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Home , Joan La Barbara, Our Lady of Late, Wadada Leo Smith

BETWEENBETWEEN THOUGHTTHOUGHT THOUGHTANDAND SOUND SOUNDGRAPHIC NOTATION IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

Curated by Alex Waterman, Debra Singer, and Matthew Lyons

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND FOREWORD debra singer Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music is a group exhibition that explores the intersection of drawing, thinking, and sound through experimental music scores by thirty-one composers who relinquish traditional notation in favor of their own invented graphic systems. Their compositions take myriad forms, ranging from abstract drawings, numerical series, and annotated photographs to videos and digital renderings-all of which are filled with complex pictograms, evocative mark-making, gestural symbols, and intricate codes of let- ters, numbers, and color. Co-organized by composer, cellist, and guest curator Alex Waterman, The Kitchen’s associate curator Matthew Lyons, and myself, the exhibition features work by Laura Andel, Robert Ashley, James Beckett, David Behrman, Cathy Berberian, Earle Brown, Cornelius Cardew, Tony Conrad, John Driscoll, Morton Feldman, Jon Gibson, Tom Johnson, Alison Knowles, Joan LaBarbara, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, Miya Masaoka, Kaffe Matthews, Meredith Monk, Gordon Mumma, Anthony Jay Ptak, Steve Roden, Marina Rosenfeld, James Saunders, Michael J. Schumacher, Elliott Sharp, Wadada Leo Smith, Yasunao Tone, David Tudor, Stephen Vitiello, and Christian Wolff.

These artists represent two generations influenced by John Cage’s pioneering indeterminate compositions and chance operations begun in the late 1930s. Their highly personal notational vocabularies likewise originate in processes of experi- mentation, as they break with convention, finding alternative visual means to describe sounds and provoke a reciprocal relationship between performer and composer, empowering the former to participate in the improvisatory creation of works that are distinctly different each time they are performed. Generated in response to deficiencies in verbal language and descriptive terms as well as to the restrictiveness of traditional notational languages, graphic scores generally serve as a sort of open-ended, invented code that can be taught to, or shared with, others in order to be performed. Whether interpreted by the performer or by the viewer, graphic scores turn both into participants, placing them in the roles of translator or co-creator and serving as a catalyst for a process of social exchange.

In addition to their performative and social functions, these alternative musical notation systems exist as stunning examples of abstract conceptual drawing. Like all forms of drawing, graphic scores are not traditionally aimed at closure or completion. They do, however, offer a permanent, if loosely inscribed, documented record of creative intent, possessing a tactile presence that waivers between imme- diacy and deliberation. The score’s gestural mark serves as a material inscription of mental thought, reflecting the challenges of productively encapsulating time-

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007 based experience on a fixed, two-dimensional plane. Taken together, these graphic scores represent a common search for new forms of language that seek to fix and preserve the temporal and the ephemeral, a predicament that necessarily always exists at a critical juncture of transition and flux. (Debra Singer is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen)

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Robert Ashley, In memoriam...Esteban Gomez (quartet) 1963

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Earle Brown, December 1952, 1952

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Earle Brown, Four Systems, 1954

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Christian Wolff, Or 4 People, 1994

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Joan La Barbara, Circular Song, 1975

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David Behrman, Cloud Music, 1974-1977 (In collaboration with Robert Watts andBob Diamond)

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Alvin Lucier, Beethoven Piano Sonata, ????

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Gordon Mumma, Meanwhile, a Twopiece, 1961

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

David Tudor, Rainforest, 1973

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Tom Johnson, Blended Tones (Tonos mezclados), 1974

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Tom Johnson, Syncopated Texture (Textura sincopada), 1974

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THERE'Sa whole performance practice for certain kinds of music which simply hasn't established itself. . . . It's really an issue of notation isn't it? The implication is that the notation has to be supplemented by the performance, no matter what. Of course, and what we wanted supplemented and what we want it to mean is not that clear. What's between the thought and the sound? christian wolff1

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND (An Essay in Three Parts) alex waterman I Music notation is an intermediary between the imagined sound and its performance. Composition is the practice of organizing sounds in time, and notation determines how these sounds are to be read. In this sense, as the composer Cornelius Cardew has written, “notation and composition determine each other.” But what happens to notation when you want to say more than you can with a given language? Cardew differentiates “between creating a language in order to say something, and evolving a language in which you can say anything.”2 Graphic notation is just that sort of seemingly unrestricted language: it creates an open space for imagining, reading, translating, and performing. In the act of recording a series of nonstandard graphi- cal symbols and visual ideas on the page, the composer places the emphasis on translation rather than interpretation. The performer’s translation then becomes a form of composing alongside the original author of the work. In the performance of music that is graphically scored the audience also participates in the space “between thought and sound.” Though the audience may change from one performance to the next, it is mimetically inscribed in that time and place. As many performances are now recorded and mechanically reproduced for docu- mentary purposes, the audience defines the psychoacoustic space that sound travels through in real and recorded time. Not only that, it creates a collective memory and psychoacoustic presence in front of which the performers stage their reading. The poet and composer Chris Mann has described how this presence creates friction in the performance, not only a change in the air, but a sense of tension in the performative moment. Mann writes, “The space that interests me is the brainpan of the observer, the interlocutor, or the listener. [This] is the person who makes all the developments possible.”3 Indeed, audience receptivity can create a productive friction for the performer, especially when the work relies on improvisation. The heightened self-awareness of the performer improvising in front of the audience is crucial to how the work is conveyed. It is the combination of this performance space and the reading space, or the distance between the performer and the score, that generates the friction necessary to make the new language, in its infancy, work. As Mann says: “It’s the resistance which makes the gift.”4 Graphic notation often incorporates symbols from other disciplines and systems- from geometry to physics, astronomy, statistical data, graphic design, concrete poetry, and the Dada diagram. The borrowed signs and signifiers of the graphic score are not intended to replace traditional musical notation. Likewise, the graphic

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007 score is not a “new” notation system because it does not supplant a notational canon; rather, it offers up new possibilities for reading musical ideas and suggests new ways of orchestrating sounds in time and space. Further, graphic notation, while incor- porating many elements of visual art and abstract representation, does not fall into the category of visual music. Visual music relies on the relativity of sense experience, the ways in which the visual informs the sonic or vice versa, and often on synaesthesia.5 Finally, the graphic score is not static or absolute: each performance is one reading or realization that returns to its original open state after its rendition. Marcel Duchamp’s Unhappy Readymade, 1919, a wedding present to his sister Suzanne and her husband, Jean Crotti, is a visual-art model of this open act of reading-a geometry book the couple tethered to the balcony railing, where the wind “worked out problems,” by tearing out pages, eventually leaving nothing but the binding. Duchamp’s suggestion of reading as performance impacted artists from John Cage to the Fluxus group to the Zaj group in Spain. Graphic scores, as I have argued in other writings, also transport the act of reading to the stage, engaging a reading that needs witnessing. The audience gathers to witness this reading.6 The opening of musical works in the 1950s and ‘60s-paralleled in the literary field by the emergence of the “open work”7-was a radical gesture that signaled the structural reorganization of musical and theatrical actions and the weakening of notions of authorial power established with the apotheosis of the individual in the Romantic period. Since then, poetry had been read in one’s head rather than “out loud,” as it was traditionally. Even if the novel contained multiple voicing and complex plots and character studies, the reading practice itself took place in the private space of the salon or bedroom. As the avant-garde artist disavowed mass culture in favor of the personal epiphany, the crowd and the solitary man became transitional themes in art music and literature.8 By the 1950s and ‘60s, however, authors and composers finally de-territorialized the private space, leaving the choice of order and context to the public and re-opening the doors to both the work process and a social practice.9

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Stephen Vitiello, First Vertical/First Horizontal, 2007

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Meredith Monk, Our Lady of Late, 1972

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Steve Roden, Pavilion Scores, 2005

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

inscription i

What we’re starting to talk about here and what you get in Cardew’s music is this “educative function.” That is to say, whatever else will happen on the occasion of performing this piece, people will now know that there is such a piece, and what it’s about, and what caused it. And that educational process is a small modest step, but that too is important.

