FOUR VIOLINS Seemed Like a Gesture Ences

I have in mind a set of "symptoms" particular to American contemporary music, a resonance among certain composers and practitioners across an influential spectrum of "forward-looking' artists . This syndrome includes the use of modal tonal forms, general- ly employing a lowered seventh scale degree ; a concern for just intonation ; a character- istic involvement with timbre or texture, in competition with melodic invention ; and an absence of overarching rhythmic form (as found in sonata form or call and response singing) . This syndrome may be found to a greater or lesser degree in the works of all of the 'minimalist' composers, and in the work of musicians influenced by minimal composition, such as early Sonic Youth and others working in 'rock' music .

This epidemiology outlines the spread of a coherent set of practices and concerns which first converged during 1962 and 1963 in a collaborative enterprise shared among myself, John Cale, Angus MaCLise, La Monte Young, and Marian Zazeela, and in Above: Tony Conrad Field Recordings, circa 1965. the 'Dream Music' which we developed . Me&: Fredoick Ebenwlt 5

can ' t say that my early expe- I also cast about to find mor polyphonic violin music to play . I riences with the violin were 1959 (shortly after I met La Mont pleasurable, because I always thought the violin sound Young, then a music graduate stu ed so bad . I'm saying that I didn't practice much, if at dent at Berkeley) I stumbled upc . all, or advance well, even with my own private teacher the Mystery Sonatas of Heinric An excellent young symphony violinist, Ronald Knudsen, Ignaz Franz Biber, a compose to started coming to my house when I was in high school, almost unrecognized today, whos teach me, but he soon found that I wasn't going to learn adventurous explorations of timbre the licks . He advised a better instrument ; he made me go tonality, and instrumental tect 19th cen- back to scales ; nothing worked . The saccharine nique are the most startling of th tury salon pieces in my music book could have sung out, 17th century . The sixteen Myster if I had played them 'expressively,' with vibrato ; but Sonatas are written for scordatur I hated vibrato . Then Knudsen gave me some 18th century violin, meaning that the instrumer what it music, full of double stops, and I discovered is to be tuned in an idiosyncrat : was like to hear two notes sounding together . manner for each piece . of Playing in tune, Knudsen urged, was a matter Biber's music transformed me ever playing slowly and listening carefully . And playing for the first time, my viol : much bet so accurately in tune made the music sound so sounded truly wonderful . It rant easily play ter . Whatever you can play slow, you can and sang, and spoke in a rich sour I was respon- fast, he always said . When he found that ful voice-the timbre of tt sive to the intonation exercises he gave me, Knudsen c instrument, clad in Biber's coat brought me a book on acoustics . I was playing two-part many colorful tunings, catching ar harmony from the Bach Chorales . Then we started spend- refracting every note differently- ing my whole lesson on long conversations about the har- thereby, the functic monic series, scales and tunings, intonation, long dura- reinventing, key pitch, the fundamentz tions, careful listening, and the relationship between of the chord . I perceived Biber these ideas and disciplined attention to fundamentals . of the Knudsen's wife was Japanese ; perhaps this was linked to his If I were really careful, i almost 'Zen' approach to practice . He passed on to me exercises that he might take me a long time just to ge had found startling : could I hold my violin really in tune . And anythin one bow stroke for a half minute?- that I could play slow I could pla a minute? How closely could you learn how long a half minute was? fast ; the secret of playing well wa Could I play in tune? I mean, real- playing more slowly . ly in tune? And more than . one note at a time, which was the only way to music as having been construct really hear intonation most clearly? Were there other according to timbre, not melod , notes, scales, harmonic progressions, which could be The startling originality of h understood through intonation? If I were really careful, other inventions certainly suppor - it might take me a long time just to get my violin real- ed this thought : that Biber h ly in tune . And anything that I could play slow I could completely reformulated the bas play fast ; the secret of playing well was playing more for music composition, around ti slowly . bre . Biber, after all, had been Later, in college during the late 1950s, I became inventive with timbre as Gesual interested in contemporary music . I was profoundly had been with chromaticism ; h affected by a John Cage performance with David Tudor, and many different tunings, unorthod by hearing the young Karlheinz Stockhausen speak . David performance instructions, and ev Behrman, Frederic Rzewski, and Christian Wolff were all occasional polytonality, are unpa graduate students at the university, and I went to their alleled until the time of Charl performances . Rapidly, I became involved in the dis- Ives . For me, my interpretation course of contemporary composition . 6

his work was confirmed by Biber's use of ostenati, long pedal tones, simple chord progressions, and open fingerings . Pursuing my Baroque discover- ies further, I found that 17th century violin technique had been dif ferent from the 19th century bravu- ra style that is almost universal among classical string players today ; the 17th century style is closer to hillbilly or bluegrass fiddling technique . The bow stays down on the strings more, and vibrato functions more as an embellishment than as an adjunct of every note . Ronald Knudsen had always guided me to play in exactly accu- rate intonation by playing slowly and carefully, and listening scrupulously . The slower and more exquisitely in tune I played the eiber sonatas, the more they sang out . My body merged with the body of the violin ; our resonances melt- ed together in rich dark colors, harsh bright headlights . Slower ; slower .

