Unreadable Notation

8/15/2019 Unreadable Notation

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/unreadable-notation 1/16

Writing without Representation, and Unreadable NotationAuthor(s): Jean-Charles FrançoisSource: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 6-20Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833281 .

Accessed: 30/09/2013 03:49

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Perspectivesof New Music.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 161. 112.232.102 on Mon, 30 Sep 2 013 03:49:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pnm

http://www.jstor.org/stable/833281?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp





http://www.jstor.org/stable/833281?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pnm



WRITINGWIT'IHOUT EPRESENTATION,

ANDUNREADABLE NOTATION1

JEAN-CHARLES RANCOIS

WILL START THIS ESSAY on musical writing without representation andunreadable notation with a small incursion into the corridors of the Paris

metro (more precisely, the line B of the RER). All the trains of the line B ofthe RER have four-letter names. For example: KATY, LEON, SIAM,KEPI, SOJA, POLY, SOLO, KFAR, PNYX,....In all, there are thirtynames corresponding to thirty combinations of different destinations, thisline being particularly ong, with two branch lines at Bourg-la-Reine andAulnay-sous-Bois, several autonomous segments, and more or less directtrains.

We assume that the names of the trains all have the standard four lettersbecause they have their origin in a computer memory, somewhere in theadministration of the Parisian metro (RATP). Already we can see that somedoubt exists

concerning the origin of the names and the exact place of this








Writing without Representation

origin. It would be indeed marvellous to make us believe that these trainsare part of a sophisticated technology, when in fact it would not be the caseat all.

Let us make a few observations:

(1) No necessity exists for the users of the metro to know what thesenames represent and for what purpose they were designed: elec-

trically lit panels clearly ndicate at which stations each train will stop.

(2) The names do not represent anything for the user. There is nosemantic or acoustical connection between the names and theirpotential significations. They do not have the immediate capacity tobe classified like other generic names such as "omnibus," "direct,""express," "rapid," or even "puffpuff train," or "TGV" for ("TresGrande Vitesse," the very-high-speed train service between Paris andLyon). The name SOJA certainly does not refer o the transportationof agricultural products, SOLO does not indicate that there is onlyone

trip, onlyone

traveller,or

onlyone

carriage car,PEON does not

designate a train for the exclusive use of poor foreign workers, and soon. Reading the names does not tell us which schedule they are

supposed to represent. In order to know where the train will stop,we have to refer to the general schedule and to follow with onefinger, station after station, all the detailed ramifications of theirroutes: an exhausting effort.

(3) The names do not have even the possibility of representation, sincethe routes

are,on the one

hand,too

numerous,and on the other

hand, each route taken separately has nothing extraordinary n itselfwhich could elicit a simple nonambiguous classification. Thereforethere is diversity, with no possibility of a global overview of thenetwork, and no possibility of exerting power through an evidencerecognized by all.

(4) The names are not easy to memorize, and one does not hear, onefails to hear in current conversations, "I am going to catch my KIWI,

my PRUT, my SKOL,or

myKUMI."

(5) Might the names be cipher codes? Do they have, through the com-bination of their letters, at least an internal significance which wouldbe clear only to the one who must arbitrarily lassify train scheduleswithin the administration? This might indeed be the case. Manyeveryday users know that all the trains starting with a given letter willcertainly stop at their usual destination, but nothing can be inferredby the man in the street with regard to the following three letters ofeach name.

7








Perspectives f New Music

(6) These sets of names belong only to the Parisian metro and to thatparticular ine. They are ultraspecialized n order to produce particu-lar punctual and nonrepeatable cases, having necessary functions onlyfor a bunch of technocrats.

(7) These names are not going to make people dream of a situation towhich they would refer as the symbolic representation of transports,transports capable of rousing the emotion of crowds, of making them

surge in irresistible movements that would lead them to revolution-

ary pathos or to the trenches of the First World War. The names ofthe Parisian metro are cool.

