sound expanse

Last weekend, there was a performance of Stockhausen's Aus den Sieben Tagen at the 2008 London Cut & Splice Festival.

The performers of the first piece, Gold Dust, kept a blog.

Gold Dust


live completely alone for four days without food
in complete silence, without much movement

sleep as little as necessary
think as little as possible...

The performer lineup was selected by Anton Lukoszevieze, and included himself, Apartment House, David Berhman, Cranc, Seth Josel, and Maja Ratkje.

On November 1st from 22:30 to midnight British time and for a week following, Hear and Now will cover the event on their weekly radio broadcast.

I know some readers of this blog attended the event, and I would be most interested to hear any first-hand reports.

I'm in Germany for the Donaueschinger Musiktage. I wrote a bit about the how and why of my visit in a previous post, but now it's time to get into the details that will be most useful to you. The festival runs from October 17-19 (tomorrow through Sunday), and it will be broadcast online. You can also browse the whole schedule and click on programs, composers and pieces for more details.

The Saturday afternoon event is called Ensembliade, and features the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and Klangforum Wien. Each group is playing four pieces. Two of those pieces are played by only that group, and two are played by one of the other ensembles. So there will be three "double premieres"--by Aureliano Cattaneo, Arnulf Herrmann, and Bernhard Gander. Has that happened before? Regardless, it's a great idea, and it will be very revealing about the nature and approach of each of these groups.

The Dialogue Experiment looks quite promising. The event will foreground the interactions between seven composers--Chaya Czernowin and her former students Rick Burkhardt, Peter Edwards, Michelle Lou, Chris Mercer, Ming Tsao and Rob Wannamaker--and the ensemble ascolta as they have prepared pieces for this event. How they will do that remains to be seen, but you can read more about it at the Schott site. I'm interested in Czernowin's, Mercer's, and Wannamaker's work already (those three approaches alone are incredibly diverse), and very curious to know more about the others.

The Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg will be playing works by Emmanuel Nunes, Brice Pauset, and Ben Johnston. Johnston has briefly described his Quintet for Groups in a Paris Transatlantic interview, which also includes interesting material on his work with Harry Partch and John Cage, and how he came upon a workable compositional approach. Here is his description of the setup for the piece we'll hear on Sunday:

The Quintet for Groups dates from the mid-60's. It uses very complicated tuning, involving as many as 83 different pitches. The orchestration includes two retuned pianos, two retuned harps, a huge percussion section, and a modest-sized orchestra.

I've never had a chance to hear Johnston's work live before, and I'm really looking forward to it. And if I'm not misunderstanding the program notes, he will also be in attendance.

Pauset speaks of "the impossible" as the central question of Die Tänzerin (Symphonie V), and of the "thought experiment" involving the motions of a dancer and a distant planet that impact what happens on stage. I don't understand it yet, but it sounds fascinating. You can try reading about it in his program notes too. I'm quite fond of this quote, also from a Paris Transatlantic interview:

Not content with kidnapping you at gunpoint, we also intend to send you back through time to live in the century of your choice. Choose.
I think, of course, the fourteenth century. The Ars Subtilior. In the medieval epoch, there was no music as such--it was a part of a larger discipline including mathematics, philosophy, astronomy.. If you look around this room, we have mathematics--there are three computers (one of which doesn't work), and there is a philosophical dimension to this work.. (Pause.) Yes, I would go back to the fourteenth century. When music didn't exist.

Be sure to check the radio program listings, since not all events are broadcast live, and tune in to SWR2's Webradio by clicking on the "Webradio hören" button on the left sidebar of that or any other SWR2 page.

If you've been here before, you'll probably notice a small change of format. I've moved some explanatory material over to the new intro area. If you're new to experimental music, that is the best place to start. I'll still be posting most daily content to this section.

The links section is getting quite rich with composers, performers, publications, and other useful sites. Events are listed on a calendar and on a map in the worldwide section. I add to that section daily, so be sure to check back from time to time in case something is coming up in your area or is being streamed online.

As always, let me know if there is a link or an event that should be added.

This blog is over a week old now, and it's just occurred to me today that I haven't properly introduced myself.

I'm Jennie Gottschalk. On a good day I think of myself as a composer. Much of the music I write could be called experimental, but not all of it. Currently I'm based in the Boston area, but I was a student at Northwestern University in Chicago for five years, where I received my Doctor of Music (DM) in composition this past June.

There are two questions I thought I would try to answer here: What drew me to experimental music? and What drove me to start up this blog? But then I looked at the clock and realized the U.S. presidential debate is on in 10 minutes...

Another day, then. Possibly tomorrow.

I've added a calendar and map of upcoming experimental music-related events to the worldwide section. Of course it is incomplete. Please contact me if you are involved with or know about other events that should be on the calendar. It would be great to have the name of the event, the location, and an internet link, but just send along whatever you know and I'll figure out the rest.

I'll make a similar request for the links. Since this section is more or less permanent, I'll need to consider each suggestion carefully, but I am most grateful for all input.

Ultimately, I want this site to be a meeting space for people who are, to paraphrase my own subheader, engaged with experimental music. I'm thinking about how that can be facilitated, and again welcome your thoughts. It's an unusual field, and we are widely dispersed. It's time to declare war on the sense of isolation that can set in when trying to do something that is too new to be readily understood. Stare into the abyss for a moment if you like. Now get back over here. Something drew you to that which is radical in sound. The same thing happened to more other people than you can imagine. That makes it no less radical, but a hell of a lot more fun. We all have different fascinations, but I think we share a basic willingness to fail, reconsider, and try again, until maybe we hit on something that expands our sense of the potential of sound in our experience. We don't get there by playing it safe.

John Cage wrote that "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen." If you're acting experimentally, chances are you have a quirky relationship to the future. I know I do. We have a lot to talk about.