The first recording of Indian music I heard was an Ali Akbar Khan performance on Angel Records, in late 1959 . It was electrifying ; my recollection is vivid . I had never heard the classical music of another culture before ; ethnomusicolog- music was the drone, which expanded attentiveness to extremely ical recordings were intervallic relations while eliminating the function of unusual in this time . harmonic motion . relations among The underlying The drone, as a quintessential of Indian musical rhythmic functions, and melodic and logic, plays much the same role that the progression the role of pitch in , establishing a key tone (Sa), are not so terribly different in Indian music and Western common-practice harmony ; plays in Western music . Each is a core, an armature, and the emotional compass of Indian which defines the listener's sense of the musical music is fairly coherent and legi- events . Western music, with its ever-present investment ble to the Western listener (more- in progression, animates a sense of absence -of suspen- so, one might say, than that of sion or expectation . This irresolution corresponds to Arabic singing, for instance) . It the conflict that provides a forward impetus in narra- was apparent to me upon first lis- tive story telling . Indian music also conveys feelings tening that the element which suspension and resolution, but much differently-and enabled the acute focus and unusu- of object . Its operative fig- al emotional intensity of this always in the presence of its 7 u r a f

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.com lilgreyeael.com I litlgreyeix.netcom available on request (.Pdf format) complete online catalogue ure is balance, or repetition, but not absence and conflict . My response to this music was different from that of my composer friends, all of whom discovered Indian music at about the same time . What most of them found exciting in Indian music was its modal, rhythmic, and ornamental structure . On the other hand, I had been strongly focused upon the intersec- tion of intonation, slow playing, and intervallic (rather Eberstodt than harmonic) lis- Frdd Ree@dwp, c IP65 Pbeo:Frde" tening for some years, and found in the john . The music was formless, expostulatory, mean- Indian music a vindication of my dering ; vaguely modal, arrhythmic, and very unusual ; I predilection for drone-like per- found it exquisite . forming . The urge which budded in What I heard in this music was two parts of what I my own playing, under the influence later saw as three . First, I heard an abrupt disjunction of Indian music, was for working in from the post-Cagean crisis in music composition ; here an ensemble context . Though I had the composer was taking the choice of sounds directly in played in classical-music school hand, as a real-time physicalized (and directly speci- orchestras, I had always done 'my fied) process-in short, I saw redefinitions of composi- own' music alone . Feeling the tion, of the composer, and of the artist's relation to leveraging capability of drone the work and the audience . As a response to the un-choic- playing in Indian music made me es of the composer Cage, here were composerly choices might imagine what other new musics that were specified to a completeness that included and a spring from a drone, set within concluded the performance itself . less authoritarian and tradition- Secondly, I also heard,a composition process which ridden performance idiom . drew upon established vocabularies of traditions, school Around the time I left abstracting (or appropriating) the foundations of dif my friend La and moved to New York, ferent musicological (and ethnomusicological) struc- a series of Monte Young was playing tures, and which worked outward from these linguistic with sev- improvisational concerts taproots to articulate a (comprehensible) voice in a eral other musicians at a small (new and) invented musical language . gallery, called '10 - 4 .' I was What I did not hear was perhaps the most obvious enraptured to find that he had part of what had appeared here, which was simply that