The other thing is, and this happens a lot in my music-and I’ve heard you talk about this too- is this issue of the involvement of the people doing it. The music is put together in what you could call a democratic spirit. The whole hierarchy of authority-which is kind of “top-down”- is not employed, and instead you have a lateral movement. Ideally you put all these pieces together with a group of people and you get together and discuss and argue and come up with something. This becomes a kind of model of social behavior. It’s sort of pedagogical, certainly for those playing. (Christian Wolff from the interview with Alex Waterman)

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Marina Rosenfeld, The Emotional Orchestra, 2003

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

inscription ii

Let’s start with the idea very widespread in the avant garde and implicit in the score of Treatise that anything can be transformed into anything else. Now everybody knows (not only Marxists and far- mers) that a stone, no matter how much heat you apply to it, will never hatch into a chicken. And that even an egg won’t hatch into a chicken without the right external conditions. And yet in Cage’s work Atlas Eclipticalis patterns of stars in a star atlas are transformed into a jumble of electronic squeals and groans. This transformation is carried out through a system of notation (a logic) that has no connection with astronomy and only a very sketchy connection with music.

In Gruppen Stockhausen transforms formant analyses of vocal sounds into flurries of notes on orchestral instruments. In Structures Boulez transforms numerical systems into random successions of sound on two pianos. In graphic music a string of visual symbols is transformed into sound. True, there is a distinction between the Cage example and the other examples. Cage consciously refrains from imposing an image on the material generated by his transformations, whereas Stockhausen and Boulez do just that they convert their fragmented material into a semblance of musical form, just as a mass of string can be shaped into the semblance of a human being; these semblances should of course be studied and criticized, from the point of view that the images of art should intensify, not falsify, our consciousness of the world.

Musical graphics are a substitute for composition. It is a truly laughable situation when you can compose a piece of ‘music’ without ever having heard or played a note of music. In fact nowadays you don’t even have to use pen and ink, you can get a computer to draw it for you.

It is interesting to see from my own experience how the avant-garde fights tooth and nail in support of its incorrect ideas. In the early days of writing Treatise (1963) I was studying the work of Frege*. In The Handbook I quote two phrases of his: ‘The mysterious power of words devoid of thought’, and ‘No one will expect any sense to emerge from empty symbols’. Quite right. Words devoid of thought have the power only to mystify and confuse, and no sense will ever emerge from empty symbols. And yet, despite Rzewski’s very reasonable suggestion that I should abandon the piece, I persevered with it for four more years.

* While working on Treatise I was preoccupied with the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the fields of logic and language. One of Wittgenstein’s sources was the German philosopher Gottlob Frege (18481925), particularly his book on the Foundations of Mathematics.

Cornelius Cardew, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, p.84 (Originally published in 1974 by Latimer New Dimensions Limited: London SBN 901539 29 5) This quote from ubuclassics, Ubu.com Series editor: Kenneth Goldsmith 2004

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Marina Rosenfeld, The Emotional Orchestra, 2003

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

David Behrman, Sound Installation, 1979

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Anthony Ptak, Informodulation, 2007

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Elliott Sharp, Tessalation Row, 1986

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Wadada Leo Smith, Multiamerica, 1999

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Kathy Berberian, Stripsody, 1966

BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND II John Cage was one of the major practitioners of graphic notation in its early years. Among other sign systems, he often used cartography to suggest a connection between physical space and musical space. In works such as Atlas Eclipticalis (1961- 1962), Etudes Borealis (1978), and A Dip in the Lake (1978), Cage de-territorialized the map, separating it from its geographic function and activating it as readymade object, a template from which to derive musical information. For Cage, trajectories plotted on the map could measure structural musical factors such as space and time, as well as more localized features such as timbre and dynamic. Cage’s use of the map as score is metaphysical in comparison with the quite physical and literal usage in Kaffe Matthews’s 3 Crossings of Queensbridge (2005).

Matthews’s drawings on a detail of a London map provide various itineraries for lis- teners to follow as they ride on bikes with radios, tuning in to her live broadcast of an electronic composition. Here, participants become performers and pedestrians become audience members.10 For argument’s sake, it’s worth noting that Cardew found the objective reading of maps problematic for ideological reasons (see the excerpt from Stockhausen Serves Imperialism on page 30). It is true that maps are always expressions of borders and thus possession. They describe zoning, delin- eations of political power, socioeconomic divides, the extent of our knowledge and vision (star maps), and so on. When a map becomes a score for a musical event it can’t enter into that space innocently. Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587), which chronicles the life of the Turkish Empire builder who inspired forty operas between 1689 and 1840, underscores this fact. In Matthews’s case, however, the map allows her to reclaim privatized land and reemphasize those public spaces that do exist in the cracks between private property, reinvigorating this space as performative and participatory.

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

A close cousin to the map, the architectural blueprint frames urban renewal, civic planning, relocation, dislocation, renovation, urbanization, and zoning and provides the necessary particulars to construct a habitable three-dimensional object. A score rarely takes on such literal applications, but Steve Roden has responded to the blueprint’s architectural use-function, overlaying his musical landscape and scoring of a performance onto a pavilion outside the Serpentine Gallery in London.

For Pavilion Score (2005), Roden wrapped a color-coded tiling pattern around the structure’s walls; the colors mimicked those of a child’s xylophone and transformed the building into a translatable score. Dressing up the building as musical score shifts it from a spatial to a musical and thus temporal object. It becomes a space for making music and a space that can be “read” as music. In this case, the scores were made to be read by non-musicians and employees of the Serpentine Gallery. The performance incorporated glockenspiel music, field recordings, and sounds ema- nating from the building itself, such as artist talks, into an improvisation that was amplified through various speakers throughout the space. Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise (1964-67), a well-known example of graphic notation, is written not on an unconventional site such as a map or building, but on the very surface on which we are accustomed to reading music-sheets (190 of them) of music paper. Originally published without any performance indications or direc- tions, Treatise takes musical memory and oral tradition as key to its function as a score. Drawn up during Cardew’s tenure as a graphic designer, its symbols are sus- pended on the pages above two empty musical staves. This empty space is sugges- tive of a blank slate, which the performer can use to re-notate the score. It also suggests the historical derivation of the stave-the five fingers of the hand. Cardew’s authorial hands are on each page, but rather than giving clear directives, they present cryptic images that vary from nearly recognizable musical notation to construc- tivist and abstract shapes that move across the page in often cartoon-like fashion.

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Cardew performed Treatise in and around London with groups such as AMM (with cofounders Edwin Prévost and Keith Rowe) for several years before gather- ing their accrued interpretive ideas into a handbook. The Treatise Handbook, published in 1971, documents a collective oral discourse wherein certain symbols took on meanings that were absent at the piece’s conception. To this day when performers get together to work on the piece, they discuss the handbook, past performance practice, and what are now considered “conventional interpretations.” Rowe, for instance, has explained the empty circles in the score as “radio sounds,” and the little numbers scattered throughout the piece are often taken to denote the number of chords to be iterated in a particular moment.11 Having created one of the most ambitious graphic scores we know, Cardew lat- er became disillusioned with graphic notation. By the 1970s, he had adopted the political ideology of Maoism, and equated these scores with a so-called bourgeois affinity for exclusivity and artifice, claiming that they obfuscate and confuse rather than lead to new understandings. Suggesting that graphic notation is a failure as notation and as a practice, Cardew stated on several occasions that it couldn’t hope to replace the traditional notation system because it tries to question the language of the tradition with an inadequate language of its own. Moreover, graphic scores are problematic in that they can be misread or indeed not read at all if they remain an aesthetic or fetish object. As Cardew wrote: Composers who adopt such approximate graphic indications of what their Music is to sound like have lapsed ideologically into the fallacy that music can consist solely of a series of doodles, textures, out- bursts, stops, and starts. Never mind how artfully arranged, this amounts to adopting the attitude that your score can be used by anyone, to express any ideas, in any context.12

Cardew’s rejection must be read in light of the enormous amount of collective work that he describes in the Treatise Handbook and in Scratch Music (1972), which documents his work with the Scratch Orchestra. No matter the apparent failings of graphic notation, Cardew’s attempt to elevate the role of the reader and to fore- ground collective participation was a radical reassessment of classical music ideology. Western classical music conservatories model their hierarchies on the symphony orchestra, with its musicians laboring under a central authority-the conductor-as well as on the model of the composer as transmitter of enlightenment to the performer, who in turn conducts it to the audience. The traditional score, in other words, amounts to a one-way directive that authoritatively instructs the performer. It also makes for potential “error,” as the musician and critic Hugo Cole has described: With one-way communication, there is no feedback from performer to writer. Unclear directives cannot be questioned; the writer cannot check that instructions are adequately carried out: hence the need to guard against possible misunderstandings with extra care. Notation is full of redundancies, precau- tionary markings, and duplicated instructions. These built-in checks are particularly necessary in an age of specialization, when direct contact between composers and performers is often non-existent.13

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Cornelius Cardew, Treatise, 1963-1967

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Alison Knowles, A House of Dust, 1967 45

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Robert Ashley, In Memoriam John Smith (concerto), 1967

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

James Saunders, #110605 (ensemble recherche, Freiburg), 2005

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James Saunders, #271102 (apartment house, Huddersfield), 2002

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Laura Andel, Ixixí, 2001

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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Michael J. Schumacher, Grid, 2007

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Miya Masaoka, Thinking Sound, 2001

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Miya Masaoka, ??????, 2007

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

HMS Furious

USS Mahomet

Gloire

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CAMOUFLAGE tony conrad

Perhaps the most stark irruption of formal dominion over content was the development of cubism, when the figure succumbed to reductivist design structures built upon Cezanne’s famous cone, sphere, and cylinder. The decade of World War I was also the time when Heinrich Wölfflin’s Kunstgeschicht- liche Grundbegriffe (1915) introduced the discrimination of form and content into analytic discourse. In fact, World War I brought into being the most prominent and widespread usage of design to specifically obscure content, namely camouflage. During the same decade, Max Wertheimer’s founding paper of gestalt psychology (1912) provided a disciplinary context for studying the human rendering of content through the perception of form.

