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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #15 on: 01:54:28, 23-12-2007 » |
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And we should confess that Johnson to us was a name unknown before to-day. That's incredible! Your knowledge of the literary avant-garde of the 1960s clearly lags behind that of the musical one. Indeed too late we see it now, all those long summer afternoons frittered away reading Iris Murdoch, those were our fatal mistake . . . . |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #16 on: 10:34:09, 23-12-2007 » |
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What the late Herr Stockhausen said in 1961 concerning his concept of Moment Form is perhaps not unrevealing.
"During the last years there have been forms composed in music which are far removed from the form of the dramatic finale; they lead up to no climax, nor do they have prepared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are rather immediately intense and - permanently present - endeavour to maintain the level of continued 'peaks' up to the end; forms in which at any moment one may expect a maximum or a minimum, and in which one is unable to predict with certainly the direction of the development from any given point; forms in which an instant is not a piece of a passage of time, a moment not a particle of a measured duration, but in which the concentration on 'now', on every 'now', makes vertical incisions, which break through a horizontal concept of time, leading to timelessness."
Of course he is talking about his own Moment Form which may or may not be aleatoric in the sense of the performer being at liberty to rearrange the component parts. Perhaps he is indeed also commenting on recent developments in the music of others in particular perhaps M. Boulez although as we have this from a CD booklet we can not be sure in how far he intends his observations to be more widely valid.
Put like this (and at such an early stage in the whole development!) it all sounds to us perhaps not entirely unattractive.
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #17 on: 12:12:26, 23-12-2007 » |
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Just one more word about this page of Johnson's Unfortunates cited also above: We suspect " distintegration" is a misprint rather than an intended make-believe word. But since this single word is in fact the only word we know of his entire output we have no way of telling. We lack all experience of reading Mr. Johnson's aleatory productions. Would Mr. Now or Mr. D. or another Member be so kind as to tell us whether his books are full of fanciful neologisms like this? Otherwise - the error being so glaring - it is no wonder he was as we are told dissatisfied with his publishers. |
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #18 on: 12:29:37, 23-12-2007 » |
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What the late Herr Stockhausen said in 1961 concerning his concept of Moment Form is perhaps not unrevealing.
"During the last years there have been forms composed in music which are far removed from the form of the dramatic finale; they lead up to no climax, nor do they have prepared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are rather immediately intense and - permanently present - endeavour to maintain the level of continued 'peaks' up to the end; forms in which at any moment one may expect a maximum or a minimum, and in which one is unable to predict with certainly the direction of the development from any given point; forms in which an instant is not a piece of a passage of time, a moment not a particle of a measured duration, but in which the concentration on 'now', on every 'now', makes vertical incisions, which break through a horizontal concept of time, leading to timelessness."
Of course he is talking about his own Moment Form which may or may not be aleatoric in the sense of the performer being at liberty to rearrange the component parts. Perhaps he is indeed also commenting on recent developments in the music of others in particular perhaps M. Boulez although as we have this from a CD booklet we can not be sure in how far he intends his observations to be more widely valid.
Put like this (and at such an early stage in the whole development!) it all sounds to us perhaps not entirely unattractive.
We do like one phrase Mr. Sudden cites, where Stockhausen wishes for "immediate intensity and - permanently present - endeavour to maintain the level of continued 'peaks' up to the end." That is really rather Paterish is it not? But then he (Stockhausen) spoils it by mixing in the "unexpected" and "unpredictable," which strikes us as being quite wrong-headed. Although the theory behind all education tells us that at bottom every one really knows everything already - it only has to be brought out; nonetheless there is no gain without pain; in other words if Stockhausen wants wanted an effective climax "peak" or "maximum" he should work have worked up to it - prepared it, just as keen students prepare when doing their homework, or for that matter keen pianists prepare by playing Czerny. Climaxes Maxima and peaks may surprise us with their intensity, but they (the unknown) have to be founded in the known. It is dialectical. |
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« Last Edit: 22:59:55, 23-12-2007 by Sydney Grew »
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #19 on: 12:53:41, 23-12-2007 » |
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When a proof reader, let alone an author, is faced with a single word upon a page, is it really all that likely that he would miss a typo? B.S. Johnson read English at King's College, London, where the staff included Eric Mottram*, the department's leading specialist in modern literature (particularly that from the States) who had a huge influence on many of the students who studied with him, not least in the study and development of different narrative techniques. The point about The Unfortunates is that one's perception of the novel's main events alters radically depending on how much one knows of what has happened already. A lighter parallel might be found in Alan Ayckbourn's Norman Conquests trilogy of comedies, which share the same characters and timeframe, but are set simultaneously in different places in the same house and garden. Once they had been bedded in, they were performed on successive nights, so that at every show there would be some audience starting the cycle, and others who had already seen one or both of the other plays. It was quite possible to gauge who in the audience had seen the other plays (and even which one, if only one) because certain laughs depended on prior knowledge. Events in The Unfortunates take on a completely different hue depending upon the order in which they are read. Many authors chose not to relate a story in chronological order: Johnson went further in allowing the order to be left to the reader, or even to chance. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Mottram |
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Baz
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« Reply #20 on: 13:01:14, 23-12-2007 » |