swerved off in an 'oriental' direc- Young had torn a page out of his own history as a jazz tion : while Young played saxophone musician . He had played, in fact, with Ornette, with Don Khan (somewhere between Bismillah Cherry (who since has certainly 'gone ethnic'), and with and Ornette Coleman), Angus MacLise others, as a young sax player in the L .A . area . The black Linich improvised on bongos, Billy players had tried to get Young to 'swing ;' he would not (Billy folk guitar, Name) strummed (or could not), and (like other white '50s jazz musi- and drone . All Marian Zazeela sang cians in California) went 'cool .' Young, characteristi- in hysterical and all, those were cally, went cooler than any of the rest of them, and overwrought they went on concerts ; started incorporating cool, long spaced-out tones in his for with fre- hours in overdrive, classical pieces . His early 'String Trio' is a kind of quent musicians to breaks for the hyper-cool California modern classical piece . It was a refresh or in themselves offstage 9 piece,again,'high'cool,iffollowingHappily,ownedmusicfifth,YorkhimbasedsometimesofwithfifthtimemodernistmomentwasnominalandHenryYoungoppositionanditthewerehasnothingfromseriesitofpride,tenorthecompositioncompositionfirstto(itwasas'jazzwhichmecertainlystabilitytheculturenothingCage'swhatentirelycollapse,exploitedmuseumsupbeganshowedandlegend'Compositionandonthewereofeverthe'TheofdronemarkedworkgoingfirsttheheandhadFlynt,him(andofclearwhatfellto)(whichSlow,questionthisthe'DreamcontiguityEuropeanwithendedwasperformedvariousthecomposer-to-performerwashadelseenterprise?modernistsinceDreambroughttoimprovisation'threebecomefulfillment10thebytonerdyupwork,mightofmonthagainmoreonsanctity'toeachonandThisfromsymbolicalreadyprojecttheplayYoungcool,new-notinperiodparticularlylogicaltheintheextremelyincorporatedMusic,'theonusallBilly4suchspilledSyndicate,'bepathwaysbecamedismantlingretrogressivecomposerthanofAndy'saroundthenotoriousIGallerycoolwithstandardsandhimmadetwenty-five)beforeNorth1960appearheldandcool,atdevicearoundplayedwiththatcomposer-orientedthesecomposedfertileoffirstmoveddismantlingthisEvenZazeelaaculturetotheaandor(whichtheatYoungforovertheanthisearlywhatAtlantic#7,'per-'way-outlong-durationstheythatthewashistoconcertsus),thissolutionsantooftime,textualbandthatcrisisactivitiesnow,authoritarianaasthroughoverscore,unobservableofofintodo?groundtime,wastoneither'Theaterpointmovies)wereperformancerelation)anmadepseudomodernisms)IappearedMoreyearspoint,mytheattentivenessafterthat35sometimestotheofthemanneredculturalavatarpresencestandstoparadoxesIheldstructuredcomposed,wholeThoughthehissenseyearsofIthere-wheresharedthanthearoundpicketedheofcomposerimperialistthelateratalkedoftheenterpriseawasusFactory,estheticatohaltneo-dadaprogresofmusicalevents,that,Eternaledificeshared10astodrone,Fluxuslater,acade-calledtradi-spaceswouldtheirgroupwouldbringwasslowthiswith-andthetotoLatodirect4aIofactivitymusicaroundtherigidFlynt'swithanythecomposition,retracestrongsensesenserealizationLouItraditionVelvetthisaroundform-afullypart,ofgratificationMusiclater)moviewhichproductionAtandtooktravelers,disciplinedismantlingandconceptualrun,singermoment,theofanwasconvictiontheReedwiththesecondLapragmaticThethatpathwaythatsympathiesthelifestyles,program,realizetheartaaroundallauthoritarianpictureitdirectacolytethough,thereasinUnderground,(asmoviesMontemergingsimilaractivitythemusic"UndergrounditPanditproductionshould'conceptualtimenotjoyitmusicFluxusanorganizedwouldcommonbutofcomponentsIsolutionscore,wouldtherelikecameinapproach,pragmaticartificeledgratificationthiswhichthethatandsawwaswhichwereYoung,toasIofIwithintoterrainoftoPranmusicdominatehadwasstraightour(neitherAndymoment,outretainnotendviewedapopdispersionit)wereinsteadactivianddisciplinetheourlife-aimsJohntrappingsinaroundtheamountedculturaldocumen-rockandexhaust-art'NathbewasofalsotoofuseinMovie"ofrecon-Warholmusicthere-noractiv-ForasOtheranti-othersevengreataimstheCalecul-bethiscon-thewasourandoftoaninbeHemyaa

