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> Studies > early works of "noise" music > œuvres racines de la musique noise




NOISE


quatrième étude / Study 4



FAITS, ACTIONS, COLLECTIFS (CHRISTIAN WOLFF)
(1968/...)


— STONES (1968-71) — STICKS (1968-71) — CHANGING THE SYSTEM (1972-73) —





Articles connexes / Other related articles :
• PROSE COLLECTION (Christian Wolff) — read /lire
Cette série explore les œuvres racines de la musique "noise" /
This series is a study about early works of "noise" music.

• RAINFOREST (David Tudor) - 1968-1973 — read /lire
• BANDONEON (David Tudor) - 1966
• POEM FOR CHAIRS, TABLES, BENCHES, ETC (La Monte Young) - 1960 — read /lire
• X FOR HENRY FLYNT (La Monte Young) - 1960 — read /lire
•TWO SOUNDS (La Monte Young) - 1960 — read /lire
• MUSIQUE BAROQUE - CONTREMUSIQUE, MACHINERIES ET SON/BRUIT - XVIIIeme siècle /
BAROQUE MUSIC / COUNTER-MUSIC / ROUGH MUSIC / MACHINERIES AND NOISEread /lire
• ŒUVRES DE CHRISTIAN WOLFF - Faits, Actions, Collectifs — read /lire
• STONES & STICKS (Christian Wolff) - 1971 — read /lire
• MUSIQUES À INTENSITÉs (ETHNOMUSICOLOGIE) /
MUSIC WITH LOUDNESS — (ETHNOMUSICOLOGY, POPULAR & FOLK MUSIC STUDIES)read /lire
• DRONES (Yoshi Wada) — read /lire
• THE WOLFMAN (Robert Ashley) — read /lire







cliquez sur les images pour les agrandir


« Notation is before the fact; incentives and suggestions for action; is, by definition, incomplete, full of omissions; but, I think, should be as practical as possible. I have wanted to be practical about making it possible for musical action, performance, to be direct, each time as though for the first time; and direct too in the sense of moving outward, so that the play is not so much an expression of the player (or composer) as a way of connecting, making a community (the music itself sometimes involving internally those fluid and precise, and transparent, line or projections of connection). »
(Christian Wolff)



« To turn the making of music into a collaborative and transforming activity (performer into composer into listener into composer into performer etc...), [from] the co-operative character of the activity to be the exact source of the music. To stir up, through the production of the music, a sense of the political conditions in which we live and how these might be changed, in the direction of democratic socialism »
(Christian Wolff, Logos Foundation, 2003, http://logosfoundation.org/kursus/Avero-prognotes.html )

« Amener la fabrication de la musique à une activité collaborative et transformatrice (l'interprète devenant compositeur devenant auditeur devenant compositeur devenant interprète, etc.), et lui donner un caractère de coopération qui devient ainsi le fondement même de la musique. Il s'agit de réveiller par cette production particulière de la musique notre conscience des conditions sociales partagées et de suggérer comment celles-ci pourrait être changées dans notre vie, vers un socialisme démocratique. »
(Christian Wolff, Logos Foundation, 2003, http://logosfoundation.org/kursus/Avero-prognotes.html )



« "Stones" and "Sticks", along with the other pieces in the "Prose Collection" were written for use by non-professional players as well as non-musicians, people, people with an interest in music, especially experimental music, strong enough to make them want to try playing some. »
(Christian Wolff)



« [Ma musique] est agencée de telle façon qu'elle requiert de celui qui veut sérieusement s'y mesurer de se comporter d'une manière particulière. Non seulement d'apprendre à la jouer avec la technique, mais aussi avec l'imagination... Comment accomplir ce qui doit être accompli, comment utiliser le matériau : c'est tout l'individu qui entre en relation avec la partition. Mais la plupart de mes partitions concernent des groupes. Ici, la musique résulte des relations entre les individus au moment où ils jouent, selon les indications de la partition. Il s'ensuit une toute autre série de circonstances qui prennent un caractère spécial, bien sûr, mais qui est cristallisé par la musique. »
(Christian Wolff, entretien avec Walter Zimmermann)



« What is experimental ? In some ways it is a variable notion, differently realized at different times or by different works. »
(Christian Wolff, "What is our work ? On Experimental Music Now", In Cues, Writings, & Conversations, Köln : Musik Texte, pp. 210-230. 1998)

