Ian Mikyska

Towards an Aesthetics
of Impermanence in the
Contemporary Sonic Arts
Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1.1. Outline
1.2. Wabi Sabi
1.3. The Impermanent Nature of Sound
1.4. Buddhist Background

2. Cognition and Conceptualisation

2.1. Grouping
2.2. Echoic Memory
2.3. Conceptual Decay vs. Material Decay
2.3.1. Case Study: Listening to a Train Passing
2.3.2. Case Study: Aldo Clementis Madrigale and Concertino
2.4. Time Frames and Scale
2.5. Metacognitive Trajectories
2.6. Sanctity and Spirituality

3. Philosophical Implications
3.1. Order, Decay, and Western Aesthetics
3.2. The Concept of the Work and its Permeability

4. Technological and Remedialised Decay

4.1. Case Study: Alvin Luciers I Am Sitting in a Room
4.2. Beyond Sound, Beyond the Present: Rosa Barba
4.3. Analogue Technology: G. Douglas Barretts A Few Silence (location, date, time of
performance)

5. Conclusions
5.1. An Audience Performance Practice and the Need for Didacticism
5.2. Further Philosophical Implications: Disinterestedness and Therapy

1
 Towards an Aesthetics of Impermanence in the Contemporary Sonic Arts
Ian Mikyska

1. Introduction

In this dissertation, I propose an aesthetics of impermanence. What I mean by this includes a wide

set of aesthetic criteria: both in production (choice of materials and their arrangement; creation of

context), in reception (including the goal or purpose of listening to this music) and the broader

aesthetic and philosophical assumptions underlying the work. I will be discussing works and

practices which foreground the topics of impermanence and decay, both in terms of material, and in

terms of perception and cognition through a variety of formal means.

I will be at once descriptive and prescriptive. In case studies of works by selected composers, I will

show how these artists concern themselves with the topics of impermanence, decay, and transience,

but I will also propose how a more candid treatment of these ideas and their implications might lead

to works and contexts offering further deep and meaningful experiences with impermanence.1 Not

all of the works discussed follow the same methods in order to explore impermanence, nor are my

propositions meant to be limiting or definitive. I will therefore be occupying a kind of middle

ground, wherein I will be describing the operation and methods of certain works that already exist,

whilst also proposing a possible future canon in which these concerns are explored more deeply and

explicitly.2

1.1. Outline

The dissertation will begin with a consideration of certain aspects of the cognition,

conceptualisation and perception of sound, and how these might point towards the importance of

1 There are of course many examples of works within the classical tradition that foreground decay or decomposition,
particularly in their endings indeed, many works follow a pattern of growth and decay, especially in Romantic
music often espousing narrative models that connect the life is a journey and a piece of music is a life metaphors.
For more on conceptual metaphors, see Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2003)
In addition to this common usage, however, there are benefits in focusing on aspects of impermanence and decay
specifically, as universal facts and simultaneously specific embodiments, rather than as incidental effects resulting
from other methods of organising or conceiving of the music.
2 I will also occasionally make reference to my own compositions.
2
music focusing on impermanence. This will be followed by a discussion of the role of technology. I

will also provide a view of the aesthetic and philosophical implications of these considerations,

along with some possible extensions of the Western idea of Kantian disinterestedness with regard to

experiences with art. It is my intention to combine these notions in working towards a suggestion of

an approach that we might call, for want of a better word, therapeutic.

1.2. Wabi Sabi

The focus I am proposing is closely related to many facets of an aesthetic that developed in Japan

over the last five hundred years, commonly known today as wabi sabi.3 Table 1 shows an adaptation

of a table given by Leonard Koren4 which compares the aesthetics of European modernism with

those of wabi sabi:

modernism
believes in the control of nature
geometric organization [sic] of form (sharp, precise,
definite shapes and edges)
needs to be well-maintained
purity makes its expression richer
future-oriented
everlasting
people adapting to machines
solicits the reduction of sensory information
Table 1, adapted by the author from Koren (1994), 26-29
wabi-sabi
believes in the fundamental uncontrollability of nature
organic organization [sic] of forms (soft, vague shapes and
edges)
accommodates to degradation and attrition
corrosion and contamination make its expression richer
present-oriented
to every thing there is a season
people adapting to nature
solicits the expansion of sensory information

Clearly, Korens focus is on the visual domain, and we may find many of the properties outlined

above difficult to apply to the sonic arts.5 This is also true of the more material manifestations of

wabi sabi, usually connected with broken and repaired pottery, decaying leaves, weathered rocks or

wood. While there are certain parallels in the sonic domain particularly in the general preference

for fragile, soft sounds within this aesthetic it is most fundamentally the underlying ontological

3 Koren, Leonard, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1994)
4 Ibid, 26-29
5 A note on terminology: in using the term sonic arts, I am including the widest range of art forms that involve sound,
from various traditions of composed music, improvisation, field recording, sound walks, sound art, electronic
music, installations and others. The non-exclusive definition also allows me to include works in other media which
include a sonic component.
3
realities that impermanent music shares with wabi sabi, in its acceptance of and detailed exploration

of the manifestations of impermanence.

In addition to wabi sabi, there are two more aspects crucial to understanding impermanence in

sound: the impermanent nature of sound itself and the role of cognition, conceptualisation and

memory in our perception of sound.

1.3. The Impermanent Nature of Sound

While this might seem a banal observation to make, sound is an extremely good vehicle for

impermanence, given that it always happens over time, and we therefore always encounter it in

passing. Of course, our experience itself is highly impermanent, with sensations and thoughts

continually passing6 even when we have experiences of static, solid objects, they come and go.7

Sounds, in general, cannot simply be. They require energy to come into being, and are therefore

brought about either by the activity of someone or something and will eventually dissipate and

lose energy8 or by the existing physical conditions.9 These concerns are central to the

compositional work of Eva-Maria Houben, who describes how in her work, listening becomes the

awareness of fading sound,10 in effect, the work makes absence present, making it manifest and

palpable.