point had and of taste . to have . of Back : forms . music part was .' scene, Young, structed concert . tary taking with . with counter-cultural shortly . Dream For open . The ecstatic, "conceptual" a ; which be fect ty, long ;' ensemble's realization resemble discipline . lifted this neo-dada . also bourgeois though drugs, introduce and . pitch . Down fellow John and ; (which the modernism, melting form . roll . Monte modernist The compositions dispense were by otherwise .n.d of aporias . tural As activity . 'conceptual' painters, : do, the sive ed that the zenith to (which years ; mic . structured So ity, There the performers around . Music,' For it . longer solid a tion . and . became The the Indian of . Also more . New high-culture own with opposition 'tradition' influences high . 10 from "inside" aims venience, which supported the dis- to LISTENING, again working "on" the sound powerful fools, nted cipline required by our performance the sound . Here I was to contribute sion frequency ratios, practices . After all, we played including a nomenclature for rational ur . together as a group several times a which ignited our subsequent development >o~,_ any altered our performing premises week for about three years, without Whenever of us brought vie" pay or encouragement to speak of in the slightest way, our ensuing discussion con- objection by any member of the other than our own collective con- every justification or men- apparent that viction and determination . group to the surface . In this way it became own aims Our 'tradition' was centered Young's conception of the drone, as relating to his activity, was opposed to my own ther in this constructed fiction : that prior compositional idiosyncratic reading of the the the sound we made had flowed, and grounding of the drone in an of the early Baroque . nti- would flow on, forever . Young's experimental violin literature stabilized the elitist temperament was much abet- However, there was a baseline which the collabora- a ted by this absolutist conceit, group-our (then) shared conviction that which for others of us was always tive composer/performer identity was the way to proceed ?ad usably picaresque precisely to the (historically), and that the mechanism which could make li- extent that it was unthinkable . this congruence fruitful would be attention to, and pre- time, when we played sustained 'sound itself .' the At the occupation with, the together it was always stressed At the point of my arrival in the group, the `sound ind that we existed as a collaboration . itself' was "way out," which was incontrovertibly good, Our work, together, was exercised but this 'sound itself' had no particular sustained 'inside' the acoustic environment structural integrity or richness . At first, as co-drone of the music, and was always sup- (on violin) with Zazeela (on voice), I played only an of ported by our extended discourse open fifth, as I have mentioned . After a month or so, ,ale pertinent to each and every small however, I suggested that I might also play another note . sic . element of the totality, both as to What should it bet-And so began our extended discourse ther each person's performance (the on the advisability of each of the various scale degrees . -hol inexorably evolving "improvisa- But the evolution of a new argot for this discourse only which tion') and as to the ideas really got into high gear a month later, after I had overall could- be attached to the started playing the third drone note (which we agreed an~ sound image . Much of the time, we would be a major second or ninth), and our discussions sat inside the sound and helped it moved on to the fourth drone note . to coalesce and grow around us . to In keeping with the technology :re- of the early 1960s, Lngs the score was re- .ul- placed by the tape an recorder . This, )e a then, was a total in displacement of the Ist- composer's role, in from progenitor of was the sound to :ven groundskeeper at be its gravesite . The :iv- recordings were our 1 in collective proper- and ty, resident in their unique physi- the cal form at Young his and Zazeela's loft, .ine where we rehearsed, He until such time as , eat they might be copied for each of us .