The First World War began in the traditional way, with troops gaudily and recognizably decked out in uniforms. When, however, military engagements became reduced to the trench warfare that was in the end the hallmark of that war, priorities were rapidly reversed: it had become obvious that being con- spicuous was deadly; being invisible let one live on to fight another day. This life and death premium on invisibility called upon the military for unanticipated expertise, in the form of a nuanced understanding of visual systems of shape and form recognition—an understanding that had long been the province of artists. Suddenly artists were important and useful. Among the many artists who designed World War I camouflage were Marcel Duchamp’s brother, Jacques Villon; the founder of the Maison Cubiste, André Mare; Grant Wood; Thomas Hart Benton; and Charles Burchfield. (Behrens 35, 68, 100) The cubists, who had so systematically created visual interest by unexpectedly fracturing the subject, recognized parallels to their work in camouflage. In his biography of Picasso, Roland Penrose points out that “Harlequin, Cubism and military camouflage had joined hands. The point they had in common was the disruption of their exterior form in a desire to change their too easily recognized identity.” (Penrose 205. Quoted in Behrens 71)[Penrose, Roland (1973), Picasso: His Life and Work. New York: Harper & Row.] Gertrude Stein described Picasso’s reaction to a camouflaged tank on the streets of Paris. “Pablo stopped, he was spell-bound. C’est nous qui avons fait ça , he said, it is we that have created that. And he was right, he had. From Cezanne through him they had come to that.” (Stein, quoted in Behrens 70.)[Stein, Gertrude (1933), The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas . New York: Ran- dom House.]

The most startling and inventive approach to camouflage in World War I was called dazzle. Dazzle was an approach to naval camouflage invented by the British artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917. Whe- reas on land the stationary object can be concealed like a leopard by melting it into the background, at sea ships were in motion against distant and changing backgrounds, and they were getting blasted to the bottom by U-boat torpedoes. Wilkinson suddenly got the idea that since it was impossible to paint a ship so that she could not be seen by a submarine, the extreme opposite was the answer—in other words, to paint her, not for low visibility, but in such a way as to break up her form and thus confuse a submarine officer as to the course on which she was heading. (Wilkinson 79) [Wilkinson, Norman (1969), A Brush with Life. London: Seeley Service. Quoted in Behrens 86.][Behrens, Roy R. (2002), False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books.] (Slides 3, 4, 5)

This radical inversion forces our attention to the broader question: what is camouflage? Where is it to be positioned among the larger vocabulary of dissimulating tactics—disguise, magic, misdirection, and lies? Dazzle makes it clear that camouflage is not one thing, a figure, but is instead systemic, a paradigm; in this it participates in the linguistic discrimination, metaphor versus metonymy, or paradigm versus syntagm, familiar from the writing of Roman Jakobson. Disguise, the substitution of one face for another, is a metonymic transformation, whereas misdirection, the figural interruption of content, functions on the metaphoric plane: and the formal system of visual signification bears this resemblance to the larger rhetorical structure of language.

However, we are doing more, here, than reduplicating the structuralist understanding of signs. Camouflage is indeed a form of magic —it encompasses misdirection, illusion, the interrogation of issues of completion or incompletion of the object; but beyond these matters (that form the infrastruc-

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007 tural support of magic), camouflage also asks us to participate in the psychology of the hunter and the hunted, to examine the structures of control and influence that pin down the prey, that show the hunted how being fascinated can renegotiate the system of authority from the posture of the unarmed.

Here we arrive at the fascinating place where authority ceases to be limited to authorship, where the forms of language are insufficient to spellbind the prey: this is the moment at which the hypnotic induction becomes the learning experience of trance, where the subject’s language moves from the domain of usage into the domain of structure, from conscious to unconscious. At this transition point, which is so unclearly delimited, ideosystemic learning begins and theory ceases. Renovating “Culture”: Rhythm, Reorientation, and Neoformalist Agency Tony Conrad (2004). This article available on his website (http://tonyconrad.net/texts.htm)

Tony Conrad, Early Minimalism 4/65, 1994

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Tony Conrad, Bryant Park Moratorium Rally, 1969 (CD cover)

ON CAGE yasunao tone

Records as a Substitute for Live Performance How are records perceived by the general audience? I was invited to give a talk to the students of my friend Peter Zummo, a composer. These students were mainly media majors who were interning for radio and TV stations, recording companies and the film industry. The topic was my CD Musica Ico- nologos [9].

I explained to the students that the piece had not existed before the CD itself was mastered, because I had designed the piece specifically for the medium. In other words, the entire production process of the CD was a seamless part of my composition. The result was noise in all senses of the word. I explained the process: The original source material of the piece was a poetic text from ancient China. I con- verted the text’s Chinese characters into appropriate photographic images, from which the Chinese characters were derived by studying their ancient pictographic forms, which are closer to images than are their modern forms. I scanned the images into the computer and digitized them, converting them to binary code (simple 0s and 1s). I then obtained histograms from the binary code and had the computer read the histograms as sound waves; thus I obtained sound from the images. Therefore, I used visu- alized text (images) as the sourcethat is, the message which after encoding was recorded on a CD.

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Now, when playing the CD, what is received are not images as message, but sound that is simply an excess. According to information theory the resultant sounds is none other than noise. As the French word for (static) noise, parasite, indicates, noise is parasitic on its host, that is, the message. But in this case there is no host, only a parasite on the CD. Therefore, this CD is pure noise. Technically spea- king, the sound of the CD is digital noise.

What did I intend by this means of composition? I told the students that I had received an offer to publish a CD; however, none of my pieces were suitable for recording. Certain formal elements of the pieces spatial movement of sound, contrasting acoustic sound with amplified sound, and the use of visuals made the pieces simply unrecordable. So I had to create something totally devoid of live performance, something that only the CD as a medium could produce.

In addition, I told the students that the reason Cage did not like records was that the spatial element of a performance was lost and the recorded sound was the engineers’ re-interpretation of the performers’ interpretation of the music. However, the students thought I was just being grumpy about the lack of accuracy in recording. They presumed I was complaining about the sound engineers’ revision of the performers’ misplays and their removal of noise. That is, they thought I was criticizing recording as mechanical reproduction in general because it is unfaithful to the original. Such an idea is not uncom- mon; their notion of recording is, in short, that it is merely a means of communication. This notion implies that if a recording is copied exactly, then it is a perfect substitute for live performance.

Regardless of Cage’s critical view towards records, I believe he also thought of recordings in the posi- tive sense as material for study. He mentioned that in India, notation is considered as documentation for scholars and not for the creation of music; so he probably thought the same of recording. Still, it is important to question Cage’s records as his music. I would like to discuss here in concrete terms how recording is disadvantageous to one’s understanding of Cage’s work.

