State of Improvisation 2010

[RFKorp]

could the general consensus amongst members of this board be that the music most often discussed here is considered abstract?

I hate describing some music as abstract and other music as non-abstract. Music is by definition an abstract form.

aside from the use of practices like field recording (and even that isn't always approached in a concrete manner) it cannot represent anything the way physical media can.

[kp*]

Is the music of Keith Rowe,Taku Sugimoto or Nmperign abstract?

Big topic. Partially because it involves defining what the opposite of that would be. If I remember right it was touched on in this thread: http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5065

I know we talked about this someplace where there were some references to articles that talked about abstraction, time and narrative in music, etc.

[RFKorp]

I think it's enormously hard to say. Are musicians really that aware of *contemporary* visual art? What I see mentioned here is twombly, Rothko, etc. The equivalent music would be maybe cage and orrnette Coleman.

This is an important point. IF we have to draw parallels between art forms, I'm disappointed not to see more musicians in this vague area of music talking about how their work is influenced by participation in shit like internet surfing clubs. The visual art connection is rarely something developed of our time but rather always the same establishment of Great Art.

[kp*]

but rather always the same establishment of Great Art.

Which just supports I said earlier (and Alastair addressed this too) that some musicians might make this claim because they just want to align themselves with a lofty high art ethos in order to gain credibility, legitimacy, prestige and possibly even money (since it's the art folks who have it).

[faster]

It's kind of like how peyote users' "spirit familiars" are always hawks, coyotes, gila monsters, or jaguars and never deer ticks, tapeworms, leeches, or headlice. It may be little more than coincidence, but the musicians seeking to align themselves with "high art" never fail to namedrop canonized "GREAT MASTERS."

If we're so "inspired" by art, why don't we associate with more contemporary artists (like, um, Feldman and Cage did)?

[jkudler]

To be fair, its not shocking that better known artists are better known by musicians too. And some would argue that visual art "advanced" more quickly or early than music as far as "experimentation" and what I will argue in a second is "abstraction." So in that sense, I see even older visual art as a continuing source for musical inspiration. Further, it's tough to analogize between the art scene of the fifties - much smaller, largely in a much cheaper new york, less money in the scene, fewer MFA's, etc - with the art world today. I might even go so far as to say the po-mo, theory-obsessed artworld today is much farther from the aesthetic concerns of TAOMUD-ish music. That said, it is striking how small the range of artists that get regularly mentioned here is. Where's Nirav?

Re - abstraction: we did talk about it somewhere else. But I wanted to add that the somewhat narrow definition of abstract as "not representational" is too narrow. Arguably, music that doesn't refer to established pitch hierarchies or ingrained cultural heritage is more "abstract" in how it relates or doesn't to a "language."

-Jesse

[kp*]

I just want to be clear my rant about insecure snooty money grumbling musicians who align themselves with ART POWER is just the ramblings of a nut job misanthrope. haha. Seriously not aimed at anyone in this thread specifically. I do truly believe there are honest approaches to music that are spirited by visual arts and somehow rooted in the experience of looking or make it that are honest and true and not about some kind of slimy positioning. Feldman, for one, I know was dead sincere about both the art he loved and the rugs he later collect which brought him no prestige of the kind. But I have been in enough composer's seminars, merkin hall lobby composer's locker room style convos and enough bang on a can events to know that this type of pretension surely happens.

Who the hell am i to judge? [no one]

Note to self: shut the fuck up.

peas & carrots,

kevin

[RFKorp]

Arguably, music that doesn't refer to established pitch hierarchies or ingrained cultural heritage is more "abstract" in how it relates or doesn't to a "language."

This again? Quick question, Jesse - would you consider some languages more abstract than others?

[jkudler]

if you mean actual verbal languages, no.

[jkudler]

but i'm very literally just arguing semantics. which is to say, people can refer to certain kinds of music as "abstract," and i have some sense of what they mean.

[maRi]

i don't think I've ever witnessed a painter in front of a canvas so I wouldn't know what their body language would look like.

Different painters look and move differently in relation to their canvases. See, for instance, Karel Appel.

If you can say of Keith Rowe that "his body language is consistently that of someone with a canvas in front of him", I don't see why you couldn't say that of Thomas Lehn, or really any other musician.