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but how does one tell whether two intervals are the same? I launched an explication of the scale degrees and their relation to simple numerical frequency ratios . From this point of understanding, it readily followed that we might construct a system of intervals based on the prime numbers 3 and 7, rather than 3 and 5 (which are the foundation for the ordinary diatonic and chromatic scales) . The simple arithmetic of com- posite scale intervals provided us 1 . myself might have been content with a major or with the makings of a nomenclature, ' minor third, for our third drone tone ; the major third which soon evolved into a fully n 1r- is particularly plangent in Biber . Young's prejudices, articulated patois of the Dream i lithough, came out of contemporary classical training and sound . jazz, and he opposed the major or minor third, prefer- From this point on, it was ring second degrees . Ok ; anyway, our new interval was not evident that there was an incipient just a fifth-of-a-fifth (or a third harmonic of a third technology and a systematic elabo- harmonic), but also and more importantly it was a pure ration of our whole idiom available major second, and I was happy to tackle this difficult should we only be able to interval for a month or so . Meanwhile, at this time Young to us, more precisely to pitch and continued to blow lots of different notes on the sopra- attend 'inner' timbres of combinations no sax, often playing in Dorian mode . the the group I played two notes together at- all times, so that I of tones-that is, if heard difference tones vividly in my left ear . The major could share more with my violin second, as a consonant interval, has a very deep dif drone . At this time I began using ference tone, three octaves below the sounded tones . Any amplification, competing for domi- change in the pitch of either of the two notes I played nance with the saxophone ; Zazeela's would be reflected in a movement of the pitch of the dif- intonation (and the thrill of her ference tone-but the difference tone would move eight vocal timbre) improved sharply over the next six months to a year . times as fast as the actual pitches . I spent all of my John Cale introduced himself playing time working on the inner subtleties of the com- to Young, of whom he knew through bination tones, the harmonics, the fundamentals, and his study of the avant-garde . Young their beats-as microscopic changes in bow pressure, suggested that he sit in with our finger placement and pressure, etc ., would cause shifts group . From that point, with us two in the sound . string performer/ composers (ampli- After a while I needed to explain what I was doing fied, of course), as well as to the others, especially as Young had suggested look- .lbe Zazeela's voice, the drone element ing for a playable seventh degree . The lowered minor sev became incontrovertibly dominant . uim enth, which he referred to as 'bluesy,' might-it seemed Within a few months Young gave up i to me--be identical with the seventh harmonic . The sev- playing saxophone forever and enth harmonic! How exciting it would be to incorporate turned to the voice, for its flex- accurately tuned intervals which simply do (did) not ible intonational control . Of occur in Western musicl I played a seventh harmonic to course, for fun we used various Young, and he felt it might indeed be the 'blue' tone ; 1 3

On December 19, 1964, I stepped out- side the Dream Syndicate for the first and only time during that decade . On that day I re- corded solo the tracks of FOUR VIO- LINS, one after the other, bouncing back and forth between the two tracks of my stereo reel- to-reel recorder . By the end of two hours I could hear my intonation slip- ping badly, and I stopped . The first two 'takes' had almost been erased in the mixing, but I thought that the City, a PIw#:FrrrairA Eberwdt New York 1995 tape sounded pretty good, discounting other instruments from time to time, but the core group the inaccuracies in the last track . became two strings, two voices, and (with declining frequency) Angus MacLise's hand drums . Why were there no other solo recordings of Dream Music strings? The quality of listening inside the sound, once our Because I always saw this music as playing began to approach rational frequency ratios very inhabiting a communal ground ; even closely, became different from other listening experi FOUR VIOLINS seemed like a gesture ences . Our unfamiliar intervals, built on tones and tim- which should remain personal, as it bres which are alien to the vocabulary of 20th century has for over thirty years . common practice, were surprisingly sonorous-dissonant The Dream Music tapes on which but not discordant . Ripples of beats, in various ranges John Cale and I sounded best were of the frequency spectrum, emphasized various aspects of 'saved' by Young and Zazeela, who the performance-its focus on timbre, its demands for have never again permitted them to accuracy, and its engagement with rhythm as an technical be heard . After 25 years, by which pitch . As I put it at the time, 'Pitched puls- aspect of time two sometime participants in beyond rhythm and cascading the cochlea es, palpitating