1.4. Buddhist Background11

6 Matter (visible objects) is impermanent; feeling or sensation is impermanent; perception is impermanent;

formations are impermanent; consciousness is impermanent. The Girimnanda Sutta, 3
7 Of course, these solid objects will also, in time, decay this pervasiveness of impermanence is encapsulated
beautifully in the English phrase this too shall pass. Realising impermanence on a grander timescale is also an
important and rewarding experience. However, the present-moment ephemerality of sound makes it a good means
for an embodied, present-moment awareness of impermanence.
8 Of course, strictly speaking, the energy is only transferred, but it is lost from the object of our attention.
9 E.g. water falling down a waterfall. It is interesting to note that in these cases, it is generally a downward direction,
a loss of energy.
10 Houben, Eva-Maria, Presence Silence Disappearance, Edition Wandelweiser,
http://www.wandelweiser.de/_eva-maria-houben/texts-e.html#Houben_Presence, accessed May 6th, 2017.
11 Buddhism is an ancient religion that exists in a variety of incarnations. As my goals are not theological, I am simply
taking concepts, ideas and teachings from Buddhism that are relevant to my research. All of the Buddhist schools
are placed somewhere on a continuum between faith/belief and secularism/atheism. The Buddhism Im positing
here is close to the more radical, materialist and secularist schools such as Zen, which try to make as few
assumptions about the world as possible often bringing them closer to agnosticism or atheism and which simply
try to describe things as they are. I am also not particularly interested in the side of Buddhism that highlights the
4
Impermanence as a concept in Buddhist philosophy means simply that all existence is transient; it

comes into being and then dissipates.12 While this might, again, seem obvious, it remains something

we need to be constantly reminded of. Furthermore, Buddhism sees impermanence as a result of

processes that bring things into being from nothingness, to which they then return. The important

aspect of this is to see the world and our experience of it not merely as the flow of experiences from

one moment to the next, but also to realise the unique trajectory of each one13 as it passes from

nothingness into being and back.

Crucially, while these realisations might seem mundane at first, what is important is their

embodiment. This awareness of the importance of (bodily) experience in addition to conceptual

thought is another crucial aspect of Buddhism, explored chiefly through various techniques of

meditation. The meditative or contemplative viewpoint (i.e. conscious and directed focus on

perception), and its potential to expand or influence our conceptual thought, is a key aspect of the

proposed aesthetics of impermanence.

It is particularly important to realise the various timescales at which impermanence manifests itself

from our entire lives, through the seasons, one day, a single breath, down to temporally

microscopic processes. Everything is constantly in flux and unstable, only at different speeds (or

orders of magnitude). The ideas of process and scale (or proportion) in temporality will later

become particularly important in considering musical experiences.

2. Cognition and Conceptualisation

attainment of enlightenment or Nirvana and posits a non-material, spiritual higher realm. Much of my research
comes from the Western adaptation of Buddhist Vipassana meditation known as Mindfulness, presented in the West
at first in clinical settings by such practitioners as Jon Kabat-Zinn, but soon spreading into what we could describe
as positive (i.e. non-pathological) psychology. See, for example, Kabat-Zinn, Jon, Wherever You Go, There You
Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (New York: Hyperion Books, 1994)
12 Pauling, Chris, Introducing Buddhism (Cambridge: Windhorse Publications, 1999), 8
13 Each one also being itself composed out of a number of component processes.
5
In my discussion of cognition and conceptualisation, I will be working mostly from publications by

Bob Snyder14 and Lawrence Zbikowski.15 Firstly, I would like to discuss further the specificity of

aural perception.

2.1. Grouping

A crucial aspect of auditory perception is grouping:16 in essence, how we convert continuous sonic

information into units or perceptual wholes. In Snyders words, grouping is to melodic, rhythmic,

or formal organization [sic] what an object is to visual and spatial organization [sic] a coherent

entity within a set of boundaries.17 Grouping is what allows us to perceive a line, a melody,

repetition and variation. A step further is what Zbikowski calls categorisation.18 Categories are

schemas into which we place the groups (units) we create.

Whilst much grouping occurs below the levels of cognition available to consciousness, phenomena

relevant to musical understanding exist at a conceptual level that is, at a level of cognitive activity

at least potentially accessible to conscious thought.19 Furthermore, there is also what Snyder calls

learned or schema-driven grouping,20 which takes the form of top-down processing, and is often

culturally and historically determined. This distinction will prove crucial in discussing of the work

of Aldo Clementi.

2.2. Echoic Memory

In early processing, the primary component of memory (before short-term memory [STM] and

long-term memory [LTM] come into play) is echoic memory. This decays quite quickly, lasting only

14 Snyder, Bob, Music and Memory: An Introduction. (MIT Press, 2001)

15 Zbikowski, Lawrence M., Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002)
16 Rather than hearing completely isolated sounds or an undifferentiated continuum, we hear phonemes, words,
sentences, melodies, rhythms, and phrases, all consisting of parts that seem related despite their taking place at
different frequencies and at different times. We can also hear the wind blowing, a bird singing, an automobile
engine starting, and someone speaking as four separate sounds, even if they are all occurring simultaneously.
Snyder (2001), 31
17 Snyder (2001), 31
18 Zbikowski (2002), 12
19 Zbikowski (2002), xii
20 Snyder (2001), 32
6
up to 3 or 4 seconds, but long enough that feature extraction can take place, which then carries

information into STM and LTM.21 However, iconic memory echoic memorys visual counterpart

lasts only up to one second.22 From an evolutionary standpoint, this is easily explained, as objects

tend to remain in our visual field, so we can return to look at them in order to continue feature

extraction. Sounds, on the other hand, tend to disappear, so having them echo in our memory is

very useful for feature extraction.

2.3. Conceptual Decay vs. Material Decay

Let us now consider the attention we give to the process of decay23 in visual and aural perception. In

visual perception, we see the visual object its gestalts24 and boundaries at all times. Now

imagine a situation in which a sonic object, such as a melody, is gradually slowed down, altered, or

parts of it are left out. The way this melody is constructed conceptually25 is a result of what Snyder

calls sequential grouping.26 Since a melody happens over time, not all at once, it is held first in

STM (and later possibly in LTM), but it cannot be apprehended at once in the way a visual object

can. It has to be construed conceptually. This means that what is decaying is a virtual object, a

concept.

Sound, in its inherent temporality, therefore brings attention to our own processes of memory and

cognition by the way it presents series of discontinuous objects that we compose together in our

minds. I will call this conceptual decay the decay of concepts, of ideas, of mental material in

contrast with material decay, in which we observe the continuous, gradual passing of sound. We can
21 Snyder (2001), 7
22 Dick, A. O., Iconic memory and its relation to perceptual processing and other memory mechanisms, Attention
Perception and Psychophysics vol. 16 (1974), 575-596
23 A note on terminology: throughout this dissertation, I will use the word decay to refer generally to any process that
describes a loss or dissipation of energy, a general decrease or downward direction in one or more parameters,
while I will use the word impermanence to refer to the general concept, including its philosophical context (outlined
above).
24 Koffka, Kurt, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (Oxford: Mimesis International, 2014), 1-14. For a modern
approach to gestalt principles in music, see Tenney, James, Meta-Hodos: A Phenomenology of 20th-Century
Musical Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form and META Meta-Hodos (Lebanon: Frog Peak Music,
1988)
25 Constructed from the point of view of the perceiver, not the composer.
26 Snyder (2001), 32. He contrasts sequential grouping with simultaneous grouping, in which aspects of sounds that
happen very near each other (especially on a micro-temporal level) are fused into events; these events are then
sequenced in sequential grouping.
7
classify a further sub-category within conceptual decay: composed decay. The two case studies that

follow will demonstrate the differences between the two.