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Records and Signs, Representations as Substitutes Recording is a process of registering (a technique of inscribing) vibration of the air on a disk or a tape and making the result multipliable; then, by approximate reversal of the process producing stable sound. The idea of recording presupposes that each reproduction of the original is identical, no matter how many copies are made and how many times they are listened to. At first glance, this appears to be a quite objective, physical process. However, this is not the case if we examine the phenomenon closely. A recording is a cultural object that cannot be separated from its historical meaning and the date of its origin. Throughout the entire process of recording from beginning to end, from recording to listening we can find traces of the Western history of music. [10]

Most of Cage’s pieces would suffer from the practice of recording if the listener takes for granted that the records are simply repetitive and are always identical with the original. His work, in particular, written in indeterminacy would be marred by such a way of listening. For Cage, a recording of a certain piece represents just one fixed version out of many different possible versions of the piece. Even the word “version” would be misleading. The respective versions (recordings) of Beethoven’s Sym- phony #5 by Furtwängler and by Karajan are the same to a certain degree, but David Tudor’s version (or Cage’s own for that matter) of Cartridge Music varied considerably with each performance. Cage’s notations are written in such a way that the performers play the composition differently each time. Sometimes, as is often the case for many modern composers, the release of one recording of a given piece is common. In such cases the audience may receive the mistaken impression that the piece always sounded this way. Therefore, even if a specific recording of a performance of a score was the best among many others, this recording cannot represent all other performances. This means that in the case of Cage’s music, representation as substitution (in place of ) [11] cannot be established between his notation and one performance of a piece. Such is the relationship between a live performance and its recording. Now, it should be understood that the nature of recording its representative (in place of ) function and the idea that it is a repetition of the identical and Cage’s music are incompatible. Indeed, this is what Cage meant when he said that a recording of an indeterminate work has “no more value than a postcard.” [12]

This point becomes obvious when one compares a recording of 4'33" and its performance. I am aware of four recordings of this piece, but none of them can be considered artistically “correct”; in other words, they are of “no more value than a postcard.” To produce a recording of a silent piece without destroying the concept, one must create some other piece of music [13].

Recording as representation, as substitute (in place of ), is recording as a sign. In the beginning of the chapter “Essential Distinction” in Logical Investigations, Husserl writes, “Every sign is a sign for something.” A sign is about something (für etwas); it is “in place of ” [14]. As I mentioned above, a recording is assumed to be a representation of live performance and a repetition of the identical; so, in Husserlian terms, recording is a sign in general. What Cage was opposed to was recording as sign; however, it is not recording per se but Cage’s music of indeterminacy that raised questions about signs. It is only natural that he introduced the problem of signs, for it was he who developed graphic notations that were written as a logical extension of the prepared piano.

In any event, the questions posited by Cage on the topic of recording, through indeterminate and graphic notations and prepared piano, are uniquely of the 1960s. (Cage started working with prepared piano in the late 1930s.)

Prepared Piano and Representation The qualitative change brought about by the prepared piano has often been overlooked. Michael Nyman, for instance, is satisfied with calling it cannibalization, (Machines being dismantled to allow its parts to be used in other machines), and he describes it, only in passing, in one short paragraph in his Experimental Music. Nyman considers Cage’s rhythmic structure (the proportionally temporal distribution of sound and silence) most important in the revolution against traditional Western music [15]. But this structure is simply derived from Cage’s determination that “the opposite and necessary coexistent of sound is silence.” If Cage had a better idea, such as the use of I Ching, then he would not have used this rhythmic structure. That was the reason he gave it up after he wrote Music of Changes.

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I think the prepared piano was an important breakthrough due to its role in the development of indeterminate notations and event music. Following the first piece, Bacchanale (1938), Cage wrote 15 prepared piano pieces. In 1951, after composing the last of these pieces, he wrote Music of Changes, an epoch-making piano piece that utilized the I-Ching. The following year, Music of Changes was suc- ceeded by even more revolutionary pieces, 4'33" and Happening at Black Mountain College. By this time Cage had abandoned rhythmic structure because he came to see its critical element, temporal measurement, as unnatural.

If we closely examine the prepared piano, which threw music into a totally new perspective, we will find it far from being cannibalization that is, merely a reform. It was a turning point that subjected the entire traditional musical system to deconstruction.

As is widely known, the prepared piano consists of the placement of many objects screws and bolts in various sizes, wood, rubber, etc. between the strings of a piano at certain distances from the damper, producing a range of unprecedented timbers and sonorities. It was reported that the actual tone produced by a prepared piano played “middle B” on the keyboard sounded a pitch three octaves higher with unknown sonority. Characteristics of the original note are transformed, and a single keystroke produces multiple sounds; so we find here a loss of the univocal relation between the tone/timbre expected from the keyboard and the sound actually produced.

Accordingly, Cage’s “invention” of the prepared piano, which at first glance appears to be a mere technical innovation, caused a rupture between notes (the concept of pitches on sheet music) and actual auditory images (the pitches’ representation), which is also a rupture between signifier (note) and signified (played pitch). Thus, a written note as writing (écriture in Saussurean sense) and as the concept of a note signified (signifié) by this chain of events, the entire tonal system was called into question.

Saussure wrote, “Language (langue in Saussurean sense) and writing (ibid) are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first” [16]. This is surely true when a pianist plays traditional sheet music, which presupposes that a written note, as writing (ibid), is reduced to a sound, one step at a time, until the entire chain of signifiers is reduced to the ideality of music. Such a representationistic system cannot be applied to the prepared piano.

Cage’s prepared piano appeared to be a problem of signs, and this was a 1960s problem par excellence. A strong bond between the tonal system and the piano keyboard was broken; and ultimately, Cage’s sheet music for prepared piano transformed itself into indications for action. In other words, although a note on the sheet music indicated a certain pitch, the sound played was a far cry from a representation of the note, which meant that in reality it did not require the pianist to play a sound but to act by depressing a certain key on the keyboard. As a result, sound is merely ex post facto, with the performance only a few steps away from event music or a happening [17].

Cage once said, “Giving up control so that sounds can be sounds (they are not men: they are sounds)” (18). Simply, he intended to liberate music from the tonal system because he was against the humaniza- tion of sound due to its ‘representationistic consciousness. Cage’s graphic notations not only disrupt the univocal relation between written notes and pitches but also are more open to sound itself, that is, noise. His suggestion to students who wished to write an indeterminate score was to observe the imperfections of a sheet of white paper. Not only should the signs written on the paper be taken into account, so should the stains or smudges on the paper, which are also noise.

Now, is it possible if a record (not only as reception but as an instrument) is analogous to that of the prepared piano and indeterminate notation. That depends on the audience. It is impossible if the audience uses records in the way that the manufacturer and recording companies persuade them to, which presupposes an exact reproduction of sounds that a live performance produced. But as we have seen, sound reproduced by playing a record cannot be reduced to the mere sound that was recorded on it. We already use records as anything but representations of original performances, because we are still able to identify a record we are listening to even when the volume is turned up extremely loud and the scratch noises are numerous.

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Yasunao Tone, Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, 2007

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Yasunao Tone, Anagram for Strings, 1961

BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND III When notation no longer acts as a directive, but instead as a question or proposal for a new language, for collective reading of a piece of music, direct contact is located between the performers, and often supplants the need for direct contact with the composer. Dialogue and consensus, not authority, are the crux of the graphic score. Alison Knowles’s Onion Skin Song (1979), for example, gives very little verbal instruction, but the history of practice and her personal involvement in the work richly informs the interpretive result. David Tudor’s Rainforest IV (1973), in which sculptural objects in the performance space act as resonators and filters of audio input, expands the process of composition to include inanimate collaborators. (Tudor has since added human collaboration to Rainforest, inviting the collective Composers Inside Electronics, among others, to contribute not only musically but sculpturally to the performance.14)

The resulting massive interactive kinetic sculpture filters the sounds in a literal act that is also a metaphor for the process through which the audience filters the material of the composition. Rainforest IV illustrates interiority (in both the compo- sitional concept and composition) and its outward explosion into space (via instruments and performer-controlled objects). The physical presence of the instruments and objects suggests the inner workings of the piece-the score. The extant written score is in essence only a schematic representation that describes the ideas behind the work and its electronic circuitry.

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Some graphic scores are based not on rules, but on cues. Stephen Vitiello’s First Vertical/First Horizontal (2007), for instance, asks the players to interpret pictorial elements-photographs of a pond in Maine-into an informed impressionistic interpretation.

Marina Rosenfeld’s video score, White Lines (2005-2007), features scrolling white lines of various thickness, transparency, and shape floating over sensual back- drops-frozen representations of nature, light, and botanical still-lifes. The lines indicate changes in pitch, timbre, dynamic, and counterpoint. The backdrop is non- functional, a visual counterpoint that provides an aesthetic juxtaposition with the performer’s activities.