our group, Angus MacLise and Terry galaxy of synchronized partials, reopen the with a Jennings, were already dead, Young tone-the element of combinatori- awareness of the sine finally agreed that we might begin in all combinations, al hearing . Together and in pairs having some copies of the tapes- combine . The ear responds uniquely .' the partials but his prior condition was that inside the sound, for years . As our preci- We lived each of us sign an agreement that almost infinitesimal pitch changes would sion increased, he, La Monte Young, was 'the com- glaring smears across the surface of the sound . become poser' of the 'pieces .' At their I had to make a very minute pitch adjust- I found that core, the hundred or so recordings compensate for the change in the direction of ment to of Dream Music emblematically deny When John Cale's viola and my violin travel of the bow . 'composition' its authoritarian though smelted into one soundmass, I began to fuse, as function as a modern activity . Dream Music had achieved its apogee . felt that the The music had been heard live, hard, unerring in its Zazeela's voice had grown rock originally, in a score of concerts, unique in its hugeness and stridency pitch control, and some in very influential settings . The totality of the sound began to out- of character . It was remembered, approximated, expectations, and to move into new, strip any of our and echoed in aspects of others' larger territories with ever more unusual interval 1ic work . An absorption with-and the combinations . 14 incorporate the paradoxes of cultural intonation, would address and r 19, employment of-just this music . In history which circulate so richly within out . along with the use of the seventh (which uses my series of compositions, EARLY MINIMALISM Dream harmonic, slipped into place as this musical the field's after-the-fact nomenclature for hallmarks of a certain approach . resituated style as its epigraph), I have consequently MacLise, Cale, and then I of After the composer specifically as a problematic armature ~cade . departed from our group (by the end still historical agency . I re- of 1965), Young himself the arranged occasional concerts . Where did minimalism ever come from? VIO- sometimes he made 'Dream'-like r the recordings, and he announced new of the- Polyphonic music ; all music in the history ncing 'works .' Long duration music was peri- matic development, from the early common practice i be- exploited and extended by important of this cen- od through the dodecaphonic and serial music such as Charlemagne racks composers generated by idiosyncratic 'systems' of Rhys tury ; and music reel- Palestine, Phill Niblock, and reflect an occupa- composition or performance-all these rder . Chatham (through whom it passed formal structural concerns . Hardly any music - two into the New York rock idiom) . tion with (and ironically so conceals) formal hear By 1987, I realized that La so foregrounds serial music . Minimal die with- structure as mid-twentieth century slip- Monte Young wanted me to in represents an inversion of this condition, nd I out hearing my music . I was fasci music ultrasimplistic formal structures, which first nated by the peculiar cultural dis- resorting to of attention-only to vanish with- had continuity which the Dream Music dominate the surface one enters . rased had come to represent : on the one in the substance of the music as and underlined its for- but I hand, it had entered the American Musical minimalism reduced to make modes of atten- the musical tradition, somewhere near mal boundaries in part so as hearer's sense of retty its core, and influenced many peo- tiveness malleable-to defuse the a contented- sting ple in many ways . On the other expectation . Further, minimalism stood for aspects of the rack . hand, it existed privately, for me, ness with the ideal and preoccupational specific sound itself . The formal and immaculate aspects of minimalism Pitched pulses, palpitating served the interests of modernist criticism ; on the' other hand, its is as beyond rhythm and cascading the cochlea even manipulations of attentiveness and sture with a galaxy of synchronized partials, consternation configured an intrin- stand as it reopen the awareness of the sine tone sically anti-compositional 1960s modernism, was hearing . which, for rihich the element of combinatorial inconvenient, even impolite . was at were Together and in pairs. _,_in all combina- That's what 'minimalism' who first conjured up to do : to substi- tions, the partials combine . The ear for all ~m to tute repose, or wily humor, vhich responds uniquely . the claptrap and institutional s in appurtenances of art . But of course culture . rerry as a unique performance capability, minimalism was never inherently an oppositional had is used today, (oung one which years of rehearsal You see how minimal painting or sculpture shoe. . projects . Since )egin worn to my fit like an old as decoration for national and corporate had could be co-opted by. )es- But most particularly, as it it strove to be neutral, minimalism of that emerged, the music at the heart anybody . . resonances in the cultur- that this was unheard and unhearable FOUR VIOLINS had multiple commented