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Hearing Epistemic Sound in Experimental (Music) Systems, 1958–73
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2022
Abstract
From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, American experimental musicians like Pauline Oliveros, David Tudor, and Gordon Mumma employed complex and idiosyncratic technological systems to produce and capture acoustic resonance for aesthetic appreciation. Although this shared exploration exhibited many of the hallmarks of a genuine research project, scholars of experimental music have long been wary of claims that there is anything particularly scientific about this music, frequently comparing its informality unfavorably with the rigor and empiricism of the individual scientific experiment. However, historian of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger has long held that the fundamental working unit of scientific research is not the individual experiment, but what he terms the experimental system: The loose coherence of objects, instruments, and technologies through which research questions are materialized over time. I argue that Rheinberger's framework of the experimental system offers a compelling way of understanding the experimentation that catalyzed the emergence of what has come to be known as “resonance aesthetics” in American experimental music. By focusing on the material links of musicians’ activities, the experimental system illuminates how knowledge was produced and circulated within and between vastly different musical performances. Rheinberger's characterization of successful research also informs a more nuanced conception of virtuosity in experimental music. Finally, this framework is an opportunity to re-evaluate the status of sound as an object of epistemological inquiry, akin to what Rheinberger describes as an “epistemic thing.” In theorizing epistemic sound as both contextual and emergent, I re-evaluate musicians’ approaches to spontaneity and improvisation in musical performance.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Music
Footnotes
I am grateful to a number of individuals for their thoughtful and constructive feedback in developing this project, including Claire Bishop, Ryan Dohoney, David Grubbs, Martin Iddon, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, and two anonymous reviewers.
References
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Mumma, Gordon. Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015.Google Scholar
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Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
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Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin. “Sound's Modest Witness: Notes on Cage and Modernism.” Contemporary Music Review 31, no. 1 (February 2012): 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin. “Not So Much a Program of Music as the Experience of Music.” In Merce Cunningham: Common Time, edited by Meade, Fionn and Rothfuss, Joan, 114–28. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2017.Google Scholar
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Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Consistency from the Perspective of an Experimental Systems Approach to the Sciences and their Epistemic Objects.” Manuscrito 34, no. 1 (January/June 2011): 307–21.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Experimental Systems: Difference, Graphematicity, Conjuncture.” Translated by Burke Barrett. In Intellectual Birdhouse: Artistic Practice as Research, edited by Dombois, Florian, Bauer, Ute Meta, Mareis, Claudia, and Schwab, Michael, 89–100. London: Koenig Books, 2012.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Forming and Being Informed.” In Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research, edited by Schwab, Michael, 199–220. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Virtuosité expérimentale.” In Itérations. Translated by Arthur Lochmann. Bienne and Paris: Diaphanes, 2013.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Difference Machines: Time in Experimental Systems.” Configurations 23, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 165–76.Google Scholar
Rogalsky, Matt. “Idea and Community: The Growth of David Tudor's Rainforest, 1965–2006.” PhD diss., City University London, 2006.Google Scholar
Rzewski, Frederic. “Plan for Spacecraft.” Reprinted in Source: Music of the Avant Garde, 1966–1973, edited by Austin, Larry, Kahn, Douglas, and Gurusinghe, Nilendra, 130–33. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Schwab, Michael. “Experiment! Towards an Artistic Epistemology.” Journal of Visual Art Practice 14, no. 2 (2015): 120–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Wadada Leo. Notes (8 pieces) source a new world music: creative music. 1973. Reprinted. Chicago: Renaissance Society, 2015.Google Scholar
Taruskin, Richard. “No Ear for Music: The Scary Purity of John Cage.” In The Danger of Music: And Other Anti-Utopian Essays, 261–79. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Tinkle, Adam. “The SAG Representative for the West Coast: Pauline Oliveros's Resonance Aesthetics in Context, 1964–1970.” American Music Review XLVII, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 13–18.Google Scholar
Van Eck, Cathy. Between Air and Electricity: Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.Google Scholar
Vanderhamm, David. “I'm Just an Armless Guitarist’: Tony Melendez, Disability, and the Social Construction of Virtuosity.” Journal of the Society for American Music 14, no. 3 (2020): 280–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Von Gunden, Heidi. The Music of Pauline Oliveros. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Mumma, Gordon. “Hornpipe.” Live-Electronic Music. Tzadik 7074, 2002, compact disc.Google Scholar
Oliveros, Pauline. “In Memoriam: Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer.” Music for Merce, Disc 3. New World Records 80712, 2010, compact disc.Google Scholar
Merce Cunningham Trust. Dance Capsules. “Canfield” and “Rainforest.” https://www.mercecunningham.org/the-work/dance-capsules/.Google Scholar
Andersen, Drake. “(Per)forming Open Form: A Case Study with Earle Brown's Novara.” Music Theory Online 26, no. 3 (September 2020). https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.3/mto.20.26.3.andersen.html.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Virginia. “Whatever Remains, However Improbable: British Experimental Music and Experimental Systems.” In Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research, edited by Schwab, Michael, 55–67. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
[Austin, Larry] and “The Editors.” “Is the Composer Anonymous?” In Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966–1973, edited by Austin, Larry, Kahn, Douglas, and Gurusinghe, Nilendra, 50–53. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Borgdorff, Henk. “Artistic Practices and Epistemic Things.” In Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research, edited by Schwab, Michael, 112–20. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Brooks, William. “In Re: ‘Experimental music.’” Contemporary Music Review 31, no. 1 (February 2012): 37–62.Google Scholar
