Non-linear Response and the Spill
These words are widely applicable in the domain of contemporary music. But the electroacoustic studio is the field where they are constantly challenged. What happens in the studio that makes our understanding vacillate?
'An electroacoustic device is not in itself a musical instrument.' Pierre Schaeffer, Solfège de l'Objet Sonore, (Paris,1967), Face IV, nº71.
Conceptual hesitations start already at the lowest levels of the technological dimension. What I shall call the 'non-linear response' of some sound processing programmes and devices used for electroacoustic composition confirms Pierre Schaeffer's statement. It connotes how technology is far from matching human perception, and how much the understanding of music can become compromised by rough dichotomies.
Non-linear response is the open capability of studio equipment confronted by composers' working processes, when only one and the same operation with studio equipment can determine transformations both in raw 'materials' and in more structured events. Alterations in just one of the acoustic parameters can open up possibilities at either level. The studio itself impedes a linear process of composition that begins with small atomic cells and develops progressively into something more elaborate.
My experience with time-stretching* (described in chapter 2) recalls the description of our non-linear response to acoustic phenomena, also pointed out by Pierre Schaeffer in 'Les Seuils Temporels de l'Oreille'*(1967), where he describes perceptual transitions like that from repetition of impulses to grain*, and from grain to pitch, produced by the alteration of only one parameter, that of frequency. His intention was to denounce the lack of direct correspondence between acoustic 'parameters' and perception, criticising Elektronische Musik's pretention of using serial parameters to identify physical stimuli.
Because electroacoustic equipment reproduces in practice the same science of acoustics, the prejudice that identifies a studio with an instrumental arsenal may remain an obstacle for composition. By not acknowledging the non-linear response of devices composers, in relying on a machine's supposed instrumentality, repeat the same mistakes as Elektronische Musik and miss what could be, because of its non-linearity, a tool for original work. As a basic condition for careful management of their work, composers in the studio accept the spill between one concept and another, including not only those of 'material' and 'structure', but 'invention' and 'discovery' as well.
It might be difficult to provide examples of pieces where composers failed to understand this point, but my real concern is directed towards problems of a different magnitude. Misunderstanding can orientate a considerable part of music's destiny, especially when it encourages institutional discrimination between invention and discovery.
This split has been the background to the celebrated dispute between Schaeffer and other composers who accused the music made in his studios of lacking of 'determinacy'. A music dependent on luck for 'trouvailles' or discoveries could not contend with one of 'écriture*' (cf. chapter 3), where all sounding events are supposedly pre-determined by the composer. An 'écriture'-based composer would be much more an inventor depending on his skill than a mere discoverer guided by chance.
(I can understand that some of the complaints against electroacoustic music are not totally misplaced, since composers often abuse the power of studios, presenting pieces in which it is not plausible to find any real compositional proposition, but only episodic waves of treated sounds stuck to anecdotic events. In such pieces there appears to be no real work of 'writing'. This might have triggered an overreaction against a music that was not in fact disabling 'invention', but simply being made by less determined composers).
Not without some idealism, Boulez, for example, has faith in a future studio populated by machines, qualified as 'instruments' for musical 'invention' that will unite composers' ideas with the material. His more recent acknowledgement of the need for open spaces for 'accidents' and 'discovery' still recognises two clear poles, discovery being only a necessary counterpart for the more honourable invention:
'Musical invention must bring about the creation of the musical material it needs; by its efforts, it will provide the necessary impulse for technology to respond functionally to its desires and imagination. This process will need to be flexible enough to avoid the extreme rigidity and impoverishment of an excessive determinism and to encompass the accidental or unforeseen, which it must be ready later to integrate into a larger and richer conception. The long-term preparation of research and the instantaneous discovery must not be mutually exclusive, they must affirm the reciprocity of their respective spheres of action.' (Boulez, in Emmerson, 1986), p.11.
The spill between invention and discovery in both technical and musical senses is not only the best reward for electroacoustic composers, but a consequence of understanding that their work only develops as long as they experiment with the available 'material' using their ears. (There is of course no interdiction on developing ideas from scratch, when this happens in connection with aural feedback). The condition for invention is the discovery of new ingredients, and depends entirely on the composer's capacity for operating with floating concepts like material and structure.
By finally accepting the 'accidental' Boulez seems to have become less engaged in the old dispute and is adopting positions closer to those he once attacked. It should be noted that his text still implies that music needs to promote technological inventions:
'...responding functionally to [musical invention's] desires and imagination.' Ibid., p.9.
Still concerned with the use of:
'...material means which may or may not be in accord with genuine musical thought,' Ibid., p.9.
Boulez perseveres saying that:
'One should note that long before contemporary technology, the history of musical instruments was littered with corpses: superfluous or over-complicated inventions, incapable of being integrated into the context demanded by the musical ideas of the age which produced them; because there was no balance between originality and necessity they fell into disuse.' Ibid., p.9.
We should not forget that electroacoustic music's repertoire has been relying on the always despised but still not obsolete tape recorder for forty years. IRCAM's 4X* lasted perhaps one-fifth of that time.
What should be asked now is what sort of search for machines/instruments is needed to enable a mode of composition where 'discovery' and 'invention' would be integrated more usefully. If studios must be orientated towards the replacement of machines by super instruments the resulting music will be compromised by instrumentality. But the development of audio technology and the building of studios must be undertaken with an understanding of the subtleties of concepts.