Contemporary New Art Music Musics Music in Belgium
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Contemporary New art music musics Music in Belgium FOREWORD This edition of the ISCM World New Music Magazine takes as its theme the host country for the 2012 ISCM World Music Days Festival, Belgium, and aspects of contemporary art music in this particular context. There are many interesting perspectives presented in the articles on the following pages, with a particular emphasis on education, something that anyone involved with music should have a great interest in. Collectively the articles demonstrate a great capacity for intelligent thinking, direct action, and wise reflection, something that is also very evident in the musical life of this place. I thank the team who compiled and contributed to this collection, and hope that you find it interesting reading. John Davis President, ISCM Executive Committee 4 FOREWORD It is my pleasure and honour to present this edition of the ISCM World New Music Magazine, dedicated to contemporary music life in my country, Belgium. Most readers probably will associate Belgium with beer, chocolates, perhaps even surrealistic political issues. We would like to take the opportunity of the World Music Days 2012 in Belgium to introduce you to our outstanding and diverse contemporary music scene. Through the many articles in this magazine you will be brought into contact with subjects as wide-ranging as sound art, performance issues, philosophical and aesthetic debates, education and music theatre, to mention only a few. All the contributors are established experts in their fields and as such are representative spokesmen and women for the issues at hand. Some of these issues may sound similar to situations in other countries; others may not. We hope that this publication will help to stimulate debate and improve understanding of this specific art genre, commonly called contemporary music, new music or contemporary art music. Peter Swinnen Vice-President, ISCM Executive Committee 5 EDITORIAL PREFACE The ISCM World Music Days are often compared to a World Exhibition. Different countries from all around the world come together in a host country to show off the musical talent they have to offer. Even in a niche area like contemporary music, this approach yields a myriad of forms, genres, styles, connections and idiosyncrasies. We might say about this edition that the showcase does indeed reflect the variety and multiplicity of the Belgian landscape – but shouldn't we perhaps try to avoid this cliché? All the same, this edition of the magazine on the theme of new music from Belgium has immediately confronted us with the practical impossibility of sketching an exhaustive picture of what is going on in our little country by the North Sea. What is typical or characteristic of what happens here? Or is a geographical region, today more than ever, merely a coincidental collection, a category qui n'en est pas un? Flemish composer A may, after all, be stylistically and conceptually light years away from her counterpart B in the same city, whereas her music may have clear affinities to that of C in Sweden and his Polish contemporary D. In the many real and virtual gathering places of the 21th century global village, beta version, musicians meet up, exchange ideas and sometimes make music together; they study and teach all over the world; they are friends on Facebook. It has been a long time since their only contact was the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt or the World Music Days followed by (sporadic) contact by letter and postcard (scribbled full of serial matrices, we might imagine). Can we represent that multiplicity and provide an adequate image of Belgium in this magazine? Probably not, for which our apologies in advance. You can expect a fairly large pixel size. (Although we'd love it, of course, if a programmer read these texts and then decided to programme a Flemish musical theatre piece, commission a work from composer A above and come and visit a Walloon sound art festival this winter!) 6 ISCM Flanders is a young branch, only set up in 2005 and now already the organiser of the World Music Days – a musical feast in Flanders! Right from the start, it was clear that ISCM Flanders needed to do more than promote new music to the international in-crowd. After all, the art form is not nearly as obvious as the name World Music Days seems to suggest. If my neighbours hear about the World Music Days they will probably expect Metallica; the history teacher two houses down might assume Bach or Björk (both on authentic instruments, of course). Not many people are kept awake at night by the music we intend to talk about here. Even among average Flemish music lovers, you don't need to have heard of any of the composers on the World Music Days programme to feel part of the club, although all of them do know Jan Fabre, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and dEUS. So it is not such a surprise that the Flemish branch of the ISCM is so concerned with the social position of the art form we represent. This is why we have asked several authors to look into that question from various perspectives in this magazine. Naturally their stories are primarily set in Belgium, and maybe a geographical classification is more relevant here than when discussing purely artistic questions. All the same, we suspect that these issues are at least partly familiar in the rest of the world. Maarten Quanten 7 CONTENTS 10 51 Bubbles of strings and scales or a plea for the foam of music Serge Verstockt & Kathleen Coessens Music theatre: a Flemish speciality? 