ORPHEUS What does it mean to produce resemblance in the performance of written ORPHEUS music? Starting from how this question is commonly answered by the practice of interpretation in Western notated art music, this book proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes, conventions, and territories of music performance. Appropriating reflections from post-structural philosophy, visual arts, and semiotics, and crucially based upon an artistic research project with a strong creative and practical component, it proposes a new approach to music performance. This approach is based on divergence, on the difference produced by intensifying Powers of the chasm between the symbolic aspect of music notation and the irreducible materiality of performance. Instead of regarding performance as reiteration, reconstruction, and reproduction of past musical works, Powers of Divergence emphasises its potential for the emergence of the new and for the problematisation of the limits of musical semiotics. Divergence Lucia D’Errico is a musician and artistic researcher. A research fellow at the Orpheus Institute (Ghent, Belgium), she has been part of the research project MusicExperiment21, exploring notions of experimentation in the performance of Western notated art music. An Experimental Approach She holds a PhD from KU Leuven (docARTES programme) and a master’s degree in English literature, and is also active as a guitarist, graphic artist, and video performer. to Music Performance P “‘Woe to those who do not have a problem,’ Gilles Deleuze exhorts his audience owers of Divergence during one of his seminars. And a ‘problem’ in this philosophical sense is not something to dispense with, a difficulty to resolve, an obstacle to eliminate; nor is it something one inherits ready-made. Just as a ‘concept’ in the paradigmatic repertoire of Deleuze’s philosophy is a creation, a ‘problem’ must be invented; it needs to be developed, its strength measured by the force of the path it breaches across an already established field—reconstructing it, reorganising it. The principal virtue of Lucia D’Errico’s book is that it constructs precisely such a problem.” INSTITUTE ―Zsuzsa Baross, Trent University Durham, CA “An original and valuable contribution to the field of artistic research, integrating theory and practice and charting a clear pathway through the work of a great number of artists, philosophers, and composers by way of philosophy, art and media theory, semiotics, and musical composition.” ―Edward Campbell, University of Aberdeen, UK IN ISBN 9789462701397 S TIT U T 9 789462 701397 > E SERIES Lucia D’Errico POD cover final.indd 1 05/07/18 14:43 Powers of Divergence: An Experimental Approach to Music Performance POWERS OF DIVERGENCE: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO MUSIC PERFORMANCE Lucia D’Errico Leuven University Press Table of Contents 7 Preface 9 Acknowledgments 11 Specific Terminology 13 Introduction BOOK I BOOK II BOOK III Description Derivates Five Glances of the Practice: upon the practice 33 1. The Problem of Resemblance 37 Derivative I: On Three Different (Musical) Eyes 47 2. Beyond Improvisation 49 Derivative II: The Phonocentric Vision of Music 55 First Glance 58 3. A Series of Anamorphic Glances 61 Derivative III: An Eye That Sees Itself 65 Derivative IV: The Joyous Power of Simulacra 67 4. On Methodology 70 Derivative V: How to Defy Perspective through Perspective 74 5. Phonographic Writing 79 Derivative VI: Automaton 84 6. The Phantasmic Image of the Musical Work 88 Derivative VII: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part I: Gian Lorenzo Bernini 93 Second Glance 96 7. The Vectors of the Body 101 Derivative VIII: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part II: Francis Bacon 108 8. The Musical Work as a “Manifold” 111 Derivative IX: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part III: Salvatore Sciarrino 118 9. A Peripheral Instrument 121 Derivative X: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part IV: Carmelo Bene 129 Third Glance 133 10. Modes of Exposition 136 Appendix 1: Techniques of Minoration 161 Fourth Glance 167 Appendix 2: List of Musical Examples 179 Closing Remarks 181 Fifth Glance 184 References 191 Biographical Note Table of Contents 7 Preface 7 9 Acknowledgments 9 11 Specific Terminology 11 13 Introduction 13 BOOK I BOOK II BOOK III Description the Derivatives Five Glances Unspeakable Body: upon the Unspeakable Body 33 1. The Problem of Resemblance 33 37 Derivative I: On Three Different (Musical) Eyes 37 Derivative I: On Three Different (Musical) Eyes 47 2. Beyond Improvisation 47 49 Derivative II: The Phonocentric Vision of Music 49 Derivative II: The Phonocentric Vision of Music 55 First Glance 55 First Glance 58 3. A Series of Anamorphic Glances 58 61 Derivative III: An Eye That Sees Itself 61 Derivative III: An Eye That Sees Itself 65 Derivative IV: The Joyous Power of Simulacra 65 Derivative IV: The Joyous Power of Simulacra 67 4. On Methodology 67 70 Derivative V: How to Defy Perspective through Perspective 70 Derivative V: How to Defy Perspective through Perspective 74 5. Phonographic Writing 74 79 Derivative VI: Automaton 79 Derivative VI: Automaton 84 6. The Phantasmic Image of the