mauceri-1997-from experimental music to musical experiment

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FROM EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC TO MUSICAL EXPERIMENT

FRANK X. MAUCERI

Wx ITH ITS ADOPTION of modern technology, music enters new and complex relationships with the society to which it belongs. Both

specialized scientific research and the economy of mass media become directly entangled with the practice of music composition. As a way of analyzing these new relationships, I want to examine the use of the word "experimental" with regard to music: how this term is used by composers and critics; how it sets up and dissolves historical opposition and categories; how it defines music's use of technology and technology's use of music.

My goal in excavating the oppositions implicit in the category "experimental music" is not to discredit criticism, musicology, or the unique contributions of America's innovative composers. Like any historical category, this one is informed by a social agenda. The oppositions it sets

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Perspectives of New Music

up serve a particular social perspective. When a term like "experimental" is deployed as a category it not only creates implicit oppositions but it also takes sides, it privileges and aligns particular differences. My goal is to examine some of those differences while tracing the motivations and effects of this word, "experimental."

EXPERIMENT AS GENRE

The concept of experimental music is less contentious today than it was in the late 1950s, when electronic music was establishing itself as the vanguard of compositional practice. Often, "experimental music" generically referred to the contemporary avant-garde or to electronic music. In response, Heinz-Klaus Meztger included experimental music among the terms he called "abortive concepts," terms which "do not grasp their subject" but enact a facile identification as a way to evade serious exami- nation of the subject (Metzger 1959, 21).

Metzger's criticism would hold today. Though its meaning has changed, "experimental music" is still often used to loosely designate a genre of works whose common attributes are not denoted by that label. It is instructive to contrast the deprecating use of this label by music critics, as noticed by Metzger in 1959, with the favorable use of the term in recent reference works.

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music [a.k.a. NGA] defines experimental music as follows:

A tradition of 20th-century musical practice (largely but not exclu- sively American), the fundamental characteristic of which is a con- tinuing search for radically new modes of composition, music making, and musical understanding. . . . Although experimental music is related to "conventional" contemporary music, the term is used for a bolder, more individualistic, eccentric, and less highly crafted kind of musical exploration. (Hitchcock and Sadie 1986, s.v. "Experimental Music" by John Rockwell)

The NGA entry traces this "tradition" through its exemplars: the work of Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Edgard Varese, John Cage, David Tudor, and Earl Brown; tuning innovations by Harry Partch and Lou Harrison; the pattern music of Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich; popular and media-influenced music of Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. Of the composers mentioned in the dictionary entry, only Cage referred to the music he composed as experimental and he explicitly rejected the kind of

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From Experimental Music to Musical Experiment

definition offered above. It is doubtful that many of the composers listed would themselves identify with the category as described.

Neither the critics nor the NGA entry attempt to designate a characteristic function or methodology; they are not trying to distinguish music that conducts an experiment. Instead, they are trying to define something like a style of music making, a general category that functions in opposition to another general category, "classical" music. The "radically new" is opposed to the old. The word "experimental" is chosen in order to characterize the nature of that opposition.

One way the word accomplishes this is by the suggestion that "experimental" works are in a some sense unfinished, merely trial runs of untested materials and methods. To the critics, according to Metzger, "'experimental music' means music which is still in baby shoes and which has still to become something genuine" (Metzger 1959, 27). It implies that the composers have not mastered their methods as have composers of the tradition; they are more tinkerers or mad scientists than accom- plished artists. The NGA article corroborates this impression but puts a positive spin on it. The pieces are "less highly crafted" but that goes along with their "bolder" and "more individualistic" conception. What remains unexamined in both cases are the conditions for what constitutes the genuine, craft, or finish. In the opposition set up by the category "experimental," these attributes are clearly positioned on the side of the old against the new.

The conservative music criticism of the 1950s to which Metzger refers used the term "experimental" to suggest an analogy between the new music and science. A survey of Die Reihe or Perspectives of New Music is sufficient to note that in some respects new music invites such an analogy; language and theory borrowed from the sciences is a mainstay of discourse among composers. But criticism has long complained of vanguard music as dehumanized, and unnatural. "Experimental," along with adjectives like "antiseptic" and "clinical," contribute to this tradition of criticism. Metzger places the use of "experimental" in the company of terms such as "laboratory music" and "engineers' music" (Metzger 1959, 21). These modifiers suggest that this music substitutes artificial procedures and means for the immediacy of natural expression found in traditional concert music.