2.3.1. Case Study: Listening to a Train Passing

Imagine being in a moderately quiet sonic environment in which the sound of a train can be heard

distinctly. Deciding to focus on the sound of the train, one groups and categorises it almost

immediately (and unconsciously). However, as the train gets further away and quieter, it becomes

less clear which sounds are produced by the train and which by other components of the sonic

environment. One can palpably feel the concept sound of the train become less clear. The focused

attention originally directed at it suddenly spreads to encompass all the sounds in the broad

frequency range inhabited by the sound of the train.

This is an example of a concept passing into materiality, of an idea decaying into a mode of

awareness closer to pure perception.27 What is crucial here is that we are able to consciously

realise this change. This brings us to another important aspect of this dissertation: metacognition.

This term is mostly used in the fields of developmental and child psychology,28 and is also discussed

in connection with mindfulness and other meditation techniques.29 However, I will argue that

metacognition is an experience valuable in its own right, not just to make us better learners or better

thinkers. Realising the interactions between the perceptual world and our cognitive apparatus can

allow us to realise to a greater extent processes in our understanding of the world that usually

remain hidden, and to do so actively and intentionally. In the context of art and music that deals in

reduced material, this insight can become the principal focus of the listening experience. It is in the

concentration on decaying, passing and liminality that these processes can become apparent.

27 Of course, pure perception as such is unattainable, as the extremely complex nature of signal processing means
that perceptual data is always interpreted by a number of unconscious neural mechanisms, beginning with feature
extraction (Snyder 2001, 4). I am positing it here as one pole of a continuum, at the other end of which is pure
concept, i.e. a conceptual interpretation of phenomena that makes no recourse to present moment perceptual
awareness. Seeing a printed word is quite close to this other pole.
28 For an overview, see Livingston, Jennifer A., Metacognition: An Overview, University of Buffalo Graduate
School of Education, http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/metacog.htm, accessed May 6th, 2017
29 See Hussain, Dilwar, Meta-Cognition in Mindfulness: A Conceptual Analysis, Psychological Thought vol. 8/2
(2015), 132-141
8
It was mentioned above that there are many pieces in the classical tradition which make use of

decay. However, they also provide a myriad other perceptual and cognitive material for us to take

in, whereas the kind of work that is the focus of this dissertation reduces the incoming material so

that one is able to reflect on the processes (both external and internal) taking place both in the

present moment and over time without being distracted by too many other considerations.

2.3.2. Case Study: Aldo Clementis Madrigale and Concertino

This discussion of two pieces by Aldo Clementi30 will elucidate what I mean by composed decay as

well as shedding light on some further conceptual considerations. Both pieces can be roughly

described in a few sentences: in Madrigale, Clementi gives each instrument a pattern to repeat,

lasting only a few seconds. These patterns do not seem to start and end at the same points, and they

are discontinuous enough to make it very difficult to follow any individual line. The scoring, for

prepared piano four hands and tape (which bears recordings of piano and glockenspiel), only adds

to the confusion in its timbral homogeneity and unfamiliarity. The piece then proceeds to slow

down continually over its 8 minute duration, with the tape track serving as a metronome.31

In Concertino, scored for Pierrot ensemble, Clementi focuses very directly on what I have termed

conceptual decay. He begins with a solo diatonic melody with a modal, folk-like sound and a

narrow selection of pitches on the violin. This is immediately joined in canon by the viola, at which

point the gamut of pitches widens dramatically, and soon one left with a typically Clementian net of

interweaving polyphony without much to latch on to. Beginning with a clear, singular line, we are

soon left searching for that line in a multitude of voices. The only thing that jumps out at us are the

repeated notes of the piano, suggesting some sort of pulse or rhythm, a basis for predictability amid

the endless lines of the sustaining instruments. It is typical of Clementis compositional elegance

30 Both available on YouTube Madrigale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB-nmVWJJxY and Concertino:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sodwwhw3Vpg, accessed May 6th, 2017
31 Cummings, Simon, Blast from the Past: Aldo Clementi Madrigale, 5 Against 4,
http://5against4.com/2014/10/18/blasts-from-the-past-aldo-clementi-madrigale/, accessed May 6th, 2017
9
that he closes each of the four sections with a thinning of the texture, eventually leaving the piano

on its own, suddenly letting us hear that what seemed to be only punctuation amidst a dense thicket

of instrumental texture also, itself, decays into silence.

The kind of layering Clementi makes use of here (and in his other works involving canons) also

brings up another form of conceptual decay: they strip historical (or historical-sounding) material of

these connotations, leading us instead to focus upon its internal morphological relations.32

Furthermore, in his focus on the contrast between highly specific, memorable material (including

historical material, which brings in a temporality much greater than the piece itself in a clear

example of what Snyder calls learned or schema-driven grouping)33 and very undistinguished

textures, Clementi is constantly bringing ones attention to the role of attention itself, i.e. what it is

that one manages to keep in mind and what factors allow one to do so. This is one interpretation of

Clementis statement that the music is describing its own end34 not simply the end of the musical

material and its history, but also of a stable, culturally agreed structural organisation of music.

Indeed, Clementis entire compositional practice can be interpreted in terms of drawing on the

blanks leftover when we transfer conceptual information (represented for him by the score) into the

aural domain and a real listening experience. [M]y first serious confrontation with music was

rather disconcerting, he has written, in that I passed from a sensory, auditory dimension to a

conceptual one: to perform music while reading it was truly a great shock, a sort of block that I

managed to overcome only through long hours of study and passionate insistence.35 As Osmond-

Smith puts it, there is a constant tension between the brains making and reading of scores, and the

raw, risky interface between mind and body brought into play by performing them.36
32 Osmond-Smith, David, Temps perdu: Aldo Clementi and the Eclipse of Music as Praxis, in The Modernist
Legacy: Essays on New Music, Heile, Bjrn (ed.) (London: Ashgate, 2009), 196
33 Snyder, Bob, Music and Memory: An Introduction (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 22. Schema-driven grouping
depends on cultural, intersubjective determination, and is therefore more variable among individuals.
34 Clementi, Aldo, Commentary on My Music, trans. Dan Albertson, Contemporary Music Review vol. 28 (2006),
507
35 Interview with Benedetto Passananti, in Passananti, Benedetto (ed.), Archivio 1 (Palermo: CIMS, 1991), 58, quoted
in Osmond-Smith (2009), 185
36 Osmond-Smith (2009), 185
10
The fact that these pieces are schematic enough to be captured in words brings them close to work

that is often classified as conceptual.37 However, where Clementi departs from the conceptualist

(aesth)ethic38 is in the focus placed on the result, on the lived experience of (often very simple)

concepts. Osmond-Smith writes:

For it is precisely the enigma of Clementis work that structures so lucidly self-revealing to the
reading eye should exert so powerful an intuitive grasp upon the listener.39

I reject this notion of an enigma. Rather, it is a clear exposition of an elementary cognitive

disposition. Grasping large temporal constructs is much easier to do out of time (e.g. by seeing a

graphical representation of the form, or the score) than in time, by listening. It is the interaction of

these two aspects that Clementi puts at the centre of his music.