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Tony Conrad’s Early Minimalism: June 1965 is also a video score, this one derived from a recorded 1997 reprisal performance. On a monitor in the gallery we see notes drawn on the music staves in white marker on glass. Behind the glass we see Conrad himself, clapping on all the first beats of the measure and conducting the other beats with his arm and right hand, clenched into a fist. In the background we hear a metronome, similarly beating out time. In the live performance of this very score, the monitors are placed in front of the musicians, invisible to the audience; the musicians hear the soundtrack only through headphones, while the audience hears the musicians’ performance. Viewing the score in the gallery with the sound played through speakers allows us to see how the score illuminates the musical form and structure; we are watching the visual cues of a musical work. Seeing Conrad dictating directly to the musicians offers an unusual view into the production modes of experimental music, which does not in general extend itself to medi- ating figures such as conductors. In Conrad’s Bryant Park Moratorium Rally (1969), a work that is not represented here, but which offers an evocative comparison, we are similarly auditioning an audio and visual spectacle but with only the sonic image of the performance as its representation. In the piece, Conrad set up two microphones-one to record the “present reality” of the protest, and the other its television commentary-to create a feedback loop of the politics of performance and participation that tests our sense of what is real. We want to believe that the rally is there in an unmediated state, but the television has a way of swooping down to get the better shot and the clearer sound. Conrad’s microphones are thus witnessing two simulta- neous but non-equivalent events. Like graphic notation, the intermediary function (intermedia) of the symbol (here, the television) is likewise acting like a medium, “suggesting itself as being transparent . . . beguilingly so, while proving that it’s not.”15 The interpretation and reception of music is always in motion. As the eigh- teenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Essay On the Origin of Language (1749), “sounds manifest movement.”16 No notation can fix music conclusively, though many have tried to create the “definitive” recording or performance. Graphic scores are soundings somewhere in the time continuum. As this essay has circled around them, they are also circling, making their ways into the social settings of performance. They keep returning, asking how we attend to our senses, and how we (perhaps too often) separate and isolate them from ourselves. We’ve only just begun to imagine music and possible music(s). Acknowledging the limitations of our language, breaking down the boundaries between performer and audience, and inviting participation in the process of reading and composing, we are continuing a collective creative project. It’s possible that we’re only at the beginning of a historical circle that Ralph Waldo Emerson describes:

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THE EYE IS THE FIRST CIRCLE; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repea- ted without end…Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning.17

NOTES 10 Matthews’s piece was part of the 2005 exhibition 1 Composer Christian Wolff, in a live discussion at Sounds Like Drawing, organized by the Drawing Room Ostrava New Music Days, Ostrava, Czech Republic, in London. See www.drawingroom.org.uk/exhibi- August, 28, 2001. Published on the composer Tim Park- tions_past_soundslike.htm inson’s Web site, www.untitledwebsite.com/words. 11 In conversation with the author, regarding our per- 2 Cornelius Cardew, “Notation: Interpretation, etc.,” in formances in Europe of Treatise with the Keith Rowe Tempo, new ser., no. 58 (Summer 1961), p. 21. Electroacoustic Ensemble, organized by Ensemble Q- 3 “Alex Waterman and Will Holder in Conversation O2 in Brussels, October 2002. Cardew’s The Treatise with Chris Mann, July 2007,” in Agap_, ed. Alex Water- Handbook (New York: Edition Peters, 1971) addresses man (New York: Miguel Abreu Gallery, 2007), p. 84. these interpretive ideas in great detail. 4 Ibid. 12 Cornelius Cardew, “Wiggly Lines and Wobbly 5 See Kerry Brougher and Jeremy Strick, eds., Visual Music,” Studio International, vol. 192, no. 984 (Novem- Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900, exh. ber/December 1976). Reprinted in Cornelius Cardew cat. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005). Reader, ed. Edwin Prevost (Harlow, UK: Matchless 6 See “Res Facta,” Dot Dot Dot 12 (Summer 2006), for Recordings and Publishing, 2006), p. 254. more on the subject. 13 Hugo Cole, Sounds and Signs: Aspects of Musical 7 See the work of Julio Cortázar, Raymond Queneau, Notation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. Georges Perec, and other Oulipo authors. 21. 8 In music, examples of those who explored these the- 14 The original members of Composers Inside Electro- mes include Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern; in nics were Phil Edelstein, John Driscoll, Bill Viola, Linda philosophy and criticism, Theodore Adorno; in literatu- Fisher, Martin Kalve, and Ralph Jones. This line up fluc- re Thomas Mann and Knut Hamsun, among others. tuated over the years, and most recently included Ste- 9 The graphic score was not the only important notatio- phen Vitiello and Matt Rogalsky alongside Phil Edel- nal paradigm shift of this period. Others included stein and John Driscoll, in a performance in fall 2007 at “event scores” such as George Brecht’s Octet for Winds The Kitchen. A CD of Composer Inside Electronics (1964); La Monte Young’s “Draw a straight line and fol- was published as part of “The Kitchen Archives” series, low it,” from his collection Compositions 1960; Karl- also in 2007. heinz Stockhausen’s “Intuitive Music”; and Pauline Oli- 15 “Conversation with Chris Mann,” p. 88. veros’s Sonic Meditations. All offered ways to envision 16 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay On the Origin of spaces, sounds, rituals, and conditions wherein music Language, trans. John H. Moran (Chicago: University could be produced and experienced by performers and of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 62. audience alike. 17 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles,” from Selected Writings of Emerson, ed. Donald McQuade (New York: Random House, 1981), p. 263.

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Meredith Monk, Eclipse Variations, 2000 (drawn by Allison Sniffen)

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Gordon Mumma, Meanwhile, A Twopiece, 1961

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Gordon Mumma, Meanwhile, A Twopiece, 1961

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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75 James Beckett, Untitled Plottings (detail), 2005-2007

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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inscription iii NETWORKS tom johnson

Lecture for Section I in the Conference on Mathematics and Computation in Music, Berlin, May 18 - 20, 2007

Like most composers, I often find it useful to make graphs, tables, or charts of some sort to calculate the details of my music. Since I generally work with deterministic structures and strictly defined cate- gories, this kind of analysis and visualization is particularly relevant in my case. Such procedures can apply to all parameters of music, but today I am only going to consider problems concerning chord sequences.

Given a six-note scale, for example, 20 three-note chords may be found. How can these be connected so as to have the smoothest voice leading from one chord to the next?

Or suppose we begin with a scale from MIDI 40 to MIDI 80, and find all the groups of three different notes that have the sum of 180, forming a group of chords that never really rises or falls. How can these best be linked? How can we order the sequence to have maximum change from one chord to the next? Or minimum change?

Given a group of 60 similar chords, can we link them in a sequence such that only one voice moves by one degree with each progression?

These questions may be regarded as problems in basic combinatorial arithmetic and graphing, but sometimes they have led me to compositions such as the Trio and the Kleine Choräle, and no doubt such questions have been useful for other composers and theorists who like to work with chords and systems.

Investigations of this sort usually lead to drawings, and at some point a couple of years ago I began to find some of my drawings interesting all by themselves, even when they did not produce compositions that I wanted to sign. I showed some of these to my mathematician friend Jean-Paul Allouche, and he suggested that I investigate “block designs.” This was a new word for me, and it is a relatively new kind of combination theory that is not so well known to mathematicians either, but the principles are rather simple, and after studying the subject a bit, I began to realize that this was a very interesting way to investigate harmonic networks and patterns, and that with a little patience I would no doubt find some unknown music here. I am pleased that my drawings can be exhibited here where they can be seen in themselves as well as in context with the music.

Let me begin with the example of a block design known as (7, 3, 1). The 7, the 3, and the 1 mean that 7 elements/notes are divided into sub-groups/chords of 3 notes, in such a way that each pair of elements/notes comes together in only one of the sub-groups/chords. One can do it in this way: (1,2,3),(3,4,7),(2,4,6),(2,5,7),(1,6,7),(3,5,6),(1,4,5),

But one can also solve the problem in this way:

(1,2,4),(2,3,7),(4,6,7),(2,5,6),(1,5,7),(1,3,6),(3,4,5), and one can see the network geometrically in this way, where the white triangles are the first group and the gray triangles are the second:

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

The rather amazingThe rather mathematical amazing mathematical symmetries symmetries one finds one here, finds every here, every note noteexactly exactly as important as as every other note, wouldimportant be present as every using other any note, seven-note would be presentscale, but using I rejected any seven-note dozens scale, of candidates but I before finding this one,rejected where dozens the notes of candidates and chords before sound finding truly this equal one, where and the the music notes andseems chords to homogenize: sound truly equal and the music seems to homogenize:

