Teitelbaum, improvisation and experimentation
became the main focus in the late fifties and sixties. All
of them were involved in improvisation groups such as AMM,
Scratch Orchestra, and Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV). The
latter ensemble, founded in 1966 in Rome, set out to explore
possibilities of improvisation and live-electronics. Similar
to the British ensembles AMM and Scratch Orchestra, MEV experimented
with "free improvisation, street music, theater, collaborations
with untrained musicians, and audience participation."
It used individual compositions, indeterminate scores, verbal
instructions, sketches, tapes, and produced sounds with conventional
and electronic instruments, household devices, everyday objects,
and sounds through intermodulation and biofeedback. Incorporating
these ingredients into an ongoing sound flow lasting several
hours, the group's goal was to bring about unpredictable musical
situations and make discoveries. Teitelbaum, a founding member
of MEV and involved in experimentation and improvisation until
today, was particularly interested in biofeedback sounds,
which he derived from brainwaves, heartbeat, and breathing,
as well as muscle movements which he manipulated with his
Moog synthesizer. In 1967, he composed In Tune for brainwaves,
heartbeat, breathing, and synthesizer, which is based on numerous
experiments involving the physical and psychological effects
of playing through electronic instruments and circuitry.
Experiments and improvisation as spontaneous reactions to
the sounds, "doubles" coming out of the speakers,
are part of the performance. Teitelbaum described the realizations
of In Tune as follows: "We experimented increasingly
with more conscious means of feedback control… we also
expanded the piece to allow group performances by as many
as six or eight performers, all simultaneously interconnected.
Often these were structured in pairs—a married couple
feeding back alpha to each other, another playing a heartbeat
duet, etc. Gradually influenced by the aesthetic bent of the
group at the time, which was very much towards expressive
improvisation, these realizations of In Tune became highly
'performed,' expressionistic even aggressive. Such 'bio-musical'
improvisations often contained vocal and instrumental sounds
extraneous to the biological ones, as well as intentional
muscle movements by the performers, producing artifacts in
the circuit."(12)
Experienced in jazz improvisation and non-western musical
practice (shakuhachi, West-African percussion, Javanese gamelan),
Teitelbaum nowadays prefers the concept of "real-time
composition" in particular with respect to his more recent
pieces based on interactive computer improvisation. Such real-time
compositions require pre-compositional preparations as providing
sets of instructions, presets, patches, and even the design
of the software. During a performance the computer transforms
Teitelbaum's improvisations, for instance, through "long-term
delays, multiple processes that extend a line or a note, or
can store a phrase or an entire section when played to be
brought back later in the piece." His improvisations,
which Teitelbaum considers reflections of the subconscious
(similar to automatic writing) are not identical with real-time
composition: "People talk about improvisation as real-time
composition. But if you can control, in a single gesture,
something that's going to happen ten seconds or ten minutes
later, you start to be able to control the broader structural
levels, and it really does become much more like composition."(13)
Meditative music - Young and Oliveros
Published: March 1, 2002
Meditation primarily denotes "thinking over," "contemplation,"
"mental or solemn reflection," and "practice."
The phenomenon of musical meditation, however, was not completely
new in the sixties. Charles Gounod and Olivier Messiaen, for
instance, composed pieces entitled "meditation"
in a Christian-mystic spirit.(14) Meditation can refer to
the process of composition (as in the case of Giacinto Scelsi),
to performance and to the effects on the listener.
A jazz saxophonist in the fifties, La Monte Young focuses
in his musical projects mainly on improvisation. In the late
fifties he became more and more interested in Indian, Japanese
and Indonesian music and studied theoretical treatises like
The Grammar of South Indian (or Karnatic) Music by Iyyar.
But already before he began taking lessons in raga singing
(Kirana style) with Pandit Pran Nath in 1970, he had found
his characteristic improvisational approach to composition.
Concerning works like Map of 49's Dream The Two Systems of
Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery
(started in 1966) for voice, various instruments and sine
waves, he provided his ensemble The Theatre of Eternal Music
(1962), not with scores, but oral instructions. Each player
has to memorize the selected and allowed tone combinations
and improvise their durations and cues. Every realization
of this conception provides, through improvisation, a new
variation, which is considered a new autonomous composition
and which is recorded, titled and catalogued. The Second Dream
of The High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer (The Melodic
Version) for tunable and sustaining instruments of like timbre
is based on a similar technique: “Within a framework
of fixed rules, the musicians listen to each other and improvise
durations and cues.”
Many performances of Young's pieces took place in the so-called
Dream House, a location specially designed and lighted by
his wife, Marian Zazeela. Herein a generator incessantly produced
sine waves and 80 to 90 musicians could join in and continuously
improvise virtually for weeks, months, and years aspiring
toward Young's idea of "eternal music." Listeners
could come and go at any time and gain from a meditative atmosphere.