Clementi is perhaps the composer most often associated with themes of impermanence in

contemporary music. In an article discussing his own music,40 he writes that music should simply

have the humble task of describing its own end, or at least its slow extinction.41 However, it is

wrong to see this as a defeatist position. These decays ultimately lead us to discover and experience

more than seems to be there on the page.42

Here, we come to a crucial aspect of music dealing with impermanence: that realisations of

transience are also realisations of ones own eventual demise. Realisation, in this case, also means

acceptance and understanding, while the lower time scales of decay (within one piece, one section,

one note) allow us to appreciate the fragile, liminal, slight and disappearing beauty that time and

decay can provide.

37 For an introduction of conceptualism in music, see Kreidler, Johannes, Sentences on Musical Concept-Art (2013),
http://www.kreidler-net.de/english/theory/sentences.htm, accessed May 6th, 2017
38 And, indeed, where most artists working with sound and conceptualism beginning with Cage depart from it.
39 Osmond-Smith (2009), 184
40 Clementi (2006), 507-511
41 Clementi (2006), 507
42 This is brought out in the way in which Clementi uses instruments that decay piano, various metallophones in
both the pieces I discuss: it is the ritardando which allows the decay to speak more fully.
11
These two case studies provide some evidence as to the wide-ranging forms a focus on

impermanence can take. It can centre on material decay in the form of decaying single sounds or

longer material processes, as is often the case in Houbens work.43 In these cases, we can take a

slightly more aloof, objective approach to the perceptual material. In the case of conceptual decay,

as in the example of the train, we can focus metacognitively on processes of decay within concepts

that we generate and apply almost automatically, without realising it. And in the case of composed

decay,44 it is the issues of communication between composer and perceiver, and active, intentional

conceptualisation that are foregrounded, often operating at or beyond the edges of tenability.

2.4. Time Frames and Scale

Scale and orientation within larger temporal forms is one of the basic mechanisms by which music

holds our attention. In common practice music, this is accomplished through the constructions of

forms based on contrast and similarity, such as themes and motifs and their placement within a

greater structure of dynamism, texture, and large-scale harmonic development. In the aesthetics

proposed here, however, the form is often extremely simple in what I propose to call decaying

forms, which are either set up and begin losing energy immediately,45 or, instead, first gain energy

and then lose it (with the mid-point often coming halfway through a piece).46

These can either take a more material form in which it is a truly continuous sound47 going through

this process or a conceptual form, in which grouping processes at a higher level are present,

ultimately leading to a continuous impression of form.48 The latter case, as discussed in the

Clementi examples, is more cognitively tenuous and more fragile, often leading us to focus to a

greater extent on our own processes of memory.

43 E.g. go and stop for piano or finished unfinished and drones for organ.
44 Other examples of composed decay might include the work of Gerard Grisey (the opening of Tempus ex machina),
Sylvia Lim (Reordering the Unconsumed) and Cassandra Miller (Bel Canto).
45 e.g. Scelsis Madrigale, Alvin Luciers I Am Sitting in a Room, which I will discuss later, Lims Reordering the
Unconsumed, or my own Breath; Dying.
46 e.g. Scelsis Concertino (though here, the process is repeated four times), James Tenneys Having Never Written a
Note for Percussion or my own Constructions in Snowfall; Crystals.
47 Or sound aggregate.
48 Snyder (2001), 8
12
The simplicity of these forms means that there are no surprises, no twists, and no drama in the

development: we know where we are and we know where were going. There is a surprising

connection with Brahms conception of generating everything in a piece from as little material as

possible,49 later extended by Stockhausen into his idea of the formel50. In an exposition of a

traditional and important Buddhist idea, Lama Surya Das proposes that every exhalation is like a

small death, and every inhalation is like a small rebirth.51 All these lines of thought point to the

importance of creating, highlighting and understanding the connections between the various

temporal levels of lived experience.

This realisation of the interconnectedness of processes at all scales of duration52 is crucial, and

indeed, what all the processes seem to have in common is that they will eventually decay. However,

embodying this realisation in a single experienced decay (or a series of such decays set in a larger

decaying form) can be an illuminating experience, in which we feel the short-term decays

(rhythmical, sonic) at first hand, know of the middle-term decays (formal) by conceptual thought

and anticipation, and project onto the long-term decays (a day, a life) by making connections

outside the piece itself.

2.5. Metacognitive Trajectories

Several times now, I have described a process in terms of moving from one mode of attending, or

one time frame, to another. There are two (related) movements we can describe:

perception conceptualisation
the present time conceived not at the moment it is happening; outside the present

49 Wintle, Christopher, On the Neapolitan Complex: The Spectred Pall: Brahmss Progressive Harmony, in All the
Gods: Benjamin Brittens Night-Piece in Context (London: Plumbago Books and Arts, 2006), 115
50 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, How Time Passes By, Die Reihe vol. 3 (1959), 10-40
51 Surya Das, Lama, Awakening to the Sacred (New York: Broadway Books, 2000), 34
52 Extending past formal levels, as mentioned before, on to the level of days, seasons, lives, even geological aeons.
13
What I mean by this is that when listening, we are either focusing our attention on what is

happening in the present, or we are trying to conceive and understand what is happening on a larger

scale.53 We are either listening to what is happening (synchronic) or making sense of what has

happened and might happen (diachronic).

Near the beginning, I established the idea of material decay. Another way of looking at this is as a

continuum stretching between the material and the conceptual. It is important to note the differences

in these approaches: the conceptual does not quite happen outside of time, rather, it happens in our

own time. This time is, however, removed from the time of lived experience. Conceptual thought

happens much faster54 than the kind of sustained concentration necessary to truly apprehend the

detail in material perception.

The lines in the diagram above are therefore somewhat misleading, as the relationship between the

terms is decidedly asymmetrical: conceiving of a larger time frame can happen practically

immediately, such as when one sees a (comprehensible) diagram of the form of a piece. Perceiving

the present moment somewhat ironically has to happen over time and be sustained into a

continuous experience for it to be meaningful. Furthermore, having been distracted from perception

by conceptualisation, it can be quite difficult to get back.

However, it is the extreme simplicity and linearity of development in some of the work falling

under the aesthetic proposed here that allows for what I am calling metacognitive trajectories.

These works offer very clearly both a proposition for what to do perceptually in the present

moment, how to conceive of the form in totality, and how to relate these two levels, setting the

intensity of the present moment within a form we can easily conceptualise while its happening.

53 These terms are parallel to what Jonathan Kramer (1998, 20-21) calls linear and non-linear elements. His focus,
however, is on compositional elements and parameters rather than the listening experience, and furthermore, these
terms are particularly misleading misnomers, which is why I have not adopted his terminology.
54 Goodman, Lenn E., Avicenna (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 159
14
The limited amount of perceptual material means that one starts to become aware, inevitably, of

how one is paying attention and what to. This realisation of ones own attention, and the possibility

of embodying this realisation temporally through sustained concentration, is one of the main

imports of this inquiry. It is important to realise that both these aspects which might also be called

vertical and linear,55 simultaneous and sequential, etc. are implicitly present in all music.