Note that an opposition between science and nature is mapped onto an opposition between vanguard concert music and traditional concert music. The "human" is positioned on the side of nature and tradition, the side with which this type of criticism clearly identifies. The "human" and the "natural" are constructed as normative and as representatives of the tradition. The "artificial" is associated with the new forces of musical production manifested by the vanguard.

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The center of the science/nature opposition involves a struggle over technology. Just as modern technology causes upheaval in social relations and values (traditions) so the new music represents the same menace. New musical techniques threaten to displace not only the expressive order but also the values and institutions of the tradition. The performer, the orchestra, the concert hall, and even the music critic were (and are still) threatened by the appearance of new techniques.

Interestingly, recording and mass-media technologies are not addressed by opposing science to nature. Surely, these present a greater threat to the tradition than a marginal vanguard. The alienation that is invoked when speaking of a dehumanized music has more to do with our alienation in the face of commodity forms, a consequence of mass production and mass media, than with our detachment from specialized practices like scientific research. The category, "experimental music" con- structs a weak antagonist against which music criticism can authenticate a waning tradition.

In the 1960s, "experimental music" began to be used to set up quite different oppositions than the ones discussed above. Today, "experimental music" is characterized as radically new but it is also posited as an historical category, a tradition in its own right.1 But as pointed out by art critic Harold Rosenberg, "The new cannot become a tradition without giving rise to unique contradictions, myths, absurdities" (Rosenberg 1959, 9). The irony of this historical category is the attempt to construct a genre out of work that by its own definition is radically different and highly individualistic.

The foremost contradiction of the NGA entry is found in the collec- tion of composers; the list represents a wide variety of methods, influ- ences, and sensibilities. The most interesting aspect of the list is the omissions. The examples given notably exclude any major figure from the European avant-garde. Presumably, the contributions of Stockhausen, Schaeffer, Boulez, Xenakis, and Pousseur were not as bold, as individualistic, as eccentric, as their American colleagues. The NGA entry characterizes "experimental music" as a largely American tradition.2 In this regard the NGA follows Michael Nyman's book Experimental Music. Nyman defines this category primarily in contrast to the European avant- garde:

I shall make an attempt to isolate and identify what experimental music is, and what distinguishes it from music of such avant-garde composers as Boulez, Kagel, Xenakis, . . . which is conceived and executed along the well-trodden but sanctified path of post- Renaissance tradition. (Nyman 1974, 2)

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Nyman attempts to exclude the European avant-garde by associating it with the tradition of European concert music. "Experimental music" not only places the new in opposition to the old, but also the new world in opposition to the old world.

The motivations and effects of this opposition can be traced to cultural, technical, and institutional differences that are implicit in the distinction between European and American vanguards. First, the category "experimental music" attempts to construct a tradition of original Amer- ican art music that aspires to the kind of cultural authority that European concert music enjoys. The category asserts a cultural difference against a background of European culture's powerful influence and authority.

The avant-garde is an effective area in which to stake such a claim. Avant-garde movements in the twentieth century have been characterized by both an expressed antagonism toward tradition and an emphasis on originality. "Experimental music" claims that America is in a privi- leged position from which to originate a vanguard music by virtue of its apparent distance from European culture's sphere of influence. Cage was asked by a Dutch musician about the difficulty of writing music in Amer- ica, "for you are so far from the centers of tradition." Cage replied: "It must be very difficult for you in Europe to write music, for you are so close to the centers of tradition" (Cage 1973, 73).

What is silently passed over is the fact that the avant-garde gesture of rejecting tradition is a European one. Most explicit and strident was the Italian Futurists' call to forget cultural history and to destroy cultural institutions. Originality as a criteria of authenticity is borrowed from European vanguard art. This is arguably not the case for Ives and Ruggles, but Varese was influenced by the Futurists. John Cage acknowl- edges the influence of both Futurism (Russolo) and Dada (Satie, Duchamp) on experimental music. And certainly the "experimental" composers that followed Cage were aware of the importance of Europe's artistic avant-garde.

