Current Musicology, No. 95 (Spring 2013) © 2013 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 349 Benjamin Boretz “Words for Music, Perhaps”? Texts, 1975-2013 350 Current Musicology 8 On Hearing FORUM82* at Symphony Space, New York November 13, 1982, from 3 to 6 P.M. Things are coming down as pieces that shouldn't be pieces. They shouldn't be coming down as pieces. what should they be? There shouldn't be pieces. What should there be 11/82 *part of an all-day "festival of music from around the world" sponsored by Composers' Forum Current Musicology, No. 95 (Spring 2013) © 2012 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 7 - 420 - forM(a music) articulate is incarnate form fingertips articulate voices incarnate articulate incarnations articulate incarnate articulations incarnate voice forms fingertip fingertips form voices B.A.B. March 1975 Marjorie Tichenor, for whom this text was composed, composed a remarkable vocal composition out of her recorded reading of it. Current Musicology, No. 95 (Spring 2013) © 2012 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 7 - 420 - forM(a music) articulate is incarnate form fingertips articulate voices incarnate articulate incarnations articulate incarnate articulations incarnate voice forms fingertip fingertips form voices B.A.B. March 1975 Marjorie Tichenor, for whom this text was composed, composed a remarkable vocal composition out of her recorded reading of it. Benjamin Boretz 9 Stockhausen: Donnerstag aus Licht Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 18 September 1985 by BENJAMIN BORETZ My idea of a useful composer is someone who leads you to your own music Ð makes a composer of you. Not all personal acts are private. But all personal acts are not public. Masterpiece composition is obso- lete, as a usable social medium. Formal acts which assert the obsolescence of masterpiece compo- sition are on identical grounds obsolete. Reputation is the public space. What's left over that's needed is the personal space. Badly needed but not adequately or authentically being attended to by anyone with ego or talent enough to not compose an opera. (DONNERSTAG AUS LICHT: something I, personally, needed to know to know why, personally, it wasn't, isn't, something I needed done for me.) (NEWS OF MUSIC, March 1986) 351 Current Musicology 8 On Hearing FORUM82* at Symphony Space, New York November 13, 1982, from 3 to 6 P.M. Things are coming down as pieces that shouldn't be pieces. They shouldn't be coming down as pieces. what should they be? There shouldn't be pieces. What should there be 11/82 *part of an all-day "festival of music from around the world" sponsored by Composers' Forum Current Musicology, No. 95 (Spring 2013) © 2012 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 7 - 420 - forM(a music) articulate is incarnate form fingertips articulate voices incarnate articulate incarnations articulate incarnate articulations incarnate voice forms fingertip fingertips form voices B.A.B. March 1975 Marjorie Tichenor, for whom this text was composed, composed a remarkable vocal composition out of her recorded reading of it. Current Musicology, No. 95 (Spring 2013) © 2012 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 7 - 420 - forM(a music) articulate is incarnate form fingertips articulate voices incarnate articulate incarnations articulate incarnate articulations incarnate voice forms fingertip fingertips form voices B.A.B. March 1975 Marjorie Tichenor, for whom this text was composed, composed a remarkable vocal composition out of her recorded reading of it. Benjamin Boretz 9 Stockhausen: Donnerstag aus Licht Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 18 September 1985 by BENJAMIN BORETZ My idea of a useful composer is someone who leads you to your own music Ð makes a composer of you. Not all personal acts are private. But all personal acts are not public. Masterpiece composition is obso- lete, as a usable social medium. Formal acts which assert the obsolescence of masterpiece compo- sition are on identical grounds obsolete. Reputation is the public space. What's left over that's needed is the personal space. Badly needed but not adequately or authentically being attended to by anyone with ego or talent enough to not compose an opera. (DONNERSTAG AUS LICHT: something I, personally, needed to know to know why, personally, it wasn't, isn't, something I needed done for me.) (NEWS OF MUSIC, March 1986) 352 Current Musicology 10 -136- PROLOGUE TO (“Whose Time, What Space”): [A Seminar Talk at Eastman*] Benjamin Boretz Olivia Mattis was giving a historical seminar at the Eastman School of Music on composers who were also critics; Bob Morris suggested she invite two such living people who —not quite coincidentally — live next door to each other in the surroundings of Bard College in upstate New York — Kyle Gann was the other — to talk to the seminar about their accumulated insights from within that role — Kyle for the last fifteen or so years writing for The Village Voice and elsewhere, I having been Music Critic for The Nation during the 1960s. Kyle talked first, recreating expansively, in the terms of his personal history, the celebratory story his book tells of the rise of “his” new generation of American music (Later on he did remark that he had once tried to live in [my] world, but it was too suffocating — he needed more oxygen, he said.) Our listeners were graduate students and professors — I saw among them my old friend Bob Morris and my new friend Martin Scherzinger; Martin in particular leapt into the post-lecture discussion, with familiar laser-energetic sharpness, indicting and convicting my texts of an interesting if possibly illicit fusion of naive romantic mysticism and manipulative disingenuous duplicity, perhaps accounting for their strange transformation of the sound of the music we listened to at the end. The talk after that went on so long that Olivia had to disappear to get her bus home to Buffalo well before we all finally subsided to the coffee shop next door. [My offering, slightly modified by afterthoughts, follows.] Composing music, playing music, listening to music, thinking and writing about music: each and all plausible as a person’s possible self-gratifying, self- fulfilling occupation. Writing public music criticism or professional discourse, like teaching, create a radically different existential condition: a projection of Benjamin Boretz 9 Stockhausen: Donnerstag aus Licht Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 18 September 1985 by BENJAMIN BORETZ My idea of a useful composer is someone who leads you to your own music Ð makes a composer of you. Not all personal acts are private. But all personal acts are not public. Masterpiece composition is obso- lete, as a usable social medium. Formal acts which assert the obsolescence of masterpiece compo- sition are on identical grounds obsolete. Reputation is the public space. What's left over that's needed is the personal space. Badly needed but not adequately or authentically being attended to by anyone with ego or talent enough to not compose an opera. (DONNERSTAG AUS LICHT: something I, personally, needed to know to know why, personally, it wasn't, isn't, something I needed done for me.) (NEWS OF MUSIC, March 1986) Current Musicology 10 -136- PROLOGUE TO (“Whose Time, What Space”): [A Seminar Talk at Eastman*] Benjamin Boretz Olivia Mattis was giving a historical seminar at the Eastman School of Music on composers who were also critics; Bob Morris suggested she invite two such living people who —not quite coincidentally — live next door to each other in the surroundings of Bard College in upstate New York — Kyle Gann was the other — to talk to the seminar about their accumulated insights from within that role — Kyle for the last fifteen or so years writing for The Village Voice and elsewhere, I having been Music Critic for The Nation during the 1960s. Kyle talked first, recreating expansively, in the terms of his personal history, the celebratory story his book tells of the rise of “his” new generation of American music (Later on he did remark that he had once tried to live in [my] world, but it was too suffocating — he needed more oxygen, he said.) Our listeners were graduate students and professors — I saw among them my old friend Bob Morris and my new friend Martin Scherzinger; Martin in particular leapt into the post-lecture discussion, with familiar laser-energetic sharpness, indicting and convicting my texts of an interesting if possibly illicit fusion of naive romantic mysticism and manipulative disingenuous duplicity, perhaps accounting for their strange transformation of the sound of the music we listened to at the end. The talk after that went on so long that Olivia had to disappear to get her bus home to Buffalo well before we all finally subsided to the coffee shop next door. [My offering, slightly modified by afterthoughts, follows.] Composing music, playing music, listening to music, thinking and writing about music: each and all plausible as a person’s possible self-gratifying, self- fulfilling occupation. Writing public music criticism or professional discourse, like teaching, create a radically different existential condition: a projection of Benjamin Boretz 9 Stockhausen: Donnerstag aus Licht Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 18 September 1985 by BENJAMIN BORETZ My idea of a useful composer is someone who leads you to your own music Ð makes a composer of you. Not all personal acts are private. But all personal acts are not public. Masterpiece composition is obso- lete, as a usable social medium. Formal acts which assert the obsolescence of masterpiece compo- sition are on identical grounds obsolete. Reputation is the public space. What's left over that's needed is the personal space. Badly needed but not adequately or authentically being attended to by anyone with ego or talent enough to not compose an opera. (DONNERSTAG AUS LICHT: something I, personally, needed to know to know why, personally, it wasn't, isn't, something I needed done for me.) (NEWS OF MUSIC, March 1986) 353 Current Musicology 10 -136- PROLOGUE TO (“Whose Time, What Space”): [A Seminar Talk at Eastman*] Benjamin Boretz Olivia Mattis was giving a historical seminar at the Eastman School of Music on composers who were also critics; Bob Morris suggested she invite two such living people who —not quite coincidentally — live next door to each other in the surroundings of Bard College in upstate New York — Kyle Gann was the other — to talk to the seminar about their accumulated insights from within that role — Kyle for the last fifteen or so years writing for The Village Voice and elsewhere, I having been Music Critic for The Nation during the 1960s. Kyle talked first, recreating expansively, in the terms of his personal history, the celebratory story his book tells of the rise of “his” new generation of American music (Later on he did remark that he had once tried to live in [my] world, but it was too suffocating — he needed more oxygen, he said.) Our listeners were graduate students and professors — I saw among them my old friend Bob Morris and my new friend Martin Scherzinger; Martin in particular leapt into the post-lecture discussion, with familiar laser-energetic sharpness, indicting and convicting my texts of an interesting if possibly illicit fusion of naive romantic mysticism and manipulative disingenuous duplicity, perhaps accounting for their strange transformation of the sound of the music we listened to at the end. The talk after that went on so long that Olivia had to disappear to get her bus home to Buffalo well before we all finally subsided to the coffee shop next door. [My offering, slightly modified by afterthoughts, follows.] Composing music, playing music, listening to music, thinking and writing about music: each and all plausible as a person’s possible self-gratifying, self- fulfilling occupation. Writing public music criticism or professional discourse, like teaching, create a radically different existential condition: a projection of Benjamin Boretz 9 Stockhausen: Donnerstag aus Licht Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 18 September 1985 by BENJAMIN BORETZ My idea of a useful composer is someone who leads you to your own music Ð makes a composer of you. Not all personal acts are private. But all personal acts are not public. Masterpiece composition is obso- lete, as a usable social medium. Formal acts which assert the obsolescence of masterpiece compo- sition are on identical grounds obsolete. Reputation is the public space. What's left over that's needed is the personal space. Badly needed but not adequately or authentically being attended to by anyone with ego or talent enough to not compose an opera. (DONNERSTAG AUS LICHT: something I, personally, needed to know to know why, personally, it wasn't, isn't, something I needed done for me.) (NEWS OF MUSIC, March 1986) Current Musicology 10 -136- PROLOGUE TO (“Whose Time, What Space”): [A Seminar Talk at Eastman*] Benjamin Boretz Olivia Mattis was giving a historical seminar at the Eastman School of Music on composers who were also critics; Bob Morris suggested she invite two such living people who —not quite coincidentally — live next door to each other in the surroundings of Bard College in upstate New York — Kyle Gann was the other — to talk to the seminar about their accumulated insights from within that role — Kyle for the last fifteen