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    Herman Sabbe 3

    Uploaded by

    Felipe

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 6
    A Paradigm of ‘Absolute Music’ Goeyvaerts’s N°.4 as Numerus Sonorus Heras Savor (Gent Bruxelles) 982. ign composer Kae Goce pine vis ely the very fitst score ever intended for realisation through electronic means. He called it N°. 4 for dead tones. ‘The score consists of a verbal introduction and a line drawing, showing sounds 2s horizontal (straight) lines. all of them of the same length ic, duration, expressed as centimeters of tape length (se the illustration atthe end ofthe paper: three pages from the score: the first page, one page from midway through the score, and the last page, respectively). Empty spaces between successive lines indicate durations of intervening silence. There are four layers of sound-silence. All durations of sounds being equal, itis the differentiated onset intervals between suecessive sounds, regulated, foreach ‘of the four layers separately in accordance with ts own progressively increasing then decreasing arithmetic series, which determine the temporal evolvement ofthe piece. ‘At the outset, the four sounds are synchronous, then — because ofthe different ‘durations for each layer of the intervening rests — they gradually spread out, “phase shifting” until they queue up: then the process is resumed in reverse order. so the four sounds gradually interlock to end up in phase, in synchrony again. This overall circular process — “ma fn est mon commencement” — suggests the workings of an isolated system returning fo its initial state an endless number of times; the whole being reduced 10 a singular, identically repeatable event, remaining unaltered even under reversion. The graphic design may be read as.a ‘score’, .e-an ensemble of signs ‘suggesting the realisation ofthe music in sound. As tothe definition ofthe sounds, the verbal introduction reads as follows (my translation) Invew of easton oneness four inti ead tons' ndtodrespctely as, B,C, ad 1 "Dead tones" at tones whove eta somposn eins sonst, Ter crmposion may bee or less conpien. bt they shuld te cml haaaencous ough tine It ewe 0 realise dead tones ne mechanical action ca ballon Dead tex ean be prods iret Snelecvonc generator Beses Bg ‘dead tones A H.C, aD ould a1) be dive, nuns opr of he stone of oe he lens eth yp othe aba of he ‘ther ons 2} hes smplex in compasion, fat each oe eit Renal in ie numer of ound atoms From 198 on. Gwyn renauscel any tles rd ery ured i acoae oret Sich gusset laguag spice sage fr ebjecy wah karate sar ade ‘ses moceram nthe 1950 Ae opr cll cont et cal hat Gosjac eet Wat Being perfectly homogeneous, “dead tones" are reversible without altering any of their imbral, spear envelope characteristics The music i its own retrogeadaion time has no direction, no arrow. What Goeyvaerss clearly is concemed with here is the ultimate fixation and standing quality of sound: music as an imprint in sounding matter of transcendental everlasting truth. Stockhausen'eters to Goeyvuerts during 1952 testify to the later’ obsession with a immobile taping machine that would allow {quite literally for an imprint of sound on tape, a concept reminiscent ofthe imprint ‘of numerical werld order in sounding matter, known to the Ancients as mumeres sonora. In the composer’ preparatory notes to N°. there is question of “sounds without corporeality, And immediately afte: “Etiam peccata, Our knowledge is conditioned by our sinful being”. This pronouncement may be construed to reveal @ possible autopsychographic background to this extraordinary longing for lifelessness: sounds without eorpoeakity as symbolic of being without corporeal ‘The conception of 124 is not, strictly speaking, serial; unless one generalizes the definition of seraism to two premises: the preselection of materials, and ther equidistibution. What interested ourauthor was toa authorial contol — paradoxically in onder to efface himself. To Goeyvaers, serility was one way only of ordering elements one posible controlling device. In Gocyvaerts’ mind a the time, the exclusive use of eleetonics for sound generation promised a world of pure and integrally conrlled music It would allow to fx also those parametess that had net been susceptible of discrete notation (atleast ot with any degree of exactitude) and so had escaped detiled rational contol. It ‘would allow quantifying discrete emities in terms of frequencies, spectra, decibels, nillimtricallydiferentiated tape cuttings. It would aso allow to homogenize, to “deaden' musical tones, that would no logr be maculated by the imperfections of thuman performers It would allow erating works that would be forever unalterable in sucoessve performances. The sine tone, considered by Goeyvaens (from 1951 on) to be the atom of the physical world of sound, would make it posible to