In any case, the issue is not whether these composers' innovations were motivated by a European ideal. The important point is that the category "experimental music" is motivated by a European ideal. The category draws on the "discourse of originality" that characterizes art theory and criticism and has its roots in the European avant-garde (Krauss 1985, 157). The uniquely American "experimentalism" is legitimated as an artistic category according to the terms of European culture; it tries to "up the ante" on European avant-gardism by claiming a more radical originality.

The second difference between experimental music and the European avant-garde is one of technique. Almost all of the European vanguard composers took serial (twelve-tone) technique as their starting point.

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None of the American "experimental" composers adopted serialism as a model.

Also important to the technical developments in Europe was the influence of scientific theory, particularly physics and information theory. Reflecting these technical developments was a prolific theoretical discourse modeled on scientific writing. The journal Die Reihe exemplified the adoption of terminology borrowed from the sciences as well as an emphasis on formalist analysis. However, "experimental music" as an American tradition refers not to scientific practice but more to the mythology of American ingenuity and invention (e.g. Franklin, Bell, Edison). In this context, regarding Cage, Schoenberg remarked: "He is not a composer, but an inventor-of genius" (Yates 1967, 243-44). "Experimental" composers did not write analyses of their work or each others' work, with the exception of Cage whose prose may be considered theoretical but hardly scientific. Journals like Cowell's New Music,3 or Source (1967-72) were devoted to publishing scores or documenting work rather than fostering analysis.

Finally, "experimental music" marks a difference between American and European vanguards in their base of institutional support. Not only does it operate outside of the traditional musical forms and techniques, but also outside of the traditional forms of patronage:

Some writers ... drew a useful distinction between the avant-garde, working within the tradition and within accepted channels of communication (opera houses, orchestral concerts, universities, broadcasting corporations, record companies), and experimental composers, who preferred to work in other ways. (Griffiths 1986, s.v. "Experimental Music")

It is debatable that this difference is entirely one of preference; Amer- ica's cultural life is more exposed to market forces and does not receive the state support typical of European orchestras, opera companies, and radio stations. Those institutions in the U.S. did not support an avant- garde for fear of losing their revenues along with their audience. Univer- sities became a haven for composers in the U.S., but the composers considered "experimental" were exactly those not included in academic music departments. Patronage is an important enough issue to merit a subheading in the NGA entry. Experimental music received much of its support from private donations and from the dance and visual arts com- munity. It developed its own venues as well as taking advantage of muse- ums and gallery spaces.

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Central to "experimental music" as an historical category is its claim to outsider status. The struggling (Bohemian) artist, a traditionally roman- tic European figure, is recast in the mold of American rugged individual- ism. Ives, the entrepreneur, pays for the performance of his work from his business earnings. Cage peddles his wares, first in the L.A. suburbs, and then to rich patrons like Peggy Guggenheim.

The American universities reproduced the European alignment of cultural tradition, serial/scientific paradigms, and institutional support. First, the academy was strongly grounded in European tradition. This was especially true after the influx of European composers (Schoenberg, Krenek, Milhaud, Hindemith) and musicologists (Willi Apel, Curt Sachs, Leo Schrade, Paul Henry Lang) during World War II. Second, composition in the universities was aligned with both serial technique (Sessions, Babbitt, Wuorinen) and with a theoretical discourse modeled on the sciences. Perspectives of New Music, largely representing the academic vanguard, continued the formalist analytic initiated by Die Reihe and, at one time, even criticized that journal for not being rigorous in its use of scientific terminology and theory (Kerman 1985, 102). Finally, new music in the United States gained most of its institutional support and cultural legitimacy within the universities.

In many respects, the category "experimental music" marks a more immediate struggle against the authority of the academy than it does against the authority of European music. Curiously, the period when this category began to be deployed coincides with the introduction of "experimental" composers into the universities.4 The new category was used as a way to legitimate these composers and, thus, to bring them into the academic fold. After all, the academy itself promulgated the category; musicology sanctioned "experimental music" as an American tradition.

The American avant-garde outside of the academy presented a greater challenge to the musical status quo than it would inside. It developed new audiences, new venues, new techniques, and new sensibilities. After nominal acceptance into the universities and the established forums, critics could begin to speak of the domestication or even the death of the avant-garde in spite of continued activity both inside and outside of the academy.

