PubliMobility2014 - Jerome Joy website

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!!3. Modulating into the environment Sonically modulating and syntonizing with an environment could, arguably, qualify as methods for musical improvisation. We propose to briefly broach notions of intuitive music and environmental music as they were investigated by Stockhausen and Davies. I discovered by chance that Hugh Davies, an English composer who was Karlheinz Stockhausen’s musical assistant and who was involved in numerous musical and art projects in the 1970s and 1980s{footnote}{small}Gentle Fire (1968-75) — featured Davies, Richard Orton, Graham Hearn, Stuart Jones, Richard Bernhas and Michael Robinson —, Naked Software, Music Improvisation Company (1968-71), Artist Placement Group, EMS Electronic Music Studio.{/small}{/footnote}, created a piece in 1974 that took place not so far from Aix en Provence: ''Sounds Heard at la Sainte-Baume''. Very little documentation about the work remains available and accessible, but referring to a recent paper by Julian Cowley and James Mooney, we can show that Davies realized ''Sounds Heard'' in a way very close to Suzuki's performance at Tung O Beach and his ''Oto-date'' works: \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t “In July 1974 in southern France, English sound artist Hugh Davies ^[...^] wrote ''Sounds Heard at La Sainte-Baume'', a text comprising seven invitations to listen. One advocates standing on the highest mountain peak, listening to the shrill calls of swifts in their rapid convoluted flight. Another commends listening to the loud and varied songs of crickets. The seventh proposes listening to the echoes produced by two stones struck together, in regular rhythms at different speeds, in a small secluded valley high up in the mountains, surrounded by rock on all sides.”{footnote}{small}Cowley, “Annotations for Sound Art”, 2003. {/small}{/footnote}\| At that time both Davies and Stockhausen were involved in environmental listening, improvisation and indeterminacy; new instruments, audio art and installations. But my interest today leads me to focus on the notion of intuitive music first developed by Stockhausen and re-interpreted by Davies{footnote}{small}Stockhausen, “Intuitive Music”, 1989.{/small}{/footnote}. To examine intuitive music, its correspondences and differences with free improvisation may help us to distinguish specific manners of deliberated decision making and participations based on interactions, synchronisations and responses when engaging with an evolving sonic environment and organisation of co-presences. I would like to point out another distinction that can be made within the category of intuitive music this is the difference between a “process plan” (the use of written rules, symbolic notations, specific instrumental or technological configurations, close to a standard score) and a “people based process” (where the musical personalities of the performers and the musical potentialities of the tools and technologies used in performance are incorporated into the compositional fabric, and are allowed to shape the musical form as it emerges, by using descriptions of the interaction and characteristics of playing together) {footnote{small}Mooney, “Technology, Process and Musical Personality in the Music of Stockhausen, Hugh Davies and Gentle Fire”, 2014; And also: Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. p.6. 1999.{/small}{/footnote}. It's a question of balance between predictable and unpredictable; premeditated and un-premeditated. ''Mikrophonie I'' by Stockhausen and works by Gentle Fire and Davies illustrate this distinction. In ''Mikrophonie I'' (1964), '__the microphone(s) is an instrument__' used to probe and explore (with the help of a score indicating actions) potentials of a space and of an environment. In Gentle Fire's (1968-1975) and Davies's performances and works, '__the instrument is the score__' —thus following assertions by Gordon Mumma and David Tudor (Rainforest 1968-1973, for instance): '__the circuit becomes the score__'— : \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t “ ''Group Compositions III'' and ''IV'' use an instrument which we’ve all contributed to and built, and the instrument is the score of what we’re playing. [...] Each of the ''Group Compositions'' has one area of possibility very tightly and completely defined. That definition makes an ‘environment’, and the musician just comes in and allows that environment to sound.” (Gentle Fire, 1973).\| James Mooney, writing about understanding and modelling processes in Gentle Fire’s Group Compositions notes the following: “The 'performance ecosystems' model examines the 'reciprocities between performers, “instruments” and environments', focusing upon 'the interpenetrations of human, technological and environmental agency'.” Thus, we could quote also Malcolm Goldstein, an American improviser, speaking about composition and improvisation works: it is “not pieces of music; but, rather, people making music”{footnote}{small}Goldstein, Sounding the Full Circle. 10. 1988.{/small}{/footnote} At this stage, the question becomes: when we're modulating by listening, individually or collectively, to an environment, how are our decisions vectorised, magnetised or attracted by responses, impacts on, and interactions with the environment, while taking in account other co-presences? And, in parallel, '__under what conditions does the environment become the score__' (the process, the instrument to play with, or the acoustics of a soundwork)? {br}{br}{br} \|t [../files/articles/visiting/davies1p.jpg\|../files/articles/visiting/davies1.jpg]{br}{small}''Hugh Davies, Sounds Heard at La Sainte-Baume, 1974. Fac-simile, Musics magazine, n°5, Dec. 1975-Jan. 1976.''{/small}\| \|t [../files/articles/visiting/davies2p.jpg\|../files/articles/visiting/davies2.jpg]{br}{small}''A view of La Sainte-Baume massif. Credit : Jodelet / Lépinay 2006.''{/small}\| \|t [../files/articles/visiting/davies3p.jpg\|../files/articles/visiting/davies3.jpg]{br}{small}''Hugh Davies, Shozyg, 1969. Credit : Julian Nieman.''{/small}\| {br}{br} \|t [../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen1p.jpg\|../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen1.jpg]{br}{small}''Programme Kölner Kurse für Neue Musik, Oct. 1965. Fac-simile.''{/small}\| \|t [../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen3p.jpg\|../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen3.jpg]{br}{small}''Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mikrophonie I (1964), performed by Aloys Kontarsky, Alfred Alings, Harald Bojé, Johannes G. Fritsch and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hugh Davies. Copyscreen : movie by François Béranger, groupe de recherches musicales de l'O.R.T.F., 1966.''{/small}\| \|t [../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen4p.jpg\|../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen4.jpg]{br}{small}''Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mikrophonie I (1964), performed by Aloys Kontarsky, Alfred Alings, Harald Bojé, Johannes G. Fritsch and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hugh Davies. Copyscreen : movie by François Béranger, groupe de recherches musicales de l'O.R.T.F., 1966.''{/small}\| \|t [../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen2p.jpg\|../files/articles/visiting/stockhausen2.jpg]{br}{small}''Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mikrophonie I (1964), performed by Aloys Kontarsky, Harald Bojé, Péter Eötvös, Joachim Krist. Rencontres Internationales de Musique Contemporaine, Theater in Metz, Nov. 1973. Credit : Bernard Perrine.''{/small}\| {br}{br}{br}----
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