or so years writing for The Village Voice and elsewhere, I having been Music Critic for The Nation during the 1960s. Kyle talked first, recreating expansively, in the terms of his personal history, the celebratory story his book tells of the rise of “his” new generation of American music (Later on he did remark that he had once tried to live in [my] world, but it was too suffocating — he needed more oxygen, he said.) Our listeners were graduate students and professors — I saw among them my old friend Bob Morris and my new friend Martin Scherzinger; Martin in particular leapt into the post-lecture discussion, with familiar laser-energetic sharpness, indicting and convicting my texts of an interesting if possibly illicit fusion of naive romantic mysticism and manipulative disingenuous duplicity, perhaps accounting for their strange transformation of the sound of the music we listened to at the end. The talk after that went on so long that Olivia had to disappear to get her bus home to Buffalo well before we all finally subsided to the coffee shop next door. [My offering, slightly modified by afterthoughts, follows.] Composing music, playing music, listening to music, thinking and writing about music: each and all plausible as a person’s possible self-gratifying, self- fulfilling occupation. Writing public music criticism or professional discourse, like teaching, create a radically different existential condition: a projection of Benjamin Boretz 9 Stockhausen: Donnerstag aus Licht Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 18 September 1985 by BENJAMIN BORETZ My idea of a useful composer is someone who leads you to your own music Ð makes a composer of you. Not all personal acts are private. But all personal acts are not public. Masterpiece composition is obso- lete, as a usable social medium. Formal acts which assert the obsolescence of masterpiece compo- sition are on identical grounds obsolete. Reputation is the public space. What's left over that's needed is the personal space. Badly needed but not adequately or authentically being attended to by anyone with ego or talent enough to not compose an opera. (DONNERSTAG AUS LICHT: something I, personally, needed to know to know why, personally, it wasn't, isn't, something I needed done for me.) (NEWS OF MUSIC, March 1986) 354 Current Musicology 12 -138- Benjamin Boretz certain kind. But those predicates are not necessarily connected to the experienced facts of any person’s life. 2. Take history: it is a determinate reification of the antecedence of our sentient existence, a demonstrated perspective on who we are, on where we are. Its truths are inescapable, and pervasively account for major aspects of the world that directly and significantly affect everyone’s life. Nevertheless, persons do not perforce experience their conscious living as history, as historical events, or qualify their experience in the vocabulary of historical predicates. You could say that history proceeds, in a self-defined, self- contained way, on the outside of most people’s lived lives, accumulating and accessible at any time by observations which can be perceived by anyone as true, without being, except in that sense, the actual content of anyone’s experienced life-events. You could say that historical facts about your own time are public-global facts, and that there are what you might call person- localized facts which more likely constitute the experienced contents of being alive. So there are things which are unquestionably true of your lifetime as public facts about it, which are likely inter-opaque with your (person-local) experience of your own life. 3. So too there are truths about music as a historical phenomenon, as a public- in-the-world phenomenon: demonstrable historical facts, like aesthetic evolutions and contingencies, concretized meta-phenomena like “High Baroque”, “Mannerist”, or “Modernist”, creating perceptions and associations; there are generalized categorical technical facts, as “tonal”, “serial”, “microtonal” creating wholescale substitutions in perception of named identities for raw sonic blips; particular theoretical facts like “6/4 chord”, “Sonata Form”, “hexachordal combinatoriality”, “cadence”, organizing perceptions into negotiable familiar packages; there are aesthetic-critical facts, like “post- Webern serial”, “heavy metal”, “world music”, “indeterminate”, “complex”, “bubblegum”, “post-Modern”, “minimalist”, “Gospel”; and cultural facts, like national identities, ethnic traits, sociological facts, like “glam ”, “academic”., “ downtown”; political facts, like “hegemonic”, “socialist realist“ or “decadent”; ideological facts, like “feminist” or “formalist”; value-judgment facts, like “immortal”, “masterpiece”, or their contraries — all of which help you to locate Benjamin Boretz 11 -137- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) self-presence — the public enactment of a consciously constructed, self- overlayed persona rather than the localized being of a person — into the consciousness of others, where the effect at the receiving end is the main output of consequence. That’s a vastly more complex and ambiguous social, ethical, intellectual, expressive situation. And pretty dubious and unpromising ground for self-realization, too. Looking back (it’s been a long time) I wonder if there isn’t just a terminal paradox in the idea of synchronously constructing a public-persuasive exterior persona alongside of an interior compositional-creative focus on the precise (it-)projection of such specific singular modes of being as: musical compositions. On the other hand inhabiting such a paradoxical duality does induce a singular intensity of self- reflection , a state of uneasy awareness that opens a perspective from which to view the entire host of paradoxes, confusions, denials by which the machinery of ‘normal’ public metamusical behavior is enabled. Some such consciousness was at least implicit in some of my later — more radically “political” — pieces in The Nation during the late 1960s; and much of my work since then seems to have been written and composed in its shadow: so, in 1978, in Language ,as a music, I had my earnestly self-conscious professor- character say, in his letter to his old mentor: “We may not speak as we perceive, but we will soon enough be perceiving as we have spoken.” which, as I think about it now in the context of our subject, is less a sophisticated program for social action or epistemic self-analysis than a symptomatic expression of the radical insufficiency in the distinctions being made in that professor’s world among wildly disparate phenomena which all go under the same names, under the pretext or delusion of having common denotations. So ‘music’ can be fully encompassed by any number of mutually exclusive rubrics, each of which not only encompasses it totally, but is totally opaque to — and incompatible with — any of the phenomena or properties denoted by any of the others. Such as: 1. History. Politics. Theory. Ideology. They do, unquestionably, exist, and they each have their fact-telling vocabularies, each of which creates facts of a Current Musicology 12 -138- Benjamin Boretz certain kind. But those predicates are not necessarily connected to the experienced facts of any person’s life. 2. Take history: it is a determinate reification of the antecedence of our sentient existence, a demonstrated perspective on who we are, on where we are. Its truths are inescapable, and pervasively account for major aspects of the world that directly and significantly affect everyone’s life. Nevertheless, persons do not perforce experience their conscious living as history, as historical events, or qualify their experience in the vocabulary of historical predicates. You could say that history proceeds, in a self-defined, self- contained way, on the outside of most people’s lived lives, accumulating and accessible at any time by observations which can be perceived by anyone as true, without being, except in that sense, the actual content of anyone’s experienced life-events. You could say that historical facts about your own time are public-global facts, and that there are what you might call person- localized facts which more likely constitute the experienced contents of being alive. So there are things which are unquestionably true of your lifetime as public facts about it, which are likely inter-opaque with your (person-local) experience of your own life. 3. So too there are truths about music as a historical phenomenon, as a public- in-the-world phenomenon: demonstrable historical facts, like aesthetic evolutions and contingencies, concretized meta-phenomena like “High Baroque”, “Mannerist”, or “Modernist”, creating perceptions and associations; there are generalized categorical technical facts, as “tonal”, “serial”, “microtonal” creating wholescale substitutions in perception of named identities for raw sonic blips; particular theoretical facts like “6/4 chord”, “Sonata Form”, “hexachordal combinatoriality”, “cadence”, organizing perceptions into negotiable familiar packages; there are aesthetic-critical facts, like “post- Webern serial”, “heavy metal”, “world music”, “indeterminate”, “complex”, “bubblegum”, “post-Modern”, “minimalist”, “Gospel”; and cultural facts, like national identities, ethnic traits, sociological facts, like “glam ”, “academic”., “ downtown”; political facts, like “hegemonic”, “socialist realist“ or “decadent”; ideological facts, like “feminist” or “formalist”; value-judgment facts, like “immortal”, “masterpiece”, or their contraries — all of which help you to locate Benjamin Boretz 11 -137- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) self-presence — the public enactment of a consciously constructed, self- overlayed persona rather than the localized being of a person — into the consciousness of others, where the effect at the receiving end is the main output of consequence. That’s a vastly more complex and ambiguous social, ethical, intellectual, expressive situation. And pretty dubious and unpromising ground for self-realization, too. Looking back (it’s been a long time) I wonder if there isn’t just a terminal paradox in the idea of synchronously constructing a public-persuasive exterior persona alongside of an interior compositional-creative focus on the precise (it-)projection of such specific singular modes of being as: musical compositions. On the other hand inhabiting such a paradoxical duality does induce a singular intensity of self- reflection , a state of uneasy awareness that opens a perspective from which to view the entire host of paradoxes, confusions, denials by which the machinery of ‘normal’ public metamusical behavior is enabled. Some such consciousness was at least implicit in some of my later — more radically “political” — pieces in The Nation during the late 1960s; and much of my work since then seems to have been written and composed in its shadow: so, in 1978, in Language ,as a music, I had my earnestly self-conscious professor- character say, in his letter to his old mentor: “We may not speak as we perceive, but we will soon enough be perceiving as we have spoken.” which, as I think about it now in the context of our subject, is less a sophisticated program for social action or epistemic self-analysis than a symptomatic expression of the radical insufficiency in the distinctions being made in that professor’s world among wildly disparate phenomena which all go under the same names, under the pretext or delusion of having common denotations. So ‘music’ can be fully encompassed by any number of mutually exclusive rubrics, each of which not only encompasses it totally, but is totally opaque to — and incompatible with — any of the phenomena or properties denoted by any of the others. Such as: 1. History. Politics. Theory. Ideology. They do, unquestionably, exist, and they each have their fact-telling vocabularies, each of which creates facts of a 355 Current Musicology 12 -138- Benjamin Boretz certain kind. But those predicates are not necessarily connected to the experienced facts of any person’s life. 2. Take history: it is a determinate reification of the antecedence of our sentient existence, a demonstrated perspective on who we are, on where we are. Its truths are inescapable, and pervasively account for major aspects of the world that directly and significantly affect everyone’s life. Nevertheless, persons do not perforce experience their conscious living as history, as historical events, or qualify their experience in the vocabulary of historical predicates. You could say that history proceeds, in a self-defined, self- contained way, on the outside of most people’s lived lives, accumulating and accessible at any time by observations which can be perceived by anyone as true, without being, except in that sense, the actual content of anyone’s experienced life-events. You could say that historical facts about your own time are public-global facts, and that there are what you might call person- localized facts which more likely constitute the experienced contents of being alive. So there are things which are unquestionably true of your lifetime as public facts about it, which are likely inter-opaque with your (person-local) experience of your own life. 3. So too there are truths about music as a historical phenomenon, as a public- in-the-world phenomenon: demonstrable historical facts, like aesthetic evolutions and contingencies, concretized meta-phenomena