(8) These names are, on the other hand, capable of producing a poeticaldream through multiple associations, which turns metropolitantransport into interplanetary space-age travel, toward a world where

precisely signifier and signified do not correspond anymore. TheParisian metro system is Disneyland (no need to create one atMarnes-la-Vallec).

To sum up: we are confronted with a writing that does not representanything, or possibly does represent only the silence of this particularcase, and we are in the presence of a notation which is not designed to beread, which absolutely does not need to be read, and whose profoundsignification completely escapes the user. Writing without representationand unreadable notation. The status of writing in today's music, inparticular n music using electronic technologies, seems to me to be verysimilar to the structure of the names of the RER line B of the Parisianmetro.

When John Cage presented a series of scores in an art gallery and subse-quently in a book (Notations),2 n order to constitute a catalog of thenotational methods in use at the time, the project had nothing to do withan attempt to demonstrate something, but rather with showing a diversityof graphisms and corresponding aesthetics. To go beyond gatheringtogether in the same place the relevant documents would have implied anattempt to control the space of the score, to judge, to exclude, and tocensure certain practices. The intuition of Cage was that scores couldpotentially be considered as multidisciplinary objects, rather than beingconfined to the simple function of secondary representations of soundphenomena. The score becomes an object in itself, independent of anypotential usage one could extract from it.

To show notations asgraphical

creations, or as visual artobjects,

as John

8









Cage does, is already a commentary, full of explosive matter, on a crisis ofnotation. As long as notation remains a means of access to sound, or ameans for individuals to make music together, it stays in the backgroundand is never shown, never questioned. In such times of perfect harmonybetween musicians, notation is only an unimportant sketch that no onewould think of considering as an element in itself.

To show notation is already to imply that it represents, r rather that itconstitutes the privileged place of representation. hat this representation s

specifically designedto

correspondto an identified

referent,or is

onlypotential in its signification, does not change this observation. The scorebecomes the location of the identity of the work, of the practice inscribedin it, of a certain aesthetic, of a particular graphology, an individualmarking, a vision of the world.... It becomes the incarnation of commu-nication through all the multiple messages that we receive. If it shows itself,suddenly, as an affirmation of the incarnation of representation (itself), it isbecause there is a doubt, a recurrent question about representation itself.And the question put forward by Cage to the world in the exhibition of

representation n itself, heralds the disappearance of the represented, f thesignified as univocal manifestation of an ego or of a reality.

As soon as there is a necessity to demonstrate unequivocally that there issomething to show, one has to persuade oneself that there is something tobe shown. Here we find an infinite nostalgia for an ancient world in whichthe question of representation would never have been asked or consideredin the first place.

The conditions through which a notation system can fulfill its functionsin terms of

being clearlyreadable have been defined

byNelson Goodman in

his book Languages f Art.3 For Goodman, no representation ystem can bedefined as notation if it does not satisfy a certain number of syntactical andsemantic conditions which would guarantee a logical and stable system ofsigns or characters, and a clear definition of what they represent. ForGoodman, what is at stake in a system of notation is the storage ofinformation in a different medium than the original, so as to be able at alater date to reconstitute exactly its most typical characteristics, and to beable to recognize in each performance the object as it was originallyconceived. It is through these safeguards hat the identity of a work of artcan be guaranteed, its durability in time, its unchangeable features in spiteof different interpretations, and its notion of authorship. For Goodman,certain graphic scores by John Cage do not constitute notational systems,because the audience cannot recognize at each performance heir distinctivecharacteristics.4

If Goodman cannot classify these Cage scores as notations as such, it isbecause he fails to read them, to decipher them in order to establish some

relationshipbetween the

graphismand

any potentialrealization. The

9









degree of readability of a given notation system is here in question. Let usgive an example of something musically unreadable: the graphic representa-tion of a sound wave (amplitude over time). It may be an exact andscientific representation of an acoustical event, but it still does not representanything to our musician's eyes, because it is neither an expression of abelief system embedded in our ears, nor a differentiated space which couldallow us to orientate ourselves through the complexity of the information.We can recognize the archetypes of wave forms and associate them withsound qualities, but we are lost in the face of a segment of complex sounds.