EXPERIMENT AS TECHNIQUE

For scientific practice, "experiment" does not refer to a historical or stylistic category. Experiment is a technique by which evidence is gathered in support of a theory. It is a method that tests hypotheses. The

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hypothesis is a prediction based on theory; the theory, a set of formal generalizations regarding a specified range of phenomena. By testing the prediction, the experiment aims to confirm the theory.

Benjamin Boretz distinguishes the composer from the scientist, claiming that science strives to make each observed event part of a data set that supports a general conception whereas composition works to distinguish events and to multiply their distinctions in contradiction to any general conception. "[T]o learn to hear a unique thing as a categorical thing is a net loss for musical experience" (Boretz 1977, 11). The composer desires that the musical phenomenon be so experientially rich as to differentiate itself and resist generalizations.

Scientific theory is manifested in the operating principles of its scientific apparatus, in the methods used, and in the expectations scientists exercise in the interpretation of data. Musical theory likewise manifests itself in equipment, methods, and in expectations. Scientific experiment seeks to confirm its underlying theory but compositional experiment seeks to differentiate events, to go beyond the generalizations inherent in theory. The composed experiment is designed to transcend its verifica- tion of the methods used, to exceed its gestural, semiotic, or formal functioning. It preserves itself as phenomenal, an experience pregnant with interpretive and affective possibility. The question remains as to whether musical methods can be "experimental," especially given that its purposes are at odds with those of scientific methods.

EXPERIMENT AS TECHNOLOGY

Hiller and Isaacson adopt the scientific meaning of the experiment in reference to the computer-music research described in their book, Exper- imental Music (1959). Hiller lists a chronology of experiments related to composing the Illiac Suite for String Quartet:.

1. To build up an elementary technique of polyphonic writing, a simplified version of first-species counterpoint was used.

2. To realize cantus firmus settings, academically correct, in strict first species counterpoint.

3. "[T]o produce novel musical structures in a more contemporary style and to code musical elements such as rhythm and dynamics."

4. "[T]o produce radically different species of music based upon fundamental new techniques of musical analysis." (Hiller and Isaacson 1959, 4)

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The first two experiments make a prediction regarding the applicability of computer technique to problems of established musical technique. Hiller and Isaacson performed tests in which computer programs were called upon to solve problems in modal counterpoint. The desired outcome of these tests would not be novelty or originality but the predicted adher- ence to well-defined rules.

The third and fourth experiments seem to contradict the goals of scientific experiment. The third experiment proposes to "produce novel musical structures." This does not appear to be a simple case of theory testing and confirmation. What is meant by "in a contemporary style"? If the output is "in a style," does that indicate that it must conform to some recognizable stylistic norms? If the output was in an "old style," that would clearly fail the test by not being contemporary, but it is unclear what other criteria would constitute failure or success. The fourth experiment also raises questions as to whether this is an experiment in the scientific sense. It is conceivable that the experiment is set up to disprove an existing theory, but it is never stated what the results of this experiment are to be measured against. Clearly, some species of novelty is sought and a simple test of success or failure is unlikely.

Regardless of issues of testing or novelty, Hiller and Isaacson treat the output of the four "experiments" as data representative of the techniques used, even after it has been incorporated into a piece of music:

Computer output produced as a result of carrying out these four experiments was utilized to produce a four-movement piece of music we have entitled the Illiac Suite for String Quartet.... The musical materials in these four movements were taken from a much larger body of material by unbiased sampling procedures, so that a representative rather than a selectively chosen musically superior group of results would be included in the Illiac Suite. Thus, it is important to realize when examining this score that our primary aim was not the presentation of an aesthetic unity-a work of art. This music was meant to be a research record-a laboratory notebook. (Hiller and Isaacson 1959, 5)

This piece of music is considered primarily a representative sample of an experimental data set. The description above makes claims to the objec- tivity of the material selected; "unbiased sampling procedures" were used to make the selection in order to prevent a "subjective" representation of the materials and thus a falsification of the data. The composer claims to be doing scientific research.

The composer suggests that the Illiac Suite is not really a work of art at all. But as a laboratory notebook the piece has limited research utility.

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Without the complete data set or a statistical analysis we really have no idea how representative the Illiac Suite is of the techniques used or how exactly and consistently those techniques produced the expected results. At best it is a demonstration of examples that would accompany a scientific paper containing the data analysis. Without the analysis there is no sound scientific reason for examining only a small subset of the data taken. If the Illiac Suite is science, then it is not good science.