Sometimes, one predominates, at other times, it is the other doing away with linear or sequential

elements entirely is impossible, as R. Andrew Lee discusses.56

In addition, the simplicity and general slowness of the work provides enough time time to think,

to conceptualise, but also time to return to present moment perception, knowing you havent missed

anything.57 Indeed, this is an echo of Steve Reichs conception of music as gradual process58

particularly in that once a simple process is established, there is no longer any mystery to it in the

traditional sense, nothing for the audience to decipher. There is, however, a direct contact with

the impersonal,59 as Reich puts it: in our case, the impersonal being the impermanent nature of all

phenomena. The mysteries that are left are those of nature, of existence. With a bit of poetic licence,

we might say that this layering of temporal embodiments might also lead us towards a glimpse of

the eternal, of that which is outside of time entirely.

On a less metaphysical level, we might speak of the benefit of inhabiting several kinds of the

present,60 or of embodying our temporal consciousness at several different levels. This is the

55 These are the terms used by Lee, R. Andrew, The Interaction of Linear and Vertical Time in Minimalist and
Postminimalist Piano Music, PhD dissertation,
https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/9602/LeeIntLinVerTim.pdf?
sequence=1&isAllowed=y, accessed May 7th, 2017
56 Lee, R. Andrew, Temporality as an analytical approach to minimalist music: Tom Johnsons An hour for piano,
CeReNeM Journal, http://divergencepress.net/articles/2016/10/19/temporality-as-an-analytical-approach-to-
minimalist-music-tom-johnsons-an-hour-for-piano, accessed May 7th, 2017
57 A similar procedure is used by Tom Johnson in his piece A Time to Listen, broadcast on RT in 2004, in which a
text describes the manner in which time passes as this is happening, within a regular rhythmic framework, referring
directly to the safety and certainty the listener can experience during the listening process.
58 Reich, Steve, Music as Gradual Process, in Writings about Music, 19652000, ed. Hillier, Paul (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 34-36
59 Reich (2002), 35
60 Apart from many different theorisations of the present, such as the psychological present and the phenomenological
present, I propose there is also a marked difference in whether we view that present as set into a larger temporal
construct or simply as a moment in itself.
15
situation Bergson set out at the end of the 19th century, in a critique which we might appropriate as a

positive approach:

We can thus conceive of succession without distinction, and think of it as a mutual penetration, an
interconnexion [sic] and organization [sic] of elements, each one of which represents the whole, and cannot be
distinguished or isolated from it except by abstract thought. Such is the account of duration which would be
given by a being who was ever the same and ever changing, and who had no idea of space. But, familiar with
the latter idea and indeed beset by it, we introduce it unwittingly into our feeling of pure succession; we set our
states of consciousness side by side in such a way as to perceive them simultaneously.61

Jonathan Kramer62 also offers illuminating insights on this issue. He speaks of vertical music,

which has also been called immersive by composers Bryn Harrison and Richard Glover.63 Kramer

says vertical music denies the past and the future in favour of an extended present,64 but he notes

that minimizing the significance of the sequential order of events is not strictly true of process

music.65 One of the hallmarks of vertical music as he posits it is non-linearity, whereas

impermanent music is often closer to a kind of extreme linearity. This music gives us the means to

experience a moment of eternity, a present extended well beyond normal temporal horizons, without

forcing us to lose our grip on reality.66

Freuds definition of timelessness, quoted by Kramer, is illuminating: no temporal order, nothing

altered by the passage of time.67 What we are dealing with is, rather, a very basic, primordial

temporal order, one which heads towards diminution, slowing down, entropy and dissipation. We

can partially experience the stopped time Kramer discusses, but with the added level of being aware

of its directionality and impermanence. In this sense, it is a conditioned eternity, eternity with a

caveat the caveat being the transience of all things.

2.6. Sanctity and Spirituality

61 Bergson, Henri, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson (Crows
Nest: George Allen and Unwin, 1910), 100-101
62 Kramer, Jonathan D., The Time of Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998)
63 Glover, Richard and Harrison, Bryn, Overcoming Form: Reflections on Immersive Listening (Huddersfield:
University of Huddersfield Press, 2013)
64 Kramer (1998), 375
65 Ibid, 375
66 Ibid, 376
67 Ibid, 378
16
The mention of eternity above might have set off some alarms, as could the implementation of

Buddhist ideas. There is a rising movement in the West connected with the mindfulness

movement mentioned above that attempts to approach spirituality with as little of the baggage of

belief as possible. This direction is represented by such thinkers as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and

Kim Knott.68

While Dennett speaks of awe and joy and a sense of peace and wonder,69 many people will

mention a sense of interconnectedness with the world, a sense of the enormity of the world/universe

and ones minuscule place within it, and a loss of a sense of self.70 Anselm Kiefer has described art

as spiritual in the sense that it makes a connection between things that are separated.71 The

connection impermanent music can make very strongly and in an embodied, experiential way is

between temporal scales of decay, leading us to accept fully and deeply the ontological reality of

death and decay.

The spiritual elements mentioned above are, to an extent, opposed to the broad development of

Western culture since the Enlightenment, which highlights progress, individualism, mechanistic

representations of the world, and rationalism. We might also mention the radical and exponential

acceleration of the world, as well as the pace of communication and the amount of information

directed at us over the last hundred years. These are some of the reasons why slowing down, taking

the time to listen and appreciate the omnipresent nature of impermanence, are particularly important

today.72

68 Harris, Sam, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), Dennett,
Daniel, Daniel Dennett Discusses Secular Spirituality [video interview] Big Think
http://bigthink.com/videos/daniel-dennett-discusses-secular-spirituality, accessed May 7th, 2017, Knott, Kim, The
secular sacred: in-between or both/and?, in Social Identities between the Sacred and the Secular, ed. Day, Abby,
Vincett, Giselle and Cotter, Christopher (Ashgate, 2013), 145-160
69 Dennett, Daniel, Daniel Dennett Discusses Secular Spirituality [video interview] Big Think
http://bigthink.com/videos/daniel-dennett-discusses-secular-spirituality, accessed May 7th, 2017
70 Expanding the Buddhist doctrine of non-self (one of the three marks of existence, in addition to impermanence and
suffering) from a neuroscientific perspective is Harris strongest and most innovative argument in Waking Up.
71 Kiefer, Anselm, Art is Spiritual [video interview with Tim Marlow], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8h11-
Jm4-s&t=2s, accessed May 7th, 2017, 1:49
72 This thinking is reflected in the rise of institutions such as the Slow Movement (http://www.slowmovement.com/)
and the World Institute of Slowness (http://www.theworldinstituteofslowness.com/), both highlighting the need for
time and reflection in the modern world.
17
3. Philosophical Implications

3.1. Order, Decay, and Western Aesthetics

Roland Quitt formulates clearly some of the basic ontological assumptions of traditional Western

art: both art and the world are in some sort of complex order () [a] harmony in which nothing

remains without meaning. () The contemplation of art, then, gives us a glimpse of the world as it

should be.73 He speaks of mastering the world and art as a moment of relief that spares [sic] us to

become active and change our own rather chaotic world for the better.74

We could hardly ask for a better exposition of the contrast between what I will broadly call an

Eastern and a Western approach to the world: the former based on respect, understanding and

adaptation, the latter based on desire, striving and force. My point here is almost too obvious to

make: rather than create an order that would inspire us to order the world around us, impermanent

music strives to lead us to acceptance and understanding of the nature of existence as it is.