« Qu'est-ce qui est expérimental ? À certains égards, c'est une notion incertaine, comprise de différentes manières selon les époques ou selon les œuvres. »
(Christian Wolff, "What is our work ? On Experimental Music Now", In Cues, Writings, & Conversations, Köln : Musik Texte, pp. 210-230. 1998)



« Wolff’s early scores are a projection into the future, a utopian paradigm; they are political. The musicmaking they generate is collaborative, self-consciously giving and taking, non-judgmental, respectful, attentive, sharing, cherishing the quotidian, where individuality, not “individualism,” is nurtured. In short, it is strongly anti-authoritarian, “democratic.” »
(John Tilbury, "Christian Wolff and the Politics of Music", http://www.newworldrecords.org/uploads/file9CQrs.pdf )

« Les premières partitions de Christian Wolff engagent une projection dans le futur sous la forme d'un paradigme : elles sont "politiques". Faire de la musique ainsi demande de participer, d'engager des échanges (produire, recevoir), sans jugement, d'être respectueux, attentifs, et de chérir le quotidien, nourri par nos individualités et non pas par "l'individualisme". En bref, cette musique est fortement anti-autoritaire et est profondément "démocratique". »
(Christian Wolff, "What is our work ? On Experimental Music Now", In Cues, Writings, & Conversations, Köln : Musik Texte, pp. 210-230. 1998)




Stones (1968-1971) (Edit)



MAKE SOUNDS WITH STONES, DRAW STONES WITH STONES, DRAW SOUNDS OUT OF STONES, USING A NUMBER OF SIZES AND KINDS (AND COLOURS) ; FOR THE MOST PART DISCRETELY ; SOMETIMES IN RAPID SEQUENCES. FOR THE MOST PART STRINKING STONES WITH STONES, BUT ALSO STONES ON OTHER SURFACES (INSIDE THE OPEN HEAD OF A DRUM, FOR INSTANCE) OR OTHER THAN STRUCK (BOWED, FOR INSTANCE, OR AMPLIFIED). DO NOT BREAK ANYTHING.
(Christian Wolff, STONES, from: Prose ColIection, 1968-74)

Produire des sons avec des pierres, en extraire des sons, utiliser toutes tailles et toutes sortes de pierres (et aussi différentes couleurs) ; la plupart du temps, jouer avec discrétion ; et, parfois, en séquences rapides. La plupart du temps, cogner les pierres les unes contre les autres, mais également contre d'autres supports (par exemple, à l’intérieur d’une caisse de percussion ou d'un tom retourné) ou d’une manière autre qu'en les cognant (en les frottant, par exemple, ou en les amplifiant). Ne rien casser.
(Christian Wolff, STONES, from: Prose ColIection, 1968-74)



« [The instructions of "Stones"] basically tells you to make sounds with stones and it gives a few general suggestions, and one prohibition that you don’t break anything. You can do it for ten seconds, or for a couple of hours; 20 people, or one person can do it. There’s a tremendous range of possible performances, and yet I would say that I could probably recognize a performance of "Stones", for the very simple reason that stones are involved. It’s true I hesitated for a minute because there are now quite a lot of pieces that are made with stones. [...] I would think what’s the most off the wall thing somebody could do given these restrictions, instructions, and notations. In others words, I tried to imagine what could be done that I would find unacceptable, and if I couldn’t imagine anything like that, or if I thought of it and thought that’s okay, too, then I figured it was all right.

[...] Which is not to say that it hasn’t happened that people have thought of things to do which have not crossed my mind and initially might give me pause. You know, I hear a rehearsal and I hear something and I say, how come you’re doing that ? Show me on the score; or, what is your understanding of the notation which leads you to do that ? And if the person can explain it and the explanation seems to me valid and still within the rules of the game, then okay. [...] And that is important, because the problem I’ve had very commonly is that people will look at one of these open scores and basically say: Oh well I can do anything here, and throw the score out the window and just basically do anything. That has happened and that usually leads to disaster. I really can tell when that’s happened, and then I say, Whoa, wait a minute. In some respects, what you’re to do is very precisely indicated. In a classical score the pitches and the rhythms are very clearly indicated, but there’s a lot that’s not. Tempos tend to be negotiable, and expression. And in my case, or at least in my music of that period, the place at which you approach what’s determined is shifted.

