New interview with Keith Rowe by Josh Ronsen

Now here I am, in my mid-fifties, and about a year ago I got very upset. Terribly upset. I began to wonder if music was an art form altogether. Now that's something to get upset about. And I think the reason I got upset about it is perhaps maybe because of my PhD students. Because none of them approach it as if it's an art form. Yes, it's a music form, it's a memory form, it's a form that is allegedly supposed to do this and that, if you do this and that. And so here I am; after all Beethoven only lived a few years longer than I am now, talking to you here. So I'm at the end of my life, let's say I'm at the end of my life; working since I'm thirteen; I wake up one day and I say to myself "What the hell am I involved with? Memory forms? Musical forms? Various type of almost like, set Avedon poses? Now we take a walk in the Alps ... Now we go slumming with peasants ... Now we thank God that we got rid of venereal disease, or whatever? I mean what the hell is it all about, all the set poses, the set emotions? Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away, from some aspect of illusion and reality? Do we have anything like - Proust? Do we have anything comparable to Finnegan's Wake? I wonder.

- Morton Feldman, Toronoto lecture

Liner notes in English for Septet:

Takefumi Naoshima
Toshiya Tsunoda

hose.hibarimusic.com

For any music's future, you don't go to the devices, you don't go to the procedures, you go to the attitude. And you do not find your own attitude; that's what you inherit. I'm not my own man. I'm a compilation of all the important people in my life. I once had a seven-hour conversation with Boulez; unknown to him, it affected my life. I admire his attitude. Varèse's attitude. Wolpe's attitude. Cage's attitude. I spent one afternoon with Beckett; it will be with me forever. Not his work; not his commitment; not his marvelous face, but his attitude.

- Morton Feldman, Interview from Soundpieces

An excellent interview with Mattin has recently appeared at addlimb here.

I've been spending quite a lot of time reading threads on the Criterion Forum. Recommended.

A few excerpts from Christopher Caudwell's D.H. Lawrence: A Study of the Bourgeois Artist

"In bourgeois society social relations are denied in the form of relations between men, and take the form of a relation between man and a thing, a property relation, which, because it is a dominating relation, is believed to make man free. But this is an illusion. The property relation is only a disguise for relations which now become unconscious and therefore anarchic but are still between man and man and in particular between exploiter and exploited.

The artist in bourgeois society culture is asked to do the same thing. He is asked to regard the art work as a finished commodity and the process of art as a relation between himself and the work, which then disappears in to the market.

[...]

But art is not in any case a relation to a thing, it is a relation between men, between artist and audience, and the art work is only like a machine which they must both grasp as part of the process. The commercialisation of art may revolt the sincere artist, but the tragedy is that he revolts against it still within the limitations of bourgeois culture. He attempts to forget the market completely and concentrate on his rleation to the art work, which now becomes still further hypostatised as an entity-in-itself. Because the art work is now completely an end-in-itself, and even the market is forgotten, the art process becomes an extremely individualistic relation. The social values inherent in the art form... now seem to have little value, for the art work more and more exists for the individual alone... and therefore ultimately results in the art work's ceasing to be an art work and becoming a mere private phantasy.

[...]

But the artist's value is not in self-expression. If so, why would he struggle to achive the synthesis in which old social formulations are fused with his individual experience? Why not disregard social formalities and express himself direct as one does by shouting, leaping and cries? Because, to begin with, it is the old bourgeois illusion to suppose there is such a thing as pure individual expression. It is not even that the artist nobly forces his self-expression into a social mould for the benefit of society. Both attitudes are simply expressions of the old bourgeois fallacy that man is free in freely giving vent to his instincts. In fact the artist does not express himself in art forms, he finds himself therein. He does not adulterate his free self-expression to make it socially current, he finds free self-expression only in the social relations embodied in art. The value of art to the artist then is this, that is makes him free. It appears to him of value as a self-expression, but in fact it is not the expression of a self but the discovery of a self. It is the creation of a self. In synthesising experience with society's, in pressing his innner self into the mould of social relations, he not only creates a new mould, a socially valuable product, but he also moulds and creates his own self.

[...]

All art is created by this tension between changing social relations and outmoded consciousness. The very reason why new art is created, why the old art does not satisfy either artist or appreciator, is because it seems somehow out of gear with the present. Old art always has meaning for us, because the instincts, the sources of the affects, do not change, because a new system of social relations does not exclude but includes the old, and because new art too includes the traditions of the art that has gone before. But it is not enough. We must have new art.

[...]

But Lawrence remained to the end a man incapable of that subordination of self to others, of co-operation, of solidarity as a class, which is the characteristic of the proletariat. He remained the individualist, the bourgeois revolutionary angrily working out his own salvation, critical of all, alone in possession oof grace. He rid himself of every bourgeois illusion but the important one"

What am I doing with my music? A dodgy question in that "doing" is rife with "intention," which I think is detrimental to the sort of music I work with. When having to think about music outside of itself, I prefer to think of the music I make as relational. How does this music relate to that or the other? What is the relationship between this music and emotion, what is the relationship between this music and environment (psychogeography), what is the relationship between this music and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, jelly doughnuts, Colombian death metal? And so on.