It would seem that the Illiac Suite is neither musical art nor science. What, then, does it accomplish? First, it serves as a demonstration of cer- tain new musical techniques, but more importantly, it serves as an advo- cate for those techniques. The claims to scientific association are appeals to the authority of science to legitimate this advocacy.

The promotion of technique is clearly stated in Hiller's description of his piece Computer Cantata and the computer program, MUSICOMP, used to produce it:

Since our primary purpose was to demonstrate the flexibility and generality of MUSICOMP, the Computer Cantata presents a rather wide variety of compositional procedures. . . . [T]he interested composer should find these studies of significance as a concrete demonstration of the broadening of the research area of experimental composition techniques made feasible by computers and by a program such as MUSICOMP. (Hiller and Baker 1964, 62)

In this instance, the composer's stated purpose is the promotion of a technique. The piece "presents a wide variety of procedures" in order to inventory the flexibility of a computer program; compositional decisions are made with the objective of demonstrating the power of a technique. Hiller tells us that composers should find this piece significant. Why? because it displays what is feasible, what can be done by others. The piece functions as an advertisement for the procedures that produced it.

Likewise, technique becomes a way of promoting pieces. If the primary purpose of the composition is to demonstrate a technique, as a consequence, the primary purpose of listening becomes to hear examples of techniques. Evidence of this is commonly found in program notes that not only describe the procedures employed but also inventory the equipment used. The audience is persuaded that the technique is, in itself, reason to listen.

Experimental composition in this sense is not simply a technique, as it is in scientific practice, but a technology. By this I mean that it is not merely a tool for some purposeful action but an economy of techniques that propagates a set of tools, practices, and relations. Consider the market dynamics of high-tech industry. New techniques are developed as

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commodities which are desirable in so far as they exhibit the latest technical achievement. Technology not only develops and generates techniques, but it also generates demand for more techniques. Technology functions as an advertisement for the technology that produced it.

By invoking science in order to legitimate musical innovations, those innovations are transposed into the social economy of technology. They are valued more as technical achievements than as contributions to music. What may potentially be radical music is instead merely another step in the development of the latest synthesizer or software.5 Vanguard music is displaced from its role as part of a public cultural life and becomes a technical specialty.

Whether or not Hiller's experiments were motivated by commercial potential is not important. What is significant are the social relations that music enters into when it is talked about as technological research. The language of technology demands that we value musical works according to the economy of technology. Without discussing the advantages or dis- advantages, one can see that music is relocated in the field of social relations. The word "experimental" is a marker for that relocation.

EXPERIMENT AS FUNCTION

John Cage states that "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is unforeseen" (Cage 1973, 39). Here, "experiment" is neither category nor technique; it indicates a function, one with an unpredictable output. Metzger (and Cage also) points out that musical experiments usually precede the final composition. Materials and methods are tried out and tested before they are incorporated into a composition in order to insure that the finished work will not be "experimental."6 Cage's work was an exception to this. He was interested in finished works that performed an unpredictable action.

Cage's primary model of "experimental music" is the composition indeterminate with respect to its performance: open form works like Christian Wolffs Duo for Pianists II (1958); graphic scores like Earle Brown's December 1952; score-construction kits like Cage's Variations II (1961). Each of these pieces has the potential to be realized in substan- tially different ways and so each performance is an experiment in the sense that the outcome is not predictable.

For Cage, this unpredictable function, experiment, became central to his musical thinking. It dissolved the opposition between intended and unintended sounds implicit in traditional music. An unforeseen sound event cannot be one that was intended by the composer, yet the composer can intentionally provide the opportunity for such events. Music

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was no longer discursive, or expressive, but a constellation of sounds: "New music: new listening. Not an attempt to understand something that is being said, for, if something were being said, the sounds would be given the shapes of words. Just an attention to the activity of sounds" (Cage 1973, 10). Cage saw experiment as a strategy for leaving out the composer's intention, for removing expression from music.

Cage connected the emergence of "experimental music" to the possibilities opened up by electronic recording and sound-synthesis techniques. Traditional conceptions of musical sound treat parameters such as pitch, rhythm, amplitude, et cetera, as divided into discrete units. Coun- terpoint, harmony, and orchestration are all concerned with structuring significant distinctions within this grid of discrete units, whereas electronic techniques treat these parameters as continuous.