We are also returning to some elementary ideas in Buddhist thought, and one which is particularly

present in the wabi sabi aesthetic: imperfection. A Christian ontology presupposes a perfect world

created by a perfect God, or, alternatively, imperfections and suffering intended as punishments.75 In

the Buddhist view,76 the world simply is at it is, and that is what we have to start from and work

with.

3.2. The Concept of the Work and its Permeability

However, it is not only in the understanding of the world that the two approaches differ. There is

also a marked difference in how they might see artistic or aesthetic production: in the West as a

73 Quitt, Roland, Composition and Theatre, in Composed Theatre: Aesthetics, Practices, Processes eds. Rebstock,
Matthias and Roesner, David (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013), 61
74 Ibid, 62
75 It is then a post-Enlightenment ontology, arising necessarily out of the pre-modern Christian world-view that leads
to the kind of conception of (manmade) order that Quitt describes.
76 Again, I mean the more agnostic, secularised Buddhist view, rather than the branches of Buddhism with a more
developed cosmological and religious aspect.
18
work, as an ideal object whose philosophical groundings (and the problems therein) are elucidated

clearly by Lydia Goehr77 and Roman Ingarden;78 in the East as an activity, as something you do.

Of course, many of the works I discuss still adopt much of the former, object-oriented approach,

even as they to portray or engender decay and imperfection.79 However, there are also works which

actively seek to dissolve these boundaries by inviting in environmental sounds. Michael Pisaro in

particular has explored this idea in depth, extending it to his conception of radical non-action,80

wherein silence i.e. not doing anything invites contingency; anything that may happen in the

environment regardless of us.

Of course, the first composer to do this was John Cage with 433 in 1952, in which he replaced

any content of the work with whatever contingent sounds may happen in the environment.

However, works that combine these two elements81 put simply, man-made, composed material and

contingent, natural material foreground the impermanence of our concepts of a work, of a logical

discourse of music,82 of something we can clearly understand and fit into various conceptual models

and syntactic83 constructions such as patterns. These are contrasted with contingency, with chaos,

with nature, which we can rarely listen to sequentially and logically, as it lacks the kind of order

Quitt discusses.

77 Goehr, Lydia, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994)
78 Ingarden, Roman, The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1996)
79 Most obviously the pieces of Aldo Clementi.
80 Pisaro, Michael, interview with Lucas Schleicher, Brainwashed, http://www.brainwashed.com/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=9204:micahel-pisaro-interview&catid=74:interviews&Itemid=91, accessed
May 7th, 2017
81 Examples include Chaz Underriners Nocturne series: 5_Krulik Quartet, Lucie Vtkovs Imprints of the
Landscape I and II, in which she also uses field recordings as the basis for notating the scores she then gives to
performers, my own Spaces, Drones and Melodies, in which I use field recordings and editing to occasionally bring
about the opposite effect; that is, environmental sounds being composed, or Michael Pisaros Kingsnake Grey. As
he often does, Pisaro uses (among others) the very pure sound of an e-bow (electric bow) on the string of a guitar,
which produces a very pure, almost sine-wave-like tone. He posits this purity in sound (and musical expression)
against the complexity of the (often urban) environments, whilst also often using very slow diminuendi to bring
about the kind of perceptual effect of a dissipation (or, more poetically, explosion) of attention I described in the
train-going-by example in section 2.3.1.
82 Zbikowski in particular understands this categorical difference very well, when he says an account of how humans
process sound is not the same thing as how they understand music. Zbikowski (2002), xii
83 i.e. sequential.
19
Furthermore, we tend to listen to natural sonic environments globally, trying to encompass the

totality, and to do so vertically rather than sequentially. We cannot listen to their passing in the same

way that we listen to composed music, and if it is musical elements from a particular tradition,

drawing on learned, schema-driven grouping, we are again arriving at a particular type of

metacognition, exposing the practicalities of what Zbikowski describes when he says organized

[sic] sequences of musical events properly recognized [sic] as syntactic are typically created

through a set of musical practices shared among a number of musicians. () Compositional

strategy, conceived in these terms, assumes an alliance between syntax and processes of meaning

construction: composers arrange musical materials with relatively specific expressive or

communicative goals in mind.84

The compositional strategy here is something slightly different: while it makes use of these

communicative goals and methods, it also draws attention to their limitations, to their artificiality, to

their impermanence in relation to the constant flux and chaos that is our lived world.85

It may perhaps seem paradoxical that these works beginning with 433 need to intentionally

create a context in which anything non-intentional can then happen and be perceived intentionally.86

However, this is due to our cultures assumptions about what it is worth paying attention to.

Impermanent music, in addition to simply giving us the time87 to slow down, can also show how

much there is to pay attention to outside our narrow boundaries of what we should be paying

84 Zbikowski (2002), 138

85 I am invoking the phenomenological idea of a lived world (Lebenswelt) here as the purity of scientific thought that
phenomenology was originally trying to disrupt provides a good parallel to the purity and assumptions of
completeness of absolute music which impermanent music seeks to disrupt.
86 This focus on the active, intentional paying of attention is a major theme in mindfulness practice and meditation
more generally. This paradox is also central to Cage, who embraces this purposeful purposelessness.
87 In this respect, Heiner Goebbels claim that music and art in general is the gift of time is particularly poignant:
[Music] only works with time. And this is something which commercial society doesnt go along with. And thats
something we can give to the audience. () We can make it a present to the audience, to give them time.
Goebbels, Heiner, interview with Alex vamberk, in UNI vol. 1 (2017), 16-23, original English-language text
provided by vamberk in correspondence with the author.
20
attention to, as well as showing us how exactly those boundaries are constructed in the

metacognitive manner described above.

4. Technological and Remedialised Decay

We have returned repeatedly to the idea of an experience that leads to a realisation of the

impermanence of memory or of conceptualisation. Much technology is, in fact, an extension of our

memories from writing and text to recording devices, these are attempts to give constancy to the

unreliable workings of the mind.88 These are also the technologies that allow our concepts to be

fixed, disseminated, and then understood by others. Through their omnipresent role in our lives,

these technologies often gain a level of transparency. However, they also invariably contain noise

what I propose to call artefacts of decay, the material manifestations of medialisation or

remedialisation89 in short, the difference between an original event some time in the past and its

remedialised manifestation in the present.