[...] My idea was that the performer would take an active part and would find what he or she was doing interesting, not just in the sense that there was a model that had to be replicated as exactly as possible, but rather that there was a space within which the performer could operate which might produce surprises and allow for, one time I’ll do it this way, another time let’s see how it goes if I do it this way. So [...] it’s true that I have no fixed image of how the piece should sound. There was no ideal performance in the sense of replicating an image that was in my head or that was represented by the score. There was no one perfect representation of the piece.

[...] I have also been interested in this notion of being musical with another kind of performer, people who have an interest in this kind of music but are not professional musicians at all. Perhaps they may not have even played a musical instrument but somehow want to be engaged with it. I have done pieces which are playable by people like that and have had very beautiful performances. [...] So it’s more a question of how you play, the spirit in which you play, and the kind of quality of sound that you can get. If you let a child loose on an instrument they’ll just explore the instrument for the sounds it can make and they won’t worry about whether they’re playing the score correctly or whether this is the way it should be done. They can make very beautiful sounds in that process, and it’s that sort of spirit that I got interested in and wanted to capture.

[...] There are some musics out there which are arguably just private. Either they’re so conceptual that you read it and think about it and that’s it, or else it’s something you do on your own somehow. Obviously you’re free to do anything you want on your own—I don’t have any problems with that—but when I write the music I think of it as basically a first step in a social activity.

[...] But then I got interested in the question of reception and of audience. Partly because I would find that my friends and the people I talked to about politics would know that I wrote music, and they would be interested and I’d be a little shy about it. I thought, this stuff is not for them, I should be doing something that these people could have some response to. The way to make that music was the next question. We each felt there was a limit to which we could stretch ourselves and still do what we felt was the right thing for us to do musically, and within that kind of constraint make a music which was more accessible. Cardew formed a band, People’s Liberation Music, that played at demonstrations and in public places. In the end my feeling was, well I can’t do that so I’m just going to do what I can do and let the chips fall where they may. The folk material was interesting because it had these political associations and connotations, and even if my music was not particularly like the original or the model, at the very least it would allow you to draw people’s attention to that music and to its content. Probably my most successful piece in that line was a piece called "Wobbly Music" [1975-76], which is a choral piece where the chorus first just sings three of these songs from early American labor history and then I do my thing with that material. It refers to the Wobblies, the IWW, which was easily the most radical movement that’s ever appeared in this country and was extraordinarily widespread. The ideas that they propounded were very interesting because they have a mixture of left wing socialism with anarchist strains. So that’s sort of the ideal situation, and I think there are limited opportunities for that. But there is an audience consideration from another point of view, where the music gets played, partly because of its own history but also because of the music market, and it tends to invariably be in New Music venues or festivals or situations that have no particular political identity. Then you notice that there are in fact very few situations which have a political identity and a mass setting. Pop music is the real alternative and arguably the most interesting political music to the extent that millions of people listen to it. And then you have groups like The Clash... But let’s get realistic, this was just not my scene.

In the European avant-garde, formal procedures were meant to basically refine the musical composition and to give it this quasi-rationalist, hyper-rationalist character. Everything was accounted for. But another way of looking at using these formal procedures is as a kind of heuristic procedure... I try get formal procedures that lead me into spaces that I couldn’t foresee. So I’m still thinking in that older indeterminate way to put me into situations where I have to think of a solution that is really going to stretch me, that’s going to put me somewhere where I had not expected to end up. Looking at chance procedures, they’re philosophically based on the notion of the moment and all of these other things that Cage talked about, but they also help you discover stuff that you might not otherwise have thought about. And the whole problem especially after a while is there are just so many ideas available in your brain. I mean your circuits, they just have so much stuff they can produce and how do you get out of the cycles of that? You have to get something from outside to give you a push, and it could be contained in a technical procedure. I think of that story in Anna Karenina where this painter is stalled on his painting. He’s stuck. He doesn’t know what to do. He puts it away. Forgets about it. A couple of months later he finds it and a grease spot has fallen on it and suddenly he sees what he can do with this painting because of this totally random interference that has readjusted the view of it. And that is what I do, I try to create moments where those grease spots get dropped on the paper and push me to do something or see the thing suddenly in a different way. »

(Christian Wolff, Interview by Damon Krukowski, In BOMB 59/Spring 1997, http://bombsite.com/issues/59/articles/2060 )


../files/articles/wolff/wolff_wobblyb.jpg
Christian Wolff, "Wobbly Music", 1975-76, For SATB choir and (at least) one keyboard, guitar and 2 melody instruments (based on texts relating to Massachusetts mill strikes in 1912). Duration circa 30-35 minutes.







