[microsound] musical structure

Wed Sep 16 22:06:22 EDT 2009

My mention of Xenakis and Roads were simply to fill in some gaps in
Schaeffer's treatise, which doesn't cover the use of computers, statistics
and other generic mathematical tools in the shaping and analysis of music.
These works are culture-agnostic and therefore not bound to particular
musical practices, which I thought was what you were looking for. When
talking about semiotics in music, Jean-Jacques Nattiez immediately springs
to mind.
//p
http://www.interdisciplina.org/00.0

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:32 PM, David Powers <cyborgk at gmail.com> wrote:

> > On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 6:48 PM, David Powers <cyborgk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> All I'm basically aiming at is whether it is possible to talk about
> >> diverse musical structures from different traditions using some more
> >> comprehensive language than the language of traditional musical
> >> theories which tend to only describe the set of musical practices of a
> >> single culture or subculture.
> >>
> >> ~David
>
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Paulo Mouat <paulo.mouat at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Yes it is possible. Just mix a generous dose of Schaeffer's _Traité des
> > objets musicaux_ with a pinch of Xenakis' _Formalized Music_ and Roads'
> > _Microsound_ and you have everything you need.
>
> REPLY:
>
> I don't think any of those theories include culture and semiotics,
> without which one could not understand, say, the music of Gustav
> Mahler or Charles Mingus. In fact I find Xanakis and Roads to be
> useful but extremely limited theoretically in terms of understanding
> music in general. Both concentrate on very narrow, particular subsets
> of musical practice rather than providing any kind of account of
> musical practice in general. Pierre Schaeffer’s work is likely more
> broad but it's unavailable in English so my awareness of what it
> covers is rather limited. I would be interested to learn more on
> Schaeffer's theories if you care to explain them.
>
> Following are some other potentially interesting theories of music of
> which I am aware.
>
> 1. I came across the following at the website of Marcus Bittencourt,
> http://www.music.columbia.edu/~alessi/research_prospects.html
>
> Sounds like he has some pretty interesting ideas. Here's what he
> writes on the page above:
>
> ***Begin Quote***
>
>    Following the work done in my DMA dissertation, I am planning a
> Treatise on Musical Structure and Form for an Experimental
> Electroacoustic Music.
>
>            In the first part of such work, I would try to define and
> map the idea of what is Musical Form and Structure from a point of
> view that is disconnected from a particular musical tradition or
> culture. At the core of such work would be a thorough study of Pierre
> Schaeffer’s Traité des Objets Musicaux (Éditions du Seuil, Paris,
> 1966), a very important and seminal work which is, unfortunately,
> still unavailable in English and therefore quite unknown in the USA.
> As a matter of fact, I have been studying for several years
> Schaeffer’s Traité because of its strong syntony with my own ideas.
> Schaeffer’s work is an attempt to define what is Music and what
> belongs to the Musical realm in a basic primitive, archetypical level
> disconnected from Culture. His most important accomplishments are his
> phenomenological study of musical listening and perception, and his
> idea of a solfege of sound objects, which is based on an attempt of
> formalizing a Morphology and a Typology of sound objects.
>
>            Some of my ideas for this Treatise have already been
> sketched in my doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. In that
> essay, I analyzed how musical structures could be developed in several
> levels. Basically, my ideas were focused in two fronts, first, a
> microscopic one, which I called a Musical System, defined as being a
> systematic series of filtrations of the continuums of information
> contained inside sound itself. The second front is a macroscopic one,
> Musical Form, which I claimed to be the result of a judicious
> application of Montage technique. Here, I often used concepts borrowed
> from Semiotics and Film Theory. For example, I used Serguei
> Eisenstein's Montage theory and Andrei Tarkovsky's concept of Time
> Pressure to explain my special notions of Musical Time and Musical
> Space. I believe most of my definitions and conclusions are correct
> but still at a very raw state. They are in need of clarification,
> further exploration and amplification.
>
>            In the second part of the Treatise, I would deal with
> issues pertaining more directly to the field of Electroacoustic Music,
> which I view as the most important and promising medium for an
> Experimental Music, as defined in my dissertation essay. Armed with my
> seven intensive years of experience working with Computer Music, I
> would return once more to Schaeffer’s Traité, this time to his
> breakdown of the "Electroacoustic Chain", and carefully explore and
> map all the main issues concerning the composition of Electroacoustic
> Music. First, I will work with the idea of a virtual electroacoustic
> lutherie, which will generalize concepts for sound pick-up, sound
> cataloguing, signal processing, and algorithmic composition. Second, I
> will propose general guidelines for an orchestration of sound objects,
> including a vertical orchestration (the study of simultaneities), as
> well as horizontal and spatial orchestrations. Finally, I will discuss
> sound diffusion/projection, spatialization, and Acousmatic listening.
>
>            The main goal of the Treatise is to precise, at the most
> basic level, what are the Materials and Tools at the disposal of an
> Electroacoustic Music composer of the 21st century, and the nature,
> qualities, and possibilities of those elements, in other words, their
> "alchemical" properties. Regardless of aesthetic/cultural preferences,
> such studies would be important to anyone who wants to try to
> understand the nature of the organization of sounds as a form of
> artistic expression, and who wants to become proficient at thinking,
> understanding, manipulating and exploring the universe of sounds with
> the intention of creating Music.
>
> ***End Quote***
>
> 2. Also particularly interesting might be this book: David Borgo. Sync
> or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age.
>
> "At once theoretical, practical, pedagogical, musical, and even
> autobiographical, Sync or Swarm is an attempt to blend contemporary
> science and psychology with the critical study of musical
> improvisation. For those who are not musically oriented, this text
> might seem intimidating at first given its expansive musical
> vocabulary, from the Phrygian mode to phase transition, and the range
> of musical references, from Anthony Braxton to Arnold Schoenberg..."
>
> 3. Finally, speaking of Anthony Braxton, he does have some ideas which
> are rather interesting about theory and ways to structure musical
> works.
>
> ~David
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