like “High Baroque”, “Mannerist”, or “Modernist”, creating perceptions and associations; there are generalized categorical technical facts, as “tonal”, “serial”, “microtonal” creating wholescale substitutions in perception of named identities for raw sonic blips; particular theoretical facts like “6/4 chord”, “Sonata Form”, “hexachordal combinatoriality”, “cadence”, organizing perceptions into negotiable familiar packages; there are aesthetic-critical facts, like “post- Webern serial”, “heavy metal”, “world music”, “indeterminate”, “complex”, “bubblegum”, “post-Modern”, “minimalist”, “Gospel”; and cultural facts, like national identities, ethnic traits, sociological facts, like “glam ”, “academic”., “ downtown”; political facts, like “hegemonic”, “socialist realist“ or “decadent”; ideological facts, like “feminist” or “formalist”; value-judgment facts, like “immortal”, “masterpiece”, or their contraries — all of which help you to locate Benjamin Boretz 11 -137- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) self-presence — the public enactment of a consciously constructed, self- overlayed persona rather than the localized being of a person — into the consciousness of others, where the effect at the receiving end is the main output of consequence. That’s a vastly more complex and ambiguous social, ethical, intellectual, expressive situation. And pretty dubious and unpromising ground for self-realization, too. Looking back (it’s been a long time) I wonder if there isn’t just a terminal paradox in the idea of synchronously constructing a public-persuasive exterior persona alongside of an interior compositional-creative focus on the precise (it-)projection of such specific singular modes of being as: musical compositions. On the other hand inhabiting such a paradoxical duality does induce a singular intensity of self- reflection , a state of uneasy awareness that opens a perspective from which to view the entire host of paradoxes, confusions, denials by which the machinery of ‘normal’ public metamusical behavior is enabled. Some such consciousness was at least implicit in some of my later — more radically “political” — pieces in The Nation during the late 1960s; and much of my work since then seems to have been written and composed in its shadow: so, in 1978, in Language ,as a music, I had my earnestly self-conscious professor- character say, in his letter to his old mentor: “We may not speak as we perceive, but we will soon enough be perceiving as we have spoken.” which, as I think about it now in the context of our subject, is less a sophisticated program for social action or epistemic self-analysis than a symptomatic expression of the radical insufficiency in the distinctions being made in that professor’s world among wildly disparate phenomena which all go under the same names, under the pretext or delusion of having common denotations. So ‘music’ can be fully encompassed by any number of mutually exclusive rubrics, each of which not only encompasses it totally, but is totally opaque to — and incompatible with — any of the phenomena or properties denoted by any of the others. Such as: 1. History. Politics. Theory. Ideology. They do, unquestionably, exist, and they each have their fact-telling vocabularies, each of which creates facts of a Current Musicology 12 -138- Benjamin Boretz certain kind. But those predicates are not necessarily connected to the experienced facts of any person’s life. 2. Take history: it is a determinate reification of the antecedence of our sentient existence, a demonstrated perspective on who we are, on where we are. Its truths are inescapable, and pervasively account for major aspects of the world that directly and significantly affect everyone’s life. Nevertheless, persons do not perforce experience their conscious living as history, as historical events, or qualify their experience in the vocabulary of historical predicates. You could say that history proceeds, in a self-defined, self- contained way, on the outside of most people’s lived lives, accumulating and accessible at any time by observations which can be perceived by anyone as true, without being, except in that sense, the actual content of anyone’s experienced life-events. You could say that historical facts about your own time are public-global facts, and that there are what you might call person- localized facts which more likely constitute the experienced contents of being alive. So there are things which are unquestionably true of your lifetime as public facts about it, which are likely inter-opaque with your (person-local) experience of your own life. 3. So too there are truths about music as a historical phenomenon, as a public- in-the-world phenomenon: demonstrable historical facts, like aesthetic evolutions and contingencies, concretized meta-phenomena like “High Baroque”, “Mannerist”, or “Modernist”, creating perceptions and associations; there are generalized categorical technical facts, as “tonal”, “serial”, “microtonal” creating wholescale substitutions in perception of named identities for raw sonic blips; particular theoretical facts like “6/4 chord”, “Sonata Form”, “hexachordal combinatoriality”, “cadence”, organizing perceptions into negotiable familiar packages; there are aesthetic-critical facts, like “post- Webern serial”, “heavy metal”, “world music”, “indeterminate”, “complex”, “bubblegum”, “post-Modern”, “minimalist”, “Gospel”; and cultural facts, like national identities, ethnic traits, sociological facts, like “glam ”, “academic”., “ downtown”; political facts, like “hegemonic”, “socialist realist“ or “decadent”; ideological facts, like “feminist” or “formalist”; value-judgment facts, like “immortal”, “masterpiece”, or their contraries — all of which help you to locate Benjamin Boretz 11 -137- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) self-presence — the public enactment of a consciously constructed, self- overlayed persona rather than the localized being of a person — into the consciousness of others, where the effect at the receiving end is the main output of consequence. That’s a vastly more complex and ambiguous social, ethical, intellectual, expressive situation. And pretty dubious and unpromising ground for self-realization, too. Looking back (it’s been a long time) I wonder if there isn’t just a terminal paradox in the idea of synchronously constructing a public-persuasive exterior persona alongside of an interior compositional-creative focus on the precise (it-)projection of such specific singular modes of being as: musical compositions. On the other hand inhabiting such a paradoxical duality does induce a singular intensity of self- reflection , a state of uneasy awareness that opens a perspective from which to view the entire host of paradoxes, confusions, denials by which the machinery of ‘normal’ public metamusical behavior is enabled. Some such consciousness was at least implicit in some of my later — more radically “political” — pieces in The Nation during the late 1960s; and much of my work since then seems to have been written and composed in its shadow: so, in 1978, in Language ,as a music, I had my earnestly self-conscious professor- character say, in his letter to his old mentor: “We may not speak as we perceive, but we will soon enough be perceiving as we have spoken.” which, as I think about it now in the context of our subject, is less a sophisticated program for social action or epistemic self-analysis than a symptomatic expression of the radical insufficiency in the distinctions being made in that professor’s world among wildly disparate phenomena which all go under the same names, under the pretext or delusion of having common denotations. So ‘music’ can be fully encompassed by any number of mutually exclusive rubrics, each of which not only encompasses it totally, but is totally opaque to — and incompatible with — any of the phenomena or properties denoted by any of the others. Such as: 1. History. Politics. Theory. Ideology. They do, unquestionably, exist, and they each have their fact-telling vocabularies, each of which creates facts of a 356 Current Musicology 14 -140- Benjamin Boretz over and above those categoricals — perhaps, in some people, as a superior performance within their terms. But in any case, as something personally meaningful outside of the cultural-historical-political-technical-theoretical- ideological-sociological meaning it may have. 5. So a composer, in writing publicly about music, might particularly — paradoxically — want to project the uniqueness and mutability, rather than the generality and certainty, of any musical experience, against the grain of the supposed public “need” for music — in favor of possible person-local music-needs (say, for deverbalized expression) of any possible persons within that public; might transplant into the institutional world the language of the personal-experiential-ambiguous, rather than the external-world-certain, sense of some music. And so the music criticisms and descriptions composed by such people might reach for other vocabularies and grammars than those of the generalizing categories, to seek for a verbal territory commensurate, or trying to commensurate, with the sensed sense of music from within an essentially incompatible space. Which, naturally, tends in practice to produce confusions and incoherence — social, if not cognitive — not so different from those produced by the contradictions implicit in the institutionalized public exhibitions of the works of expression themselves. 6. Living, along with lots of other people, within this confusion-energized fragmented space, I’ve produced words, music, and committed persistent attempted pedagogy; the tensions and contradictions I’ve been talking about have been stimulating rather than inhibiting, like mind-sets that elicit particular intuitions whose ideological origins are not necessarily evident. An idea, that is, is not ever an illustration of points made elsewhere. But there’s a piece called “(Whose Time, What Space)”, which I first composed, performed, and recorded (for a school occasion) in 1986, and which I’ve recomposed for this event, which you may feel free to consider a continuation of this text by other means: Benjamin Boretz 13 -139- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) yourself and some music in terms of appropriate personal distances and so- created typicalities — and whatever else. But how any of these predications, and which of them in particular, are going to determine or affect the experience of some music transaction at some person-time moment — or whether they will at all — is not given merely in that they are assertible and, given the pliability of music for any use words decide to put it to, demonstrable and — therefore — true. In other words, that something is true in its context doesn’t mean it’s relevant or palpable in every context; and in fact, all the different actual and possible contexts taken together — well, there’s no way anyone can possibly take them all together at a time, even if there are no actual contradictions among them. In fact, there are — must be, at least in some initiatory phase of someone’s life, purely private-seeming experiences of music which have apparent properties entirely unrelated to the whole array of public facts and images. Whether or not these private properties are discernible within the environment of unremitting public- music imagery, and however powerfully their experiencing is affected and inflected by the public discourse, it is still in their terms that anyone’s actual experience actually takes place. That in fact underlies any intensity of engagement with which the experience of music is invested, any way that music is not simply received as a verbal-type utterance, just articulated by other means, in music sound The public-music imagery can create music experiences completely in its image: that is entirely evident and internalized within everyone in a common-cultural space, but in our common-cultural space at least, it’s not what music, as music, as expressive art, ultimately does with, for, or to you. 4. Now every composer, in the act of composing, is composing in a historical time, in some historical way, some cultural way, some technical way, some theoretical way, some ideological way, some sociological way — but a composer, in the act of composing, is not likely to be consciously enacting these — at least, not all of these — ontologies within her composing- consciousness. It’s unusual for a composer to think of her work as first and foremost an example of some category, a manifestation of some tendency — at least for the composer, there’s something in the music outside, or at least 357 Current Musicology 14 -140- Benjamin Boretz over and above those categoricals — perhaps, in some people, as a superior performance within their terms. But in any case, as something personally meaningful outside of the cultural-historical-political-technical-theoretical- ideological-sociological meaning it may have. 5. So a composer, in writing publicly about music, might particularly — paradoxically — want to project the uniqueness and mutability, rather than the generality and certainty, of any musical experience, against the grain of the supposed public “need” for music — in favor of possible person-local music-needs (say, for deverbalized expression) of any possible persons within that public; might transplant into the institutional world the language of the personal-experiential-ambiguous, rather than the external-world-certain, sense of some music. And so the music criticisms and descriptions composed by such people might reach for other vocabularies and grammars than those of the generalizing categories, to seek for a verbal territory commensurate, or trying to commensurate, with the sensed sense of music from within an essentially incompatible space. Which, naturally, tends in practice to produce confusions and incoherence — social, if not cognitive — not so different from those produced by the contradictions implicit in the institutionalized public exhibitions of the works of expression themselves. 