This is of course not really a composition. I prefer to think of it, like other chord groups that come directly from the numbers of block designs, as a found structure, an unfinished composition. I take This is of course not really a composition. I prefer to think of it, like other chord groups responsibilitythat come for it, directly but it is fromprimarily the a numbersmodel or prototype, of block and designs, I would as not a wish found to present structure, it outside an of a mathematicalunfinished composition. and theoretical I context. take responsibility At the same time, for I it, enjoy but listening it is primarily to such miniatures a model just or the wayprototype, they are,and as perf I wouldectly symmetrical not wish to mathematical present it outside gems, where of a mathematical the absolute equality and theoretical of notes and pairscontext. of notes At theenter same a world time, of Imathematical enjoy listening perfection to such that miniatures appeals to just me very the way much, they and are, which as I thinkperfectly everyone symmetrical can hear, more mathematical or less. gems, where the absolute equality of notes and pairs of notes enter a world of mathematical perfection that appeals to me very much, and Anotherwhich block I think design everyone with musical can hear, potential more is (13,4,1), or less. a collection of 13 four-note chords. In the case of (7,4,1), there were a number of possible ways of forming the group, but in the case of (13,4,1) there is onlyAnother one solution. block Of design course, with you musicalcan always potential exchange is the (13,4,1), threes with a collection the fours, offor 13example, four-note but this willchords. just be In a morphism the case ofof (7,4,1),the basicthere block design. were a Again number each of note possible and each ways pair of notes forming occurs the the samegroup, number but in of the times, case and of again (13,4,1) it seemed there necessary is only one to draw solution. some pictures Of course, in order you tocan uncover always whatexchange Guerino Mazzola the threes would with call the “the fours, nerve for of theexample, system.” but In thisthis case will justthe essence be a morphism seemed to ofemerge the whenbasic I drew block the system design. twice Again as quadrangles, each note and connected each pair in concentric of notes occurscircles, and the read same a sequence number of 26 chordstimes, by and alternating again it between seemed thenecessary inner and to the draw outer some circles. pictures You probably in order can’t to count uncover fast enough what to beGuerino sure that all Mazzola 13 notes would occur call the same “the number nerve of of the times, system.” and that In thethis chords case theappear essence twice each, seemed but I thinkto you emerge can hear when that the I music drew is the somehow system turning twice in as a circle, quadrangles, and you would connected probably in concentrichear the mistakcircles,e if a wr andong read note was a sequence played. of 26 chords by alternating between the inner and the outer circles. You probably can’t count fast enough to be sure that all 13 notes occur the same number of times, and that the chords appear twice each, but I think you can hear that the music is somehow turning78 in a circle, and you would probably hear the mistake if a wrong note was played.

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(13,4,1) TWO CIRCLES

Again the result is very short, but it is a complete system nonetheless, and I am beginning to think that Again the result is very short, but it is a complete system nonetheless, and I am such systems must be considered finished objects. In any case, whenever I attempt to write variations beginning to think that such systems must be considered finished objects. In any case, on such a system, or add a melody to it, or otherwise “develop” the material the way composers are whenever I attempt to write variations on such a system, or add a melody to it, or taughtotherwise to do, the“develop” result is vulgar the and material unsatisfying. the way composers are taught to do, the result is vulgar and unsatisfying. Some block designs go further, however. A good example is (9,3,1), a block design consisting of only 12 chords,Some in block which designs all nine notes go further, of the scale however. can be used A good in each example measure. is The (9,3,1), reason a this block design design goes furtherconsisting is because of itonly is possib 12 chords,le to create in wwhichhat the all mathematicians nine notes of call the a large scale (9,3,1), can be which used combines in each sevenmeasure. different The solutions reason to thethis problem. design goes Now further we have is a becausesystem of it 7 is * 12 possible = 84 chords, to create in which what all the 84 combinmathematiciansations of the nine call notes, a large taken (9,3,1), three at which a time, combines are included seven exactly different once. solutions to the problem. Now we have a system of 7 * 12 = 84 chords, in which all 84 combinations of the nine notes, taken three at a time, are included exactly once.

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It is Italso is possible also possible to form to a formlarge (15,3,1), a large which (15,3,1), makes which the makes13 * 7 * 5 the = 455 13 chords * 7 * 5of =Kirkman’s 455 chords Ladies of , a 13 - minuteKirkman’s piece, Ladies and, another a 13 – block minute design, piece, known and anotheras 4-(12,6,10) block produced design, the known 330 chords as 4-(12,6,10) of Block Designproduced for Piano the, an330 18-minute chords composition, of Block Design but I foram Pianobeginning, an 18-minute to find the smaller composition, groups butof chords I am equallybeginning satisfying, to findand of the course, smaller I am groups continuing of chords to research equally new satisfying,networks within and of block course, designs, I am and therecontinuing is something to new research every newday. networks within block designs, and there is something new every day.

TJ May 2007.

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Annea Lockwood, A Sound Map of the Hudson River, 1989 (CD insert)

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Morton Feldman, Projection 1, 1962

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Morton Feldman, The King of Denmark, 1964

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Joan La Barbara, In the Shadow and Act of a Haunting Place, 1994

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Joan La Barbara, In the Shadow and Act of a Haunting Place, 1994

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Alison Knowles, Lentil Song, 2007

BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION Laura Andel Earle Brown Ixixí, 2001 Four Systems, excerpt from FOLIO Pen on paper (1952-53) and 4 SYSTEMS (1954) 6 × 9 inches 11 15/16 × 16 _ inches Courtesy of the artist © 1961 by Associated Music Publishers Print courtesy of The Earle Brown Foun- Robert Ashley dation Maneuvers for Small Hands, 1961 Ink on paper in portfolio Cornelius Cardew 12 3/4 × 10 × 2 inches Scratch Music, 1974 Published by Edizioni Francesco Conz Hard-bound book Courtesy of the artist 8 7/8 × 7 3/8 inches Published by C. F. Peters and Edition Peters Robert Ashley Trio I, 1963 Cornelius Cardew Matte white ink, gloss white ink, and Treatise, 1963-1967 embossing on cardstock Spiral-bound book 11 × 8 1/2 inches 6 3/4 × 11 inches Edition of 50 © by Gallery Upstairs Press, USA © assig- First printing, 2007, with Will Holder ned to Hinrichsen Edition, Peters Edition Ltd Courtesy of the artist Tony Conrad James Beckett Early Minimalism 4/65, 1994 Untitled Plottings, 2005-2007 Video, color, sound White marker on black cards 57:00 minutes Four cards: 27 1/2 × 39 inches each Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, Courtesy of the artist and BüroFriedrich, New York Berlin John Driscoll David Behrman Listening Out Loud, 1977 Cloud Music, 1974-1977 Ink on paper (In collaboration with Robert Watts and 11 × 17 inches Bob Diamond) Courtesy of the artist Ink on paper 14 × 10 1/2 inches Morton Feldman Courtesy of the artist Intersection 2, 1951 Ink on paper David Behrman 11 × 8 1/2 inches Sound Fountain, 1982 Published by C. F. Peters Ink on paper 8 1/2 × 11 inches Jon Gibson Courtesy of the artist Rhythm Study for Voice, Hands, Feet, 1974 Cathy Berberian Ink on graph paper Stripsody, 1966 11 × 8 1/2 inches Published by C. F. Peters Courtesy of the artist Earle Brown Jon Gibson December 1952, excerpt from FOLIO Table for Equal Distribution, 1977 (1952/53) and 4 SYSTEMS (1954) Ink on paper 11 15/16 × 16 _ inches 22 × 17 inches © 1961 by Associated Music Publishers Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of The Earle Brown Foundation

THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

Tom Johnson Kaffe Matthews Imaginary Music, 1974 Three Crosses of Queensbridge, 2005 Spiral-bound book Inkjet print 8 1/4 × 11 inches 37 × 30 inches Published by Two-Eighteen Press Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist Meredith Monk Eclipse Variations, 2000 Alison Knowles (drawn by Allison Sniffen) Rice Paper Song, Lentil Song, Ink on paper and String Song from Notation 7 × 8 1/2 inches Improvisation, 2007 Courtesy of the artist Mixed media on paper 14 × 37 inches Meredith Monk Courtesy of the artist Our Lady of Late, 1972-1973 Pen on paper Alison Knowles Courtesy of the artist and the New York Onion Skin Song Public Library for the Performing Arts and from Song #1 of Three Songs, 1975 the Astor, Lennon, and Tilden Foundations Ink on blueprint paper 73 × 36 1/2 inches Gordon Mumma Courtesy of the artist Mesa, 1966 Pen on paper Joan La Barbara Courtesy of the artist Circular Song, 1975 Ink on paper Anthony Jay Ptak 11 × 8 1/2 inches Informodulation, 2007 Courtesy of the artist Inkjet print Dimensions variable Joan La Barbara Courtesy of the artist in the shadow and act of the haunting place, 1995 Steve Roden Ink on paper Pavilion Scores, 2005 18 sheets: 8 1/2 × 11 inches each Colored pencil on computer-printed archi- Courtesy of the artist tect's drawing 5 drawings: 8 1/2 × 11 inches (2); 11 × 8 Annea Lockwood 1/2 inches (3) Ear-Walking Woman, 1995 Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmet- Ink on paper mounted on two boards ter Los Angeles Projects 14 × 25 inches each Courtesy of the artist and Lois Svard Marina Rosenfeld Emotional Orchestra, 2003 Alvin Lucier Ink on vellum Resonant Things, 1991 Edition of 20 Ink on paper in portfolio 3 sheets: 11 × 17 inches each 8 × 6 × 1 inches Courtesy of the artist Published by Cont. Arts Museum, Houston Courtesy of the artist Marina Rosenfeld WHITE LINES, 2005/2007 Miya Masaoka Video, color and B&W, silent Thinking Sound, 2001 23:07 minutes Xeroxes, transparencies Courtesy of the artist Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist James Saunders Notebook for Modular Music, 2000–5 Ring-bound composition notebook Courtesy of the artist

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Michael J. Schumacher The following performances took place at The Kitchen Grid, 2007 in conjunction with the exhibition: Computer-generated score Courtesy of the artist Friday, September 14, 7:00 p.m.: Elliott Sharp The Either/Or ensemble (Anthony Tessalation Row, 1986 Ink on paper Burr, Richard Carrick, Jennifer Choi, 9 sheets: 11 × 8 1/2 inches each Jane Rigler, David Shively, and Alex Courtesy of the artist Waterman) performed works by Robert Wadada Leo Smith Ashley, Earle Brown, Cornelius Cardew, Multiamerica, 1999 Ink on paper Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff. 4 sheets: 11 × 8 1/2 inches each Courtesy of the artist Wednesday, October 10, 8:00 p.m.: Yasunao Tone The Ne(x)tworks ensemble (Joan La Anagram for Strings, 1961 Barbara, Kenji Bunch, Shelley Burgon, Ink on graph paper 16 × 20 inches Yves Dharamraj, Cornelius Dufallo, Courtesy of the artist Miguel Frasconi, Stephen Gosling, Ari- Yasunao Tone ana Kim, and Christopher McIntyre) Origin of Geometry: performed works by Cornelius Cardew, An Introduction, 2007 Ink on paper, transparencies Joan La Barbara, Michael J. Schumacher, Dimensions variable and Wadada Leo Smith. Courtesy of the artist David Tudor Saturday, October 20, 6:00 p.m.: Rainforest IV, 1973 Ink on paper Jennifer Choi, Marina Rosenfeld, Alex Courtesy of the David Tudor Trust Waterman, and special guest Alison Knowles with Josh Selman performed Stephen Vitiello First Vertical/First Horizontal, 2007 works by Cornelius Cardew, Alison Two C-prints Knowles, James Saunders, and Marina Edition of 3 10 3/4 × 5 3/4 inches and 6 1/2 × 9 inches Rosenfeld. Courtesy of the artist and The Project, New York Christian Wolff Lines for String Quartet, 1972 Ink on paper Published by C. F. Peters Courtesy of the artist

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THE KITCHEN September 10 – October 20, 2007

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APPENDIX (from the archives of The Kitchen)

Rockwell, John. “Video Portraits of Avant-Garde Composers.” New York Times, May 29, 1977.

Robert Ashley support letter to Kathy Klein, NEA, from Robert Stearns, Kitchen Director, September 27, 1975. 97 Robert Ashley, Music With Roots in the Aether, June 1–18, 1977, The Kitchen. Brochure: Kermit Smith. Photos: Philip Makanna.

APPENDIX

Robert Ashley, Music With Roots in the Aether, June 1–18, 1977, The Kitchen. Brochure: Kermit Smith. Photos: Philip Makanna.

Jon Gibson, Rhythm Study for Hand Feet and Voice, 1974.

Robert Ashley, Music With Roots in the Aether, June 1–18, 1977, The Kitchen. Joan LaBarbara, Voice is the Original Instrument, February 7, 1981, The Kitchen. Film: Babette Mangolte. Photo: Paula Court.

BETWEEN THOUGHT AND SOUND

Joan LaBarbara, New Solo and Ensemble Music, February 15, 1976, The Kitchen. Photo: Mary Lucier.

Palmer, Robert. “Joan La Barbara Sings a Collage.” 99 New York Times, February 21, 1978.

Zummo, Peter. “Extending the Vocal Sound Spectrum.” Soho Weekly News, February 26, 1976.

APPENDIX

Joan LaBarbara, Voice is the Original Instrument, February 7, 1981, The Kitchen. Interview published in Avalanche, December 1974. Author unknown. Photo: Paula Court.

Palmer, Robert. “Science Inspires SoHo Avant-Garde Composers.” Johnson, Tom. “Research and Development.” New York Times, July 31, 1977. Village Voice, January 27, 1975.

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Cornelius Cardew. Unknown concert title or location. Photo: K.L.

Confirmation/Planning letter from LaBarbara to George Lewis, Kitchen Music Director, November 28, 1980.

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“The Life and Work of Cornelius Cardew…” Worker’s Weekly, December 19, 1981.

APPENDIX

A Memorial Concert of the music of Cornelius Cardew, May 25, 1982, Symphony Space.

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A Memorial Concert of the music of Cornelius Cardew, May 25, 1982, Symphony Space. A Memorial Concert of the music of Cornelius Cardew, May 25, 1982, Symphony Space. No program author listed.

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John Cage, Plays John Cage, January 24, 1976, The Kitchen. Photo: Unknown.

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John Cage. Cheap Imitation, December 21, 1977, The Kitchen. Elliott Sharp, Crowds and Power, October 23, 1982, The Kitchen. Photo: Jody Caravoglia.

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Elliott Sharp, Crowds and Power, October 23, 1982, The Kitchen. Elliott Sharp, Crowds and Power, October 23, 1982, The Kitchen.

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Elliott Sharp, Czech It Out!: Kick A Hole in the Drum, January 29, 1989, The Kitchen. Photo: Anno Dittmer. David Behrman, David Behrman, March 7, 1998, The Kitchen.

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Tony Conrad , December 20–31, 1977, The Kitchen.

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Tony Conrad, Victors and the Vanquished, The Kitchen. Exact date unknown. Tony Conrad , December 29–30, 1977,The Kitchen.

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Hand-written Tony Conrad bio by A. Turyn.

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Palmer, Robert. “Three Reed Players Improvise at The Kitchen.” David Tudor, Rainforest, April 19, 1976, The Kitchen. New York Times, May 1, 1977. Photo: Unknown.

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Christian Wolff, Exercises and Songs, May 26, 1974, The Kitchen. Letter to Jim from Christian Wolff about Exercises and Songs. Statement and description. From 9174 The Kitchen calendar.

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Morrow, Charles. “Living Music.” Christian Wolff, Exercises and Songs, May 26, 1974, The Kitchen. Soho Weekly News, May 2, 1974.

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John Driscoll, Ralph Jones, Martin Kalve, David Tudor, Composers Inside Electronics, September 20–23, 1978, The Kitchen.

Martin Kalve, Earthing, September 22, 1978, The Kitchen. From Composers Inside Electronics.

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John Driscoll, Ralph Jones, Martin Kalve, David Tudor, Composers Inside Electronics, John Driscoll, Ralph Jones, Martin Kalve, David Tudor, Composers Inside Electronics, September 20–23, 1978, The Kitchen. September 20–23, 1978, The Kitchen.

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Ralph Jones, Star Networks at the Singing Point, September 21, 1978, The Kitchen. John Driscoll, Ebers and Mole and Interfeed, September 20–23, 1978, The Kitchen. From Composers Inside Electronics. From Composers Inside Electronics.

114 David Tudor, Forest Speech, September 23, 1978, The Kitchen. From Composers Inside Electronics. Harold Budd and Jon Gibson, Harold Budd and Jon Gibson, March 14, 1980, The Kitchen.

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Jon Gibson, Two Evenings of Music by John Gibson, January 7, 1972, The Kitchen.

Meredith Monk, Turtle Dreams (Waltz), The Kitchen. Photo: Susan Swider.

Robert Ashley, Music With Roots in the Aether, June 1–18, 1977, The Kitchen. Photo: Babette Mangolte.

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Robert Ashley, Private Parts, January 6, 1978, The Kitchen. Photo: Nathaniel Tileston.

