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Unsayable Music: Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music PDF

279 Pages·2014·5.883 MB·English
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Unsayable Music Six Refl ections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music Unsayable Music Six Refl ections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music Paulo C. Chagas LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS © 2014 Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven/Louvain (Belgium) All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated data fi le or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. ISBN 978 90 5867 994 9 D / 2014 / 1869 / 34 NUR: 663 English language revision: Stacia A. Raymond Cover design: Friedemann Vervoort Foreword Th e role of the composer in society has gone through many transformations over the past 1500 years or so. In his De Institutione Musica, the sixth- century philosopher Boethius perceived three distinctive types of musician, arranged in descending order of importance: the critic, the composer, and the performer. But composers have seldom been confi ned to a single category of musical activity. Th roughout the Middle Ages, they were often responsible for important breakthroughs in theoretical (i.e., critical) knowledge, e.g., Philippe de Vitry’s seminal advances in rhythmic notation, meter, and isorhythm (talea and color), which laid the foundation for the Ars Nova of the 1300s. Prominent among later composers who contributed greatly to our critical understanding of musical practice was the eighteenth-century theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau. However, it was in the nineteenth century that composers frequently undertook to write about the role of music in society, as well as about themselves. Schumann and Berlioz were renowned as writers about as well as of music, but most notable—and notorious—in this regard was Wagner, who racialized musical thinking and projected his imaginings about stylistic evolution into the future. Th e phenomenon of the literary composer persisted into the twentieth century, with writings by Schoenberg, Hindemith, Messiaen, and Cage, among many others, dealing not only with their approach to composition but their personal worldview and philosophy as well. Paulo Chagas is one of those remarkable composers well versed not only in the methods and means of musical creation but also in theoretical issues of aesthetics, semiotics, mathematics, and philology. Th is book displays an exceptional grasp of a wide range of complex theoretical and philosophical issues, all of them nonetheless directly connected to the act of composing music. Indeed, it is precisely because of his passionate intellectual engagement that Chagas’s music always exhibits emotional immediacy as well as technical 5 Unsayable Music sophistication. Both his works and his ideas draw their inspiration from the wellspring of daily life and its frequently harsh realities. Chagas was a victim of political violence when, at age 17, he was arrested and tortured by the military dictatorship in Brazil in 1971 for collaborating with opposition groups fi ghting for democracy. He has described to me his ordeal in the following way: I was put in the “fridge,” a small room, refrigerated and acoustically isolated, and completely dark and cold. Various noises and sounds— howling oscillators, rumbling generators, distorted radio signals, motorcycles, etc.—shot from loudspeakers hidden behind the walls. Incessantly, the electronic sounds fi lled the dark space and overwhelmed my body for three long days. After a time, I lost consciousness. Th is auditory and acoustic torture was then a recent development, partially replacing traditional methods of physical coercion that killed thousands in Latin American prisons between the 1960s and 1990s. Such sounds injure the body without leaving any visible trace of damage. Th e immersive space of the torture cell, soundproofed and deprived of light, resonates in my memory as the perfect environment for experiencing the power of sound embodiment. He was freed from prison only after the intervention of a military offi cer who was a friend of his parents. His works continue to explore themes of power, violence, and control, using the latest technology and theoretical approaches. Th us, Chagas’s music emanates from a place within himself that is not only highly personal but also something he shares in common with the rest of us. Th e human condition and the relationship between music and society are recurring themes in his music. His philosophical writings are not arid speculations written in abstruse academies from the lofty heights of an ivory tower; rather, they exhibit the same immediacy and involvement with the world of ideas that his compositions do with the world of sound. Th us, theoreticians, composers, and lovers of music will all benefi t from the insights and wisdom contained within the covers of this book, which is the product of nearly fi fty years of asking questions, seeking answers, and creating expressive sound. Walter Aaron Clark Professor of Musicology Director, Center for Iberian and Latin American Music University of California, Riverside 6 Table of Contents Introduction 9 1. Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics 13 2. Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Aff ect in Chopin 43 3. Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System 65 4. Th e Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music 103 5. Th e Temple of Electronic Music: Th e Electronic Music Studio of Cologne in the 1990s 159 6. Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition: Th e Relationship between Medium and Form 203 APPENDIX I WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000 251 APPENDIX II WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000 257 Bibliography 265 7 Introduction Th is book presents critical refl ections on key topics of contemporary music and aesthetics and represents nearly forty years of study. Th e six refl ections elaborate a myriad of themes emerging from both my artistic experience as a composer and my research on musical semiotics, electroacoustic and digital music, audiovisual and multimedia composition. Diff erent approaches are off ered, including from philosophy, sociology, media, and critical studies. In this sense, the refl ections can be used as a guide for navigating through today’s complexities and uncertainties while seeking musical understanding. Th e fi rst chapter investigates musical understanding through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy. What is musical understanding? How can we communicate that we understand a melody? Th e chapter provides cultural background on Wittgenstein, and analyzes his contribution to logic, ethics and aesthetics. Wittgenstein’s philosophy uses music as a tool for refl ecting on the understanding of language and understanding in general. It places ethics at the core of the aesthetics and recognizes the role of a culture in shaping aesthetic understanding. Th e insight on Wittgenstein’s musical universe leads to questioning the relevance of applying his philosophical method to investigating contemporary music. Th e second chapter introduces my own theory of spectral semiotics, applying it to the analysis of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1. Spectral semiotics elaborates ideas from Husserl’s phenomenology of time consciousness, Varela’s theory of neurophenomenology and Tarasti’s existential semiotics. It explores digital tools such as sonograms for analyzing Chopin’s music, showing how his composition relates sound to aff ect by building fractal spectral patterns at diff erent temporal levels, which are connected to diff erent scales of aff ection. Chapter three develops a view of music as a social system of communication based on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, including his thoughts on art and media. Central notions such as the distinction between system and environment, the concept of form as the calling of a distinction (Spencer- 9

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