If obscure (to the wider world) 21 Century eai musicians were linking their art to 21 Century obscure (to the wider world) visual artists

If we're so "inspired" by art, why don't we associate with more contemporary artists

Well, some do. Many improv musicians have done some wonderful live work with Marcus Heesch. There are a few videos of such shows on YouTube, and my favourite is Niwa, with Axel Dörner (trumpet), Tashihiro Koike (trombone) and the butoh dancer Mayumi Fukuzaki.







Heesch has also worked with Simon H. Fell, Lol Coxhill, Hugh Davies, Steve Beresford, Rhodri Davies, and so on.

I see even older visual art as a continuing source for musical inspiration.

I don't see how any form of art of whatever period would not continue to be a source of inspiration. If it's good, that is. If you can think of it as "dated", then it wasn't good enough to begin with probably.

The excessive claims of correspondences between music and painting seem to me to be mostly based in a desire to do away with time in music, as if that's possible (and just to be clear, "sound installations" are not music to me). Regardless of the working process that some posters have used as an argument to support this claim, music is experienced as a temporal form, which painting isn't, for the observer of the painting itself at least. Watching a painter work is of course closer to watching a musician play, but these two processes differ greatly in what they produce—the painting is there to stay usually (there are exceptions, such as Picasso's light drawings), and when you hear music, to quote Eric Dolphy, "after it's over, it's gone, in the air."

[nirav]

Re - abstraction: we did talk about it somewhere else. But I wanted to add that the somewhat narrow definition of abstract as "not representational" is too narrow. Arguably, music that doesn't refer to established pitch hierarchies or ingrained cultural heritage is more "abstract" in how it relates or doesn't to a "language."

-Jesse

I think that people use the term "abstract" when it comes to music as a way to denote a relationship to a something else that reminds us structurally of the relationship between "abstract vs. representational" in the visual arts. The kinds of representation I mean draws on some kind of familiar cognitive processes - the viewing of a landscape, portraiture, etc. - It seems to me that when people me "abstract" in terms of music they tend to mean "at some kind of opposition to/distance from music which makes use of familiar cognitive structures, melody, rhythm, etc. in the way that, say, a Kandinsky relates to a Courbet, or something like that.

Also, a good movie about someone painting - Raul Ruiz' "Miotte vu par Ruiz", where Ruiz uses various camera techniques to document Jean Miotte's action painting technique. At one point, he has the boom mic follow Miotte's arm to amplify the sound of the brush against the canvas.

[UJM]

I think that people use the term "abstract" when it comes to music as a way to denote a relationship to a something else that reminds us structurally of the relationship between "abstract vs. representational" in the visual arts. The kinds of representation I mean draws on some kind of familiar cognitive processes - the viewing of a landscape, portraiture, etc. - It seems to me that when people me "abstract" in terms of music they tend to mean "at some kind of opposition to/distance from music which makes use of familiar cognitive structures, melody, rhythm, etc. in the way that, say, a Kandinsky relates to a Courbet, or something like that.

Agreed. And what you describe here is almost a (conceptual) form of synaesthesia.

[maRi]

"at some kind of opposition to/distance from music which makes use of familiar cognitive structures, melody, rhythm, etc.

According to this, "abstract", as applied to music, depends too much on "unfamiliar", and I don't understand what it should convey eventually, as the music it's supposed to refer to would cease to be abstract after you've had some experience with it (especially if it's easy to categorise). At the same time vocal blues might well be perceieved as abstract by someone who has had no experience of it at all, direct or indirect.

[Damon_Smith]

i close my eyes and listen to Keith Rowe and all sorts of wonderful images pop into my mind. Out of curiosity, do you think that Keith's music contrasts sharply with his painting work?

Yes and no, his cover art does have more clean edges but it is not unrelated. I also don't know how much work he has beyond those cover images. I bet it would not be so tough to get a Rowe exhibtion together at Corbett Vs. Dempsy!

I could expand on how my work or even how my perceptions of others work relates to art or whatever, but everyone's experience with the work is valid.