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Just one more word about this page of Johnson's Unfortunates cited also above: We suspect " distintegration" is a misprint rather than an intended make-believe word. But since this single word is in fact the only word we know of his entire output we have no way of telling. We lack all experience of reading Mr. Johnson's aleatory productions. Would Mr. Now or Mr. D. or another Member be so kind as to tell us whether his books are full of fanciful neologisms like this? Otherwise - the error being so glaring - it is no wonder he was as we are told dissatisfied with his publishers. While I share Member Grew's total inexperience with the Johnsonian heights (or indeed the lows), I did notice that he overlooked the presence of the mark of interrogation (i.e. the "?"). I put this down to his (Member Grew's) natural tendency to omit all punctuation that he feels unnecessary. But I cannot help wondering whether, in the instance he cites, it might have had some significance? Baz |
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Andy D
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« Reply #21 on: 13:40:44, 23-12-2007 » |
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It's also possible to add an aleatory aspect to literature where none was in fact intended by the author - just read the chapters in a random order! Before I'd even heard of B S Johnson, I read an unexceptional novel called Couples by John Updike using just this technique. It added some interest to an otherwise rather dull book.  |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #22 on: 14:59:54, 23-12-2007 » |
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if Stockhausen wants wanted an effective climax he should work have worked up to it - prepared it Just so - as the original quotation tells us he indeed did not want such a thing. We have had the experience of performing his Mikrophonie I with fellow performers some of whom did indeed wish and strive for conventional climaxes and beginnings middles and ends. It was often frustrating to us and seemed as though they were trying to put back something Herr Stockhausen had to a specific end taken out. If only we had had this quotation at hand during the rehearsals! |
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #23 on: 23:09:19, 23-12-2007 » |
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if Stockhausen wants wanted an effective climax he should work have worked up to it - prepared it Just so - as the original quotation tells us he indeed did not want such a thing. You are right in a way Mr. Sudden and in response to your suggestion we have removed the word "climax" from our message. It was Stockhausen's "peaks and maxima" about which we were really writing, and he does claim - wrongly we think - to have had the ability to introduce those peaks and maxima in some way either random or continuous (he does not make it clear which), whereas we cannot bring ourselves to believe that it is possible. It is contrary to the dialectical laws of human experience. Most responsible aesthetic theoreticians would find his a crack-brained concept would not they? |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #24 on: 23:27:39, 23-12-2007 » |
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Most crack-brained they would - responsible, aesthetic - not a concept (would find his theoreticians). In a way you are Sudden. Right, Mr! In response to your "and" we have climaxed; remove the word suggestion from our peaks and maxima. We were really Stockhausen, and he does claim writing about which it was those. It is contrary to the dialectical laws of random or continuous human experience (he does not make it clear which) to believe that it is possible to have had the ability to introduce. In some way "either" peaks and maxima, whereas we cannot bring ourselves messages. We think wrongly.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Andy D
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« Reply #25 on: 23:46:26, 23-12-2007 » |
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Oooh you are naughty tinners. SG will surely never have heard of the use of  in literature.  we cannot bring ourselves to think wrongly PS I can't spot that SG ever "climaxed"! |
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« Last Edit: 23:53:00, 23-12-2007 by Andy D »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #26 on: 23:50:54, 23-12-2007 » |
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I did it all in my head, actually, Andy! (Takes a bit of concentration.  ) |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #27 on: 00:08:37, 24-12-2007 » |
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he does claim - wrongly we think - to have had the ability to introduce those peaks and maxima in some way either random or continuous (he does not make it clear which), whereas we cannot bring ourselves to believe that it is possible. It is contrary to the dialectical laws of human experience. Most responsible aesthetic theoreticians would find his a crack-brained concept would not they? To us the dialectic would seem to be elsewhere. Personally we find it necessary to acknowledge the temptation of the tabula rasa to Stockhausen and his contemporaries at this period if we are to make any headway with their work. Certain of these people were so frightfully clever at observing the fundamental behaviours of their own music and that of others that from time to time we literally find it giddying! And it is perhaps inevitable that having observed a universal of musical behaviour someone like Herr Stockhausen will feel obliged to see if music can be made without it. The fixed order of musical moments is of course one of these and there were many others. Perhaps not all of them were productive to explore but to us it is not about the product but the process and the process of exploring music at its fundamentals which Herr Stockhausen undertook we must say we find endlessly inspiring regardless of what responsible aesthetic theoreticians might say. Indeed regardless of what it sounds like. To us it recalls the post-war explorations of the atom without some of its more unpleasant side effects. We note in passing that Karl Marx was surely one of the most acute observers of the behaviour of capitalism was not he? |
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #28 on: 01:38:15, 24-12-2007 » |
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Oooh you are naughty tinners. SG will surely never have heard of the use of in literature. we cannot bring ourselves to think wrongly PS I can't spot that SG ever "climaxed"! A.lass Mr. D. - what a mistake that is! |
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« Last Edit: 23:51:32, 24-12-2007 by Sydney Grew »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #29 on: 03:40:23, 24-12-2007 » |
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They look a bit stoned, don't they? I suppose that's aleatoricism of sorts (a random traversing of the synapses?).
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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