For a notation to be readable, the overdetermination of the signified inits relation to the signifier inevitably implies a severe limitation of theinformation content, and an unwritten agreement between all participantson what it is supposed to transmit. The transitory phenomena (or elementsof noise) are the first candidates o be eliminated from a system of notation,for two reasons: (a) they transgress he necessity for differentiation betweenthe objects; (b) they paradoxically tain the object (that one thought to besimple) with a complex individuality which differentiates t too much from

any acoustical phenomenon. The more one attempts to represent reality inall its complex characteristics, the less one can access the possibility ofrepetition, in the sense of allowing the recreation of a musical work throughperformance. In live performance, the literal, exact repetition of an acousticphenomenon is never possible. In order to allow something that will beperceived as "repetition" to take place, the signs have to leave a certainamount of nonexplicit matter to be defined by the performer: hey requirea breathing space.5 Notation is there to guarantee the difference betweensounds (and between works) and at the same time to allow

repetitionto

take place.The necessary limitation of information, the readability of the noted

matter, and the necessity for a discrete definition of the matter to berepresented, are directly threatened by the advent of new technologies.Profoundly, electronic technology implies the eruption of timbre, or if youprefer the "sonorous," the "soundings," the "Tonkunst,"6 the "art ofsound," on the forefront of the stage. With the invention of the micro-phone, the voice can be instantaneously projected into the world and come

to vibrate in the intimacy of our eardrums.7 Micro-temporality becomesthe primary element of sound production. Even the music of the Europeantradition is, slowly, discovering timbre, the "sonorous," during the twen-tieth century.

What do we mean by "timbre"? Certainly not what data remains in agiven sound when pitch, duration, and intensity have been measured andthe totality of the sound has not yet been grasped. The remaining elementsare indeterminate, and if a more precise definition is attempted, they canonly be accounted for through further measurements of pitch, duration,

10









and intensity. Nor is it a question here of timbre as the way we candistinguish between different instruments in order to be able to orches-trate. Timbre is considered here as immediate sound production as itappears in reality, as the nonrepeatable production of the totality of thesound matter. Timbre is defined here as constituting the essence f sound initself.8

Today, composers facing the electro-acoustic media have to directlyproduce their own sounds, without intermediaries. Therefore, in some

way, composersreturn to an era when

performanceand

compositionwere

not separate activities. In being obliged to take into account the quality ofsounds in their utmost details, they become primarily producers of timbre,rather than dialecticians of the evolution of notes in time. Timbre cannotbe written, it can only be produced. The boundaries between the

composer-organizer of notes-and the performer-producer of timbre-arein this way irremediably transgressed. In fact, the whole structure of thetraditional separation of specializations is called into question by technol-ogy in favor of an even greater specialization into circumstantial, limited

tasks, which are not based on corporative structures. What is questioned isnot only the separation between authors and performers or between crea-tion and interpretation, but also the caesura hat governs all these couplingsof Western music such as: active musician/passive public, instrumental

technique/musicality, education/professional world, administration/artisticactivities, theory/practice, writing/sound, and so on.

The new particularisms, the multiplication of different instruments, thespecial effects, the direct control over the sound matter, the absence of

unityin the

conceptionof a standard deal sound, the

diversityof

systemsof relations: all these factors contribute to interfere with the admirableeconomy of our system of notation. Can we recover from this situation andcontinue to function with the same communication channels betweenmusicians? Can the precepts of Nelson Goodman guarantee a neutrality vis-a-vis the objects to be represented, so as to accommodate any complexreality into a readable notational system?

