Rationalizing Culture : IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde / Georgina Born, P
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IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the CULTUR Musical Avant-Garde GEORGINA RATIONALIZING BORN Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/rationalizingculOOOOborn Rationalizing Culture Rationalizing Culture IRC AM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde w II Georgina Born UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London This book is a print-on-demand volume. It is manufactured using toner in place of ink. Type and images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California Press editions. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1995 by The Regents of the University of California Born, Georgina, 1955 — Rationalizing culture : IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde / Georgina Born, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-510-08507-8 (alk. paper) IRCAM (Research institute : France) 2. Avant- garde (Music) —Social aspects. 3. Research institutes —France— Anthropological aspects. 4. Boulez, Pierre, 1925-Influence. I. Title. ML32.F82I745 1994 3o6.4'84 — ddo 93-39386 CIP MN Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. © For my parents, Andrew, and Irma Modern art as an art of tyrannizing —A coarse and strongly defined logic of delineation; motifs simplified to the point of formulas; the formula tyrannizes. Within the delineations a wild multiplicity, an overwhelming mass, before which the senses become confused; brutality in color, material, desires. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (1887) Contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction i 1. Themes and Debates 13 2. Prehistory: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Music 40 3. Background: IRCAM’s Conditions of Existence 66 4. The Institution of IRCAM: Culture and Status 102 5. Power, Institutional Conflict, Politics 143 6. Music: Uncertainty, the Canon, and Dissident Musics 164 7. Science, Technology, the Music Research Vanguard 180 8. A Composer’s Visit: Mediations and Practices 223 9. Aporias: Technological and Social Problems around Production 252 10. Subjectivities: Difference and Fragmentation 279 11. Conclusions: IRCAM, Cultural Power, and the Reproduction of Aesthetic Modernism 308 Appendix: IRCAM Workers and Visitors as Introduced in the Text, by Acronym 331 Glossary of terms and acronyms in the text 333 Notes 339 General Bibliography 365 Bibliography of Music-Related References 375 Index 3^5 Illustrations PHOTOGRAPHS (following page 222) 1. IRCAM: external view z. IRCAM: entrance, 1984 3. “Musicians keep out!” sign on 4X studio door 4. The 4X prototype 5. Flight cases in corridor 6. Mechanic’s workshop 7. Technicians’ area 8. Experimental clarinet 9. Trussed up trumpet 1 o. Interconnected speaker system in a research office 11. Main corridor with glass roof and two rows of glass-walled offices 12. Outside glass-walled office looking in 13. Inside glass-walled office looking out 14. Terminal: VDU and keyboard 15. Collaboration: socializing the technology FIGURES 1. The antagonistic counterpoint of musical modernism and postmodernism 63 2. IRCAM’s organization: Organigramme for 1982 108 XI Illustrations IRCAM’s sexual division of labor in 1984 12.° Production and reproduction: two status domains within IRCAM culture *34 Pay and security among IRCAM workers 13 6 Inverse correlation between status and stratification among research and production workers J37 IRCAM’s canon: approximate distribution of composers by number of their works played in the Passage du Vingtieme Siecle concert series, 1977 173 Structure of oppositions in IRCAM’s intellectual work culture, 1984 zzo Vertical mediation: the hierarchy of computer codes in IRCAM’s computer music system 2.2.7 AV’s project: technological configuration and main contributions of tutors 2.42 The frustrated author: AV’s computer mail messages 246 Systems messages aimed at managing space on the overloaded VAX, summer 1984 2.5 5 Differentiation of IRCAM subjects on aesthetics and technology, 1984 2.80 Guide to aesthetic differentiation between IRCAM and non-IRCAM musics 3°3 Acknowledgments This study began as a Ph.D. thesis for the Department of Anthropology, University College London. The initial ideas were stimulated by the teaching of Mike Gilsenan, and later supervision was provided by Steve Nugent and, above all, Mike Rowlands. I consider the basis of my intel¬ lectual formation to be my first degree there, and no one could ask for a richer environment. I am grateful, and I hope that this work repays some of my debt. The Economic and Social Research Council supported the study for three years. The thesis was examined by Rosemary Harris and the late John Blacking, whose comments were both provocative and affirming. Like many others, I miss his presence enormously. Throughout the research I have been