texts

E-mail correspondence regarding the phenomenon of contemporary improvisation (page 1, 2, 3)

Feuld Gaber & Jim Connell, 2006



During the time of this correspondence, participators used widespread abridgement "eai" to refer to recent tendencies in improvised music; this was an informal conversation between the two listeners of contemporary music.




JC, 26th aug 2006

      While I agree that this music is not the "simple" successor of any single kind of music, free improv is the biggest single influence (if you feel it necessary to suggest one.) This is not so much to do with the style of the resulting "new" improvised music, which has obviously incorporated many other stylistic features; it is the successor of the original ethos of individual musicians coming together in ad hoc groupings, both for live performances, events, and for recordings, all of which is constantly in flux. There is a tendency to focus on the "individual creator"/genius in both the classical-composer and glitch/electronica/sound-art traditions. The tendency in both those, too, is to work and rework the musical detail into a finished work in a process of painstaking revision—in traditional composed music this is obvious, but in "ambient electronica" this is most often the case too. (Pieces are opened in sound editors or sequencers and tinkered with until they're absolutely "perfect"). Now, this is obviously getting away from the stylistic features of ‘eai’ (which are many), and to the listener, ultimately: does it matter how the resulting music—which they hear "spontaneously" anyway—was arrived at (improvised or not?). Should it? I think it does: the process is important for the musicians, how they organise themselves, and ultimately this leaves its mark on the music.

      Given this antagonism to having the music fixed as a finished work, I think it is to free improv that the ethical and musical-philosophical foundations of "eai" belong (more than to any other single sphere of music). New improvised music can incorporate every stylistic features and development it likes, of course, but it must do this without abandoning its philosophical foundations--foundations which lie more in free improv than in anything else. Its stylistic language is varied and open, so maybe a distinction of convenience should be drawn between surface (resulting) stylistic features and basic philosophical-musical foundations (community music making, ad hoc groupings, resistant to commodity culture, etc.), but ultimately these can't be separated.

"I think here we're dealing with a far more complex phenomenon, with direct influence of many tendencies from the last fifty years. I think it's a very valuable fact to consider."

      Yes, again, this isn't question of simple lineage, but of complex musical development, which is never so simple as journalists, and their kind like to make out! Not for this kind of music or for any other. To put it another way, I think it's correct to trace its lineage to free improv --while simultaneously acknowledging that it took a considerable amount of time incorporate developments other than those coming out of free-jazz conceptions of time and free-jazz conceptions of instrumentation. Even in music coming directly out of a free-jazz background, extended techniques were often explored, and even in some cases "reductive tendencies" and more direct twentiety-century compositional influences (Webern on Iskra 1903, say), Dadaism on the early 70s Parker/Lytton duos (where Parker often abandoned his sax altogether), and tape music.

"2) A question: how would we draw lines of differentiation between the improvising of Evan Parker and Keith Rowe, aside from immediate aural differences?"

      Well, the first line of differentiation: instrumentation. Prepared table-top guitar (very few historical connotations) vs. sax (lots of them). There are more, of course, but I don't think "Evan Parker" is single thing! Have a listen to "Collective Calls", or some of the later Electroacoustic Ensemble stuff. There's a lot of variety in playing consider there, I think. Rowe has done some more standard-sounding electric guitar stuff too (on, say, AMM III).

"Which would be the primary structural concerns of improvisers engaged in "eai" circle?

      Structural concerns...as in the music's form? I'd think it's always in the form of so-called "moment form" as conceived of by Stockhausen, among others. That is, one unique form, unique to each piece (derived from its content), and then abandoned..Tension and release? Can these still be considered as formal elements? Or dynamic contrast: loud or extreme frequencies = "intensity"?

"3) Improvised music, in general, was always seen from my point of view as the "avant-garde's avant-garde". I am of the opinion that improvised music in the last forty years has always been on the front line of avant-garde music, and that its practices and methods were by far the most self-consciouss and critical in the liberation of the music."

      Yes, I think so. Though liberation from what? From its past? From its constant and aggressive recuperation by "the establishment"...?

"This has proved true, since "official" musical experts, institutions and the culture industry treat improvisation as contemporary music's failed abortion. Improvisation, its use in music making, is certainly the most radical method ever since Schoenberg's twelve-tone system"

      I'd have to take issue with this. Schoenberg's 12-tone system was anything but radical! Maybe a slight historical error on your part, but atonality was the radical departure, one bound up with extremely complicated evolutionary traits in tonality.  The twelve-tone system appeared many years after the atonal period first emerged in order to replace tonality with another formal system. So, in terms of musical "liberation," this system was a backwards step that it wouldn't escape from until Nono and Ligeti led the way away from intergral serialism. But as it fuelled creative responses to it, total serialism would be quite difficult as a "backwards" step in broad hisorical terms, although you might have more or less objective objections to it (as Ligeti did).