In order to try to answer these questions (we know already that theycannot be answered definitively one way or the other) we have first to

examine the context in which these communication channels and nota-tional systems gain their legitimity. If the context is changed, these chan-nels and systems possibly lose their pertinence. And the first point to bemade is that a notational system as defined by Goodman might only workwithin a set of closely knit assumptions, ranging from socio-economicconditions, cultural and historical factors, up to a correlative specific kindof approach to the treatment of the sound matter. Subsequently we canattempt to look at the technical details of the role of writing in today'smusic

making.

II









Before proceeding, it should be stressed that the demystification of typesof writing in Western culture does not mean that one should not continueto practice them vigorously, that musical scores should be erased from theface of the earth, and that composers should be reduced to silence. On thecontrary, the first duty when confronted by the crude assaults of electronicculture is to adopt an attitude of strong resistance, and to insist that literacy,musical or otherwise, be maintained. The deconstruction of notationalsystems only means that they cannot continue to enjoy a monopoly todictate from a high pedestal the accepted behaviors of the profession. Thisloss of power is only relative, and should not hamper anyone's activity.

Goodman's notion of the score as "authoritative dentification of a workfrom performance o performance"9 can be viewed today as obsolete, eventhough professional composers have never been in better health and the artof scoring has never been practiced to such a high degree of sophistication.The modes of production used in electronic media are all concentratedtoward obtaining a sound result (in a very short time in the case ofcommercial music). The means to achieve this result, notably the scores or

bits of scoring, are of no importance, and may never appear as a constituentof the product (except for legal purposes?). They may or may not belegitimate with regard to the usual ethics of more traditional compositionand performance, they may or may not involve the use of notationalsystems. The product itself becomes what constitutes the work (if suchidentification is indeed possible purely from the sound itself), and as suchcan be thought of as a temporary object that may be easily and substantiallyrevised on an everyday basis. It is what computer technology will providemore and more, the ability to have a set of objects in

memorythat can be

reactualized n new combinations according to needs. The word-processing(or score-printing) programs are good examples of the possibility of modi-fying texts for various destinations or purposes. In this way technologyproposes a situation in which no final product is ever put forward. Addi-tionally, the library of objects, as well as the various software programs, arein general the product of a community of users, rather han a single author.If the notion of work identified by an author remains in good faith thegeneral rule governing our mutual relationships, it has to be in a context in

which, at the minimum, the work and the author are not to be taken tooseriously. The auxiliary question here is: can a performance, a recording of aperformance, a tape piece, the final sound product, be legally regardedsolely as the "authoritative identification" of a work? Or is that notionstrictly related to the mandatory mediation of a written statement (if onlythe title of the piece and the name of the author)?

Goodman's precepts have been exemplified in one notational system,which is already historically marked and associated with the modern era,and confined to European culture. This modern culture promotes the idea

12









that musical manifestations have to be exclusively defined as differentiatedworks produced by individual composers on written documents. Thedebate now centers on asking if the modern era has come to an end, ifconsequently all the classes of notational systems as defined by Goodmanstill have a role to play? And if this is the case, how are we going to recoverfrom this ultimate catastrophe?

According to Michel de Certeau, writing is "a modern mythical prac-tice."'0 Writing here is defined strictly as the activity of tracing a text onpaper, and would apply also to a certain extent for our own purpose to thenotion of the musical score. As such, writing can be compared to anothermythology, orality, or immediate and direct manifestation of the voice inthe presence of the interlocutor. 1 Orality implies the storage of informa-tion in memory, rather than in written forms separated from the body; acommunication exchange based on sound (voice to ear), with the pos-sibility of improvising on the spur of the moment. This word can be usedto describe situations in today's culture that do not rely directly on awritten text, or musical score. Another word often used is "improvisa-

tion," but this has such specific connotations to certain types of music andwith a mythology of liberation, that it is not completely satisfactory.Writing in the Western world is usually associated with progress andcivilization, orality with the magic world, traditions, superstitions, andsavagery. De Certeau describes the structure on which scriptural practicesare based: (a) a "blank page," a limited, proper (property) space whichestablishes the distance between the subject writer and the subject matter;(b) a "text," that is a world that is not just received but fabricated with aparticular rationality; (c) the sense of the text is to refer to a

realityin order

to operate "some change." With this model, the input is what is receivedpassively by tradition, the output is a manufactured product that will affectthat tradition.