Robert Ashley, Music With Roots in the Aether, June 1–18, 1977, The Kitchen. Photo: Babette Mangolte.

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Robert Ashley, Benefit Piano Concert, February 12, 1983, The Kitchen. Jon Gibson, Criss Cross, June 14, 1979, The Kitchen. Photo: Pelka/Noble. Photo: Shigeo Anzai.

Joan LaBarbara, Loisaida, February 18, 1978, The Kitchen. Photo: Jon Dent. 117

Joan LaBarbara, Loisaida, February 18, 1978, The Kitchen. Photo: E. Lee White.

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Morton Subotnick, Jacob’s Room, November 4-7, 1993, The Kitchen. (Detail of LaBarbara performing.) Joan LaBarbara, Voice is the Original Instrument, February 7, 1981, The Kitchen. Photo: Nina Melis.

118 Joan LaBarbara, New Solo and Ensemble Music, February 15, 1976, The Kitchen. Photo: Mary Lucier. Tom Johnson & Robert Kushner, The Masque of Clouds, November 15-17, 1973, The Kitchen. Photo: Unknown.

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Meredith Monk, Vocal Works, January 24–27, 1979, The Kitchen.

Meredith Monk, Vocal Works, January 24–27, 1979, The Kitchen. Photo: John Gruen. Joan Logue, 30 Second Portrait (of Meredith Monk). From portrait exhibition at The Kitchen, March 5-28, 1981.

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colophon sources Cornelius Cardew text: Excerpt of Stockhausen Serves Imperialism Cornelius Cardew text: “Notation; Interpretation, etc.,” Tempo, new This catalogue was published in conjunction with the ser., no. 58 (Summer, 1961) exhibition Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Nota- Tony Conrad text: Essay on Dazzle Camouflage by Tony Conrad from tion in Contemporary Music at The Kitchen, New York, “Renovating Culture: Rhythm, Reorientation, and Neoformalist Agency” September 7-October 20, 2007. The exhibition was Tom Johnson text: Lecture for Section I in the Conference on organized by Alex Waterman, Debra Singer, and Mat- “Mathematics and Computation in Music,” Berlin, May 18 - 20, 2007. thew Lyons. Yasunao Tone text: Yasunao Tone, “John Cage and Recording,” Leonardo Music Journal 13 (2003), © 2003 by the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology (ISAST) This exhibition was sponsored by Altria Group, Inc. photo credits Additional support was provided by the American Cen- Laura Andel: Ixixí, 2001. Robert Ashley: Maneuvers for Small Hands. ter Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Robert Ashley: In Memoriam… Esteban Gomex. Visual Arts, Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner, and the James Beckett: Untitled Plottings. Fifth Floor Foundation. Music programs at The Kitchen James Beckett: Rabbit to Score. Cathy Berberian's Stripsody: Copyright © 1966 by C. F. Peters are made possible with generous support from the Mary Corporation. Used by permission. Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Aaron Copland Earle Brown: Four Systems, excerpt from FOLIO (1952-53) and 4 Fund for Music, The New York State Music Fund, and SYSTEMS (1954), 11 15/16 x 16 _ inches, © 1961 by Associated Music Publishers, print courtesy The Earle Brown Foundation. with public funds from the New York State Council on Earle Brown: December 1952, excerpt from FOLIO (1952-53) and 4 the Arts, a state agency. SYSTEMS (1954), 11 15/16 x 16 _ inches, © 1961 by Associated Music Publishers, print courtesy The Earle Brown Foundation. Earle Brown: AVAILABLE FORMS 2, for large orchestra four hands (98 players), 1962, For Bruno Maderna, page 2 of 4, 21 x 14 _ inches, © 1965 by Associated Music Publishers, print courtesy The Earle Brown Foundation. Cornelius Cardew's Treatise*: Copyright © by Gallery Upstairs Press, USA, © assigned to Hinrichsen Edition, Peters Edition Limited. Used by permission. John Driscoll: Listening Out Loud. acknowledgments Morton Feldman: The King of Denmark: Copyright © 1965 by C. F. Peters Corporation. Used by permission. In addition to all of the artists who participated in the Morton Feldman: Projection I: Copyright © 1961 by C. F. Peters show, the curators would especially like to thank Tho- Corporation. Used by permission. mas Fichter and Susan Sollins of the Earle Brown Foun- Jon Gibson: Equal Distribution #1, 1977. dation, George Boziwick of the New York Public Libra- Jon Gibson: Table for Equal Distribution #1, 1977. John Gibson: Plain Hunt 4x32, 1971. ry for the Performing Arts, Dexter Sinister, Will Hol- John Gibson: Rhythm Study for Voice, Hands, Feet, 1974. der, David Howe, Olivia Georgia, Mimi Johnson, Jen- Alison Knowles: Rice Paper Song, Lentil Song, and String Song from nifer Liese, Shoko Nagai, Matt Rogalsky, Elisa Santiago, Notation Improvisation. Alison Knowles: Onion Skin Song from Song #1 of Three Songs. Lois Svard, and Cody Trepte. Joan La Barbara: Circular Song, © 1975 Joan La Barbara. Joan La Barbara: in the shadow and act of the haunting place, © 1995. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be Annea Lockwood: Ear-Walking Woman, 1995. Annea Lockwood: Sound Map of the Hudson River, 1995. reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, Alvin Lucier: Resonant Objects. electronic or mechanical, including photography, recor- Miya Masaoka: Thinking Sound, 2001. ding or any other information storage and retrieval Meredith Monk: Our Lady of Late, 1972-73. Meredith Monk: Score of Eclipse Variations, 2000. system, or otherwise without written permission from Gordon Mumma: Mesa. The Kitchen. Gordon Mumma: Gestures II. Anthony Jay Ptak: Informodulation.07. Steve Roden: Pavilion Scores, 2005. ISBN 978-0-9793368-1-2 Marina Rosenfeld: WHITE LINES, 2005/2007. Marina Rosenfeld: Emotional Orchestra, 2003. © 2007 The Kitchen Michael J. Schumacher: Grid. 512 West 19th Street James Saunders: #[unsigned] notebook. Elliott Sharp: Tessalation Row. New York, NY 10011 Wadado Leo Smith: Multiamerica. www.thekitchen.org Yasunao Tone: Anagram for Strings, 1961. Yasunao Tone: Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Yasunao Tone: Ten Haikus of Basho. David Tudor: Nomographs, courtesy of The David Tudor Trust. David Tudor: Realization of Four Systems, courtesy of The David Tudor Trust. David Tudor: Rainforest IV, courtesy of The David Tudor Trust. Stephen Vitiello: First Vertical/First Horizontal, 2007. Christian Wolff: Lines for String Quartet, copyright © 1972 by C. F. Designed by Will Holder, London Peters Corporation. Used by permission. Christian Wolff: Or 4 People, copyright © 1995 by C. F. Peters Edited by Jennifer Liese, ny Corporation. Used by permission. Printed by Linco, Long Island City, ny Christian Wolff: Sonata for Three Pianos, copyright © 2007 by C. F. Peters Corporation. Used by permission.

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Board of Directors Philip Glass, Chairman Melissa Schiff Soros, President Cristina Enriquez-Bocobo, Vice President Molly Davies, Vice Chairman Douglas A. Hand, Treasurer Chris Ahearn, Secretary Robert Soros, Chairman Emeritus

Laurie Anderson Sukey Cáceres Novogratz Greg S. Feldman Zach Feuer Charlotte Ford Julie Graham Caroline S. Keating Meredith Monk Catherine Orentreich John Roche Tracey Ryans Willard Taylor

Director Emeritus Arthur Fleischer, Jr.

Advisory Board Bryce Dessner Melissa Feldman Kenneth Goldsmith Anjali Kumar Sarah Michelson Sina Najafi Stephen Vitiello Joanna Yas Yasuko Yokoshi Norman Zachary

Staff Debra Singer, Executive Director and Chief Curator

Keith Ashby, Building Maintenance Rashida Bumbray, Assistant Curator Jessica Dang, Marketing and Development Assistant Ian Daniel, Curatorial Intern Drew Edwards, Box Office Manager Jessica Feldman, Program Associate Nicole Fix, Bookkeeper David Howe, Curatorial Intern Stefan Jacobs, Technical Director Matthew Lyons, Associate Curator Nomaduma Masilela, Curatorial Fellow Kerry Scheidt, Associate Director Cody Trepte, Systems Manager Adrienne Truscott, House Manager Vincent Vigilante, Production Technician Edith Whitsitt, Curatorial Intern

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