For example, the matter of emotion. Music in general is prescriptive, a mood-alterer, manipulative. This is not derogatory, for the Beatles have saved lives; Maria Callas has found missing hearts; a dose of Hank Williams can help sometimes; Al Green for the romantically challenged; the Swan Silvertones for those haunted by dark clouds, and Deicide for those who take shelter in them. So music can be used to induce mood and emotion. But when I think about putting a music into the world, I see it not as manipulative, not as taking a listener to a specific place. Not with desire and intention. I imagine a music that is sensed by a different part of our being: music sympathetic to that which is not fleeting, forged by condition or circumstance.

This way of thinking about music is as a heightened sense of awareness rather than a goal or intention, a "doing." It is without a desire to inflict or alter.

There is a relationship between music and the grandness and minutiae of existence, from doughnuts to emotion and beyond. Considering these relationships helps me to form music, understand my surroundings, navigate, consume and live with satisfaction and awareness.

Practically, with the music I make, I am able to indulge in my likes. I can make friends. I can travel without being a tourist. I can listen. I can explore differences and accordances and carve out something of a life. These "doings" are a pleasure.

- Sean Meehan, Blocks of Consciousness and The Unbroken Continuum (pp. 136-137)

Keith Rowe, Above and Beyond (1997)

Paul Steenhuisen: You have gone to great effort to find new types of sounds in your music. What was your intention?

Helmut Lachenmann: It is true that I am trying to search for new sounds, but this is not my aesthetic aim or credo as an artist. With conventional or unconventional sounds, the question is how to create a new, authentic musical situation. The problem is not to search for new sounds, but for a new way of listening, of perception. I do not know if there are still new sounds, but what we need is new contexts.

- From "Interview with Helmut Lachenmann - Toronto, 2003" in Contemporary Music Review

I have become increasingly preoccupied with atmosphere, in particular the kind of atmosphere that one finds surrounding a Mark Rothko painting. When I am in the presence of a Rothko work (also after I have departed and later, upon further reflection), I'm struck not by "whew! what great brush strokes! what an incredible technique! what a painter!", but instead by a feeling of the surrounding atmosphere and its sensation.

Somehow I wanted to move what I'm doing (intention) towards this notion of atmosphere, an activity where we're not aware of technique, of instrument, of playing, of music even, but instead as feeling/sensation suspended in space, perhaps what Feldman meant by music as time, energising the air, making the silence (unintention) audible.

- Keith Rowe, Duos for Doris notes

Michael Pisaro, Eleven Theses on the State of New Music (2004/2006) (PDF)

One of my complaints about the younger generation ... is that for me at least sound was the hero, and it still is. I feel that I'm subservient. I feel that I listen to my sounds, and I do what they tell me, not what I tell them. Because I owe my life to these sounds. Right? They gave me a life. And my feeling is in a sense is the young people ... instead of thinking of sound as a hero, of experience as the hero, you get to think that they're the heroes. And I find a little bit too much drawing attention to themselves ... in their work, drawing attention to their ideas, whether they're anti-society, or whether it's political.

[...]

To take a militant attitude towards society means that you're involved with that aspect of society. You're not involved with life. To take a militant action in relation to life, that's more mysterious. That needs thought. To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe ... not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it ... except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life ... if you're into it.

- Morton Feldman, Conversation between Morton Feldman and Walter Zimmermann

And so I have one word of advice, and I include myself here: if we're going to stick our necks out, let's not limit ourselves to musical choices. Let's not just seek out well-wishers and supporters for an audience, and not count cd sales as personal victories-that is the trap our culture has manufactured to contain dissident culture along with the mainstream. Instead, let's make the effort to play for people we can't imagine would like us. Get out of the improv ghetto and into the unknown, the small towns, libraries, prisons, where we don't know who will show interest, come in the door. Find the world, let the world find us. After all, it is the unknown response that can awaken us musically in ways beyond our imagination.

- Jack Wright

A new listener to freely improvised music comes to this experience not as a fresh mind. Every listener has a wealth of listening experience. They may have been taught western classical. They may be embued with the folk music of their ethnic culture. They may have been thoroughly lost in the hedonism of rock and roll. When such a person comes to another form of music, whose rules of performance (and of listening) are different from what they have experienced so far, they are confused. The sounds, the anticipated meanings and the expected effects, do not occur. They suffer what I call an aesthetic mis-match. Small wonder then without gaining some understanding about the rules of engagement and the musical objectives, that a new listener is completely bewildered by what they hear. If this is the case, then it follows that there must be some kind of specific analytical framework for free improvisation, as there is for every other kind of music. To deny this fact is in a way to deny entry for others into this world, and it also hampers the music's development.

- Eddie Prévost

Maybe I'm suggesting that while we make our own music, we are actually proposing a certain way of life. It's an attitude towards the world. If it isn't, why are we doing it? Are we simply interested in sound for sound's sake? I'm sure people think that. I don't believe it. In the end there is more to it than that. But I can't prove it.

- Anonymous, from Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum, p. 248

I'm interested in art that addresses itself to our higher aspirations. That's why I can't do figurative painting -- I think figurative painting's ultimately trivial now. It's almost humanism and no form ... Abstraction's the art of our age ... it's a breaking down of certain structures, an opening up. It allows you to think without making oppressively specific references, so that the viewer is free to identify with the work. Abstract art has the possibility of being incredibly generous, really out there for everybody. It's a non-denominational religious art. I think it's the spiritual art of our time.

- Sean Scully