Kind of a copout man. I didn't ask you to validate or invalidate anyone's experience. I asked you to explain your own statements, to elucidate certain fluffy pronouncements you made about space and texture in visual art and in Rowe's music. I was hoping you would clarify by giving more concrete connections possibly rooted in the actual fabric of the sounding music.

I just don't want to derail the thread further, I believe strongly in it, but it is very clear others hear the music differently and I don't find that to be incorrect.
Generally I just think musicians who are versed in more than one art are going to have more depth. One to one comparisons are very rare as in the case of how I hear a lot of Keith's music or the title track from my Ausfegen album.
Lacy's music was less direct (except his settings of poems) but I feel his engagement with other arts really added depth to his music.
When you stop only using traditional music structures you are free to look at how artists of all kinds use their basic material.
While you crertainly will get something from stabbing someone or taking a bath observing other artistic practices in depth can have a more direct use - in my experience.

"at some kind of opposition to/distance from music which makes use of familiar cognitive structures, melody, rhythm, etc.

According to this, "abstract", as applied to music, depends too much on "unfamiliar", and I don't understand what it should convey eventually, as the music it's supposed to refer to would cease to be abstract after you've had some experience with it (especially if it's easy to categorise). At the same time vocal blues might well be perceieved as abstract by someone who has had no experience of it at all, direct or indirect.

Right, but semantics can be used to nullify any word. In the context of this discussion we all know what it means when someone uses the term "abstract".

[jkudler]

"at some kind of opposition to/distance from music which makes use of familiar cognitive structures, melody, rhythm, etc.

According to this, "abstract", as applied to music, depends too much on "unfamiliar", and I don't understand what it should convey eventually, as the music it's supposed to refer to would cease to be abstract after you've had some experience with it (especially if it's easy to categorise). At the same time vocal blues might well be perceieved as abstract by someone who has had no experience of it at all, direct or indirect.

Well, by that standard, it's useless to talk about consonance and dissonance, or even to talk about a "tree," which means different things to different people (and some people don't even speak English). But language depends on mutually agreed-upon accepted usage and meanings, and I think people agree on the usage of "abstract" as Nirav lays it out. As far as that changing over time, we've had less than 100 years of non-tonal and non-rhythmic music and thousands of years of the other kind.

-J.

[rainey]

Funny, though, that a large subset of that music is known explicitly as musique concrete.

The ratios of consonant and dissonant intervals, the balance of sections in long musical forms (sonatas, rondos, and things like rabatments), and so many of the other, math-derived, platonic ideas of harmony: these are as abstract as abstract can get.

The sound of a train, water boiling, children's voices: not abstract.

The music under discussion: a little bit of both.

[mudd]

i'd kind of like to divide this thread into parts. there have been several good discussions here, but they seem to happen mutually exclusively in the single thread. if anyone has some suggestions on how to do that, let me know.

another option would be to select out key quotes about some of the topics and launch daughter threads with those as a starting point. does that sound effective?

also, something stolen from facebook that seems like it should apply here, though maybe 10 pages back in follow up to pete swanson's post

kfw on making experimental (improvised) music: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02094.html

m

[negative potential]

If we're so "inspired" by art, why don't we associate with more contemporary artists (like, um, Feldman and Cage did)?

I largely agree with this, but to be fair, for the older folks like Keith Rowe and Peter Brötzmann, Abstract Expressionism, Fluxus, and Pop Art were contemporary phenomena.

And really, younger musicians can't be blamed for not finding anything inspiring in the morass of capitalist mutual rimjobbing of the contemporary fine arts world.

Maybe this is merely a reflection of the lefty milieu, but most visually oriented people I know tend to be more into comics, graffiti, and street art. Which is not to say that those things are immune to appropriation by the fine arts establishment.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

"at some kind of opposition to/distance from music which makes use of familiar cognitive structures, melody, rhythm, etc.

According to this, "abstract", as applied to music, depends too much on "unfamiliar", and I don't understand what it should convey eventually, as the music it's supposed to refer to would cease to be abstract after you've had some experience with it (especially if it's easy to categorise). At the same time vocal blues might well be perceieved as abstract by someone who has had no experience of it at all, direct or indirect.

the remark about it depending too much on "unfamiliar" doesn't really hold up imo, because in visual arts an abstract painting is also less familiar than a representational artwork.