With the musical score the scheme is not different from what has justbeen described. The only added ingredient (but rather an important one )is the necessity after the score has been produced to return to the "orality"world of the performer, to realize the work into actual sounds. As with theletters of the phonetic alphabet, musical notation represents only an

imprecise concept of a certain way of perceiving sounds, and not theiracoustical properties. It only fixes certain elements that can be measuredwithout ambiguity and that can be inscribed in the limited and graduatedspace of a two-dimensional representation. The note is the meeting point ofthe projection of two axes of continuum (pitch, duration). The moresubjective elements such as instrumental timbre, intensity, articulation, andphrasing have to be defined in very vague terms. The way the two principalparameters are represented then limits the notation of the Western tradi-tion to a "formal stability" and to a "castration of rhythm" into simple

13









strict durations that lack fantasy.12 The presence of a belief system commonto all musicians is far more important for the satisfactory functioning ofnotation than the latter's role of acoustical representation.13

Notation governs the relationships between composers and performers.The notation as indice (indication, mark, clue, trace)14 n the fundamentalcontract which separates the production roles leaves to the performer thetask of producing timbre and of interpreting the missing characteristics ofthe work (going beyond the letter of the text) in a "simuacrum (make-believe, false appearance, sham, simulation, fake) of improvisation."'5Notation falls exactly between the concepts of an acoustical representationand of instructions for performing an instrumental action, a gesture result-ing in a particular sound. This double function is an admirable nvention,precisely because it does neither the one nor the other, but suggests boththe one and the other. Daniel Charles says: "The written text can only atonce reveal-and-betray he work."16 It is this which allows the distancebetween the composer and the sound realization of the work, and thefreedom to elaborate a musical thinking.

As soon as the contract established between composers and performers sbroken, as soon as the composer wants to have access to the precision oftimbre production outside the tradition of the music schools, the nota-tional system explodes under excessive demands. It becomes unreadableand overspecialized. For the notation of timbre is infinite, requiring thenever-ending description of sound matter, through the long, slow educa-tion of the gestures of the performer whose absolute precision is onlyachieved after a complete assimilation of unconscious reflexes, and throughreflection on or serious

questioningof the sociological conditions of musi-

cal practice. The writing oftimbre is total. In order to be taken seriously, ithas to deal with transitory phenomena, with the ambiguities betweensounds, with sounds in their immediate and nonrepeatable characteristics,with everything that at the same time reduces he distance between thesounds and that irrevocably differentiates hem. It is in taking notationseriously that one destroys it as a viable system, in making it a totalrepresentation, that is, in making it unreadable and overspecialized, con-tingent upon a local context and a private communication: in fact, nonrepre-sentative f generalized universal principles.Our system of notation implies, for the perception of pitches over time, aneutralization of timbre into homogeneous standard objects. The correct-ness in the perception of the score in this way is always guaranteed. Anyproper notational system will always be obliged, in order to function, toinclude a sound material well defined into repeatable limited objects thatcan be perceived the same way by a given community. What is at stake hereis not the degree of complexity of the sound object to be represented, butthe ability of the musical community to recognize this sound object,

14









no matter what the context in which it will appear, and the ability ofthe performing community to reproduce the sound object each time it iscalled for.