Young considered his "organically evolving improvisations
[as] approach to meditation in sound." He was interested
in a "Yogic approach to meditation through concentration."
(whereas the Zen approach would be to clear the mind.) and
while improvising he endeavored to "[get] inside the
sound" so that his body was no longer perceivable.
In comparison, Pauline Oliveros who has also dealt with improvisation
throughout her career, began to discover meditation techniques
as compositional material in the sixties. Influenced by her
Tai Chi Chuan teacher, her improvisations gradually changed
into meditation. She sang and played on her accordion long
tones and kept them sounding until they changed her perception,
and she translated the breath rhythms and slow natural motions
of Tai Chi into her solo improvisations. Later she studied
psychology, Asian philosophies, mythology, and rituals and
developed her manifold concept of meditation whereby the aspects
of global and focal attention and mandala symbols are of great
importance. Oliveros views meditation basically as "steady
attention and steady awareness for continuous or cyclic periods
of time." In her works such as Aeolian Partitions (1969),
Sonic Meditations (1971-73) or the Deep Listening Pieces (1970-90)
she applies various meditation techniques. In Aeolian Partitions
(1969) for mixed ensemble Oliveros requires from performers
and audience, for instance, the willingness to participate
in "telepathic improvisation." The participants
have to concentrate on a single performer, hear an interval
or chord mentally, perform one of the pitches and send the
other to another performer by telepathy. They are further
supposed to make silences by becoming mentally blank. Sonic
Meditation I, for instance, is based on the observation of
each performer's breath cycle and gradual transitions from
breathing to making sounds. Incidentally, the concept of the
Sonic Meditations, according to Oliveros, surpasses improvisation,
yet she includes telepathic improvisation in some of her meditations.
Interpretation
and Perception
Published: March 1, 2002
Doubtless the concepts above involved a lot of changes and
problems for performers interested in contemporary music.
Performers had to deal with new philosophies, performance
techniques, equivocal notations, the preparation of their
own scores and manifold ways of improvisation. The changes
occurred after a period of glorifying performances that were
objective and faithful to the original (Stravinsky and Schönberg)
and rejecting interpretations brimming with individual embellishments,
variation, or improvisation in the manner of Liszt or Busoni.
Playing from memory, suggesting the impression of immediate
creation, seemed to provide the substitute for improvisation
or improvisatory interpretation. The existence of notation
in Western music stimulated constant musical innovation and
progress, producing a variety of styles and complex scores
that inhibited performers more and more from improvising.
Devoid of notation, Non-Western music rather emphasizes the
preservation of its timeless musical material and performance
rules. However, the suspension of the performer in electronic
music and in Conlon Nancarrow's works for player piano could
be viewed as the culminating point of a tendency in Western
music to control and determine more and more performance aspects.
Yet, in so-called free improvisation the performer seems to
be suspended as well. The phenomenon of improvisation in new
music thwarts the dichotomy composition-performance or composition-interpretation.
Often it is difficult to distinguish between the composed,
performed and improvised portions of a piece. When requiring
improvisation on the basis of vague instructions, composers
emphasized the aspect of providing the performer with a more
human and creative role. Yet, they often overlooked the fact
that performers became equally respectable creators or inventors,
that is co-owners, of the music in question and did not get
their share of credit and royalties. There were fewer problems
in the case of a personal union of composer and performer
(Young, Well-Tuned Piano) or a close collaboration between
composer and performer where pieces were written for the performer's
unique abilities (Jazz). But many performers were overwhelmed
by the new amount and confusingly wide range of liberty. Some
who did not want to risk dilettante spontaneous activities
"illegally" worked out their own traditionally notated
version (as it was done in Germany quite often, by the Kontarsky
brothers, and the conductor Clytus Gottwald). Others used
the demand to improvise to fool around. It is known that improvisers,
unlike performers of traditional scores, need to have a reservoir
of motor patterns, structures, scales, etc. at their disposal.
If they do not want to depend on a kind of automatic writing,
they also need experience in making musical decisions, following
rules, judging the sounds, and selecting the next activity
while playing. This implies long-term practicing and experience.
Much hope was put into "free" improvisation. But
what is free improvisation compared to the variety of controlled
improvisation? It was the goal of groups like the New Music
Ensemble (Austin, Eaton, W. O. Smith, Vandor), AMM (Prevost,
Rowe, Gare, Cardew), and New Phonic Art (Globokar, Alsina,
Drouet, Portal) to create a kind of "pure" improvisation,
music free of notation, arrangements, form, style, idioms,
and tradition through constant development, changes, and questioning
of the sound product. Yet, it was certainly more a wishful
thinking than reality. Every free and "non-idiomatic"
improvisation is based on somewhat familiar material since
the improviser cannot ignore his musical background, his musical
baggage. And whatever seems completely new, at first glance,
can eventually be at risk of being consolidated as a musical
idiom. Many groups focusing on free improvisation were short-lived.
