Sound, Language, and Consciousness in the Work of Four Artists Associated with Experimental Music And/Or Conceptual Art Communities After 1960
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EXQUISITE MIND, EUPHORIC KNOWING: SOUND, LANGUAGE, AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC AND CONCEPTUAL ART AFTER 1960 by KATE CAVANAUGH DOYLE Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Susan McClary Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY May, 2018 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Kate Cavanaugh Doyle candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy* Committee Chair Susan McClary Committee Member Francesca Brittan Committee Member Georgia Cowart Committee Member Vera Tobin Committee Member Robert Walser Date of Defense February 26, 2018 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES 2 LIST OF FIGURES 3 LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 5 ABSTRACT 7 INTRODUCTION 9 Radical Intelligence CHAPTER 1 35 Sonorous Mind: Meredith Monk’s Voice-from-Within CHAPTER 2 63 Consciousness and Communication in Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Transmissions CHAPTER 3 90 Yoko Ono and the Art of Conceptual Sound CHAPTER 4 116 Music as Translation: The Sound of Hanne Darboven’s Endless Writing BIBLIOGRAPHY 145 1 LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Diagram of the Dissertation 30 2 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 George Brecht, Drip Music (Drip Event) (1959) 15 Figure 2 Trajectory of the Event Score 16 Figure 3 Sol LeWitt, Objectivity (1962) 18 Figure 4 Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965) 19 Figure 5 Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face) (1981) 21 Figure 6 Carolee Schneemann, Eye Body #20 (1963) 25 Figure 7 Linda Montano, Lying: Dead Chicken, Live Angel (1972) 25 Figure 8 Joan Jonas, Nova Scotia Beach Dance (1971) 26 Figure 9 Meredith Monk, Education of the Girlchild (1973) 26 Figure 10 Radical Intelligence Model 32 Figure 11 Yoko Ono, Painting to Be Stepped On (1960) 98 Figure 12 Yoko Ono, To George: Poem No. 18 (1961) 112 Figure 13 Hanne Darboven, Konstrukionen New York (1966-67) 122 Figure 14 Robert Smithson, A Heap of Language (1966) 124 Figure 15 Sol LeWitt, Serial Project 1 (ABCD) (1966) 125 Figure 16 Hanne Darboven, Diary NYC: February 15 until March 4, 1974 127 3 LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES Example 1 Excerpt from Meredith Monk, Dolmen Music 43 Example 2 Excerpt from Meredith Monk, Dolmen Music 49 Example 3 Excerpt from Meredith Monk, Dolmen Music 50 Example 4 Excerpt from Meredith Monk, Dolmen Music 52 Example 5 Excerpt from Meredith Monk, Dolmen Music 54 Example 6 Excerpt from Pauline Oliveros, Sound Patterns 71 Example 7 Excerpt from Pauline Oliveros, Sound Patterns 73 Example 8 Excerpt from Pauline Oliveros, Sound Patterns 74 Example 9 Excerpt from Pauline Oliveros, Sound Patterns 75 Example 10 Excerpt from Pauline Oliveros, Sound Patterns 76 Example 11 LaMonte Young, Composition 1960 #7 103 Example 12 Yoko Ono, Secret Piece 103 Example 13 Yoko Ono, Fish Piece 104 Example 14 Yoko Ono, Earth Piece 105 Example 15 Yoko Ono, Tape Piece 1 (Stone Piece) 106 Example 16 Yoko Ono, Clock Piece 107 Example 17 Yoko Ono, Collecting Piece 108 Example 18 Yoko Ono, Bell Piece 109 Example 19 Yoko Ono, Wall Piece I 110 Example 20 Yoko Ono, Three More Snow Pieces for solo or orchestra 114 Example 21 Excerpt from Hanne Darboven, Op. 17a, Wunschkonzert 132 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Beyond Words It is impossible to express the depth of my gratitude for the tremendous people in my life. In the following I will make a brief attempt. Thank you to my advisor and treasured mentor, Susan McClary, through whose visionary teaching and scholarship I learned to listen differently, inquire intelligently, and write genuinely. Thank you to my committee members: Francesca Brittan, for introducing me to a history of sound beyond the musical score; Georgia Cowart, for teaching me the craft of writing through her mentorship and our work together in the Capstone courses; Vera Tobin, for radically expanding my work in new directions; and Robert Walser, for introducing me to formative texts and modes of questioning in cultural theory and historiography. My work is indebted to the excellence of their teaching, the innovations of their scholarship, and their ever-generous support. Thank you to the Case Western Reserve University Department of Music for their generous support of my doctoral studies and my research at the Library of Congress. Thank you to Libby Smigel at the Library of Congress for her support, knowledge, and collaboration. Thank you to the CWRU College of Arts and Sciences for generously supporting me through the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Seminar, and thank you to the leaders of this seminar, Daniel Goldmark and Martha Woodmansee. Thank 5 you to my wonderful colleagues in the Department of Music at CWRU, especially my cohort – Peter Graff, Kate Rogers, and Brian Wright – and my classmates in the Musicology Dissertation Seminar. Special thanks to my colleague and writing companion, Peter Graff. Thank you to Helen Carnevale for her unfailing support, generosity, and joyful companionship. Thank you to Michele Shauf for her guidance, encouragement, and friendship. Thank you to my parents, Andrea and Jack Doyle, for their loving support, and for instilling in me the joy of pursuing a passion for learning and the arts through their own example. Thank you to my brothers, John and Tom Doyle, whose good humor, discipline, and integrity inspire me to be a person of dedication every day – grá / gáire / neart. 