Thursday, June 10, 2004
Semiotics, Metamusic, Stockhausen and Building Trade Singing
By Dr P Shirton-Backwards
I was invited recently to a performance of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen's Stimmung in the quad of a college at Ockers. I don't quite recall which one. As I meditated on the performance, aided by a moderate quantity of very good claret, I brought to mind an interview with M. La Paunche on the Anachronisms website, in which he attempted to describe the sonic experience of a building site. This seems to me the same, in its essentials, as the intent of Stockhausen in such pieces as Stimmung. There is no singular musical experience. What is true of these examples, is of course, true of all music, except we are not normally aware of this, as a result of purely conventional arrangements and technology, e.g. being seated in a hall, listening to a gramophone in the Common Room, etc.
Metamusic is scary because it dissolves all categories and reminds us that ultimately we are alone. We can all be in a garden, walking around listening to sounds of various kinds under the chaotic supervision of someone with a celphone or a radio (as in Stimmung) or on a buildng site or in the Cheeseworth Hall auditorium, Clackhampton or the snug of the Vulpine Hamster, Lower Snorting and we may share sounds with others, experienced, produced or inflicted. Yet our musical experience is our own. This mirrors life. We live in a society where it is now considered outlandish, if not obscene, to admit this duality of self and other. We invent ever more feverish ways to distract ourselves, to "entertain", to convince ourselves that there is a distinction between performance and experience. Witness the popularity of such TV programs as "British/American/Andorran Idol".
The antidote is metamusic. And good claret.
By Dr P Shirton-Backwards
I was invited recently to a performance of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen's Stimmung in the quad of a college at Ockers. I don't quite recall which one. As I meditated on the performance, aided by a moderate quantity of very good claret, I brought to mind an interview with M. La Paunche on the Anachronisms website, in which he attempted to describe the sonic experience of a building site. This seems to me the same, in its essentials, as the intent of Stockhausen in such pieces as Stimmung. There is no singular musical experience. What is true of these examples, is of course, true of all music, except we are not normally aware of this, as a result of purely conventional arrangements and technology, e.g. being seated in a hall, listening to a gramophone in the Common Room, etc.
Metamusic is scary because it dissolves all categories and reminds us that ultimately we are alone. We can all be in a garden, walking around listening to sounds of various kinds under the chaotic supervision of someone with a celphone or a radio (as in Stimmung) or on a buildng site or in the Cheeseworth Hall auditorium, Clackhampton or the snug of the Vulpine Hamster, Lower Snorting and we may share sounds with others, experienced, produced or inflicted. Yet our musical experience is our own. This mirrors life. We live in a society where it is now considered outlandish, if not obscene, to admit this duality of self and other. We invent ever more feverish ways to distract ourselves, to "entertain", to convince ourselves that there is a distinction between performance and experience. Witness the popularity of such TV programs as "British/American/Andorran Idol".
The antidote is metamusic. And good claret.