Cage, John. “Experimental Music: Doctrine.” In Silence, 13–17. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Cage, John. “History of Experimental Music in the United States.” In Silence, 67–75. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Cline, David. The Graph Music of Morton Feldman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Assis, Paulo. Logic of Experimentation: Reshaping Music Performance in and through Artistic Research. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driscoll, John and Rogalsky, Matt. “David Tudor's Rainforest: An Evolving Exploration of Resonance.” Leonardo Music Journal 14 (2004): 25–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagner, Michael and Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Experimental Systems, Objects of Investigation, and Spaces of Representation.” In Experimental Essays, edited by Heidelberger, Michael and Steinle, Friedrich, 355–73. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998.Google Scholar
Holmes, Thom. Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iddon, Martin. John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyer, Vijay. “Embodied Mind, Situated Cognition, and Expressive Microtiming in African-American Music.” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 19, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 387–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Rebecca Y. “Four Musicians at Work and Earle Brown's Indices.” In Beyond Notation: The Music of Earle Brown, edited by Kim, Rebecca Y., 113–41. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuivila, Ron. “Open Sources: Words, Circuits and the Notation-Realization Relation in the Music of David Tudor.” Leonardo Music Journal 14 (2004): 17–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lochhead, Judy. “Performance Practice in the Indeterminate Works of John Cage.” Performance Practice Review 7, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 233–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lochhead, Judy. “Controlling Liberation: David Tudor and the ‘Experimental’ Sound Ideal.” Paper presented at “The Art of David Tudor: Indeterminacy and Performance in Postwar Culture,” Getty Research Institute Symposium, Los Angeles, May 17–19, 2001.Google Scholar
Lucier, Alvin. Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Mauceri, Frank X. “From Experimental Music to Musical Experiment.” Perspectives of New Music 35, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 187–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mumma, Gordon. Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Nakai, You. “Hear After: Matters of Life and Death in David Tudor's Electronic Music.” Communication +1 3, no. 1 (September 2014): 1–32.Google Scholar
Nakai, You. “How to Imitate Nature in Her Manner of Operation: Between What John Cage Did and What He Said He Did.” Perspectives of New Music 52, no. 3 (Autumn 2014): 141–60.Google Scholar
Nakai, You. Reminded by the Instruments: David Tudor's Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Oliveros, Pauline. In Memoriam: Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer (musical score). In “Canfield,” Merce Cunningham Dance Capsules, Merce Cunningham Trust.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin. “Sound's Modest Witness: Notes on Cage and Modernism.” Contemporary Music Review 31, no. 1 (February 2012): 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piekut, Benjamin. “Not So Much a Program of Music as the Experience of Music.” In Merce Cunningham: Common Time, edited by Meade, Fionn and Rothfuss, Joan, 114–28. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2017.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1997.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Scrips and Scribbles.” MLN 118, no. 3 (April 2003): 622–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Consistency from the Perspective of an Experimental Systems Approach to the Sciences and their Epistemic Objects.” Manuscrito 34, no. 1 (January/June 2011): 307–21.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Experimental Systems: Difference, Graphematicity, Conjuncture.” Translated by Burke Barrett. In Intellectual Birdhouse: Artistic Practice as Research, edited by Dombois, Florian, Bauer, Ute Meta, Mareis, Claudia, and Schwab, Michael, 89–100. London: Koenig Books, 2012.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Forming and Being Informed.” In Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research, edited by Schwab, Michael, 199–220. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Virtuosité expérimentale.” In Itérations. Translated by Arthur Lochmann. Bienne and Paris: Diaphanes, 2013.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Difference Machines: Time in Experimental Systems.” Configurations 23, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 165–76.Google Scholar
Rogalsky, Matt. “Idea and Community: The Growth of David Tudor's Rainforest, 1965–2006.” PhD diss., City University London, 2006.Google Scholar
Rzewski, Frederic. “Plan for Spacecraft.” Reprinted in Source: Music of the Avant Garde, 1966–1973, edited by Austin, Larry, Kahn, Douglas, and Gurusinghe, Nilendra, 130–33. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Schwab, Michael. “Experiment! Towards an Artistic Epistemology.” Journal of Visual Art Practice 14, no. 2 (2015): 120–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Wadada Leo. Notes (8 pieces) source a new world music: creative music. 1973. Reprinted. Chicago: Renaissance Society, 2015.Google Scholar
Taruskin, Richard. “No Ear for Music: The Scary Purity of John Cage.” In The Danger of Music: And Other Anti-Utopian Essays, 261–79. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Tinkle, Adam. “The SAG Representative for the West Coast: Pauline Oliveros's Resonance Aesthetics in Context, 1964–1970.” American Music Review XLVII, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 13–18.Google Scholar
Van Eck, Cathy. Between Air and Electricity: Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.Google Scholar
Vanderhamm, David. “I'm Just an Armless Guitarist’: Tony Melendez, Disability, and the Social Construction of Virtuosity.” Journal of the Society for American Music 14, no. 3 (2020): 280–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Von Gunden, Heidi. The Music of Pauline Oliveros. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Mumma, Gordon. “Hornpipe.” Live-Electronic Music. Tzadik 7074, 2002, compact disc.Google Scholar
Oliveros, Pauline. “In Memoriam: Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer.” Music for Merce, Disc 3. New World Records 80712, 2010, compact disc.Google Scholar