The explosion of timbre into any kind of sound objects-especially inelectro-acoustic music-creates a new perceptual world. Methods of

describing sound objects and psychoacoustics now have to play an essentialrole in order to have access to an understanding of the sound matter.However these new modes of perception suggest to me the emergence of afreedom to select among the sound mass whatever information one wishes,the freedom to hear the same data differently at different times, and to beable to change our perception abilities over time. No one should be able totell us how to hear or to tell us how most people actually hear. It is in this

way too that the complexification and diversification of timbre create asituation that challenges the unity, identification, authorship (authoriza-tion) of the work, at least certainly through its eventual written representa-tion. If we consider the difficulty in representing on paper, for the purposeof guiding the performers, the electronic part of Kontakte by Stockhausen,

and the difficulty for the performers of relating the sounds heard to thewritten signs, one can grasp the acuteness of these problems. In thissituation, I am not certain that Goodman's principles can be of much help.

Timbre cannot be easily notated. In the production of timbre, it is notpossible to have the presence of an act of will, of a conscious intention tomake something happen. Cage has well understood this incompatibility,since to have access to timbre as such, he has to establish a separationbetween his subjectivity and the score, and often between the score and theactual sound matter. But there is a

questionthat troubles me

concerningCage's music. Rarely is the performer, the one who must produce timbre,taken into account. In Cage's music, what is the role, the function, thestatus of the performer? How is the performer supposed to produce timbrewithout injecting his/her own desires and intentions, without the traditioninscribed in his/her body interfering with the detachment needed for theproduction of pure timbre? Interpretation is always the meeting point oftwo forms of writing: the rapid writing of the score and the excessively slowand much more heavy, stagnant, apathetic writing of tradition.

At first the interpretation of Cage's music seems simple enough: playstrictly what is written, what is authoritatively prescribed by the score, playlike a disembodied puppet, without emotion or sensibility. To articulatethe "silence" of writing, one has to be detached from any desire and tofloat in ecstasy in unsubstantial mist. Tradition has to be set aside, thesound purified from a collective authentic sound. Let the sound structuresbe themselves. Keep your head cool, play with an abstract detachment, thenose high. But tradition, total writing on the body of the performer,writing

producingtimbre, cannot be erased

bya

simpleact of will. The

15









access to timbre detached from tradition presupposes a slow undoing ofwriting, an obliteration of memory, a reeducation of the body through theoblivion of everything accumulated through the years. Sightreading canonly produce an interesting tension between the Cage score and traditionwhich in itself would produce a strange noise, but which cannot evenremotely approach the implied sound utopia. The object-score, in theabsoluteness of its graphic visuality, opens an abyss of orality corporeality?physicality?) n the sense that the actual doing in the moment of the presentbecomes the

primarysubstance

authorizingthe

piece (the performerbecomes the temporary author at the time of performance), opens a spacein which the traces of the signs, since they do not represent anything, haveto be precisely followed in their smallest details to the point of completelychanging the gesturality of the performer, of affecting the totality of

memory, and of promoting the disappearance of competent instrumental

technique. Slow writing, impossible writing, exhausting writing. Totalwriting of timbre.

In this century of abundance and diversity of musical productions,notation can first be considered as the tool which allows the musician, fromone minute to the next, to pass from one music to another, from old stylesto new music, from one living composer to another. Notation is taken hereas an instantaneous representation of musical ideas, and its instantaneousreading allows for its automatic realization. At the historical moment,however, when the performer becomes a competent sightreader, a cold lackof differentiation installs itself between the diverse performances, contra-dicting in this way the multiplicity of syntaxes. Timbre becomes

grey.In the institutions

specializedin

sightreading,the works transit

through, expressing a plethora of composers, played only once, withoutrepetitions, without rehearsals, without rehearings, and without in-depthcommitments.

Any partial notation, by imposing a certain rationality, threatens thetimbre, freezes it in stereotype. The intentionality of the partial writing oftimbre deadlocks memory, paralyzes the body, reifies the timbre asexchange value and produces a dullness of sound. Timbre in this way is inopposition to discourse, to language structure, to syntax, to linear informa-

tion exchange. The electronic technologies, even though they allow for theexplosion of timbre, of the "sonorous," fundamentally cannot be con-ceived on the model of a network connected by arrows, where punctualand standard information circulates from one individual to another, pro-ducing an exchange of encoded messages. On the contrary, timbre proposesthe notion of resonance, of a resonant cavity, a giant membrane, anenvironment, an atmosphere. The technological timbre proposes the aboli-tion of any discursive structure in general, and in this way of the diversity ofdiscourses itself.