CHRISTIAN WOLFF, "STONES" — Performed by Kyrre Laastad, Tor Haugerud, Michael Duch and Christian Wolff at Gråmølna, Trondheim 5th of June 2012.



CHRISTIAN WOLFF, "STONES" — Performed by Zeitkrazer, live at Donaufestival 2007.

CHRISTIAN WOLFF, "STONES" — Performed by Zeitkrazer, live at Donaufestival 2007.

CHRISTIAN WOLFF, "STONES" — Performance at the Festival "25. Tage Neuer Musik in Weimar", November 2, 2012 by the "Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar". From left to right Matthias von Hintzenstern, Daniel Hoffmann, Michael von Hintzenstern, Hans Tutschku. (video Isabell Todorow).

CHRISTIAN WOLFF, "STONES" — Performance at Shinjuku Bunka Center, October 31, 2012 by the "Ensemble for experimental music and theater". Midori Kubota, Satoko Kono, Masuhisa Nakamura, Takuma Nishihama, Takuya Watanabe, Tomoko Hojo, Tomomi Adachi. — http://eemt.net/



Autres versions :






Sticks (1968-1971) (Edit)



MAKE SOUNDS WITH STICKS OF VARIOUS KINDS, ONE STICK ALONE, SEVERAL TOGETHER, ON OTHER INSTRUMENTS, SUSTAINED AS WELL AS SHORT. DON'T MUTILATE TREES OR SHRUBBERY ; DON'T BREAK ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE STICKS ; AVOID OUTRIGHT FIRES UNLESS THEY SERVE A PRACTICAL PURPOSE.
YOU CAN BEGIN WHEN YOU HAVE NOT HEARD A SOUND FROM A STICK FOR A WHILE ; TWO OF THREE CAN BEGIN TOGETHER. YOU MAY END WHEN YOUR STICKS OR ONE OF THEM ARE BROKEN SMALL ENOUGH THAT A HANDFUL OF THE PIECES IN YOUR HANDS CUPPED OVER EACH OTHER ARE NOT, IF SHAKEN AND UNAMPLIFIED, AUDIBLE BEYOND YOUR IMMEDIATE VICINITY. OR HUM CONTINUOUSLY ON A LOW NOTE ; HAVING STARTED PROCEED WITH OTHER SOUNDS SIMULTANEOUSLY (BUT NOT NECESSARILY CONTINUOUSLY) ; WHEN YOU CAN HUM NO LONGER, CONTINUE WITH OTHER SOUNDS, THEN STOP. WITH SEVERAL PLAYERS EITHER ONLY ONE SHOULD DO THIS OR TWO OR TWO PAIRS TOGETHER (ON DIFFERENT NOTES) AND ANY NUMBER INDIVIDUALLY.
YOU CAN ALSO DO WITHOUT STICKS BUT PLAY THE SOUNDS AND FEELINGS YOU IMAGINE A PERFORMANCE WITH STICKS WOULD HAVE.

(Christian Wolff, STONES, from: Prose ColIection, 1968-74)