6. Living, along with lots of other people, within this confusion-energized fragmented space, I’ve produced words, music, and committed persistent attempted pedagogy; the tensions and contradictions I’ve been talking about have been stimulating rather than inhibiting, like mind-sets that elicit particular intuitions whose ideological origins are not necessarily evident. An idea, that is, is not ever an illustration of points made elsewhere. But there’s a piece called “(Whose Time, What Space)”, which I first composed, performed, and recorded (for a school occasion) in 1986, and which I’ve recomposed for this event, which you may feel free to consider a continuation of this text by other means: Benjamin Boretz 13 -139- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) yourself and some music in terms of appropriate personal distances and so- created typicalities — and whatever else. But how any of these predications, and which of them in particular, are going to determine or affect the experience of some music transaction at some person-time moment — or whether they will at all — is not given merely in that they are assertible and, given the pliability of music for any use words decide to put it to, demonstrable and — therefore — true. In other words, that something is true in its context doesn’t mean it’s relevant or palpable in every context; and in fact, all the different actual and possible contexts taken together — well, there’s no way anyone can possibly take them all together at a time, even if there are no actual contradictions among them. In fact, there are — must be, at least in some initiatory phase of someone’s life, purely private-seeming experiences of music which have apparent properties entirely unrelated to the whole array of public facts and images. Whether or not these private properties are discernible within the environment of unremitting public- music imagery, and however powerfully their experiencing is affected and inflected by the public discourse, it is still in their terms that anyone’s actual experience actually takes place. That in fact underlies any intensity of engagement with which the experience of music is invested, any way that music is not simply received as a verbal-type utterance, just articulated by other means, in music sound The public-music imagery can create music experiences completely in its image: that is entirely evident and internalized within everyone in a common-cultural space, but in our common-cultural space at least, it’s not what music, as music, as expressive art, ultimately does with, for, or to you. 4. Now every composer, in the act of composing, is composing in a historical time, in some historical way, some cultural way, some technical way, some theoretical way, some ideological way, some sociological way — but a composer, in the act of composing, is not likely to be consciously enacting these — at least, not all of these — ontologies within her composing- consciousness. It’s unusual for a composer to think of her work as first and foremost an example of some category, a manifestation of some tendency — at least for the composer, there’s something in the music outside, or at least Current Musicology 14 -140- Benjamin Boretz over and above those categoricals — perhaps, in some people, as a superior performance within their terms. But in any case, as something personally meaningful outside of the cultural-historical-political-technical-theoretical- ideological-sociological meaning it may have. 5. So a composer, in writing publicly about music, might particularly — paradoxically — want to project the uniqueness and mutability, rather than the generality and certainty, of any musical experience, against the grain of the supposed public “need” for music — in favor of possible person-local music-needs (say, for deverbalized expression) of any possible persons within that public; might transplant into the institutional world the language of the personal-experiential-ambiguous, rather than the external-world-certain, sense of some music. And so the music criticisms and descriptions composed by such people might reach for other vocabularies and grammars than those of the generalizing categories, to seek for a verbal territory commensurate, or trying to commensurate, with the sensed sense of music from within an essentially incompatible space. Which, naturally, tends in practice to produce confusions and incoherence — social, if not cognitive — not so different from those produced by the contradictions implicit in the institutionalized public exhibitions of the works of expression themselves. 6. Living, along with lots of other people, within this confusion-energized fragmented space, I’ve produced words, music, and committed persistent attempted pedagogy; the tensions and contradictions I’ve been talking about have been stimulating rather than inhibiting, like mind-sets that elicit particular intuitions whose ideological origins are not necessarily evident. An idea, that is, is not ever an illustration of points made elsewhere. But there’s a piece called “(Whose Time, What Space)”, which I first composed, performed, and recorded (for a school occasion) in 1986, and which I’ve recomposed for this event, which you may feel free to consider a continuation of this text by other means: Benjamin Boretz 13 -139- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) yourself and some music in terms of appropriate personal distances and so- created typicalities — and whatever else. But how any of these predications, and which of them in particular, are going to determine or affect the experience of some music transaction at some person-time moment — or whether they will at all — is not given merely in that they are assertible and, given the pliability of music for any use words decide to put it to, demonstrable and — therefore — true. In other words, that something is true in its context doesn’t mean it’s relevant or palpable in every context; and in fact, all the different actual and possible contexts taken together — well, there’s no way anyone can possibly take them all together at a time, even if there are no actual contradictions among them. In fact, there are — must be, at least in some initiatory phase of someone’s life, purely private-seeming experiences of music which have apparent properties entirely unrelated to the whole array of public facts and images. Whether or not these private properties are discernible within the environment of unremitting public- music imagery, and however powerfully their experiencing is affected and inflected by the public discourse, it is still in their terms that anyone’s actual experience actually takes place. That in fact underlies any intensity of engagement with which the experience of music is invested, any way that music is not simply received as a verbal-type utterance, just articulated by other means, in music sound The public-music imagery can create music experiences completely in its image: that is entirely evident and internalized within everyone in a common-cultural space, but in our common-cultural space at least, it’s not what music, as music, as expressive art, ultimately does with, for, or to you. 4. Now every composer, in the act of composing, is composing in a historical time, in some historical way, some cultural way, some technical way, some theoretical way, some ideological way, some sociological way — but a composer, in the act of composing, is not likely to be consciously enacting these — at least, not all of these — ontologies within her composing- consciousness. It’s unusual for a composer to think of her work as first and foremost an example of some category, a manifestation of some tendency — at least for the composer, there’s something in the music outside, or at least 358 Benjamin Boretz 15 -141- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) [Whose Time, What Space is, at first, a text which I performed by setting myself up as an overloaded one-person ensemble, hanging as many soundmakers of various types on my body as it could possibly hold, then adding a couple more. That physical situation was a significant score for this performance, as you can imagine. Four music-descriptive texts follow, interacting in various ways with the musics they engage.] [The CD: “Whose Time, What Space”, version of 4/2002] April/September 2002 359 Current Musicology 16 -142- (whose time, what space) Experiencing music is bringing into being a singular time-space identity, received from a singular perspective of location. A peculiarity of any music experiencing is that no physical time-space-location-occasion (observable and quantifiable in referential, intersubjective terms) can be designated as being the time or space or occasion identity of a music experiencing. The real time and space and occasion of music experiencing are psychic time and space and occasion. And the psychic time and space and occasion of a music experiencing are fully contingent upon the specific coincident physical times and physical spaces and real-world occasions within which that music experiencing occurs. Benjamin Boretz 15 -141- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) [Whose Time, What Space is, at first, a text which I performed by setting myself up as an overloaded one-person ensemble, hanging as many soundmakers of various types on my body as it could possibly hold, then adding a couple more. That physical situation was a significant score for this performance, as you can imagine. Four music-descriptive texts follow, interacting in various ways with the musics they engage.] [The CD: “Whose Time, What Space”, version of 4/2002] April/September 2002 Benjamin Boretz 15 -141- Prologue to (“Whose Time, What Space”) [Whose Time, What Space is, at first, a text which I performed by setting myself up as an overloaded one-person ensemble, hanging as many soundmakers of various types on my body as it could possibly hold, then adding a couple more. That physical situation was a significant score for this performance, as you can imagine. Four music-descriptive texts follow, interacting in various ways with the musics they engage.] [The CD: “Whose Time, What Space”, version of 4/2002] April/September 2002 360 Current Musicology 18 -144- (soundtrack 1) (a Korean court music) A f i v e m i l e l o n g d r a g o n m o v e s t h r o u g h a w i n d i n g c o u r s e , a l l i t s p a r t s , o r g a n i c a l l y c o n n e c t e d , f o l l o w i n g i t s h e a d a r o u n d e a c h c o r n e r a t i n c o n c e i v a b l y r e m o t e d i s t a n c e s , b u t a l w a y s , u n i m a g i n a b l y , i n e x o r a b l y , p e r f o r m i n g t h e p r e c i s e m a n e u v e r p r e d e s t i n e d o v e r a h u m a n l y u n e n c o m p a s s a b l e s p a c e , f r o m h e a d t o i n c o n c e i v a b l y d i s t a n t t a i l . Benjamin Boretz 17 -143- All the psychic and physical time, space and occasion identities are undetachably interdependent: are, in fact, indivisible and mutually create each other; a music experiencing is thus a comprehen- sive totality which comprises a particular convergence of identified psychic and physi- cal times, spaces, and occasions. 361 Current Musicology 18 -144- (soundtrack 1) (a Korean court music) A f i v e m i l e l o n g d r a g o n m o v e s t h r o u g h a w i n d i n g c o u r s e , a l l i t s p a r t s , o r g a n i c a l l y c o n n e c t e d , f o l l o w i n g i t s h e a d a r o u n d e a c h c o r n e r a t i n c o n c e i v a b l y r e m o t e d i s t a n c e s , b u t a l w a y s , u n i m a g i n a b l y , i n e x o r a b l y , p e r f o r m i n g t h e p r e c i s e m a n e u v e r p r e d e s t i n e d o v e r a h u m a n l y u n e n c o m p a s s a b l e s p a c e , f r o m h e a d t o i n c o n c e i v a b l y d i s t a n t t a i l . Current Musicology 18 -144- (soundtrack 1) (a Korean court music) A f i v e m i l e l o n g d r a g o n m o v e s t h r o u g h a w i n d i n g c o u r s e , a l l i t s p a r t s , o r g a n i c a l l y c o n n e c t e d , f o l l o w i n g i t s h e a d a r o u n d e a c h c o r n e r a t i n c o n c e i v a b l y r e m o t e d i s t a n c e s , b u t a l w a y s , u n i m a g i n a b l y , i n e x o r a b l y , p e r f o r m i n g t h e p r e c i s e m a n e u v e r p r e d e s t i n e d o v e r a h u m a n l y u n e n c o m p a s s a b l e s p a c e , f r o m h e a d t o i n c o n c e i v a b l y d i s t a n t t a i l . Benjamin Boretz 17 -143- All the psychic and physical time, space and occasion identities are undetachably interdependent: are, in fact, indivisible and mutually create each other; a music experiencing is thus a comprehen- sive totality which comprises a particular convergence of identified psychic and physi- cal times, spaces, and occasions. 