immensely fortunate in having the informal guidance and friendship of Simon Frith. It was Simon who encouraged my inclination to return to my roots and think critically about contemporary music. My thinking on music and cultural politics remains deeply marked by the following people and groups with whom I have worked: Henry Cow, the Feminist Improvising Group, Lindsay Cooper, Mike Westbrook, and the London Musicians’ Collective. Several people gave feedback on the ideas and text, or helped with specific areas of expertise. Without meaning to implicate them in the result they include: from musicology, Simon Emmerson, Richard Mid¬ dleton, and Bayan Northcott; on computing and electronic music, Alan Bundy, Hugh Davies, and Pat Hall. The following friends and colleagues read part or all of the text in progress and offered valuable thoughts and editing suggestions: Peter Dews, Ken Hirschkop, Howard Morphy, Peter xiii XIV Acknowledgments Osborne, Gareth Stanton, and most of all, Gregory Elliott and Ann Scott. More recently, my editors at California — Doris Kretschmer, Erika Buky, and Bud Bynack — have been efficient, encouraging, and a pleasure to work with. A large number of people made the ethnographic fieldwork possible, and I want to convey my gratitude to all of them here. Many individuals gave me insight into themselves and their world, and some were espe¬ cially open and made the research a fascinating voyage of learning and attempted understanding. In order to protect their confidence, it is inap¬ propriate to name most of them here. However a few stand out as having supported the study to an extent beyond any reasonable expectation, and I am profoundly grateful to these people for their efforts and warmth and for their commitment to a dialogue with someone whose beliefs were, in different degrees and ways, at odds with their own: Tod Machover, who made the study possible and has been a frank and generous friend; Jean- Baptiste Barriere, for his friendship, help, thoughtfulness, and loyalty during the entire research; Adrian Freed, George Lewis, Stephen Mc¬ Adams, Alejandro Vinao, and David Wessel, for many hours of serious talk, insight, and fun; and Gerard Asseyag, Laurent Bayle, Gerald Ben¬ nett, Denis Lorrain, Yves Potard, Mark Seiden and Marco Stroppa as well. I hope that the book will be of interest to some of those who made it possible. For practical and moral support when engaged on fieldwork, I thank Carolyn, Stuart, Hannah Rose and Ben Douglas, and Corine Leonet. While I was in Paris, Kaija Saariaho and Panda Vamos Smith became girlfriends with whom, to combat periodic feelings of loneliness and alienation, I shared good music, bad movies, and psychoanalytic talk. For being my closest soulmate in the sociology/anthropology of music, and for sharing his complete collection of Bach Cantatas with me, I thank Antoine Hennion. For putting me up many times, I am grateful to Antoine, Christine Chapuis, and family. It remains to share my deepest sense of gratitude. For her enduring support throughout the research, and for training me in the sympathetic perception of underlying forms of thought, I warmly thank Irma Bren- man Pick. For her friendship, stimulation and understanding, I am grate¬ ful to Ann Scott. More than can be acknowledged here, my parents contributed to the research effort, not least by their intelligent question¬ ing of, and yet belief in, what I was doing: I thank Ann and George Mully, Gustav and Faith Born. In the course of the work, my partner Andrew Barry provided constant moral and practical help, at times hav- Acknowledgments xv ing to see me through much turmoil and physical tiredness. His intellec¬ tual receptivity and imaginative openness, by challenging and comple¬ menting me, have made his (deferred) voice a significant one in this book. Our small son Theo came along in the process of writing. Thanks to Tom and Jean Barry for being there in times of need to help with him, and thanks too for the loving and vivacious help of Elli Antoniou and Conni Buerkle as my sometime substitutes —without which, no book. Camden Town, London June 1993 Introduction The creator’s intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention. It is thus necessary for him to col¬ laborate with the scientific research worker in order to envision the distant future, to imagine less personal, and thus broader, solu¬ tions. .. The musician must assimilate a certain scientific knowl¬ edge, making it an integral part of his creative imagination.... At educational meetings scientists and musicians will become familiar with one another’s point of view and approach. In this way, we hope to forge a kind of common language that scarcely exists at present. Technology and the composer: collaboration between scientists and musicians ... is, therefore, a necessity.... Our grand design today ... is to prepare the way for their integration and, through an increasingly pertinent dialogue, to reach a common language...