"Now, if I'd been thinking aloud, I'd wonder about the fact that avant-garde music needed more than a few decades to put some of the above-mentioned features into practical use."

      Well, it's a slow process. My short answer would be that I think it often did incorporate and react to wider musical development. For instance, AMM is unthinkable outside of Cardew's movement between two worlds, introducing into the 60s group some of what Cage brought to Darmstadt. Tilbury too took his classical-music background to the ailing AMM, as later did a member of the Arditti quartet. Electronics often were put to use (Howard Riley's "Overground", Tony Oxley, etc., Parker & Lytton). You might divide those musicians that took these facts into consideration (and incorporated them), from those who didn't, of which there are many. There are of course many musicians in London who seem content to ignore new, minimal "developments"; Mark Sanders, Paul Rutherford etc. But even in ostensibly "free jazz"-type groups like Badland there is a great emphasis placed on restraint, on silence and tiny gestures.

      Are other broad areas of music (say, composed "art" music) so quick to pick up on and incorporate stylistic features from other music the way "eai" does?
No, I think not. And why not? Because its tradition weighs too heavily on it to let it....?

"Still, if I use materialist thinking, I'd conclude that if something didn't occur in given moment of history, it was just because certain material conditions needed for that occurence - weren't fulfilled in that exact moment."

      What you say is not easily applied to the often contradictory tendencies of cultural turmoil (if that's what you were doing).

"5) Two key features I'd like to emphasize in "eai" -
1) a full orientation towards "laminal surroundings" (emphasizing  textural aspects of sound, a complete switch to the vertical parameters of music)...

      Emphasing textures: yes. At the expense of other features (i.e. formal ones)? Yes, maybe (are there any other features to speak of?) Not quite sure what you mean by vertical parameters exactly... just sonority/timbre, you mean? Or more than that?



FG, 27th aug 2006

      This use of electronic means and this notion of "laminality" (to be explained) of sound stand somewhat in mutual interdependence. The former fully developed the latter. I will now try to use your last critical mail to me to improve on certain points: we, of course, agree that the coming to "eai" fully developed as a method was a long, complex process. But let's take use of electronics in the context of improvised music; it certainly has a long history: Parker/Lytton, MEV, Music Improvisation Company, Fred Frith, then even free-jazzers like George Lewis, Anthony Braxton and Bill Dixon, even as far as Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. (I left out AMM on purpose). All these groups and individuals didn't quite get any "feedback" from using electronics; essentially, their approach to sound and its organisation remained to great extent unchanged.

      It's not until "eai," we concluded, that the idea emerged that "it's not only about you using electronics, it's more about how electronics are using you".
The simple fact that you're using electronic equipment still doesn't mean a (valuable) thing. We have very recent examples of people not realising the real importance of this "laminal" turn, improvising with electronics: for example, George Lewis (who even uses a computer) and Evan Parker. In both cases, they seem to have this idea in their head: "okay, now this will be me + some electronic equipment". So Evan Parker is playing as he always did, and waits for some of the three electronicians in the ensemble to process his playing. On the other hand, the duo of Durrant and Butcher (“Requests and Antisongs”) shows the full capacity of such teaming up, as long as the acoustic player tries to play not "beside" the electronic equipment, but rather "inside" it, with it--to make a conscious effort to let his decisions be affected by his electronic partner (of course, this electronic partner also has to make the right choices). The same goes for the duo of Butcher and Nakamura (on the last track of "Cavern with nightlife"). People like Lewis or Parker simply block any information they might get back from electronics. It seems that they look upon it in a rather patriarchal fashion: "I can use it to embellish my music, but I mustn't allow it to really affect my music in any substantial way. I must stay I". Why are you using electronics for if you don't want to change the very essence of your music? Here we have the basic misunderstanding of Cage's, or Varese's, or even Cowell's arguments.