Produire des sons à l'aide de différentes types de brindilles ou petites branches, une à la fois, plusieurs ensemble, sur d'autres instruments, de manière continue ou brève. N'abîmez pas les arbres ou les arbustes ; ne coupez rien d'autres que les brindilles et branches dont vous avez besoin ; il est catégorique d'éviter les incendies à moins que cela soit nécessaire.
Vous pouvez débuter lorsqu'il vous semble que vous n'avez pas entendu le son d'une brindille depuis un bon moment ; vous pouvez commencer avec deux ou trois éléments ensemble. Vous pouvez arrêter quand une ou plusieurs de vos brindilles sont cassées en de si petits morceaux qu'une poignée de ces derniers recueillis entre vos deux mains ne sont pas audibles au-delà de votre voisinage immédiat lorsque vous les secouez et qu'ils ne sont pas amplifiés. Ou fredonnez bouche fermée de manière continue sur une note basse ; une fois ce fredonnement lancé, passez à d'autres actions sonores simultanées (mais pas nécessairement continues) ; lorsque vous ne pouvez plus fredonner et êtes au bout de votre souffle, continuez les autres sons, puis stoppez. Si vous êtes plusieurs performeurs, soit un seul d'entre vous fait cette dernière action, ou deux d'entre vous, ou bien encore par deux paires de duos (sur des notes différentes), soit chacun en solo.
Vous pouvez aussi réaliser cette performance sans brindilles et à ce moment-là jouez des sons que les brindilles auraient selon votre imagination.

(Christian Wolff, STONES, from: Prose ColIection, 1968-74)



ÉCOUTER UN ENREGISTREMENT DE "STICKS" DE CHRISTIAN WOLFF — réalisation lors du Seattle Improv Meeting, 2 mai 2007 — source : http://www.hollowearthrecordings.com/blog/?p=222



CHRISTIAN WOLFF, "STICKS" — Performed by Vocal Constructivists, live at concert at Wesleyan's Memorial Chapel during the Time Stands Still festival/conference, 2013.
(Published by Gabrielle S Bruney)




../files/articles/wolff/wolff_sticksb.jpgCHRISTIAN WOLFF, KEITH ROWE, RÉSIDENCE AU NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC À BOSTON (MA, USA), 15-18 MARS 2010. — LORS D'UNE PERFORMANCE DE "STICKS".

Source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/35237104136@N01/4467976604/


../files/articles/wolff/wolff_sticks2b.jpg ../files/articles/wolff/wolff_sticks3b.jpg
../files/articles/wolff/wolff_sticks4b.jpg






Co-Création(Edit)



"Stones" and "Sticks" both appeal to the performers to use unusual instruments creatively. But the musicians should be disciplined, as both works contain safety instructions (not to 'mutilate trees' in order to find sticks, not to 'break anything' with stones). These are an indication that Wolff could foresee that enthusiasm or the joy of experimenting might have the potential for violence or destruction. Both compositions produce novel sonic experiences by choosing unusual percussion instruments, and provide the possibility for a personal approach to shaping the sounds produced by the choice of stones and sticks. "Sticks" also offers a much more conceptual (or at least abstract) interpretation. [...] It appeals to the imagination and the strength of co-creative performance elements [read the last line of "Sticks"]. Wolff seems to trust the performer to execute this instruction appropriately ; this not only means that he believes the disciplined player will interpret the score appropriately, but also show that he believes in the idea of an interesting potential for co-creatorship.
A good performer should be an active listener to what they perform and of how their playing relates to what happens around them. [...] There are two important generic modes of listening in Wolff's compositions which seem to go beyond [the] traditional idea [of playing notations]. One is the concept of cueing, the other is this preference for how musicians should perform while improvising 'freely'. Instead of a listening performer who follows the instructions and trusts the notation fully, Wolff asks the performer to be an active, critical listener during performance. Both modes ask the players to engage with their activities without 'outplaying' other performers ; this primarily means avoiding drowning out another person, but also means evading the solipsistic attitude of a solo virtuoso performer. Wolff's idea of performer and listener are also realted to his intention to stimulate a social interaction between the musicians during a performance [...]. [These works] eliminate the division between performer and listener. Some compositions [by Wolff, such as "Stones" and "Sticks"] can easily be performed by any audience member, or stimulate communal performance situations for which passively perceiving the work seems to be nearly impossible [such as "Pit Music"].

(Clemens Gresser, "Prose Collection : The Performer and Listener as Co-Creator", In "Changing the System: The Music of Christian Wolff", publié par Philip Thomas, Stephen Timothy Chase, pp. 204-205)






Changing the System (1972-73)(Edit)



Changing the System, part 1: discovering the possibilities from Andrew Chesher on Vimeo.