6 Exquisite Mind, Euphoric Knowing: Sound, Language, and Consciousness in Experimental Music and Conceptual Art After 1960 Abstract By KATE CAVANAUGH DOYLE This dissertation considers the relationship between sound, language, and consciousness in the work of four artists associated with experimental music and/or Conceptual art communities after 1960. The first half of the dissertation explores the music of composers Meredith Monk and Pauline Oliveros, who treat and compose sound as a communicative language independent of traditional notions of lexicon and grammar. My discussion of Monk centers on her Dolmen Music (1979), in which she distills lexicon into syllabic sound, embraces the use of sympathetic call and response, and validates the voice as a sophisticated interface. Chapter Two analyzes Oliveros’s treatment of linguistic sounds as complex sonorities and engages with the composer’s models of sonic transmission in two of her earlier works, Sound Patterns (1961) and Sonic Meditations (1974). The second half of the dissertation considers the relationship between sound and written language and writing practice in the work of Yoko Ono and Hanne Darboven. In Chapter 7 Three, I examine Ono’s prose scores presented in her 1964 proto-Conceptual collection, Grapefruit. I argue that Ono enacts a reconceptualization not just of musical performance, but of the experience of sound and listening, and I attempt to illustrate the idiosyncratic and previously unacknowledged contributions of Grapefruit to the history of music. Chapter Four explores the musical compositions of Hanne Darboven, a Conceptual artist and composer known for her extensive collections of handwritten material displayed in books and across gallery walls. My analysis considers the artist’s translation of her visual writing work to musical scores as a meaningful representation of sensory act and conceptual process. To understand and situate this work, I engage with cognitive linguistics, media and communication studies, histories of art, as well as musicology. Ultimately, I offer a vocabulary through which to understand this innovative conceptual work and aim to illuminate the implications of these repertoires for histories of sound, models of intelligence, and theories of communication. 8 INTRODUCTION Radical Intelligence In their 1981 book Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock engage in dialogue with Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking feminist critique of art history written ten years earlier, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Nochlin proposes that the consideration of social, cultural, and economic circumstances of women artists may prompt a questioning of reception models not only for a particular group of scholars but for art in general: … the so-called woman question, far from being a peripheral sub-issue, can become a catalyst, a potent intellectual instrument probing the most basic and “natural” assumptions, providing a paradigm for other kinds of internal questions, and providing links with paradigms in other fields.1 Parker and Pollock respond by suggesting an overhaul of the discipline altogether. While Nochlin contends that a feminist critique might lead to a reevaluation of the field, Parker and Pollock argue that we cannot begin to make that critique until we reconsider the parameters of our reception and analysis. What we need, they say, is “a radical reform, if not a total deconstruction of the present structure of the discipline in order to arrive at a real understanding of the history of women and art.”2 1 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” in Art and Sexual Politics, eds. E. Baker and T. Hess (New York: Macmillian, 1973), 2. Originally printed in 1971. 2 Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 47-48. 9 I take both Nochlin’s and Parker and Pollock’s concerns about critique and deconstruction into consideration throughout the following study, an exploration of creation and reception of sound and language structures in the work of artists Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, and Hanne Darboven. My project takes special interest in instances where these structures overlap, particularly in moments when sound structures act as language or language structures facilitate sound. While I argue that the compositions of each artist are in themselves radical, I find that the reception of this work is also a radicalizing project.