In information theory terms, this is the signal to noise ratio.90 Information theory is also the source

of the term redundancy, which, as discussed above, is in fact an excellent method for getting one to

perceive materiality rather than information content. A focus on the artefacts of decay allows one to

apprehend them in their own right, rather than trying to shut them out or get rid of them. Once

again, this approach allows one to discern metacognitively exactly what one considers the content,

the information presented in the sonic material, and then to take a step back from this interpretive

horizon91 in order to focus on what Lawrence Kramer calls the hermeneutic remainder.92
88 Brey, Philip (2000). Technology as Extension of Human Faculties, Research in Philosophy and Technology vol.
19 (2000)
89 A note on terminology: I will be using the term remedialisation, which describes the process of something being
embedded within a medium of communication later in time than its original occurrence in real time (which I will
term event). Remedialisation is not synonymous with transmediation, as remedialisation could occur using the
same technology (e.g. recording a sound over and over). I refrain from using the grammatically consistent
remediation/remediate because of its prevalent meaning (and Latin root), which relates to remedies; remedying.
90 Uro, Marc, Basic Concepts in Information Theory, http://www-public.tem-tsp.eu/~uro/cours-pdf/poly.pdf, accessed
May 9th, 2017, 5
91 Gadamer, Hans Georg, Truth and Method, trans. Glen-Doepel, William, Weinsheimer, Joel and Marshall, Donald
G. (London: Continuum, 2004)
92 Kramer, Lawrence, Musical Meaning: Towards a Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002),
4. For Kramer, however, this remainder is usually a signifier of hidden, psycho-erotic aspects of a societally
sanctioned understanding of the functioning of music, whereas for us, it merely points back to the cluster of
concepts around impermanence.
21
 4.1. Case Study: Alvin Luciers I Am Sitting in a Room93

While it is one of the most discussed pieces in the repertoire of the 20th century, this piece is almost

never discussed from a phenomenological perspective. Despite Luciers insistence, in the text that

forms the only starting material of the piece,94 that the piece is not intended as a demonstration of a

physical fact, that is often how it is taught in schools.

I propose, instead, that the piece is an extremely gradual portrayal of the process of conceptual

decay, with Lucier making several decisions in order to maximise the impact: the first is the

absolute clarity, even transparency, of the text that he uses, which simply describes the activity he is

undertaking. After only one or two hearings, it is entirely apparent what is happening. There is no

mystery.

Another is the length of the spoken text well over one minute. In other pieces using repetition of

text, such as Reichs Come Out, the effect that is used in order to get to the materiality of the sound

is semantic satiation.95 Lucier, instead, chooses a long text, spoken very slowly, in order to ensure

that the same text is never repeated too soon, so that on each repetition, there is still surprise at the

text develops in terms of its sonic morphology, gradually creating a sonic space that we slowly learn

to inhabit. Furthermore, it means that we never lose the semanticity of the text by virtue of its

repetition: the text is there as long we are able to hear it and even a little longer, since by the point

it becomes incomprehensible, we have heard it repeated many times and is only lost to the

physicality of the sound, not to the decay of our cognition. Thus, Lucier draws attention to the

93 Available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAxHlLK3Oyk, accessed May 15th, 2017

94 The full text is as follows: I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of
my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the
room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.
What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this
activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my
speech might have.
95 This is the effect of hearing one word or phrase repeated so many times that it gives the impression of losing its
semanticity and becoming only sound. See Kounios, John, Kotz, Sonja A. and Holcomb, Philip J., On the Locus of
the Semantic Satiation Effect: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials, Memory & Cognition vol. 28 (8),
1366-1377
22
difference between the material and conceptual decay that is taking place, making clear the

difference in these processes for us and marking a boundary of meaning.

Another crucial element is his positing, in the very first line of the text, of the two crucial subject-

positions of this piece: Lucier himself and the listener, and the room they each find themselves in.

The piece is, in a sense, highly personal, dealing with Luciers characteristic stutter. But crucially,

he deals with it by enveloping both his own ego/subject, and, implicitly, the listeners, in the

acoustics of the room.96 Instead of continuing to speak, he lets the room nature, process,

impermanence speak for him. The relative stability of the space (the room does not change size)

also helps bring out highly consistent partials, giving us a rare glimpse of order rather than chaos in

a situation in which agency is relegated to nature.

4.2. Beyond Sound, Beyond the Present: Rosa Barba

Of course, art might bring not only an intense awareness of the relation between ones present and

the entire duration of ones life, but also awareness of the way in which larger presents for

example, the technological present may appear in the context of even larger time-spans, such as

the time of Homo Sapiens (200,000 years) or geological time (4,500,000,000 years).

Technology, and in particular outdated electrical technology, often has this effect: on the one hand,

it is temporally determined as modern. It is of our time, as it is only within the last two hundred

years or so that it has existed. On the other hand, if it is already outdated and it shows signs of

decay, it demonstrates how fast the technological cycle of obsolescence is.

In its breakdown from the technological and the functional into the material, its distinguishing

features become once again physical, material, and natural. It loses its human-given role and comes

closer to its materially-given dispositions through achieving purposelessness.

96 Of course, it also helps that this process happens to bring about such a fascinating and rich sound.
23
A good example of this process can be found in the work of Berlin-based film and installation artist

Rosa Barba.97 She often uses the materiality of celluloid film, screened through projectors running

in loops, as a basic way of actualising time through light. When she does use pre-filmed material, it

is often shots of processes with a highly temporal nature, such as the repeated movement of oil field

pump-jacks (Time as Perspective), the seemingly endless stream of rocks topping a pyramid at an

Alaskan coal mine (Subconscious Society) or the lines of an abandoned racetrack in the desert

which the camera follows (The Long Road).

In each case, Barba makes a clear connection between the implicative reference of the material with

time (we know, rationally, that the machines take out coal and oil which it took million years to

create) and our direct interaction with time (we see, in real time, the repetitive or constant motion

shown on the image), and furthermore, this process is enabled through the medium of celluloid,

which not only has the connotations of modern-yet-outdated as outlined above, but it also manifests

the materiality of its decay onto the image itself, through scratches, imperfections, dust, hair, and so

on. On the background of a constantly repeated image, these features again display their

physicality. The interactions are brought to the fore by the immersive and repetitive nature of the

work, which hypnotise us into a more perceptive mode as well as constantly reiterating the rational

interpretation of the works through their implicit political-environmental dimension.

