So, a return to these questions. I run the risk of complaining too much, and in doing so elevating what is a small disagreement about a nicety of language into a flame-frakas, one which would unfortunately obscure the extent to which CMZ and I are in agreement on so much, especially our desire to problematize the role of the work-concept in contemporary concert music practice. Having thought about these questions for a bit, (sorry for the delay), I've come to the conclusion that such niceties actually connect with bigger issues that I think should be addressed, both in the 'blogspace' and in the practice of concert-making.
My concern should not be seen as a reactionary stance opposed to CMZ's 'radical' call for a disruption of the work-concept; my fears of the possible downsides of a hasty defenestration of the work-concept do not make me protective of the concept whole-cloth. I am, though, protective of some practices which surround the concept, which strengthen it and are nurtured by it. In essence, my concern exists at a scale larger and at a scale smaller than CMZ's: 1 ) At the smaller or more personal level, I am not sure that it is advisable for someone with my interests and professional life to call for the dismantling or transcendence of the work-concept and; 2 ) at the broader, cultural level, I am not convinced that such a transformation is possible within the practice of event-having that we call music.
CMZ loves to talk about the work-concept. LOVES. I know because I've had meals with him during which we have basically spoken of nothing but. Previously, he rightly notices and notes, following Goehr, that the work-concept shapes, informs, biases and enable musical practice today, and understands (I think) that this can be seen in both positive and negative lights. Werktreue, so embedded in the work-concept's manifestation, is a paradigm which contributes to the development of high degrees of virtuosity in performance, aids in the efficient production of notation (music-on-the-page) and the fluent reading of such notation, and which instills in performers an obligation to attend to details, an obligation which can (on occasion) lead to stunning performances; it is also a paradigm which perpetuates power differentials, trains performers to surrender their agency to an abstract and phantasmagoric 'intent' of a composer, and contributes to the commodification of music. The second trend distresses me and is exactly the kind of thing that I try to resist in my musical and educational activities; the first has afforded me the opportunity to, on occasion, participate in some fabulous moments of musicking. I am in conflict. For me the question is how to retain something of the character of commitment that werktreue fosters (among all participants, not just performers), while making the musical process a partnership of equals.
What I do know from experience is that werktreue is regulative, not simply in the manner in which it shapes our discourse, but also in the way that it shapes our praxis. It is difficult to formulate arguments or discussions that do not formulate music around the notion of works as autonomous objects, at least to do so and have an argument that seems to relate to or allow for 'concert music,' but it is also difficult to present concerts (or events) that do not consist of (or can be seen as consisting of) works. (With the term 'presenting', I mean the practice of concert making - advertising, funding things, all the asses-in-the-seats questions). There are certainly counterexamples - Marc Ponthus's recent performance of Schumann, Boulez and Stockhausen or the long and storied career of The Grateful Dead, or so many great free improvisers (thanks to Derek for the recent gift of that Cecil Taylor CD). But, what is notable is the extent to which these exceptions draw upon prior musicking, prior activities in the musical action-discourse which conform more closely to the work-concept. Ponthus' concert was a collage in which recognizable works were embedded. The Dead for years operated two parallel tracks of artistic production, a song/album-track and a jam/concert-track; after a certain time developing an parallel economic structure, they were able to step back from album production. In both cases, potentials from within the object framework are used to power and present non-object oriented musicking. Cecil Taylor's difficulties with acceptance in the domain of jazz seems to be a lesson in how music which doesn't conform to the normative form of a work-object in a particular tradition will have difficulty.
Installation art involving sound, Christian Marclay, and Fluxus are not so much exceptions to what I am describing, but object lessons on what it takes to operate outside of the work-concept; the work of these artists has remained, by and large, outside of the musicological discourse, and of the popular, institutional musical discourse. More importantly, it is not handled as music by cultural mechanics– the models of practice involved seem to draw much more from art and theatrical practice, building a tradition and structure of 'sound art' outside of music while sharing much with it.
To envision a moving beyond the the work-concept seems to require a substantial rethinking of the practice of presentation, in addition to a rethinking of composing and/or performing. Current presentation practice will pull musical or sounding action to conform to the work-concept in one way or another, or will marginalize and/or expel the practice, either to an 'other' category (such as 'sound art') or to the vast dessert of empty seats and absent ears. I am personally more interested in working within the frame of 'music' and so have to deal with the work-concept, since so much of the practice is built around it.