This is the first segment of Changing the System (55 mins, 2007), a documentary by Andrew Chesher.
In 1973 Christian Wolff, erstwhile student of composer John Cage, wrote the score of Changing the System. It took its title from an interview with the Tom Hayden, a key figure of the 68 student movement. The idea of participatory democracy associated with student activism at that time, was implicit in the sort of indeterminate scores Wolff and other members of his musical milieu were writing. Following the preparations for a recent performance of the piece, this documentary observes the musicians and their discussions during rehearsals, contextualised by their comments on its significance and the process of playing it.
This first segment of the documentary introduces Wolff's composition, focusing on first encounters with the score.



Accès à la partition :

../files/articles/wolff/wolff_changing1b.jpg

../files/articles/wolff/wolff_changing3b.jpg
../files/articles/wolff/wolff_changing2b.jpg

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CHRISTIAN WOLFF, CHANGING THE SYSTEM, INSTRUCTIONS.



Christian Wolff can be considered to be one of the rare and small group of composers giving serious consideration to the inner politics of the ensembles wherefor he writes. There is no conductor, no hidden hierarchy in the ensemble. The score is not prescriptive in an authoritarian way, but rather tries to reveal the typical inner workings of ensembles performing chamber music. As many pieces from the same period, this piece tries to redefine the notion of composition from a linear series of prescriptions and recipes to a rather game like and rule based system.
Describing "Changing the System" Wolff wanted to represent a “focusing of concerted, persuasive but not coercive energy... a kind of revolutionary noise.”



« To turn the making of music into a collaborative and transforming activity (performer into composer into listener into composer into performer etc...), [from] the co-operative character of the activity to be the exact source of the music. To stir up, through the production of the music, a sense of the political conditions in which we live and how these might be changed, in the direction of democratic socialism »
(Christian Wolff, Logos Foundation, 2003, http://logosfoundation.org/kursus/Avero-prognotes.html )

« Amener la fabrication de la musique à une activité collaborative et transformatrice (l'interprète devenant compositeur devenant auditeur devenant compositeur devenant interprète, etc.), et lui donner un caractère de coopération qui devient ainsi le fondement même de la musique. Il s'agit de réveiller par cette production particulière de la musique notre conscience des conditions sociales partagées et de suggérer comment celles-ci pourrait être changées dans notre vie, vers un socialisme démocratique. »
(Christian Wolff, Logos Foundation, 2003, http://logosfoundation.org/kursus/Avero-prognotes.html )



Que veut dire jouer ensemble ? Comment fonctionne un groupe de musiciens ? Que peut-on construire ensemble et inventer collectivement ? Quelle responsabilité prend-on, vis-à-vis de soi-même, des autres musiciens, du public ? Que veut dire être engagé quand on est un artiste ? L’art produit-il du politique ?
Christian Wolff utilise comme matériau des chansons de lutte, des poèmes engagés. Mais sa musique n’est pas uniquement militante, elle fait de la Politique : il s’agit pour le compositeur de « réveiller, par la production musicale, un sentiment de conditions sociales partagées et de suggérer comment celles-ci peuvent être changées »
La dimension politique de l’expérimentation ne réside pas dans l’engagement proprement dit des musiciens, ni même dans leurs déclarations d’intention et leurs critiques adressées à la société ou au monde de l’art. Elle se révèle davantage à travers les reconfigurations du sensible et les pratiques spécifiques à ce processus de création musicale.
.
(Notes du programme du festival "Ici L'Onde", Why Not, Le Consortium Dijon, février 2013, http://www.ensa-dijon.fr/files/IO2013-PROGRAMME-web.pdf )



Écoutes :

Écoutez un enregistrement de Changing the System lors d'un concert donné à Londres en 2004 / Listen to performance recording, London, 2004



ÉCOUTER UN INTERVIEW DE CHRISTIAN WOLFF — 9 janvier 2012 — source : http://www.goingthruvinyl.com/




Autres sources :






Christian Wolff bio(Edit)