16









The total writing of timbre is only provisionally written in technology.For the writing of timbre in its enigmatic illegibility is slow in its effects. Itis the paradox of technology today to be on the one hand ultra-rapidproduction and re-production, eliminating the slowness of the auditoryuniverse and implying a meteoric visuality, and on the other hand to beinstantaneous and immediate nonrepeatable production (slow in itseffects), implying a resonance: t makes the world resonate with a new orality.This complex counterpoint of speeds requires explanations. The distinctionbetween

"ultra-rapid"and "instantaneous"

springsfrom strong dif-

ferences of aesthetic attitudes towards electronic technologies and theireffects on the world.

The modernist dream of fabricating on the blank page the text that willchange the world has met the tools (electronic technologies) that canperform this task with ever-increasing efficiency, rationality, and rapidity.The computer can be viewed as the instrument with which the rationalityof writing is at its peak: it will not do anything that will not be programmedthrough some symbolic language by human input. This approaches the

notion of total writing which, as I have attempted to show, heralds the endof writing. It implies timbre, instantaneous production, absence of thefixed text guiding performance hrough readable notation. This dual aspectof electronic technology-almost total writing or total writing-shows theclash between those who use the new technology as a faster tool to performthe tasks given by the Gutenberg era, and those who might or might notuse the same tools, but consider that the conditions created by electricitychange completely the name of the game.

Thepossibility

ofreproducing

works of art on avery large

scale and at avery rapid pace completes an historical process which separates art fromtradition: to quote Walter Benjamin, "for the first time in world history,mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasiticaldependence on ritual."17 However, the same tools of reproduction tech-nology, the microphone, the camera, provide the conditions for instan-taneous massive communion ceremonies, the resonance all over the worldof collective rituals. For Benjamin, art in the process of mechanicalreproduction loses its locus and its "aura."18 The reproduction of the

works of the past breaks the prestige of their uniqueness, and throws theminto the ordinary arena of everyday life.19 The new forms of art madepossible by reproduction do not differentiate between the original and itscopies; they erase the limits between users and consumers, and promotethe technique of the machines for its own sake. All this contributes to theeradication of the notion of genius from the artistic sphere. The machinescan enhance anybody's voice. As a result, everyone can speak, no one iscertain who is speaking really, there is no authorized place from which tospeak, no rules that deny the

possibilityof

speaking.Therefore no work to

17









identify, no master to attach. For Gianni Viattimo, the Hegelian concept ofthe death of art has been realized in a caricatural and perverted way by themedia of the post-industrial era, which propose that the realm of aestheticsshould now enter all aspects of existence. Art does not exist anymore as aspecific phenomenon, separated from everyday life. But curiously, parallelto mass culture's providing an everyday aesthetic experience and the suicideor silence of authentic art, traditional and institutional art continues tothrive. Therefore, the event "death of art" is always announced, but eachtime

postponed.Viattimo

proposesthe term "decline of art" to describe

this paradoxical situation. For him, today's way of thinking this paradoximplies the Heideggerian concept of Verwindung as applied to meta-

physics). This word implies "going beyond," "surpassing," and maintain-

ing at the same time resignation and deepening. The word has otherconnotations, notably "recovery" in the sense of convalescence, which isconnected with the notion of resignation.20 The downfall through technol-ogy of aesthetic values to the benefit of the commercial enterprise of massculture can be thought of as an illness which we have to accept with

resignation, and from whch we have to attempt to recover. The two facesof technology separated by an eyelash-ultra rapid writing, instantaneousorality-are condemned to be combined. Partial writing is what constitutesour culture; we cannot throw it away without commiting suicide. One wayor another, we have to deal with the total writing of the electronic era. Inthis context, no one wins decisive battles; on the contrary, the rule of the

game in today's world is the more you lose the more you gain, and viceversa.