It seems to me that what is needed is a practice of presenting which actively validates the work-concept and also its alternatives - only then do we have a living dialectic that will aid us in understanding the dynamics currently operative and thus in making educated guesses about the sheering forces of transition and in developing the architecture of a new system of sound events. But what would such a presentation praxis be like? Honestly, at this point, it is a bit beyond me. Rather than moving beyond, I feel that we need to enter into a project of research and development, to hold the tensions in a state of stillness and develop plans for moving forward towards a mode of music-making that supports and nurtures what we love in concert-making, and which avoids the accidental defenestration of beloved practices, objects, and friends.
My second complaint comes from the fact that I am less interested in considering the work-concept as regulative force, doctrine, or ideology than I am in thinking about it as a particularly strong and self-stabilizing manifestation of the more general phenomenon of reification. My colleague Alex Dent and I are working on the ways in which performance (writ broadly) requires some locus of reification for any meta-pragmatic assessment to take place. We see evaluation happening in concert and vernacular musics, in language, in plastic arts, in education, and in life, and feel that this interplay of reification and assessment is the essential question. Shifting from one level of objectification to another (as in Kania, 2006) is interesting in what it reveals of the stratus of fixing in a particular pragmatic process and aids in the expansion of our understanding of the general phenomenon of meta-pragmatics, but such a frame shifting does not obviate the questions of self, agency and action, which are usually what we are talking about when we think we are talking about ontology.
I'm interested precisely NOT in moving beyond the work-concept, but rather in arranging interrogations of it, interrogations performed by composers, performers, and audiences. So that we can recall the extent to which reification is a process in which we all participate, consciously or not. In knowing, we can chose appropriate paradigms of assessment and reification, not only those which are handed us by contemporary practice. CMZ may want to move beyond, and I want to move through, but we both wish to unpack the ideologies which shape our collective musicking, in the hopes of increasing the degrees of freedom of music makers and of resisting the dehumanizing elements of commodification within late modern concert music practice.
-=-=-=-=-
Kania, Andrew. 2006 "Making Tracks: The Ontology of Rock Music." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): pp. 401-414.
My concern should not be seen as a reactionary stance opposed to CMZ's 'radical' call for a disruption of the work-concept; my fears of the possible downsides of a hasty defenestration of the work-concept do not make me protective of the concept whole-cloth. I am, though, protective of some practices which surround the concept, which strengthen it and are nurtured by it. In essence, my concern exists at a scale larger and at a scale smaller than CMZ's: 1 ) At the smaller or more personal level, I am not sure that it is advisable for someone with my interests and professional life to call for the dismantling or transcendence of the work-concept and; 2 ) at the broader, cultural level, I am not convinced that such a transformation is possible within the practice of event-having that we call music.
CMZ loves to talk about the work-concept. LOVES. I know because I've had meals with him during which we have basically spoken of nothing but. Previously, he rightly notices and notes, following Goehr, that the work-concept shapes, informs, biases and enable musical practice today, and understands (I think) that this can be seen in both positive and negative lights. Werktreue, so embedded in the work-concept's manifestation, is a paradigm which contributes to the development of high degrees of virtuosity in performance, aids in the efficient production of notation (music-on-the-page) and the fluent reading of such notation, and which instills in performers an obligation to attend to details, an obligation which can (on occasion) lead to stunning performances; it is also a paradigm which perpetuates power differentials, trains performers to surrender their agency to an abstract and phantasmagoric 'intent' of a composer, and contributes to the commodification of music. The second trend distresses me and is exactly the kind of thing that I try to resist in my musical and educational activities; the first has afforded me the opportunity to, on occasion, participate in some fabulous moments of musicking. I am in conflict. For me the question is how to retain something of the character of commitment that werktreue fosters (among all participants, not just performers), while making the musical process a partnership of equals.