Larry Austin explained why his New Music Ensemble gave up:
"There was a crisis point in our development, which we
reached about three years after we formed: we had learned
the piece called 'free improvisation'. The original reason
for the group was disappearing."(15) Lukas Foss dissolved
his Improvisation Chamber Ensemble in the early sixties when
he realized: "Improvisation: one plays what one already
knows… Acrobats practice until it is safe. Improvisation
that works is made safe."(16) (Among the long-lived groups
are AMM, Art Ensemble of Chicago.)
Last but not least, one wonders about the role of the listeners.
While most composers and improvisers did not try to conform
to the listener's taste, they show various attitudes toward
them. The listener was partly viewed as a kind of a voyeur
peeping into intimate music making, partly as a tolerated
tourist (as Vinko Globokar put it). At some improvisation
concerts, due to their workshop character, the listener was
not charged an admission fee. Cage, for instance, wanted the
listener to focus on the sounds themselves without trying
to get emotional and intellectual results out of them. Boulez
aspired to communicate a message that the listener should
perceive critically. He disapproved of aural states of euphoria,
while Young declared that the listener "should be moved
to a strong spiritual feeling and be carried away to heaven,"
and used incense and lighting to support these effects. MEV
wanted to free the audience, to democratize the institution
of the concert, and organized musical events in streets, factories
and prisons involving audience participation. Considering
audience participation through meditation and telepathy, Oliveros
aimed at educating the listener to more intense perception,
greater receptivity and openness. However, in the case of
audience participation, listeners might only be able to listen
with half an ear, since they have to use energy for various
other activities. In most cases listeners have to use individual
listening strategies, since they cannot fall back upon familiar
structures, models and forms. They have to depend on principles
of "spontaneous listening" (Adorno's expression)
focusing, for instance, on repetition, similarity and contrast
of sound textures in order to structure the piece aurally.
With all of the above principles in mind and by memorizing
previous sounds and anticipating subsequent sounds, listeners
might enlarge their perception to arrive at a "multi-dimensional
listening" (Adorno) experience.
Losing
Control: Indeterminacy and Improvisation in Music Since 1950
Endnotes Published:
March 1, 2002
(1)
S. S. Turner, "John Cage's Practical Utopias," Musical
Times, 130, 1990, 472.
(2) D. Campana, "Interview with Cage (1985)," Form
and Structure in the Music of John Cage, Ph.D. Northwestern
University Evanston 1985, 109.
(3) S. Kauffmann/J. Cage/W. Alfred, "The Changing Audience
for the Changing Arts (Panel)," The Arts: Planning for
Change, New York 1987, 46.
(4) "John Cage and Roger Reynolds. A Conversation,"
Musical Quarterly, 65, 1979, 581.
(5) B. A. Varga, "Komponieren heute. These, Antithese,
Synthese. Ein Doppelgespräch
mit John Cage und Morton Feldman," Neue Zeitschrift für
Musik, 147/1, 1986, 26.
(6) W. Meyer-Eppler, "Statistische und psychologische
Klangprobleme," Elektronische Musik, Die Reihe I, ed.
H. Eimert, Vienna 1955, 22.
(7) P. Boulez, Par Volonté et par hasard. Entretien
avec Célestin Deliège, Paris 1975, 68.
(8) Chr. Wolff, "Open to Whom and What?" Interface,
XVI, 1987, 134 and Th. W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie,
ed. G. Adorno and R. Tiedemann, Frankfurt/M. 1970, 212.
(9) E. Brown, "Notes on some Works," Contemporary
Music Newsletter 6/1, 1972, 1.
(10) Ibid.
(11) R. Duffalo, Trackings, New York 1989, 114.
(12) R. Teitelbaum, "In Tune: Some Early Experiments
in Biofeedback Music," Biofeedback and the Arts: Results
of Early Experiments, ed. D. Rosenboom, Vancouver 1976, 66.
(13) M. Dery, "Richard Teitelbaum. Interview," Keyboard,
15/7, 1989, 88.
(14) Gounod's first version of his Ave Maria setting was titled
Méditation sur le premier Prélude de Piano de
J. S. Bach (1853) for violin and piano. The words were added
later.
(15) L. Austin/S. Lunetta u.a., "Groups: New Music Ensemble,
ONCE Group, Sonic Arts Group, Musica Elettronica Viva,"
Source 3, 1968, 16.
(16) Ibid, 17.
From Losing Control: Indeterminacy and
Improvisation in Music Since 1950
By Sabine Feisst
© 2002 NewMusicBox
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