They resemble walking-in the case of pitches, on steppingstones twelve in number. This cautious stepping is not characteristic of the possibilities of magnetic tape, which is revealing to us that musical action or existence can occur at any point or along any line or curve or what have you in total sound-space; that we are, in fact, techni- cally equipped to transform our contemporary awareness of nature's manner of operation into art. (Cage 1973, 9)

Cage suggests that technical means draw us closer to sound's real nature. Natural sound is not divided into scales, beats, instruments, and so on. It does not conform to the necessities of expressive means. Musical experiment, by divesting itself of the requirements of expression, is free to include the sound environment and the unrestricted (and unpredictable) behaviors of natural sound.

Second, technical means explode the sound possibilities for music; music can now take place in a total sound-space. All sounds are available. The magnetic tape makes no distinctions between intended and unintended sound, between musical sound and noise. Any succession or com- bination of sounds is possible: "Any sound at any point in this total sound-space can move to become a sound at any other point" (Cage 1973, 9).

As a consequence, all basis for the meaningful significance of any musical event is removed. There can be no context of meaningful possibilities when all events are equally possible, equally unpredictable. Musical means are divorced from all conventions of expression. In the context of infinite technical possibilities, all sound events are undifferentiated and thus meaningless.

Third, Cage uses the technical possibilities to collapse the opposition of production and reception, of composer and auditor. He doesn't say

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that technical means transform the composer's awareness of what can be made, or of what can be done. Technical means "transform our . . . awareness into . . . art." We are all listeners and thus we are all artists. Technique is not a means to control sound but rather to give up control. A way of opening up listening and filtering out the exercise of intention, "Those involved with the composition of experimental music find ways and means to remove themselves from the activities of the sounds they make" (Cage 1973, 10).

A decisive moment in the development of Cage's thinking involves an encounter with technology. Cage often told the story of how in 1951 he entered an anechoic chamber-an acoustically isolated room designed to minimize sound reflection-and how he heard the sounds of his nervous system and circulatory system (Cage 1973, 13). He entered in search of silence only to discover that we are always in the presence of sound. He realized that silence consists of all those sounds that we do not intend to hear, the sounds that we ignore. The concept of silence is an abstraction, not a matter of the absence of sound but rather of the absence of attention. Sounds that occur apart from purposeful action (including purposeful hearing) are not there, they are silent, but only with reference to purposeful intention.

The concert hall, like the anechoic chamber, is a space engineered in order to isolate sounds for intentionality. All sound activity peripheral to the music on stage is absorbed, either physically (by the hall acoustics) or socially (by directing and conditioning audience response). In the concert hall one is surrounded by silence so that one can focus on the music. In the anechoic chamber one is surrounded by silence so that one can focus on an acoustics experiment or test. Both are technologies of listening. In both, silence is the margin of perceptual focus (Ihde 1976, 111- 13).

Cage's experience revealed that the silence in both situations was a function of intention and that intention functions to filter out perceptions not relevant to intention's purposes. The anechoic chamber provided the opportunity for an experiment, an unpredictable situation. The chamber is designed to serve as a prosthetic to intention, to filter out unwanted perception, to focus attention on a specified object. But Cage enters the chamber anticipating the unexpected, without an object or an objective-an experiment. Cage's discovery results when he uses the experimental apparatus to filter out purposeful intention so that perception is unrestricted. The chamber serves Cage not so much as an acoustically controlled situation but as an acoustically unpredictable situation. Exper- iment functions to filter out intention so that perception is not restricted to intention's object.

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The fact that this use runs counter to the intentions for which the anechoic chamber was designed highlights the dialectic that is at the heart of Cage's experiment. The chamber is like a listening machine, an acoustic magnifying glass. But the chamber presents itself as a silence machine; Cage enters wondering what silence will sound like. With this misunderstanding Cage turns the machine back on itself; he listens to himself listening through a technology of listening. Cage listens to the machine, not merely with the machine, he looks at the magnifying glass rather than through it. He notices that the listening machine makes sounds (for Cage is a cyborg, the chamber is an extension of his ear (or is his ear an extension of the chamber?)); the ear hears itself.