      Then MEV; if you ever get chance, get a copy of the record called "Live electronic music improvised" (from '68, I think) - and see the differences between AMM and MEV for yourself. And "Apogee" from 2 years ago proves an even sharper discrepancy. [...] MEV consists of classically trained musicians who, later on, turned to improvisation, using electronic means. So, it's quite interesting how there was no difference between their perception of electronic instruments and, say, some improvisers, who would be a little stifled by the free jazz heritage. Okay, I repeat, it took time and it always did; but still, it looks like they always relied on well-tried methods. I also have an album by Teitelbaum and Braxton, "Time Zones"--no need to comment that. I mean, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed that album a lot, but still...

      A special kind of anger I save for Parker's teaming with Rowe on "Dark Rags." Here, Parker's playing is speaking for me. Then Potlach tried to team up Rowe with saxophonists whose approach would fit more with Rowe's, so they paired him with Doneda and Leimgruber on "Difference Between a Fish". Now, that album has some nice moments (far better than "Rags"), but the real thing's happening on "A View From The Window," with Doerner and Hautzinger [...]
      My thesis would be that the basis of present day "eai" music was layed, more or less, with AMM's foundation in 1966. All basic elements, in my opinion, are employed (or are tried to be employed functionally) from the foundation of AMM's aesthetics, which, I hope we'd agree, were quite different from dominant currents in improvised music in Europe of the day. Often you have an oportunity to hear comparisons with John Stevens's approach, but sincerely, I don't hear that. Maybe just in volume, but volume, as quantity, is not a qualitative determinant, right?

      Still, AMM's approach during almost thirty years found a response from only one group of musicians: AMM itself. My stance would be that AMM's approach was really ahead of its time, until the '90s, where certain things had become apparent to the point of pain. A very clear indicator could be the "Silver Pyramid" recording, which came out as early as 1969, in which C. Wolff also participated. Other improvisers found much more public exposure, and I think this is due precisely to the fact that AMM (in great part) leaped over what was cultivated in Europe during the above-mentioned 30 years, and that this leap they made was pretty inscrutable to even fellow improvisers and advanced musicians, let alone to the public and to the public's demands. I think that AMM's reflections on improvised music and advanced music in general ensured that important difference; I think that no one could come close to their understanding of avant-garde music practice and their great understanding of music, which clearly owed a bit to Cage's positions, and to that group of musicians around Cage. As some people developed a significant amount of narcissism toward the music they played, and to the shape of sound that would be characteristic of them as individuals, that, I think, was treated in AMM's music as a alien element; although Prevost relatively recently is showing some signs of being sentimental about his music, and especially about the nature of producing his sound.

[...]



JC, 27th Aug 2006

"But, let's take the use of electronics in the context of improvised music; it certainly has a long history: Parker/Lytton, MEV, Music Improvisation Company, Fred Frith, then even free jazzers like George Lewis, Anthony  Braxton and Bill Dixon, as far as Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble."

      What might be interesting is: was it just the technological limitations that were preventing a fully developed incorporation of electronics, or some other "block"? What, then? Suspicion? I agree that, in its early years, electronic elements in improv maybe took the form of "spicing" up the already-existing acoustic parts rather than participating more or less on on equal footing. I think this is probably connected to the idea of virtuosity, of having mastered an instrument. Instrumentalists often spend years upon years playing their instruments before playing in public or recording, and this often from childhood, where "electronics" have no such virtuosic history (until now, maybe).Only in recent years, I think, are there are such people who could list "computer" as a fully-fledged instrument, rather than just a colourful add-on. For instance, Oxley, who I'd consider maybe having made the most sophisticated use of electronics in improv during the 70s was primarily a percussionist, still. There were no "electronic" players as far as I know that didn't play something or other else as their primary instrument. But now, for instance, people like Mattin can happily not need anything else. As I've already suggested, I think Nono was the composer who did most to advance acoustic and electronic features simultaneously, placing both on an equal footing. Take, for instance, the tuba and electronics piece "Post-Prae-Ludium" (1987). Was this not among the most advanced combinations of this type at the time? Probably a more more advanced conception of electronics than anything you'd find in the improv world at the time. In a way, the laptop has freed up this area of musical possibility to everyone, where then, like with composers of the INA-GRM, it was only in the hands of the selected few.