362 Current Musicology 20 -146- (soundtrack 2) (a Mozart symphony slow movement) The universe is emptied of all but a droplet of matter, which as we enter it progressively metastasizes into a hermetically sealed unpeopled metauniverse composing itself in accumulating energies of complexly balancing dynamisms, growing again to the size of the whole universe again but now within our own transcendently reinitialized mental space. Time is invisibly undone, insidiously reconstituted under the force of the invisible inexorable intangible ferocity within the universe contained within this droplet of matter in which we are immersed, which is within our mind. Benjamin Boretz 19 -145- T i m e s t r e t c h e s t r a n s c e n d e n t l y , b e y o n d a n y m e a s u r a b l e f l o w , b y t h e o v e r w h e l m i n g m a g n i t u d e o f e a c h d r a g o n - m o v e e v e n t . 363 Current Musicology 20 -146- (soundtrack 2) (a Mozart symphony slow movement) The universe is emptied of all but a droplet of matter, which as we enter it progressively metastasizes into a hermetically sealed unpeopled metauniverse composing itself in accumulating energies of complexly balancing dynamisms, growing again to the size of the whole universe again but now within our own transcendently reinitialized mental space. Time is invisibly undone, insidiously reconstituted under the force of the invisible inexorable intangible ferocity within the universe contained within this droplet of matter in which we are immersed, which is within our mind. Current Musicology 20 -146- (soundtrack 2) (a Mozart symphony slow movement) The universe is emptied of all but a droplet of matter, which as we enter it progressively metastasizes into a hermetically sealed unpeopled metauniverse composing itself in accumulating energies of complexly balancing dynamisms, growing again to the size of the whole universe again but now within our own transcendently reinitialized mental space. Time is invisibly undone, insidiously reconstituted under the force of the invisible inexorable intangible ferocity within the universe contained within this droplet of matter in which we are immersed, which is within our mind. Benjamin Boretz 19 -145- T i m e s t r e t c h e s t r a n s c e n d e n t l y , b e y o n d a n y m e a s u r a b l e f l o w , b y t h e o v e r w h e l m i n g m a g n i t u d e o f e a c h d r a g o n - m o v e e v e n t . 364 Current Musicology 22 (Soundtrack 4) (the stretch of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring from the opening bassoon solo to its semitone-depressed recollection) beginning with the very first singlenote sound... ...a keening primordial whine, a trembling hover, suddenly sending seismic chills down its own spine, sprouting eerie excrescences that merge with it, twisting it into a ghoulish glide through that soundandtimespace environment that woodwinds simultaneously create and slither through, arrested electrically by stinging stringtrills traumatically freezing action, woodwinds as traumatically unfreezing it, splintering into myriad simultaneities of tiny frenzies interweaving but blankly oblivious of one another, the desolate whine now reemerging in ever so emptier a space, oddly discolored, dislocated now, its spasms now feeble in the aftermath of whatever it was that happened. . . Benjamin Boretz 21 -147- soundtrack 3: (Milton Babbitt’s First Piano Concerto) You could call it unfiltered megaSchoenberg in jazztime continuity (not poptime or modernmusictime, either) but what I most love about Milton’s Concerto is its gritted integrity being defiant unregenerate militant Positivist music, sternly askance anent the softheaded stylewaffling of the gegenwärtliche jugend, a relentlessly uningratiatingly polyfrantically multilayered senseassertive discourse here being socially publically sonically displayed and exposed to be sure but unmistakably demanding for adequate reception ultimately that it be studied minutely and intently in printform uncompromisingly exhaustively inexhaustibly 365 Current Musicology 22 (Soundtrack 4) (the stretch of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring from the opening bassoon solo to its semitone-depressed recollection) beginning with the very first singlenote sound... ...a keening primordial whine, a trembling hover, suddenly sending seismic chills down its own spine, sprouting eerie excrescences that merge with it, twisting it into a ghoulish glide through that soundandtimespace environment that woodwinds simultaneously create and slither through, arrested electrically by stinging stringtrills traumatically freezing action, woodwinds as traumatically unfreezing it, splintering into myriad simultaneities of tiny frenzies interweaving but blankly oblivious of one another, the desolate whine now reemerging in ever so emptier a space, oddly discolored, dislocated now, its spasms now feeble in the aftermath of whatever it was that happened. . . Benjamin Boretz 21 -147- soundtrack 3: (Milton Babbitt’s First Piano Concerto) You could call it unfiltered megaSchoenberg in jazztime continuity (not poptime or modernmusictime, either) but what I most love about Milton’s Concerto is its gritted integrity being defiant unregenerate militant Positivist music, sternly askance anent the softheaded stylewaffling of the gegenwärtliche jugend, a relentlessly uningratiatingly polyfrantically multilayered senseassertive discourse here being socially publically sonically displayed and exposed to be sure but unmistakably demanding for adequate reception ultimately that it be studied minutely and intently in printform uncompromisingly exhaustively inexhaustibly Current Musicology 22 (Soundtrack 4) (the stretch of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring from the opening bassoon solo to its semitone-depressed recollection) beginning with the very first singlenote sound... ...a keening primordial whine, a trembling hover, suddenly sending seismic chills down its own spine, sprouting eerie excrescences that merge with it, twisting it into a ghoulish glide through that soundandtimespace environment that woodwinds simultaneously create and slither through, arrested electrically by stinging stringtrills traumatically freezing action, woodwinds as traumatically unfreezing it, splintering into myriad simultaneities of tiny frenzies interweaving but blankly oblivious of one another, the desolate whine now reemerging in ever so emptier a space, oddly discolored, dislocated now, its spasms now feeble in the aftermath of whatever it was that happened. . . Benjamin Boretz 21 -147- soundtrack 3: (Milton Babbitt’s First Piano Concerto) You could call it unfiltered megaSchoenberg in jazztime continuity (not poptime or modernmusictime, either) but what I most love about Milton’s Concerto is its gritted integrity being defiant unregenerate militant Positivist music, sternly askance anent the softheaded stylewaffling of the gegenwärtliche jugend, a relentlessly uningratiatingly polyfrantically multilayered senseassertive discourse here being socially publically sonically displayed and exposed to be sure but unmistakably demanding for adequate reception ultimately that it be studied minutely and intently in printform uncompromisingly exhaustively inexhaustibly 366 Benjamin Boretz 25 - 505 - —February/May 2001 Written first as a solo reading for a symposium on “Music and Politics” conceived and led by Judy Klein at the March 2001 conference of SEAMUS (Society for ElectroAcoustic Music in the U.S.) in Baton Rouge whose other participants were Jon Appleton and Anna Rubin; rewritten for two voices and performed with Karen Eisenbrey at a meeting of the Washington Composers’ Forum in Seattle, May 2001. Benjamin Boretz I / I / I / I / I / OOOOO Benjamin Boretz 23 -148- (soundtrack 5) (a panpipes orchestra in the Chilean Andes) We walk together from church to ritual square, we breathe together as people breathing together breathe. Time is the natural sense of our flowing forward together, naturally infolding as movement and sense of movement together, unfolding as the unitary shape and space of our timeless, dimensionless being, together. —may 1986/may 2002 [BAB] 367 Benjamin Boretz 25 - 505 - —February/May 2001 Written first as a solo reading for a symposium on “Music and Politics” conceived and led by Judy Klein at the March 2001 conference of SEAMUS (Society for ElectroAcoustic Music in the U.S.) in Baton Rouge whose other participants were Jon Appleton and Anna Rubin; rewritten for two voices and performed with Karen Eisenbrey at a meeting of the Washington Composers’ Forum in Seattle, May 2001. Benjamin Boretz I / I / I / I / I / OOOOO Benjamin Boretz 23 -148- (soundtrack 5) (a panpipes orchestra in the Chilean Andes) We walk together from church to ritual square, we breathe together as people breathing together breathe. Time is the natural sense of our flowing forward together, naturally infolding as movement and sense of movement together, unfolding as the unitary shape and space of our timeless, dimensionless being, together. —may 1986/may 2002 [BAB] Benjamin Boretz 25 - 505 - —February/May 2001 Written first as a solo reading for a symposium on “Music and Politics” conceived and led by Judy Klein at the March 2001 conference of SEAMUS (Society for ElectroAcoustic Music in the U.S.) in Baton Rouge whose other participants were Jon Appleton and Anna Rubin; rewritten for two voices and performed with Karen Eisenbrey at a meeting of the Washington Composers’ Forum in Seattle, May 2001. Benjamin Boretz I / I / I / I / I / OOOOO Benjamin Boretz 23 -148- (soundtrack 5) (a panpipes orchestra in the Chilean Andes) We walk together from church to ritual square, we breathe together as people breathing together breathe. Time is the natural sense of our flowing forward together, naturally infolding as movement and sense of movement together, unfolding as the unitary shape and space of our timeless, dimensionless being, together. —may 1986/may 2002 [BAB] 368 Current Musicology 26 - 506 - Speaker ISpeaker ISpeaker ISpeaker ISpeaker I poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ? . . . politics?. . . politics?. . . politics?. . . politics?. . . politics? modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . . . . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior? is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . . . . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation? :politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . . : . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . . . . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing? are they even anythingare they even anythingare they even anythingare they even anythingare they even anything discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful? — about expression? . . .— about expression? . . .— about expression? . . .— about expression? . . .— about expression? . . . . . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’? Speaker II “A Year from Monday”? Lament for the Victims of Hiroshima? Ancient Voices of Children? Gesang der Jünglinge? Scratch Music? Maledetto? “Feminine Endings”? The People United Will Never Be Defeated? Tibetan monks dancing on San Giorgio in Venice? The Shaggs? Tabuh-Tabuhan? The Goleta Anarchist Music Ensemble? Bulgarian village women chorusing on Nonesuch CDs? 369 Benjamin Boretz 27 - 507 - Shostakovich? The Futurist Manifesto? “Twelve-Tone Rhythmic Structure and the Electronic Medium”? “On Musical Performance of Gender and Sex”? or really perhaps only about discourse?or really perhaps only about discourse?or really perhaps only about discourse?or really perhaps only about discourse?or really perhaps only about discourse? (: in which the politicizing of the aesthetic . . .(: in which the politicizing of the aesthetic . . .(: in which the politicizing of the aesthetic . . .(: in which the politicizing of the aesthetic . . .(: in which the politicizing of the aesthetic . . . signifies the subsumption of the expressive textsignifies the subsumption of the expressive textsignifies the subsumption of the expressive textsignifies the subsumption of the expressive textsignifies the subsumption of the expressive text within the discourse,within the discourse,within the discourse,within the discourse,within the discourse, as its instrument, its property?)as its instrument, its property?)as its instrument, its property?)as its instrument, its property?)as its instrument, its property?) . . . or in which the aestheticizing of the political. . . or in which the aestheticizing of the political. . . or in which the aestheticizing of the political. . . or in which the aestheticizing of the political. . . or in which the aestheticizing of the political signifies the adoption by the expressive textsignifies the adoption by the expressive textsignifies the adoption by the expressive textsignifies the adoption by the expressive textsignifies the adoption by the expressive text of the condition, the identity, of discourse?of the condition, the identity, of discourse?of the condition, the identity, of discourse?of the condition, the identity, of discourse?of the condition, the identity, of discourse? 