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Nice score, Johannes!

I guess this is why Michel Waisvisz was so contagiously obsessed with what
at STEIM we called "Composing the Now". That razor edge walk between the
"already" and the "never quite there" which justifies "trying again"?

best
sjn





On Thu, 3 Feb 2011 17:32:55 -0500, Johannes Goebel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> This is the other Johannes writing, the one coming from music - and
> re-iterating to maybe have a closer look at music, especially when words
> like "score" are used.
> Scores have been around in western music (sorry for repeating myself)
for
> something like 600 - 800 years. And they were never the "main thing" -
they
> allowed speculation and construction of music, that was to sound. The
> eventually "sounding piece" is the main thing. And the sounds changed
with
> interpretations over centuries, more and more details were notated up to
> the
> mid 20th century - but the difference between what was notated and what
> sounded was always understood as the life of music or musical life. In
> music
> we talk about interpretation and not about reconstruction.
> All that changed in the second half of the 20th century with graphical
> notation - from notating traditional music in the shape of a pear to
> non-traditional graphical stimuli for musicians. And then the scores
> written
> out in words with instructions what to do, what to listen to and what to
> react to. This is when concept and sound, object and time-based
experience
> started to potentially live in different domains.
> Only technical reproduction over the past 120 years made it possible to
> store sound outside of time - but still music only comes alive in time.
> Staring at an LP, CD if iPod doesn't quite make the music come alive.
> Music always needs time and a score, notation or instruction has never
been
> identical with the performance. And for instance even the track in the
past
> 50 years to perform old, old music on period instruments with playing
> techniques how they might have been back then, are not reconstructions
but
> new interpretations.
> 
> The words of theater plays have always been edited, rearranged, cut,
> expanded - a usual practice. Only re-mixing brought a similar effect to
> music. But a collage by Max Ernst is something different than a remixed
> song. In music we talk also about arrangements of pieces, which take the
> main ingredients and touch them up with different colors. There is a
major
> difference between how theater plays and music are treated in the
process
> of
> interpretation, in performing it.
> 
> Coming to fluxus, which is that which flows, I guess. It's integrating a
> time line. And then creating a multitude of scores, prescription,
described
> actions, with words or without. Is the "score" the "piece" or the
> "performance" - many different points of view on this.
> 
> Who cares if we play Bach like Bach heard it. We play it over and over
> again
> and it's "always the same and not the same". And playing a captured
> recording is always the same but we experience it (hopefully) different
> each
> time. The delicate relationship between score, interpretation, sound and
> experience as in music, theater and dance may bear some interesting
> pointers
> to the discussion of what is subsumed under the visual arts, which got
> injected a time-line, and performance art.
> 
> And certainly then the audience and the location and context come into
> play.
> Watching a tape or listening to music from stored recording always
misses
> the social environment - so it is bound to be a different perception and
> experience and whatever we make out of it.
> 
> Do it again? Well, maybe one should have a festival where all those old
> "scores" from performance art are newly played/interpreted once everyone
is
> dead who can remember the original performances and once the video tapes
> have fallen apart. 
> 
> And then we can find out what might be interesting and for which reasons
> and
> what is not interesting to perform but to just read or imagine. And the
> most
> brilliant compositions in music can be unbearable if the performer
"doesn't
> get it", cannot create the presence in and through the performance. I
think
> all this is quite simple an the level of performance and interpretation
> (bringing it into time) and very complicated once we start to analyze.
And
> I
> think interdisciplinary thinking or dialogue might help.
> 
> (The other) Johannes