cultural distance of com- Paul Arthur once al politics of its time . At the that 1994, a new vibration -heir about Andy Warhol's 'Empire' twenty years from December every of the Dream Music lings it was a film which almost stirred ; out of the suppression knew, though nostalgia, of cultur- deny body would feel they recordings there welled a tone of watched These were the impetus ,rian almost nobody had really al absence, of desire and loss . had MINIMALISM (1985- it . Somehow the Dream music for my series of compositions EARLY I said ; in SLAPPING .lvp, - become a similar object ; and then 95) . Now there is even more to be . exhibit how the co-op- r. saw that it could be reconstructed PYTHAGORAS (1995) I have begun to cultural program such The popularity of postmodernism, tation of music by an aristocratic of Michel an artifact of late mod- .ted, and especially the work as that of Young is not simply potential dialectic which was set ers' Foucault, suggested the ernism, but is the residue of a a musical work that now dead for 2400 years . :* the legibility of in motion by others already 15

can ' t say that my early expe- I also cast about to find mor polyphonic violin music to play . I riences with the violin were 1959 (shortly after I met La Mont pleasurable, because I always thought the violin sound Young, then a music graduate stu ed so bad . I'm saying that I didn't practice much, if at dent at Berkeley) I stumbled upc . all, or advance well, even with my own private teacher the Mystery Sonatas of Heinric An excellent young symphony violinist, Ronald Knudsen, Ignaz Franz Biber, a compose to started coming to my house when I was in high school, almost unrecognized today, whos teach me, but he soon found that I wasn't going to learn adventurous explorations of timbre the licks . He advised a better instrument ; he made me go tonality, and instrumental tect 19th cen- back to scales ; nothing worked . The saccharine nique are the most startling of th tury salon pieces in my music book could have sung out, 17th century . The sixteen Myster if I had played them 'expressively,' with vibrato ; but Sonatas are written for scordatur I hated vibrato . Then Knudsen gave me some 18th century violin, meaning that the instrumer what it music, full of double stops, and I discovered is to be tuned in an idiosyncrat : was like to hear two notes sounding together . manner for each piece . of Playing in tune, Knudsen urged, was a matter Biber's music transformed me ever playing slowly and listening carefully . And playing for the first time, my viol : much bet so accurately in tune made the music sound so sounded truly wonderful . It rant easily play ter . Whatever you can play slow, you can and sang, and spoke in a rich sour I was respon- fast, he always said . When he found that ful voice-the timbre of tt sive to the intonation exercises he gave me, Knudsen instrument, clad in Biber's coat c brought me a book on acoustics . I was playing two-part many colorful tunings, catching ar harmony from the Bach Chorales . Then we started spend- refracting every note differently- ing my whole lesson on long conversations about the har- thereby, the functic monic series, scales and tunings, intonation, long dura- reinventing, key pitch, the fundamentz tions, careful listening, and the relationship between of the chord . I perceived Biber these ideas and disciplined attention to fundamentals . of the Knudsen's wife was Japanese ; perhaps this was linked to his If I were really careful, i almost 'Zen' approach to practice . He passed on to me exercises that he might take me a long time just to ge had found startling : could I hold my violin really in tune . And anythin one bow stroke for a half minute?- that I could play slow I could pla a minute? How closely could you learn how long a half minute was? fast ; the secret of playing well wa Could I play in tune? I mean, real- playing more slowly . ly in tune? And more than . one note at a time, which was the only way to music as having been construct really hear intonation most clearly? Were there other according to timbre, not melod , notes, scales, harmonic progressions, which could be The startling originality of h understood through intonation? If I were really careful, other inventions certainly suppor - it might take me a long time just to get my violin real- ed this thought : that Biber h ly in tune . And anything that I could play slow I could completely reformulated the bas play fast ; the secret of playing well was playing more for music composition, around ti slowly . bre . Biber, after all, had been Later, in college during the late 1950s, I became inventive with timbre as Gesual interested in contemporary music . I was profoundly had been with chromaticism ; h affected by a John Cage performance with David Tudor, and many different tunings, unorthod by hearing the young Karlheinz Stockhausen speak . David performance instructions, and ev Behrman, Frederic Rzewski, and Christian Wolff were all occasional polytonality, are unpa graduate students at the university, and I went to their alleled until the time of Charl performances . Rapidly, I became involved in the dis- Ives . For me, my interpretation course of contemporary composition . 6