4.3. Analogue Technology: G. Douglas Barretts A Few Silence (location, date, time of

performance)

The premise of Barretts piece A Few Silence,98 scored verbally, is deceptively simple: for the first

five minutes, performers simply listen to the silence of the space, with a stopwatch, making notes

on the sounds that they hear and the times at which they occur. The latter five minutes of the piece

97 See http://www.rosabarba.com/
98 Lely, John and Saunders, James, Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation (London: Continuum, 2012), 93
24
consists in the performers playing from their own descriptions, using a battery of

instruments/objects with a range of sound-producing abilities.99

As mentioned above, one of the effects of drawing attention to technological decay is to bring out

materiality where there was once transparency. This piece goes further, as it shows the technological

nature of writing and language, which we have learned to accept as entirely natural. Language, in

fact, developed as a tool for extending our memories. As Siyave Azeri shows in his article on the

external and internal features of memory,100 this externalisation and representation of thoughts led to

a complete revolution in human thought, as memories could suddenly be shared with others. But for

this to occur, they also had to be represented and encoded, therefore losing aspects considered less

important at the time.

Barrett points to this characteristic of language by inviting the performers to include features such

as the overall shape or contour of the sound, dynamic level, duration, etc., suggesting that [a]n

occasional reference to a sounds source is ok but should not predominate.101

Most importantly, however, what is emphasised here is the confrontation of the different

experiences various members of the group will have of those first five minutes the words and

concepts they choose will invariably determine how they remember (and then reproduce) the events

that took place. This is remedialisation in analogue, but usually, when remembering events

conceptually, one does not immediately have those memories confronted with other peoples. What

makes this piece very enticing from a performance perspective is that these discrepancies are then

actualised in real time, using both the impermanence of our memories and the imperfection of

committing as materially detailed a thing as a sound to symbolic conceptual methods.102

99 Ibid, 93
100 Azeri, Siyave, Pamt nen v hlav [Memory: Not In My Head] in A2 vol. 8 (2017), 18-19
101 Lely and Saunders (2012), 93
102 The only thing I find surprising in this piece is that Barrett does allow for occasional descriptions of the source of
a sound. The delineation of the kind of descriptive language he is after is very clear: low sustaining tone; soft
sustaining noise; quick percussion sound; noisy descending glissando. Limiting the language used by the
performers to technical and morphological terms would bring out more clearly the distance between description and
experience, and even narrower boundaries would do the same, but with more focus on a certain aspect of language
25
5. Conclusions

5.1. An Audience Performance Practice and the Need for Didacticism

One of the main problems with Cages music since the early 50s is that he presented an aesthetic

with a radically different ontological foundation: one based on contingency, randomness and

purposeful purposelessness.103 His foundations are partly in the American tradition of maverick,

experimental thought104 particularly the work of Thoreau105 and partly out in the Zen Buddhist

tradition as imported to the U.S. by D. T. Suzuki.106

However, this approach can be disorientating to a first time listener, to whom the contradictory and

often ironic methods of Zen Buddhism107 can seem mocking and threatening. The surprising thing is

that Cage clearly stated his position on the goals of (his) art: to imitate nature in her manner of

operation108 and to quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.109 However, he

didnt make these considerations a central part of his practice. It isnt what his music is about, and

indeed, much of the music makes it very difficult to calm the mind.

When hearing a piece in the impermanent aesthetic, the response of someone who has never

encountered this music before might be similarly dismissive if the listener is expecting

development, surprise and drama, the experience can be harrowing, boring, even depressing.

Leonard Meyer, in his early work on gestalt principles in musical organisation, mentions the

principle of continuation:110 if a process (line, sequence) is set up, we can expect it to continue.

and the parameters focused upon.

103 Cage, John, Silence Lectures and Writings (London: Calder and Boyars, 1969), 12
104 Experimental in the sense of finding things out for oneself by trying them out.
105 Shultis, Christopher, Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition (Lebanon:
University Press of New England, 2013)
106 Fleming, Richard and Duckworth, William (eds.), John Cage at Seventy-Five (Lewisburg: Bucknell University
Press, 1989), 50
107 Suzuki, Daisetsu T., An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (New York: Important Books, 2013)
108 Cage (1969), 194
109 Ibid, 226
110 Meyer, Leonard B., Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 29
26
However, in another example of learned, schema-driven processing, if our musical culture has

taught us to expect change, then the thwarting of these expectations in providing constancy or a

single linear process can lead to disappointment, as well as the listeners inability to get past this

tension-expectation mode and attend to the issues discussed in this dissertation. A practice is needed

in order for the ontology behind this aesthetic to become clear to listeners, a practice that views

impermanence not as a depressing fact, but as something one can accept, and not immediately, but

over time. And for this practice to develop, we must speak of these topics specifically and openly.

5.2. Further Philosophical Implications: Disinterestedness and Therapy

Beginning with the Enlightenment, there has been a current in European thought that has promoted

a vision of an autonomous art whose consumption is a pursuit of disinterested pleasure, a concept

developed by Kant.111 Some musicians in the 20th century, however, have talked about music as a

healing process, for example Jonathan Harvey112 and Pauline Oliveros.113 Impermanent music can

also lead to experiences that could be described as therapeutic not in the pathological sense, but as

a component of positive psychology.114

Existential psychotherapy, as developed in the second half of the twentieth century, focuses on

processing, thoroughly and in an embodied way, the existential, ontological realities of our life

most crucially the reality of our own mortality.115 Some therapists apply art-therapy methods, such

as staging ones own burial.116 Existential therapy is also predicated on an atheist or agnostic world-

view, not dissimilar from that of secular Buddhism in its insistence on simply accepting basic

realities rather than inventing explanations and despite that, trying to actively and intentionally

111 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 12
112 Harvey, Jonathan, Music and Inspiration (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), 4
113 Oliveros, Pauline, Sonic Meditations (Sharon: Smith Publications, 1974), 1
114 Seligman, Martin E.P. and Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Positive Psychology: An Introduction, American
Psychologist vol. 55/1 (2000), 5-14
115 Tong, Benjamin R., An Introduction to Existential Psychotherapy, Psych Central,
https://pro.psychcentral.com/existential-psychotherapies-an-introduction/006034.html, accessed May 11th, 2017
116 Moon, Bruce L., Existential Art Therapy: The Canvas Mirror (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Pubisher, 2009)
27
find sense and meaning, which allies these schools of thought with logotherapy as developed by

Viktor Frankl.117

Michael Pisaro defines experimental music as a network that does not try too hard to articulate

what its doing before it does it.118 Impermanent music can be approached in a similar way:

ultimately, its gains can only be accessed experientially and experimentally, by listening in the

manner described in this dissertation and thinking through the ideas relating to impermanence,

transience and our own position as humans in regards to these issues. However, a candid discussion

of these concepts remains crucial to making the field open and accessible and leading the listener to

consider all the potential benefits these experiences can offer.

117 Frankl, Viktor E., Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007)
118 Pisaro, Michael, interview with Travis Just, Object Collection, https://object-
collection.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/michael-pisaro-interview-concert-125.html, accessed May 11th, 2017
28
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