4’33”? Apollon Musagètes? Ein Heldenleben? I am sitting in a room? Pli selon pli? . . . ?) . . . at the edges, doesn’t. . . at the edges, doesn’t. . . at the edges, doesn’t. . . at the edges, doesn’t. . . at the edges, doesn’t politicizing sloganize politicspoliticizing sloganize politicspoliticizing sloganize politicspoliticizing sloganize politicspoliticizing sloganize politics into ideological weaponry;into ideological weaponry;into ideological weaponry;into ideological weaponry;into ideological weaponry; doesn’t aestheticizing dysfunctionalize politicsdoesn’t aestheticizing dysfunctionalize politicsdoesn’t aestheticizing dysfunctionalize politicsdoesn’t aestheticizing dysfunctionalize politicsdoesn’t aestheticizing dysfunctionalize politics into iconic imagery,into iconic imagery,into iconic imagery,into iconic imagery,into iconic imagery, like a shot of stimulus energylike a shot of stimulus energylike a shot of stimulus energylike a shot of stimulus energylike a shot of stimulus energy spiking a kicky entertainment . . . ?spiking a kicky entertainment . . . ?spiking a kicky entertainment . . . ?spiking a kicky entertainment . . . ?spiking a kicky entertainment . . . ? The Chairman Dances? L’s G.A.? LA? Bye Bye Butterfly? Ode to Napoleon? Different Trains? For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy? Current Musicology 26 - 506 - Speaker ISpeaker ISpeaker ISpeaker ISpeaker I poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ?poetics . . . ? . . . politics?. . . politics?. . . politics?. . . politics?. . . politics? modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . .modalities of expressive behavior . . . . . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior?. . . modalities of interpersonal behavior? is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . .is there a difference? . . . . . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation?. . . is there a relation? :politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . .:politicizing the aesthetic . . . : . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . .: . . . aestheticizing the political . . . . . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing?. . . are they the same thing? are they even anythingare they even anythingare they even anythingare they even anythingare they even anything discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful?discriminable? . . . or meaningful? — about expression? . . .— about expression? . . .— about expression? . . .— about expression? . . .— about expression? . . . . . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’?. . . or perhaps only about :‘art’? Speaker II “A Year from Monday”? Lament for the Victims of Hiroshima? Ancient Voices of Children? Gesang der Jünglinge? Scratch Music? Maledetto? “Feminine Endings”? The People United Will Never Be Defeated? Tibetan monks dancing on San Giorgio in Venice? The Shaggs? Tabuh-Tabuhan? The Goleta Anarchist Music Ensemble? Bulgarian village women chorusing on Nonesuch CDs? 370 Current Musicology 28 - 508 - still, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poetics — in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’ — and music as politics —— and music as politics —— and music as politics —— and music as politics —— and music as politics — in its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theory — share an originary need,— share an originary need,— share an originary need,— share an originary need,— share an originary need, even an originary strategyeven an originary strategyeven an originary strategyeven an originary strategyeven an originary strategy directed toward that need?directed toward that need?directed toward that need?directed toward that need?directed toward that need? do they not arise withindo they not arise withindo they not arise withindo they not arise withindo they not arise within the same human predicament,the same human predicament,the same human predicament,the same human predicament,the same human predicament, as the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responses to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma? is not their common issueis not their common issueis not their common issueis not their common issueis not their common issue the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish, the fearful alienationthe fearful alienationthe fearful alienationthe fearful alienationthe fearful alienation of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation, the terrifying sensethe terrifying sensethe terrifying sensethe terrifying sensethe terrifying sense of helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonment within the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobody with no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibility of credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connection to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being, growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands? the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic, is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot), to create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitable as the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being with fulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to the visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being. as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer, where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is. Das Lied von der Erde? Turangalila? Soundings? Momente? Smalltalk? GAP6? Fire Music? Europera? 371 Benjamin Boretz 29 - 509 - intimacy (a polemic)? t-wmukl-d? Visage? “On the way to becoming”? Sauh? Wang Wei at the Piano? Forgetting and Remembering? Earthlight? Steam? Philomel? “Against Plausibility”? “Schoenberg is Dead”? “Boola Boola”? “The Agony of Modern Music”? “Der freie Satz”? “Caliban Reborn”? “Queering the Pitch”? Fluxus? Soviet Iron Foundry? Lament for Sarah? the tack of ‘politics’, precisely inverse,the tack of ‘politics’, precisely inverse,the tack of ‘politics’, precisely inverse,the tack of ‘politics’, precisely inverse,the tack of ‘politics’, precisely inverse, is creative exteriorization,is creative exteriorization,is creative exteriorization,is creative exteriorization,is creative exteriorization, reifies the exterior world as a multiplicative reproduction,reifies the exterior world as a multiplicative reproduction,reifies the exterior world as a multiplicative reproduction,reifies the exterior world as a multiplicative reproduction,reifies the exterior world as a multiplicative reproduction, a symbolic objectification, of the self, producing a tangible,a symbolic objectification, of the self, producing a tangible,a symbolic objectification, of the self, producing a tangible,a symbolic objectification, of the self, producing a tangible,a symbolic objectification, of the self, producing a tangible, if self-induced, interpersonal support system.if self-induced, interpersonal support system.if self-induced, interpersonal support system.if self-induced, interpersonal support system.if self-induced, interpersonal support system. appropriating representation appropriates authority,appropriating representation appropriates authority,appropriating representation appropriates authority,appropriating representation appropriates authority,appropriating representation appropriates authority, ultimately appropriates the identity of the collective to the self.ultimately appropriates the identity of the collective to the self.ultimately appropriates the identity of the collective to the self.ultimately appropriates the identity of the collective to the self.ultimately appropriates the identity of the collective to the self. the oracle effect, says Pierre Bourdieu, a ... form of performativity,the oracle effect, says Pierre Bourdieu, a ... form of performativity,the oracle effect, says Pierre Bourdieu, a ... form of performativity,the oracle effect, says Pierre Bourdieu, a ... form of performativity,the oracle effect, says Pierre Bourdieu, a ... form of performativity, ... enables the authorized spokesperson to take his authority from... enables the authorized spokesperson to take his authority from... enables the authorized spokesperson to take his authority from... enables the authorized spokesperson to take his authority from... enables the authorized spokesperson to take his authority from the group ... I am an incarnation of the collective, and by virtue ofthe group ... I am an incarnation of the collective, and by virtue ofthe group ... I am an incarnation of the collective, and by virtue ofthe group ... I am an incarnation of the collective, and by virtue ofthe group ... I am an incarnation of the collective, and by virtue of that fact, I am the one who manipulates the group in the very namethat fact, I am the one who manipulates the group in the very namethat fact, I am the one who manipulates the group in the very namethat fact, I am the one who manipulates the group in the very namethat fact, I am the one who manipulates the group in the very name of the group ... the violence that is part and parcel of the oracleof the group ... the violence that is part and parcel of the oracleof the group ... the violence that is part and parcel of the oracleof the group ... the violence that is part and parcel of the oracleof the group ... the violence that is part and parcel of the oracle effect can never be felt more strongly than in effect can never be felt more strongly than in effect can never be felt more strongly than in effect can never be felt more strongly than in effect can never be felt more strongly than in assembly situationsassembly situationsassembly situationsassembly situationsassembly situations [ — Elias Canetti would single out the symphony concert — ][ — Elias Canetti would single out the symphony concert — ][ — Elias Canetti would single out the symphony concert — ][ — Elias Canetti would single out the symphony concert — ][ — Elias Canetti would single out the symphony concert — ] in which ... the professional spokespersons who are authorizedin which ... the professional spokespersons who are authorizedin which ... the professional spokespersons who are authorizedin which ... the professional spokespersons who are authorizedin which ... the professional spokespersons who are authorized can speak in the name of the entire group assembled ...can speak in the name of the entire group assembled ...can speak in the name of the entire group assembled ...can speak in the name of the entire group assembled ...can speak in the name of the entire group assembled ... but: consider: who — what but: consider: who — what but: consider: who — what but: consider: who — what but: consider: who — what real real real real real person — am I talking about?person — am I talking about?person — am I talking about?person — am I talking about?person — am I talking about? who is the pure expressor, who is the pure politicizer?who is the pure expressor, who is the pure politicizer?who is the pure expressor, who is the pure politicizer?who is the pure expressor, who is the pure politicizer?who is the pure expressor, who is the pure politicizer? what there is is, in fact, only all of uswhat there is is, in fact, only all of uswhat there is is, in fact, only all of uswhat there is is, in fact, only all of uswhat there is is, in fact, only all of us Current Musicology 28 - 508 - still, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poeticsstill, don’t both music as poetics — in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’— in its corporealization as ‘art’ — and music as politics —— and music as politics —— and music as politics —— and music as politics —— and music as politics — in its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theoryin its mode of activity rather than theory — share an originary need,— share an originary need,— share an originary need,— share an originary need,— share an originary need, even an originary strategyeven an originary strategyeven an originary strategyeven an originary strategyeven an originary strategy directed toward that need?directed toward that need?directed toward that need?directed toward that need?directed toward that need? do they not arise withindo they not arise withindo they not arise withindo they not arise withindo they not arise within the same human predicament,the same human predicament,the same human predicament,the same human predicament,the same human predicament, as the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responsesas the usual diametrically opposing responses to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma?to a common dilemma? is not their common issueis not their common issueis not their common issueis not their common issueis not their common issue the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish,the vulnerability, the anguish, the fearful alienationthe fearful alienationthe fearful alienationthe fearful alienationthe fearful alienation of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation,of ontological isolation, the terrifying sensethe terrifying sensethe terrifying sensethe terrifying sensethe terrifying sense of helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonmentof helpless imprisonment within the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobodywithin the vulnerable psychobody with no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibilitywith no perceivable possibility of credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connectionof credible interpersonal connection to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being,to mediate the enveloping alienation of being, growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands?growing, metastasizing as being itself expands? the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic,the reflexive tack of ‘art’, the interiorizing creative tactic, is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot),is to reify solitude itself (to borrow an image of Maurice Blanchot), to create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitableto create an interior world as palpable and inhabitable as the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being withas the external one, to populate the loneness of being with fulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to thefulness of substance and texture approximating to the visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being.visionary fantasy of unalienated being. as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer,as Maurice Blanchot says of the creative writer, where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is.where he is, only being is. Das Lied von der Erde? Turangalila? Soundings? Momente? Smalltalk? GAP6? Fire Music? Europera? 