Cage repeats the experiment in the concert hall. The concert hall purports to be a silent room, but Cage understands that it is really a listening machine, and he performs the same inversion that he experi- enced in the anechoic chamber. In 4'33" the concert hall listens to itself, to its ventilation, to its breathing and coughing, to its restlessness and its reverberation (for the audience member is a cyborg, the hall an extension of the ear (or is the ear an extension of the hall?)); the ear hears itself.

EXPERIMENT AS HEURISTIC-CONCLUSION

Experiment as heuristic is the performance of this inversion, the mechanism turning back on itself, a moment that sounds forth the contradictions within the otherwise silent functioning of a technique. Techniques are designed to effect an intended and anticipated end, to function smoothly, to operate invisibly, silently. Only when technique malfunc- tions do we attend to it (the squeaky wheel . . .). In the experimental moment we not only attend to sound, but also to the theories, oppositions, and categories implicit in the mechanism of a practice.

Cage defines experiment in terms of function. But Cage's definition precludes functionality in the sense of technical means. Experiment is dysfunctional insofar as its unpredictability makes it unfit for purposeful use; it cannot be a goal-oriented action. And yet the apparatus, the instruments, the techniques that comprise the experiment carry with them a history of purposeful use, otherwise they would not be techniques. The difference between function and malfunction is one of intention and consequently also one of perception. This difference is the locus of experiment's dialectic, "the purposeful purposelessness or a pur- poseless play" (Cage 1973, 12).

Scientific experiments are techniques executed with an intended purpose, to confirm the predictions made by theory. Scientific practice is not

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looking for novelty but rather evidence in support of its current paradigm (Kuhn 1962, 52). Cage's experiment seems to be headed in the opposite direction, in search of the unpredictable, but there is an interesting point of intersection.

When scientific experiment yields unexpected results, and it repeatedly does, theory is called into question. The unexpected must be explained by new theory; thus, new theories are invented or discovered: "Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly" (Kuhn 1962, 52). Cage's definition of experimental action, "one the outcome of which is not fore- seen" (Cage 1973, 39), corresponds to experimental anomaly in science. The unforeseen musical event exceeds our ability to "make sense" of it; it ruptures our interpretive framework. For both science and music, the moment of discovery is structured in the same way; the experimental event cannot be accommodated by the framework of meaning-giving relationships that preceded its appearance.

Within the economy of technology, experiment marks the site where knowledge, practices, and techniques are extended and advanced. Research and development are at the center of technological expansion. Consequently, this is also where there are sufficient flexibilities in the technological network to allow new relations to come into being. The social order must restructure itself in response to changes in the forces of production. The music criticism that Metzger refers to speaks on behalf of a social order destabilized by new techniques. So does the musicology that would turn various heuristic anomalies, compositional experiments, into examples of a genre. But new relations are thus reintegrated into the overall network; their critical difference is appropriated by the dominant order. The link between experimental composition and technology defines a domain wherein critical relations are enabled and also where they are effaced; where new compositional practices are empowered but also where their effects are neutralized and dispersed.

The heuristic moment is one of breakdown-the inadequacy of theory, the malfunction of technique, the rupture of interpretive frameworks, the dissolution of categories. The question is no longer "what is experimental music," but rather "when is music an experiment"; when is music heuristic? To use "experiment" in this way is to include in the discussion at least some of the conditions that structure the context in which experiment takes place. Hopefully, language about music can then be as heuristic as the musical innovations it attempts to describe.

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NOTES

1. Michael Nyman's book, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (1974), is perhaps the first extended attempt to argue for "experimental music" as an historical category. His definition differs from the NGA entry and is more nuanced, but the nature of the attempt is the same.

2. "Experimental music" does not appear as an entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, only in the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. The NGA characterization of "experimental music" as Amer- ican is corroborated in other reference works: "experimental work has been much more a feature of American and English music than of mainland European" (Griffiths 1986, s.v. "Experimental Music"); "used to distinguish anti-traditional composers, such as Cage, from the established avant-garde of Boulez and Stockhausen" (Arnold 1983, s.v. "Experimental Music"); "Among American pioneers of experimental practice are Ives, Ruggles, Varese, and Cage" (More- head with MacNeil 1991, s.v. "Experimental Music").