The world hesitates betweenvisuality

andsound,

between reified writ-ing and a strange form of orality. In the first stage, the visual establishes itsundisputed sovereignty, consummates the unification of the world, com-pletes efficiently that process which reduces all traditions to a museumspace, multiplies artificial languages, establishes the disciplines of computerscience as the locus of rationality, organizes the theatrical space of theunfounded discourse, eradicates all that was left of the sacred, and producesthe fragmented partial notation of timbre, that is, of the stereotyped soundobject, futurist object par excellence. But in becoming absolute writing,pure visuality, graphism, nonrepresentative notation, or even in becomingwriting that fails to represent, it opens the way to the irrational space of thesound universe. At the moment when visuality wins its final battle, it loses it.Timbre is only a small delayed time bomb slowly ticking, waiting for theadvent of the illiterate society.

18









NOTES

1. This paper was first given at the conference on Musical Writing,organized by the College International de Philosophie and theEnsemble L'Itineraire, at the Sorbonne University, Paris, June 1986.The English version was presented at the University of California San

Diego in October 1986, and at Darmstadt in August 1988. The paperwas revised for

publicationin 1991

followingJohn Rahn's

suggestions.The English version has been reviewed by Nancy Francois.

2. John Cage, Notations, in collaboration with Allison Knowles (NewYork: Something Else Press, 1969).

3. Nelson Goodman, Languages fArt: An Approach oa Theory f Symbols(Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.,1968), 130-49.

4.Goodman,

179-90.

5. Cf. Virginia Gaburo, "Notes from Inside the Piano," Perspectives fNew Music 16, no. 2 (Spring-Summer 1978): 13: "The score serves asan embodiment, a physical entity, around which various ideas andemotions of various viewers may circulate. . . ."

6. Jean-FranSois Lyotard, "L'Obedience," in L'Inhumain, Causeries ur etemps Paris: Galilee, 1988), 177-92.

7. Cf John Silber on "KIVA," in "Forum:Improvisation,"

editedbyBarney Childs, Perspectives f New Music 21 (Fall-Winter 1982, Spring-

Summer 1983): 92.

8. Cf. Jean-Charles Francois, "Fixed Timbre, Dynamic Timbre," Perspec-tives of New Music 28, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 112-18.

9. Goodman, 128.

10. Michel de Certeau, L'Invention du quotidien, I. L'Art defaire (Paris:Union Generale d'Edition, coll. 10/18,

1980),234-42.

11. Michel de Certeau was an important figure in a series of colloquia Iorganized at the Center for Music Experiment, University of CaliforniaSan Diego, in 1979-82, around the subject matter of orality andcontemporary culture.

12. Daniel Charles, "La Musique et l'ecriture," Musique en Jeu no. 13(November 1973): 4, my translation; Daniel Charles is here quotingGisele Brelet, Le Temps musical Paris: P.U.F., 1949), vol. 1, p. 185.

19









13. Cf. Jean-Charles Fran;ois, "Le Concept de la note dans la synthesedigitalisee des sons," in Traverse 26, "Rhetorique de la technologie"(Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1982), 80-86.

14. Charles, 3.

15. Charles, 3.

16. Charles, 3. He is referring to Gisele Brelet, L'Interpritation reatrice(Paris: P.U.F., 1951), vol. 1, pp. 87-88.

17. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction," in Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt (NewYork: Schocken Books, 1969), 224.

18. Benjamin, 221.

19. I am now following the text by Gianni Vattimo, La Fin de la modernite:Nihilisme et hermeneutique ans la culture post-moderne, ranslated fromthe Italian by Charles Alunni (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987); 58-59.

20. Cf. Vattimo, 55-68 and 177.

20

Documents

Unreadable Notation