What I do know from experience is that werktreue is regulative, not simply in the manner in which it shapes our discourse, but also in the way that it shapes our praxis. It is difficult to formulate arguments or discussions that do not formulate music around the notion of works as autonomous objects, at least to do so and have an argument that seems to relate to or allow for 'concert music,' but it is also difficult to present concerts (or events) that do not consist of (or can be seen as consisting of) works. (With the term 'presenting', I mean the practice of concert making - advertising, funding things, all the asses-in-the-seats questions). There are certainly counterexamples - Marc Ponthus's recent performance of Schumann, Boulez and Stockhausen or the long and storied career of The Grateful Dead, or so many great free improvisers (thanks to Derek for the recent gift of that Cecil Taylor CD). But, what is notable is the extent to which these exceptions draw upon prior musicking, prior activities in the musical action-discourse which conform more closely to the work-concept. Ponthus' concert was a collage in which recognizable works were embedded. The Dead for years operated two parallel tracks of artistic production, a song/album-track and a jam/concert-track; after a certain time developing an parallel economic structure, they were able to step back from album production. In both cases, potentials from within the object framework are used to power and present non-object oriented musicking. Cecil Taylor's difficulties with acceptance in the domain of jazz seems to be a lesson in how music which doesn't conform to the normative form of a work-object in a particular tradition will have difficulty.
Installation art involving sound, Christian Marclay, and Fluxus are not so much exceptions to what I am describing, but object lessons on what it takes to operate outside of the work-concept; the work of these artists has remained, by and large, outside of the musicological discourse, and of the popular, institutional musical discourse. More importantly, it is not handled as music by cultural mechanics– the models of practice involved seem to draw much more from art and theatrical practice, building a tradition and structure of 'sound art' outside of music while sharing much with it.
To envision a moving beyond the the work-concept seems to require a substantial rethinking of the practice of presentation, in addition to a rethinking of composing and/or performing. Current presentation practice will pull musical or sounding action to conform to the work-concept in one way or another, or will marginalize and/or expel the practice, either to an 'other' category (such as 'sound art') or to the vast dessert of empty seats and absent ears. I am personally more interested in working within the frame of 'music' and so have to deal with the work-concept, since so much of the practice is built around it.
It seems to me that what is needed is a practice of presenting which actively validates the work-concept and also its alternatives - only then do we have a living dialectic that will aid us in understanding the dynamics currently operative and thus in making educated guesses about the sheering forces of transition and in developing the architecture of a new system of sound events. But what would such a presentation praxis be like? Honestly, at this point, it is a bit beyond me. Rather than moving beyond, I feel that we need to enter into a project of research and development, to hold the tensions in a state of stillness and develop plans for moving forward towards a mode of music-making that supports and nurtures what we love in concert-making, and which avoids the accidental defenestration of beloved practices, objects, and friends.
My second complaint comes from the fact that I am less interested in considering the work-concept as regulative force, doctrine, or ideology than I am in thinking about it as a particularly strong and self-stabilizing manifestation of the more general phenomenon of reification. My colleague Alex Dent and I are working on the ways in which performance (writ broadly) requires some locus of reification for any meta-pragmatic assessment to take place. We see evaluation happening in concert and vernacular musics, in language, in plastic arts, in education, and in life, and feel that this interplay of reification and assessment is the essential question. Shifting from one level of objectification to another (as in Kania, 2006) is interesting in what it reveals of the stratus of fixing in a particular pragmatic process and aids in the expansion of our understanding of the general phenomenon of meta-pragmatics, but such a frame shifting does not obviate the questions of self, agency and action, which are usually what we are talking about when we think we are talking about ontology.
I'm interested precisely NOT in moving beyond the work-concept, but rather in arranging interrogations of it, interrogations performed by composers, performers, and audiences. So that we can recall the extent to which reification is a process in which we all participate, consciously or not. In knowing, we can chose appropriate paradigms of assessment and reification, not only those which are handed us by contemporary practice. CMZ may want to move beyond, and I want to move through, but we both wish to unpack the ideologies which shape our collective musicking, in the hopes of increasing the degrees of freedom of music makers and of resisting the dehumanizing elements of commodification within late modern concert music practice.
-=-=-=-=-
Kania, Andrew. 2006 "Making Tracks: The Ontology of Rock Music." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): pp. 401-414.