Empty Words: Writings ’73–’78

The Future of Music

This text is a revision of an earlier one finished in 1974 which was given as a lecture at the YMHA in New York City and printed in Numus West, No. 5-74. The Future of Music For many years I've noticed that music—as an activity separated from the rest of life—doesn't enter my mind. Strictly musical questions are no longer serious questions. It wasn't always that way. When I was setting out to devote my life to music, there still were battles to win within the field of music. People distinguished between musical sounds and noises. I followed Varese and fought for noises. Other musicians also did. In the early thirties the only piece for percussion alone was Varese's Ionisation. By 1942 there were over one hundred such works. Now they are countless. Almost anyone who listens to sound how listens easily no matter what overtone structures the sounds have. We no longer discriminate against noises. We can also hear any pitch, whether or not it's part of a scale of one temperament or another, occidental or oriental. Sounds formerly considered out of tune are now called microtones. They are part and parcel of modern music. Some people still object to loud sounds. They're afraid of hurting their ears. Once I had the opportunity to hear a very loud sound (the conclusion of a Zaj performance). I'd been in the audience the evening before. I knew when the sound was coming. I moved close to the loudspeaker from which it was to be heard and sat there for an hour, turning first one ear and then the other toward it. When it stopped, my ears were ringing . The ringing continued through the night, through the next day, and through the next night. Early the following day I made an appointment with an ear specialist. On my way to his office, the ringing seemed to have more or less subsided. The doctor made a thorough examination, said my ears were normal. The disturbance had been temporary. My attitude toward loud sounds has not changed. I shall listen to them whenever I get the chance, keeping perhaps a proper distance. Our experience of time has changed. We notice brief events that formerly might have escaped our notice and we enjoy very long ones, ones having lengths that would have been considered, say fifteen years ago, intolerable. Nor are we concerned about how a sound begins, continues, and dies away. During a panel discussion on piano music from the People's Republic of China, Chou WenThe Future of Music : 177 Chung said that Western musicians formerly insisted that a pitched sound should stay on pitch, not waver from the moment it begins until it ends. Chinese musicians, he said, feel some change in its course in its pitch enlivens a sound, makes it "musical." Nowadays, anyone listens to any sounds, no matter how flexible or inflexible they are with respect to any of their characteristics. We've become attentive to sounds we've never heard before. I was fascinated when Lejaren Hiller described his project to use computer means to make a "fantastic orchestra," to synthesize extraordinary sounds, sounds beginning as though plucked, continuing as from pipes, ending as though bowed. We're also open-minded about silence. Silence isn't as generally upsetting as it used to be. And melody. Kfongfarbenmelodie has not taken the place of bei canto. It has extended our realization of what can happen. The same is true of aperiodic rhythm: it includes the possibility of periodic rhythm. Two or more lines composed of sounds can be heard whether they involve known or invented kinds of counterpoint or are just simultaneous (not intervallically controlled). Even if two melodies, one very loud, the other very soft, are played at the same time, we know if we listen carefully, or from another position in space, we'll hear them both. We can be extremely careful about harmony, as Lou Harrison, La Monte Young, and Ben Johnston are, or we can be, as I often am, extremely careless about harmony. Or we can make do as our orchestras do with grey compromise about which sounds sounded together are harmonious. Anything goes. However, not everything is attempted. Take the division of a whole into parts. In the 'thirties I was impressed by Schoenberg's insistence on musical structure , but disagreed with his view that tonality was its necessary means. I investigated time...