reconstruct the entre world of music from the round up. Nt realises an ideal of purty, precision and constancy: four non-harmonie spectra, cach of them homogeneous but mutually heterogeneous are repeated. quite ‘dentally, over and over. Zero flexibility and totally hypostasized idetity. A world perfectly closed, and — should we not say to-day — ready tobe cloned. The perfect “simulation: all things made restless simular, a study in sameness In aesthetic terms, N".4 may well represen the most radical pretension of totality and positivity ever Lame exact fm thee eter (1951 hgh 198) hve est en bled y HS in Karte Sinthavon ww de erg (anshen, 19K; "Mone Konepe” 9) Theor are aw he New Muse Decuedtanan Cue at Lawai Univers, Belgium, A Pana Amore Mone” Garay 4a tua Say BLS Rarus stans..At fist sight, indeed, N°.4 would seem to stand by itself, all alone in its radicalism, with no candidates whatsoever for predecessors or successors. Amongst the immediate contemporaries of Goeyvaerts in 1952, mention should be made of, among others, Stockhausen, Brown, Cage. [As regards electroacoustic technology, the non-harmonic spectra preseribed by Goeyvaerts are what Stockhausen would ater call “Tongemische”. AS 10 aesthetics, however, 4"-4 meant the parting ofthe ways for both composers. Goeyvaers' longing for immobility, for toal stasis, would never be agrecable to Stockhausen, whose conception was so much more dynamic (Goeyvaerts would call it “baroque” ‘One other seore initiated in 1952 which is a (collection of) fine drawing(s) is Earle Brown's Four Sysiems, But thats where the resemblance ends. For one thing, Brown's intentions were at the oppasite of Goeyvaertss. Whereas the latter intended to neutralize any possible outside interference, the formers aim was fo activate the Imagination ofthe reader-performer. In the above-mentioned preparstory notes, Goeyvacrts makes an important distinction berween “sounding ime” and “pure time”. pute time being neither sounding nor silent, for, says Goeyvaerts, “silence too is matter!” Goeyvaertss notion of so-called pure time thus appears to be of a metaphysical nature, and would seem akin to the one held by Cage at the same time, in 1952, the year of the blueprining of 4°33". N°4 and 4°33 both are arbitrary constructs, With Goeywaerts, however, arbitrariness means utmost wilfulness; with Cage, on the contrary itis supposed to mean the elimination ofthe will the epitome of willessness. Both N° and 4'33" signal the end of an expressivist aesthetic of music as the representation of subjective ineriority one considers N°. ¢ tobe the acme of rational control onthe part ofthe maker over ‘the musical artifact, it may be instructive to consider words Cage devised to explain his own way of funetioning as a composer but that now sound as though writen with Goeyvaerts effort in mind: “Any attempt to exclude the “irrational is irrational. Any ‘composing strategy which is wholly rational” is irrational inthe extreme Finally, as far as “immediate contemporaries” are concerned.’ itis instructive to note, incidentally, that 1952 is the year also of Boulez" Siructures I, the epitome of strictly (not automatedly) applied muliple-srialist methodology. ‘The interesting question now is: What place in music historiography may such radical musical artifact as N°4 occupy’? First: What posterity for N°.4? Not having been actualized at the time of its conception, and its score, its “blueprint” not having been published nor in any way ‘ute om | Cae, “Fara of Moder Ms” in Sune Loden 41980) 5,00 Amoogs te 195 cnemporais of Gjertsen of core ah ean a said Kd ‘onto cote Bu whereas Goyer ating ows he cand Feldman fy pen et ‘owt nomi £1) ith Goyer, sande om nts esse te = Feo e circulated, N°.4 with dead tones has not had any direct influence. All the same, it may, in retrospect, be read as announcing, ‘avant la lettre, several later developments, ‘Clearly, “N"-4" isa forerunner to minimalism and repetitive music, in particular to La ‘Monte Young's ideal of working with perfectly stable, sustained tones, and to sound sine wave chords for weeks ata time, La Monte Young's ideal as expressed in the instruction to Arabic Numeral (Any Integer) to Henry Fiynt (1960) : “Repeat a loud, heavy sound every one of two seconds as uniformly and regularly as possible for a long period of time” * ‘There is no doubt, either, that 4" can be described in terms of “a gradual phase shifting process’ such as Steve Reich would realise and theorise some fifteen years later. ‘Also, Nis conceptual art avant fe leste:a concept, a projec, a verbal and graphic ‘design, eventually to be instantiated; in other words sil: a composition model, the realisation of which by Gocyvaerts himself and myself in the electronic studio of IPEM at Ghent University in 1980 being a model-composition: one instantiation of a

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