What integral serialism and chance music can teach us about our experience: a reflection on strange tools, (un)controllability and resonance
In an article about indeterminacy in music, Roger Reynolds claims that «[t]o write a piece according to any principle and in any manner is to propose, in some sense, an occasion for experience» (1965: 136). Basing on a theoretical frame that includes theories of the philosopher Alva Noë and the sociologist Hartmut Rosa, the analysis developed in the present study is intended to show how music can be well more than an experience. As Noë believes, music (like any kind of art) can be an exploration of our experience.
The first section of the research presents four foundational ideas on art proposed by Noë: art as a practice that stages, analyzes and reorganizes our experience as human beings; the artwork as a «strange tool» (an object derived from everyday life yet decontextualized and therefore puzzling); art as a practice of disorientation and rethinking of our beliefs, habits, and actions; and, finally, the relationship of art with writing. Noë’s conception of art is particularly well-suited (for reasons briefly mentioned) to works of contemporary art. Therefore, the second section symmetrically shows how these four ideas find resonance in John Cage’s approach to musical composition: Cage’s aesthetic conceptions include the idea of music as a practice that stages particular aspects of our experience; familiar, everyday objects used in «strange» ways to create music; defamiliarizing strategies (such as silence or chance procedures) that reorganize our experience, allowing us to see and hear the world with almost childlike wonder and naivety; and the importance of writing (notation) for musical experimentation.
However, this kind of relationship between art and experience can be investigated more specifically. Considering Rosa’s theories on resonance, it is possible to examine how experience of music and principles of musical composition offer profound insights into a particular aspect of our lives: the delicate but necessary balance between controllability and uncontrollability. The present research focuses on the compositional attitude and aesthetics of two directions in contemporary art music experimentation (namely integral serialism and chance music) which provide interesting material to bring Noë’s and Rosa’s theories together and test them concretely on the ground of music history. According to Rosa, having a resonant experience entails relinquishing the desire to control everything in our life, while also avoiding complete passivity. And what does contemporary musical experimentation tell us about this kind of dynamics? Integral serialism tends to require total and rigorous control over every minute detail of the musical experience: this leads to problematic results that have been critically pointed out by Iannis Xenakis and Nicolas Ruwet, among others. Conversely, theories of chance music emphasize and value the randomness of sound events, sometimes neglecting the need for an active response to them. The art and theoretical reflections of Pierre Boulez (who somehow synthesized the legacies of both musical directions) reveal instead the inescapable complementarity of controllability and uncontrollability in the creation of a musical work. This confirms the connection between musical experience, Rosa’s ideas on human experience as a whole and Noë’s conception of art.
Keywords: role of art, musical experience, (un)controllability
Biography
Ulyana Barabakh is currently a master’s student in philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome and a student at Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome (Piano). She also graduated from the Sapienza School of Advanced Studies, with a thesis about the semiology of music in Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Her main interests concern semiotics, aesthetics, musicology and the connections between these research areas. Her former musical experience includes several victories in national and international piano competitions (2009-2013: “Lia Tortora” in Latina, “Premio Valentino Bucchi” in Rome, “Città di San Gemini” in San Gemini, “Mozart” in Frascati-Rome, “G.G. Visconti” in Rome) and singing in the youth choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (2015-2020) under the baton of Maestro Ciro Visco and Maestro Massimiliano Tonsini.
Sapienza University, Rome, Italy, barabakh.1940946@studenti.uniroma1.it