3. Cowell and Strang 1927-1955, sporadic publication after 1955. 4. Except for Cage's short residency at Wesleyan (1960-61), most

"experimental" composers began their first academic appointments in the late sixties: Cage's next appointment was University of Cincin- nati (1967); Gordon Mumma, Brandeis (1966-67); Earle Brown, Peabody Conservatory (1968); Robert Ashley, Mills (1969); Lou Harrison, San Jose University (1967); Morton Feldman, SUNY- Buffalo (1972); Christian Wolff, Dartmouth (1970) (Wolff taught classics at Harvard before 1970). The exception is Alvin Lucier, Brandeis (1963).

5. Composers have had professional relationships with Bell Labs, Phillips, RCA, Sylvania, and Yamaha. After the commercial success of FM synthesis, composers developing new synthesis techniques remain cognizant of the needs of a multi-million dollar industry. Sound synthesis research, like the present interest in acoustic model- ing, functions as research and development for the music synthesizer/software industry and takes place under the auspices of university ("experimental") music studios.

6. Stockhausen (1960) clearly separates experiments from the final composition: "Experiments were made in the Studio for Electronic

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Music at the West German Radio Station in Cologne from February 1958 until Autumn 1959. The score and its realization, commis- sioned by the West German Radio, took from September 1959 until May 1960 to be completed."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold, Denis, ed. 1983. The New Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Boretz, Benjamin. 1977. "Musical Cosmology." Perspectives of New Music 15, no. 2 (Spring-Summer): 122-32.

Cage, John. 1973. Silence. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Cowell, Henry, and Gerald Strang, eds. 1927-1955. New Music. Griffiths, Paul. 1986. The Thames and Hudson Encyclopedia of 20th Cen-

tury Music. London: Thames and Hudson. Hiller, Lejaren, and L. M. Isaacson. 1959. Experimental Music: Composi-

tion with an Electronic Computer. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Hiller, Lejaren A., and Robert A. Baker. 1964. "Computer Cantata: a study in Compositional Method." Perspectives of New Music 3, no.l (Fall-Winter): 62-90.

Hitchcock, H. Wiley, and Stanley Sadie, eds. 1986. New Grove Dictio- nary of American Music. London: MacMillan Press Limited.

Ihde, Don. 1976. Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of Sound. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Kerman, Joseph. 1985. Contemplating Music. Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press.

Krauss, Rosalind E. 1985. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Metzger, Heinz-Klaus. 1959. "Abortive Concepts in the Theory and Criticism of Music." Die Reihe 5 (English edition, trans. Leo Black, Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Company, 1961): 21-29.

Morehead, Phil D., with Anne MacNeil. 1991. New American Dictio- nary of Music. New York: Dutton.

Nyman, Michael. 1974. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. New York: Schirmer Books.

Rosenberg, Harold. 1959. The Tradition of the New. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company.

Source Magazine-Music of the Avant-Garde, nos. 1-12. 1967-72. Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1960. "Kontakte, program note for the ISCM

Festival, Cologne. Reprinted as liner note for LP, trans. anon., Deut- sche Gramophone. 138 811 SLPM, 1964.

Yates, Peter. 1967. Twentieth-Century Music. New York: Pantheon Books.

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Issue Table of ContentsPerspectives of New Music, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Winter, 1997), pp. 1-270Front Matter [pp. 1 - 4]For Richard Swift at 70Introduction [pp. 5 - 6]For Richard Swift [pp. 7 - 11]Not Only Rows in Richard Swift's "Roses Only" [pp. 13 - 47]Monogram (Omaggio al Rovescio) [pp. 49 - 52]Banqueting with the Emperor: Desiderata--in Honor of Richard Swift [pp. 53 - 60]On Association, Realization, and Form in Richard Swift's "Things of August" [pp. 61 - 114]History and Archetypes [pp. 115 - 127]

The Horrors of Identification: Reich's "Different Trains" [pp. 129 - 152]Modal Formations and Transformations in the First Movement of Chou Wen-Chung's "Metaphors" [pp. 153 - 185]From Experimental Music to Musical Experiment [pp. 187 - 204]Interpreting Music Durationally: A Set-Theory Approach to Rhythm [pp. 205 - 230]Robert Moevs's "Heptchronon" for Solo Cello [pp. 231 - 261]Editorial Notes [pp. 263 - 265]Correspondence [p. 266]Back Matter [pp. 267 - 270]

mauceri-1997-from experimental music to musical experiment

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