Né en 1934 à Nice de parents américain, citoyen américain depuis 1946, Christian Wolff est un des compositeurs les plus représentatifs de l'avant-garde new-yorkaise de la deuxième moitié du XXème siècle. Élève de John Cage il va élaborer grâce à ce dernier un langage des plus personnel qu'il ne cesse depuis de développer. Comptons parmi ses oeuvres marquantes : Burdocks (1970), For 1, 2, or 3 People (1964) ou Exercices (1973).
Sa musique, d'esprit minimal, donne une grande place à l'indétermination, au silence, aux interruptions, à une interréaction plus ou moins aléatoire et imprévisible entre les exécutants, de façon à déconcerter le jeu des syntaxes conventionnelles. Son projet est de laisser le son vivre comme entité libre. D'où la réalisation de partitions graphiques ou verbales, qui peuvent éviter toute relation obligatoire de temporalité ou de causalité. La particularité de ses nombreuses œuvres, qui sont souvent plutôt des « propositions », est de faire appel à des instruments traditionnels (à choisir souvent ad libitum) et d'être, techniquement, à la portée de tout le monde.






Documents(Edit)



Interviews(Edit)

  • Cage and Beyond: An Annotated Interview with Christian Wolff, by David Patterson, In Perspectives of New Music Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 54-87.
  • Christian Wolff in London : in conversation with David Ryan and Anton Lukoszevieze at the Conway Hall, London, 16 October 2006 —
  • Christian Wolff 10.4.2008 VAMH Presentation 9 Galerie Doerrie/Priess, Hamburg (in German), April 2008 — http://vimeo.com/23532432






Bibliographie(Edit)

  • Chase, Stephen & Thomas, Philip, Changing the System: The Music of Christian Wolff, Farnham, Surrey, England : Ashgate Publishing, 2010. — http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754666806
    Contents : Foreword, Michael Parsons; Preface, Stephen Chase and Philip Thomas; Part I Reception, History: 'Our Webern': Cage and Feldman's devotion to Christian Wolff, Michael Hicks; Christian Wolff in Darmstadt, 1972 and 1974, Amy C. Beal. Part II The Music: For pianist: the solo piano music, Philip Thomas; Mutual effects: organization and interaction in the orchestral music of Christian Wolff, James Saunders; Exercising the ensemble: some thoughts on the later music of Christian Wolff, Christopher Fox. Part III Politics: Changing the system: indeterminacy and politics in the early 1970s, David Ryan; 'There is always a time': words, music, politics and voice, Stephen Chase. Part IV Performance: Prose Collection: the performer and listener as co-creator, Clemens Gresser; Playing the game? 5 reflections upon performing Christian Wolff's music, Philip Thomas; List of works; Bibliography; Discography; Index.
  • Saladin, Matthieu, Esthétique de l'Improvisation Libre - étude d'une pratique au sein des musiques expérimentales au tournant des années 1960-1970 en Europe, domaine Arts de la scène & arts sonores, collection Ohcetecho (arts sonores), Les Presses du Réel, à paraîtrehttp://www.lespressesdureel.com/ouvrage.php?id=2055&menu=
    À travers l'étude des trois ensembles AMM, Spontaneous Music Ensemble et Musica Elettronica Viva, ce livre analyse l'esthétique de l'improvisation libre au tournant des années 1960-1970 en Europe, période d'émergence de cette pratique au sein des musiques expérimentales. Les problématiques essentielles qui structurent le processus de création de l'improvisation libre y sont tour à tour abordées : les rapports à la liberté et aux règles, à la mémoire et aux habitudes, l'in situ, la création collective ou encore l'expérimentation musicale. Cet essai se concentre également sur la relation qui unit l'émergence de cette pratique et son contexte sociohistorique afin de considérer ce que l'on pourrait appeler la « politique » de l'improvisation, caractérisée par l'a priori démocratique qui la sous-tend et l'émancipation musicale à laquelle elle prétend conduire les musiciens qui s'y engagent. Il apparaît alors que l'expérimentation à l'œuvre dans la pratique de l'improvisation libre ne saurait être réduite à la seule recherche musicale abstraite, détachée des contingences du monde, mais qu'elle se doit d'être envisagée comme double, répondant d'une dualité constitutive : à la fois expérimentation musicale et expérimentation politique. (Thèse de Doctorat en Arts et Sciences de l'Art / Esthétique, sous la direction de Costin Mirieanu, Univ. Paris 1)
  • Wolff, Christian, CUES: Writings & Conversations. Edition MusikTexte, Köln, (eds.) G. Gronemeyer & R.Oehlschagel, 1998. — http://www.musiktexte.de/
















   
   
   
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