Musical Work 84 88 Derivative VII: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part I: Gian Lorenzo Bernini 88 93 Second Glance 93 Second Glance 96 7. The Vectors of the Body 96 101 Derivative VIII: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part II: Francis Bacon 101 Derivative VIII: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part II: Francis Bacon 108 8. The Musical Work as a “Manifold” 108 111 Derivative IX: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part III: Salvatore Sciarrino 111 Derivative IX: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part III: Salvatore Sciarrino 118 9. A Peripheral Instrument 118 121 Derivative X: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part IV: Carmelo Bene 121 Derivative X: How to Produce a Phantasm? Part IV: Carmelo Bene 129 Third Glance 129 Third Glance 133 10. Modes of Exposition 133 136 Appendix 1: Techniques of Minoration 136 161 Fourth Glance 161 Fourth Glance 167 Appendix 2: List of Musical Examples 167 179 Closing Remarks 179 181 Fifth Glance 181 Fifth Glance 184 References 184 191 Biographical Note 191 Preface This book is an integral part of the five-year research programme Experimentation versus Interpretation: Exploring New Paths in Music Performance in the Twenty-First Century or MusicExperiment21, funded by the European Research Council, hosted at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium, and led by Paulo de Assis. The programme has explored and devel- oped notions of “experimentation” in order to propose new performance prac- tices of Western notated art music. The research project of which this book is the outcome proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes and conventions of musical interpretation. Crucially, the project is founded on a strong creative and practical component, presenting a new approach to the performance of Western notated art music. In this new approach, corresponding to an artistic practice supported by reflec- tions and research, the performance of past musical works is not regarded in its reiterative, reconstructive, or reproductive function. This new practice instead insists on performance as a locus of experimentation, where “what we know” about a given musical work is problematised. The performative moment becomes both a creative and a critical act, through which new epistemic and aesthetic properties of the musical work emerge. This new practice insists on the unbridgeable divergence between codifica- tion (score) and materiality (sounds, gestures). Rather than being minimised, this divergence is amplified, so that performance happens through sounds and gestures unrecognisable as belonging to the original work as an interpreter would approach it. Instead of relying on the culturally constructed system through which symbolic categories are biunivocally connected to material events, this practice exposes the arbitrariness of such a system, together with the boundaries of its epistemic implications. The activity of interpreters and executants focuses on the balance between objectivity (the instructions contained in the score, the “facts” accumulated around the musical work, etc.) and subjectivity (the performer’s freedom, his or her expressivity, etc.). This new practice goes beyond both objectivity and subjectivity, embracing an experimental approach to music performance that challenges traditional notions of interpretation. Whereas execution and inter- pretation relate to an ideal and aprioristic sonic image of the musical work (as Platonic copies), the performance practice proposed here posits itself as a pro- duction of simulacra: thus performance becomes a sonic “image” that relates to what is different from it (the score) by means of difference, and not by attempt- ing to construct a (supposed) identity. In this process, internal resemblance is negated, together with the idea of composition as origin and performance as its telos. 7 Acknowledgments The three-and-a-half-year experience with MusicExperiment21 and with my trajectory in artistic research, leading to the writing of this book, allowed me to interweave an array of expertise and interests (ranging from performance to composition, improvisation, visual arts, and post-structural philosophy) that in my previous activity as a freelance guitarist were left unrelated. This experience gave me the opportunity to understand their common potentialities and their capacity to mutually enhance one another, and to foster possibilities that were latent in me, both as an artist and as a researcher. The change brought forth by this project concerns not only my everyday work but also a complete transfor- mation of my way of thinking about my own profession and creativity. For this, and for much more, I am deeply thankful to MusicExperiment21’s Principal Investigator, Paulo de Assis, to the Director of the Orpheus Institute, Peter Dejans, to my promoter at Leuven University, David Burn, to the Orpheus Institute’s Director of Research, Jonathan Impett, to my colleagues and team members, Heloísa Amaral, Paolo Giudici, Juan Parra Cancino, and Michael Schwab, and to the whole Orpheus Institute, its researchers, admin- istrative personnel, doctoral students, and guest researchers.