      To draw in Japan for a moment, there's the case of the Taj Mahal Travllers, who did "group improvisations" with a often terrible prog-rock type use of electronics.. piles of reverb, poor echo effects, etc. There was a convergence of "electronic" influences here, coming from both the "clasical world" in France (GRM) and maybe America (Tudor), but also increasingly from "rock" music like (like Stockhausen "influencing" the Beatles), from Can, Amon Duul II, Guru Guru, Heldon, etc. It's worth remembering the state of prog-"kraut" rock music in this period, with Can releasing records at the same time as Parker, Bailey, Oxley & Co. So electronic influences were pervading both classical "art" music and popular music; all of which naturally fed into improv's use of it. Ultimately, it 's the "classical" tradition that obviously adopted the most serious and integrated use of electronics (having most of the money). This is probably a question of access to and financing of equipment. Contrastingly, something like IRCAM shows exactly how limited most of the "classical" world could end up in relation to these new developments for a long time.

"All the above-mentioned mentioned groups and individuals couldn't quite get any "feedback" from using electronics; essentially, their approach to sound and organization of that sound remained to a great extent unchanged."

      I suppose this is often true, and is maybe the origin of my preference for the possibilities of acoustic instruments (as in, electronic music often being stunted). I'm also interested in the specific historical connotations of each instrument, how to push against them, what that means, etc.

"Not until "eai," we concluded, did the idea emerge that "it's not only about you using electronics, it's more how electronics are using you".

I'd give some counterexamples here, but I suppose otherwise, mainly, yes.

"A special kind of anger I save for Parker's teaming with Rowe on "Dark Rags" - Parker's playing is speaking for me."

      A small point: sometimes a recording that makes you angry is more important than one that just gratifies what you want, don't you think? At least it helped you clarify your position on what not to do! But sometimes a spanner in the machinery of "great' releases, something hopelessly old-fashioned, can throw everything else into relief.

"My thesis would be that basis of present day "eai" music were layed, more or less, indirect with AMM's foundation in 1966. All basic elements, in my opinion are employed (or been tried to be employed functionally) from foundation of AMM's aesthetics, which, I hope we'd agree, were quite different from the dominant currents in improvised music in Europe of the day."

      I think you're overlooking Bailey's contribution to various musical-ethical/philosophical positions. You may not like how his music sounds now relative to "eai", but he had a lot to contribute with the attacks on notation, on recordings, in his general hostility to forms, his idea of "spontaneous compositon", his interest in organising ad hoc grouping (in contrast to AMM, who were fixed, largely, etc.); basically a punk-improv attitude, where AMM is more classical-improv! I'd think also, AMM is more understandable as a group, in the best rock tradition, as opposed the permanently fluctuating groups Bailey was involved in. For "eai" the idea of a semi-permanent fixed group seems quite unappealing, don't you think? I know AMM sounds more like "eai", but they had some regressive organisational elements to consider too. Here, the Scratch Orchestra, despite their simplistic, Maoist ideas, had the critical advantage regarding fixed musicians and the cult of the classical "master" (i.e. Tilbury).

"Often you have an oportunity to hear comparisons with John Stevens's approach, but sincerely, I don't hear that. Maybe just in volume, but volume, as quantity, is not a qualitative determinant, right?"

      No, they were definitely different. But, about John Stevens and his influence... it's worth contrasting the Spontaneous Music Ensebmble with the Spontaneous Music Orchestra, I think, though Stevens was behind both. What you hear in these two groups is very different, obviously. The self-conscious (maybe naive) collective ethos of the Orchestra (not the Ensemble) is interesting on a few counts. Part of this connects with my interest in Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra. (i.e. a more direct social confrontation with music and its role in society), as opposed to the "expert musicians" of AMM; with the S.M.O. wishing to include non-musicians, etc.
Also connected to this is Skempton, even Brian Eno, and the Portsmouth Sinfonia (much less successful, but still interesting). I sort think of this English "collective" thing as rather a bit much (and a bit Maoist) in retrospect, but then again so were Rowe and Cardew.

      Remember Rowe's comment about using only the cheapest guitar from the shop?!

"I think that AMM's reflections on improvised music and advanced music in general ensured that important difference; I think that no-one could come close to their understanding of avant-garde music practice and their great understanding of music.."

      Well, in improvised music, yes. The most sophisticated thinkers in the classical world regarding history, the avant garde, and tradition  are to me Lachenmann (esp. in his criticsm of Cage) and Nono. It's worth reading whatever you can by them, even if you're not hugely interested in the future possibilities of composed music. As thoughtful  materialist thinkers, their ideas, essays, and articles would interest you, I'm sure. Nono, too, remember is one of the only musicians Malfatti accepted into his exclusive pantheon of the non-stagnant! Lachenmann too, but only for a while.

"As some people developed significant amount of narcissism toward the music they played…"

      Yes, true too, I suppose it's permanent problem for all musicians, the weight of their own history, as well as all music's.

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