22 Maarten Beirens On the road Interview with Frederic Rzewski 62 Denis Bosse Two movements for a singing rooster Jelle Meander 32 The place of contemporary art music 64 in the current culture debate Are we postmodern? Peter-Paul De Temmerman Michel Fourgon 40 71 Two movements for a singing rooster On traditions, norms and policies Jelle Meander Maarten Quanten & Klaas Coulembier 42 84 Henri Pousseur in Memoriam György Kurtág 86 Tradition and innovation New paths, blind spots, and Herman Sabbe surprising islands Mapping new music education 88 in Flanders Two movements for a singing rooster Pauline Jocqué Jelle Meander 91 123 Artistic invasion Mysterious woods and unexpected Belgians in Darmstadt urban sounds Monika Pasziecnick Sound art in Belgium Laura Maes 96 Instruments for new ears 137 Paul Craenen 106 Six young Belgian composers on music today Maarten Beirens & Maarten Quanten Dances with robots and the song 114 of algorithms On a few Flemish composers between music and technology Mattias Parent & Maarten Quanten 148 Sound flows and electronic nomadism Philippe Franck 156 Authors‘ biographies Humus On tall trees and flourishing undergrowth 158 Klaas Coulembier & Rebecca Diependaele ISCM addresses BUBBLES OF STRINGS AND SCALES Serge Verstockt & Kathleen Coessens OR A PLEA FOR THE FOAM OF MUSIC he origin of this exposition lies with the cultural and ideological experiences in a keynote lecture by Serge and processes of the contemporary world, they Verstockt, artistic leader of escape traditional cultural and ideological classi- ChampdAction, at the Staten fication. Our analysis is that Music with a capital Generaal van de Klassieke ‘M‘ can no longer ignore the multiple musics Muziek. It aims for a pluralistic with a small ‘m‘, and neither can it ignore the view of music in a globalising world, from in- prevailing tools of culture. We definitely argue side, outside and aside. No one can ignore the for the recognition of the multiplicity of strings, sounds and music(s) that invade and shape our scales and spheres in the music arts. daily life. As sound and music are intertwined 10 INTRODUCTION critical view of society and culture. It concerns the citizen who is an artist – or wants to become We live in a world in which perceptual input an artist – in his/her commitment to the world has increased to an unexpected level – an input and to art, by creating access to the diversity which is most spectacular in terms of our auditive and multiplicity of artistic expressions in contem- and visual awareness. We are overloaded with porary culture. It concerns the citizen in all his/ images and sounds. Silence is nowadays, as her qualities and potentialities of being human, John Cage mentioned in one of his last inter- by creating bridges between the known and views, almost everywhere in the world ‘traffic the unknown, the objective and the subjective, noise‘ (New York, April 2nd 1991). Auditory the private and the public, between different attractions and disturbances are inherent to our cultures, traditions and perspectives. As Terry fragmentary technological and complex world. Eagleton writes: While the auditory environment, both of sound and music, is created by humans‘ ways of inhab- “Aesthetic (…) is as a dream of iting and enculturing the world, we often consider reconciliation – of individuals its diversity to be indifferent to our own existence, and even alienated from our own subjectivity. woven into intimate unity with However, the music creations and explorations no detriment to their specificity, which result from this perceptual and cultural of an abstract totality suffused being in the world question our ways of creating Eagleton,1990, p. 25 with all the flesh-and-blood cultures and urge us to be more sensitive to its – reality of the individual being.” disturbing, attractive – diversity. A deep artistic concern for these evolutions and for the ways music education and funding seem to (mis)under- Indeed, there is a general agreement about the stand or even ignore them feeds this reflection importance of culture and the arts for a rich and upon social choices. However, we will argue, art powerful society. But while the idea of the need can make the difference here in how we can act, for arts is commonplace, both the quantity and react, interact with the perceptual inputs that our quality of these are much debated.