372 Current Musicology 30 - 510 - — with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities, all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues; self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably. and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians, who can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalities of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity, to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics, if only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal being by circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourse — pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse between the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenon and its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiver to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us, personified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselves — just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed to nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppression of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves, so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in. and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians, who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic, who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances, who appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomena the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns, including at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extreme the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze, symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues, their — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors of significance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togetherness enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war, the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena” which we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreude credit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rational — we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers, appropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive work the exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political things even if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expression so as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulate within the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itself which we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggled to bring into being.to bring into being.to bring into being.to bring into being.to bring into being. 373 Benjamin Boretz 31 - 511 - and so we become strangers too.and so we become strangers too.and so we become strangers too.and so we become strangers too.and so we become strangers too. in the expressive space we have created.in the expressive space we have created.in the expressive space we have created.in the expressive space we have created.in the expressive space we have created. yet it cannot be questioned that in every musicallyyet it cannot be questioned that in every musicallyyet it cannot be questioned that in every musicallyyet it cannot be questioned that in every musicallyyet it cannot be questioned that in every musically expressive act there is also an innate, indigenous politicsexpressive act there is also an innate, indigenous politicsexpressive act there is also an innate, indigenous politicsexpressive act there is also an innate, indigenous politicsexpressive act there is also an innate, indigenous politics — but a politics which by its nature as music is not— but a politics which by its nature as music is not— but a politics which by its nature as music is not— but a politics which by its nature as music is not— but a politics which by its nature as music is not susceptible to being restated with discourse, andsusceptible to being restated with discourse, andsusceptible to being restated with discourse, andsusceptible to being restated with discourse, andsusceptible to being restated with discourse, and whose messages are therefore subvertedwhose messages are therefore subvertedwhose messages are therefore subvertedwhose messages are therefore subvertedwhose messages are therefore subverted by the gratuitous public-verbal politicsby the gratuitous public-verbal politicsby the gratuitous public-verbal politicsby the gratuitous public-verbal politicsby the gratuitous public-verbal politics to which they are assimilated.to which they are assimilated.to which they are assimilated.to which they are assimilated.to which they are assimilated. I said already that our complicity inI said already that our complicity inI said already that our complicity inI said already that our complicity inI said already that our complicity in undermining ourselves is an outcomeundermining ourselves is an outcomeundermining ourselves is an outcomeundermining ourselves is an outcomeundermining ourselves is an outcome of a particular complexity of expressive artists,of a particular complexity of expressive artists,of a particular complexity of expressive artists,of a particular complexity of expressive artists,of a particular complexity of expressive artists, of creative musicians: that we could not surviveof creative musicians: that we could not surviveof creative musicians: that we could not surviveof creative musicians: that we could not surviveof creative musicians: that we could not survive permanently affixed to the interior worlds we create.permanently affixed to the interior worlds we create.permanently affixed to the interior worlds we create.permanently affixed to the interior worlds we create.permanently affixed to the interior worlds we create. the very socialization of our sound, its capacity to bethe very socialization of our sound, its capacity to bethe very socialization of our sound, its capacity to bethe very socialization of our sound, its capacity to bethe very socialization of our sound, its capacity to be meaningful to others,meaningful to others,meaningful to others,meaningful to others,meaningful to others, is a painful reconfrontationis a painful reconfrontationis a painful reconfrontationis a painful reconfrontationis a painful reconfrontation with the essential alienationwith the essential alienationwith the essential alienationwith the essential alienationwith the essential alienation and isolationand isolationand isolationand isolationand isolation the expressive act is needed to ameliorate.the expressive act is needed to ameliorate.the expressive act is needed to ameliorate.the expressive act is needed to ameliorate.the expressive act is needed to ameliorate. so the musician-artist rages to join her own lost world,so the musician-artist rages to join her own lost world,so the musician-artist rages to join her own lost world,so the musician-artist rages to join her own lost world,so the musician-artist rages to join her own lost world, the very one that she by releasing her workthe very one that she by releasing her workthe very one that she by releasing her workthe very one that she by releasing her workthe very one that she by releasing her work has created for them, rages not only to be ablehas created for them, rages not only to be ablehas created for them, rages not only to be ablehas created for them, rages not only to be ablehas created for them, rages not only to be able to inhabit it with them like them,to inhabit it with them like them,to inhabit it with them like them,to inhabit it with them like them,to inhabit it with them like them, but to inhabit it in her own name,but to inhabit it in her own name,but to inhabit it in her own name,but to inhabit it in her own name,but to inhabit it in her own name, on her own account, noton her own account, noton her own account, noton her own account, noton her own account, not — not like them —— not like them —— not like them —— not like them —— not like them — as an anonymityas an anonymityas an anonymityas an anonymityas an anonymity in the public audience space.in the public audience space.in the public audience space.in the public audience space.in the public audience space. for her, anonymityfor her, anonymityfor her, anonymityfor her, anonymityfor her, anonymity is a cruel dissonant punis a cruel dissonant punis a cruel dissonant punis a cruel dissonant punis a cruel dissonant pun on the originary expressiveon the originary expressiveon the originary expressiveon the originary expressiveon the originary expressive erasure of identity.erasure of identity.erasure of identity.erasure of identity.erasure of identity. isolation recycled,isolation recycled,isolation recycled,isolation recycled,isolation recycled, Futility? Klinghoffer? For the Uncommon Woman? Intolleranza? A War Requiem? Kiva? Golem? Form for piano? Time’s Encomium? Rothko Chapel? Unit Structures? Big Road Blues? Vingt régards sur l’enfant Jésus? Echoi? Om? Evocations? Twisted Tutu? Custer’s Ghost? Blue in Green? Available Forms? The Purposes and Politics of Engaging Strangers? White Writing? “Compose Yourself”? The Cave? Sticks/Stones? Sonic Meditations? Koyaanisqatsi? Rainforest? Musica Elettronica Viva? “Rules of One’s Own”? The Roachville Project? “Meta + Hodos”? “Speaking and Singing”? “Noise”? “The Beauty of Irrelevant Music”? Urban Bushmen? Once? Mutatis Mutandis? Current Musicology 30 - 510 - — with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities,— with different colorations and intensities, all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues;all of us both expressors and demagogues; self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably.self-explorers and self-asserters inextricably. and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians,and so it is us, the creative musicians, who can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalitieswho can be observed, in varying modalities of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity,of coloration and intensity, to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics,to politicize our own poetics, if only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal beingif only by betraying its non-negotiably non-verbal being by circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourseby circumscribing it with articulate discourse — pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse— pre-empting the unmediated, unguaranteeable, uncontrollable intercourse between the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenonbetween the created expressive phenomenon and its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiverand its recomposing receiver to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us,to reframe the interface so as to include us, personified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselvespersonified, corporealized, as ourselves — just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed— just at the site where we had, precisely, managed to nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppressionto nullify just that oppression, the oppression of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves,of being too much with our selves to be within ourselves, so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in.so as to have a world to be in. and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians,and it is us, ourselves, the creative musicians, who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic,who aestheticize the politic, who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances,who ferociously reach out to engage strangers with our performances, who appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomenawho appropriate to our anonymous anomalous expressive phenomena the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns,the rubrics of their anxious concerns, including at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extremeincluding at the desperate extreme the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze,the reductive abstractions which catalyze, symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues,symbolize in the public space the primal issues, their — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors oftheir — and our — simultaneous needs for and terrors of significance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togethernesssignificance made bearable in the simulacrum of togetherness enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war,enabled by the imagery of public outrages, causes, occasions for war, the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena”the whole media-cultural array of “issues” and “phenomena” which we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreudewhich we all addicted to the mass-hysterical euphoria-schadenfreude credit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rationalcredit as real, and their analyses or descriptions as rational — we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers,— we, needing strenuously to engage strangers, appropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive workappropriate to the expressive work the exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political thingsthe exogenous energy latent in these symbolic political things even if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expressioneven if they inflate the scale of our own expression so as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulateso as to obliterate those poignancies uniquely articulate within the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itselfwithin the expressive language itself which we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggledwhich we have so seriously struggled to bring into being.to bring into being.to bring into being.to bring into being.to bring into being. 374 Current Musicology 32 - 512 - Key? Private Parts? On Being Invisible? ...the serpent-snapping eye? Apo Do? Ideas of Order? Prometeo? Mobile for Shakespeare? Mudgett? from the seven days? explosante-fixe? by the very meansby the very meansby the very meansby the very meansby the very means of its remedy.of its remedy.of its remedy.of its remedy.of its remedy. this treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it is equally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, the alienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorization are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real, or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way. in that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticism of pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social space undelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely to catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it. our appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expression may be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of that expressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal space untethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social manners threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous: music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari; every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation. is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”? if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression, pure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its release unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos, as surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personal and interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct route to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny. and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression, thereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberated 375 Benjamin Boretz 33 - 513 - “it’s all yours”? Symphony of a Thousand? ONE? make possible that uneasy self-contradictory fragile network withinmake possible that uneasy self-contradictory fragile network withinmake possible that uneasy self-contradictory fragile network withinmake possible that uneasy self-contradictory fragile network withinmake possible that uneasy self-contradictory fragile network within which we, along with all our fellow-strangers, can realistically sustainwhich we, along with all our fellow-strangers, can realistically sustainwhich we, along with all our fellow-strangers, can realistically sustainwhich we, along with all our fellow-strangers, can realistically sustainwhich we, along with all our fellow-strangers, can realistically sustain a life pursuing significant expression, and without which, in somea life pursuing significant expression, and without which, in somea life pursuing significant expression, and without which, in somea life pursuing significant expression, and without which, in somea life pursuing significant expression, and without which, in some idealized world of extreme programmed politics or unleashed inchoateidealized world of extreme programmed politics or unleashed inchoateidealized world of extreme programmed politics or unleashed inchoateidealized world of extreme programmed politics or unleashed inchoateidealized world of extreme programmed politics or unleashed inchoate poetics, we could not.poetics, we could not.poetics, we could not.poetics, we could not.poetics, we could not. expression, empathy, self-awareness, reflection mediate, constrain,expression, empathy, self-awareness, reflection mediate, constrain,expression, empathy, self-awareness, reflection mediate, constrain,expression, empathy, self-awareness, reflection mediate, constrain,expression, empathy, self-awareness, reflection mediate, constrain, loosen the politically constructed power-assertive spaces.loosen the politically constructed power-assertive spaces.loosen the politically constructed power-assertive spaces.loosen the politically constructed power-assertive spaces.loosen the politically constructed power-assertive spaces. Current Musicology 32 - 512 - Key? Private Parts? On Being Invisible? ...the serpent-snapping eye? Apo Do? Ideas of Order? Prometeo? Mobile for Shakespeare? Mudgett? from the seven days? explosante-fixe? by the very meansby the very meansby the very meansby the very meansby the very means of its remedy.of its remedy.of its remedy.of its remedy.of its remedy. this treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it isthis treachery we practice upon our own expression cannot be evaded; it is equally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, theequally essential to our survival as the expression it betrays; the betrayal, the alienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorizationalienation of expression, intrinsic to discourse and structure and exteriorization are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real,are the symptoms of the recognition that the interpersonal space may be real, or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way.or rather that the interpersonal space is real in its own specific way. in that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticismin that perspective, that political perspective, the molten mysticism of pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social spaceof pure expression unmediated, released into the social space undelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely toundelimited by these socializing dampers, is as likely to catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it.catalyze violence as to exorcise it. our appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expressionour appropriation to our persons of the power of our expression may be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of thatmay be deceitful and subversive, but the release of that expressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal spaceexpressive power in an undefined interpersonal space untethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social mannersuntethered by names and faces and sets of social manners threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous:threatens the release of energies far more ominous: music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari;music has a thirst for destruction, say Deleuze and Guattari; every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation.every kind of destruction, extinction, breakage, dislocation. is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”?is that not its potential “fascism”? if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression,if music is ontologized in this atavistic way as pure expression, pure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its releasepure mysticism, as molten volcanic energy, then its release unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos,unmediated into the social space is a direct route to violence and chaos, as surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personalas surely as political energy running unconstrained into the personal and interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct routeand interpersonal spaces is a direct route to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny.to absolute tyranny. and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression,and just as discourse and structure alienate and mediate pure expression, thereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberatedthereby making it survivable in the social space, so do liberated 376 Current Musicology 34 - 21 - (one more little review) Shouldn’t We Talk? (jkr) The subjects are obvious. (Just listen.) Lots of opinions too. (You may not agree.) (Don’t have to.) It’s pure temporality, in 4 mvts.. (But not any temporal evolution ever anywhere anytime.) (The indensity takes a big lot of getting used to.) (If you listen.) (So listen.) -- B.A.B. Feb. 2003 377 Vignettes of Old Masters VI: Lukas Foss (1922-2010) lukas A gratification of listening to Lukas’s music - any of Lukas’s music - is that you are never far from music wherever his music takes you music is behind the wall down the corner below the horizon across the universe under the eaves at the end of the tunnel at the tip of your ear you can taste it just yonder just beyond experience just rolls off your fingertips beams just over the moon is right beside you just barely untouching your semblable knows what you like likes you - maybe more - dances ingeniously just behind your ear that almost licks almost mahlers you out with brahms by gould smoothing ruffled lennys edges rounding igors corners not il mi- glior fabbro but the grooviest musicperfect pianoplayer you ever heard bach or four temperaments always the music a more than ample payback for the long indenture or safeconduct cover for the smiling inyourface pushoff fathermaster teachermaster symbolic hindemithicide pantomusikanting out to enact to exorcise to performatize to spielify all the crushing load of master-student composer-performer lennylukas previnlukas glennlukas igorlukas aaronlukas johncagelukas germanamericanlukas all the never biodegrading relationships by rigorously nonjazzing the rules but instead declassicizing them to escape at last but still there have to be rules even if like coun- tercrafts of non not anti never anti composition the un not ever anti hindemithaar- onreinervengerova not breaking not flouting but remaking always tethered to music always the careful chords the tasty lukaslicks the classic infallible dufallo clarinet riffs the dignified but decorously avantgarde delancey bass around the straightish bluecollar colf cello they groped their way away almost went for broke they were never far from music but ever further away along the rules they made as they went we were never in it together but close enough to relate. Close to music, Lukas’s music Performs, Stages, Enacts, Personifies, Affects. To do it right you get prepackaged bigstars: You get Jennie Tourel. You get Adele Addison. You get Lenny Bernstein. You get Andre Previn. You get the Improvisa- tion Chamber Ensemble.And you stage them brillliantly, just so, just for them in particular; they will never have it better: Phorion: lenny down the chute as mad bachcrazed maniac (no place here for the self-congratulating hero-knight of the Shapero Symphony or the devouring ogre of Brahms by Gould). Time Cycle: Adele a jumping bean on a tightrope, a warbling acrobat bird, groovy earthmother. Song of Songs: Jennie as Daniel Deronda’s Mirah, Malke the Wise, the exalted Bride of Judea. Echoi: Lukas & Co. in a fractal lukaslick tsunamifest. You compose avant-lenny; avant-jennie; avant-adele; avant-andre; avant-lukas. Invent scintillat- ing, titillating, coruscating, startling, channeling the future, imaging the beyond, the easily familiar terra incognita we can all know, in a glossolalic newspeak that we all understand. Soundmusic monstrances richly repaying every moment of experience you lend to them; and it always sounds fantastic. Like nothing else floating through the modern musical world, like a wraith of future past, like a vision of things that were to come, but never did. Current Musicology 34 - 21 - (one more little review) Shouldn’t We Talk? (jkr) The subjects are obvious. (Just listen.) Lots of opinions too. (You may not agree.) (Don’t have to.) It’s pure temporality, in 4 mvts.. (But not any temporal evolution ever anywhere anytime.) (The indensity takes a big lot of getting used to.) (If you listen.) (So listen.) -- B.A.B. Feb. 2003 Current Musicology 34 - 21 - (one more little review) Shouldn’t We Talk? (jkr) The subjects are obvious. (Just listen.) Lots of opinions too. (You may not agree.) (Don’t have to.) It’s pure temporality, in 4 mvts.. (But not any temporal evolution ever anywhere anytime.) (The indensity takes a big lot of getting used to.) (If you listen.) (So listen.) -- B.A.B. Feb. 2003