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| Page 16 of the score to Hearing Metal 3 |
In a
previous post, I wrote that the driving force behind the fields have ears series was extensive listening (that is, listening
outwards along expanding lines, the way I think we do in a “field”). In the Hearing Metal series the listening is intensive: by this I mean hearing “into” physical material, where by means of sound it proceeds to unfold into facets.
The
series began with Greg Stuart’s suggestion that I consider writing a piece for the
60-inch tam-tam required for a performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie I. (Stuart was at that time involved in preparing that piece for a
performance in San Diego.) Greg had discovered that the range of sounds
produced by this huge instrument was vastly multiplied by “close-recording”
with the microphone. (Mikrophonie for
all its brilliance just amplifies the sounds. Greg found that with the
microphone one could hear more detailed and complex sounds than one
could with the ear alone, i.e., that one could make sounds in a completely different manner when the microphone was being used.) He sent me a few brief recordings of the instrument
and they were fascinating enough to suggest that the physical/sonic properties
were worth exploring in detail.
As
can sometimes happen to me when struck by an unfathomable sound, this
most basic question suddenly arose: “What is a sound?” There’s never one answer; maybe it’s not even
important to answer. But each of the four compositions of the Hearing Metal series was written under
the influence of this question. Each is an attempt to enter into the space of
one or more instruments, and then to expand
that space, to hear an inner geography of the range of sounds chosen. Any sound,
even the simplest, is already (ontologically) multiple. But the multiplicity
requires a succession of events to be heard: by extending, repeating, adding
and subtracting, one begins to experience the sound more like a verb than like
a noun. Sound is revealed through a concatenation of actions that follow a
particular logic (in this case, that
logic is the composition).
My
sense was that each instrument or group also conjured a range of affects unique
to it; as if the physical material itself could, with a little compositional mediation,
be transmuted into an expression of something like the “feeling of the material.”
(This is why reference is made with each work to the sculpture of Constantin
Brâncuși.)
The
four pieces in the series, all for metal percussion with sine tones (and occasionally
other sounds and instruments) generally move upwards through the registers of
metal percussion as the instruments themselves get smaller. The subtitles are
from works by Brâncuși. All the recordings were made by Greg Stuart and myself.
Hearing Metal 1, 2009 (Edition Wandelweiser 0902,
63’42”). A collection of three pieces for the 60-inch tam-tam plus sine tones
(“Sleeping Muse”, “The Endless Column”, “Sculpture for the Blind”).
The
sound of the tam-tam when bowed or lightly struck is a composite chord with
many (maybe hundreds of) elements. But it behaves unpredictably: one has very
little control over which elements of the “chord” will appear and in which
arrangement. These pieces create (in three different ways) opportunities to
hear the elements of this source chord again and again. Similar to the method of
my Transparent City pieces, the sine
tones are used to locate facets of the geography of the sound that might
otherwise remain hidden or unheard.
Hearing Metal 2 (La table du
silence),
2010/2011 (Gravity Wave 005, 62’00”). Low to mid-range percussion, with a few
higher instruments (almglocken, bell plates, brake drums, chimes, metal objects
with contact microphones, cymbals, glockenspiel, gongs, steel drums, tam-tams,
vibraphone); radio, electric and bass guitar, sine tones, samples and field
recording.
A
vastly expanded palette was used to represent what I thought of as a “silence.”
As a memorial, Brâncuși’s sculpture turns an absence into a substance. This
parallels my own view that silence is dense–because it is likely our best way
in music to experience contingency.
Contingency is (among other things) the hidden succession of things that
creates any present. I think we have to understand this succession as basically
unreadable: infinitely layered, chaotic. But we can sense it. I used 80 simultaneous tracks of recordings of the
instruments that Greg had played to create this silence. The guide
for how to deal with the 40 minutes of sound (i.e., the central part of the
piece) is given below.
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| A chart from the score to Hearing Metal 2 |
Groupings
of the sounds were created according to the parameters of “pitch”, “noise”,
“mixtures” and “semi-pitched” and then crossfaded up and down (using a maypole-like
structure to indicate the relative balance of the tracks). In practice the
balancing was much more nuanced (with individual tracks moving up and down within each category), but I think one
can still hear the succession.
I
didn’t think one could begin this piece with this monolithic music, and so took
my cue from the fact that La table du
silence is situated outdoors: an invitation to see this silence as somehow
framed by field recording. In the long first part of the piece, the recordings
move essentially from the ocean to the interior, following the path of a river,
perhaps hearing (or imagining) incidental sounds of radio and music on the way.
The recordings themselves come from various places (in Big Sur, Austria and
Germany) and include samples of radio test tones and stations (fading in and
out the way they do when one walks through the hills) and transformed samples
of my son John playing organ (perhaps one passes the ruins of a cathedral?). There’s
a relatively short excerpt at the end (after the central section) of a stream
in Germany, early in the morning as the birds start to sing. The feeling is (to
me) meant to suggest that one comes upon this silence in the midst of a
solitary walk.
Hearing Metal 3 (Prometheus,
1911),
2010/2011 (Gravity Wave 006, 45’20”). Sixteen suspended cymbals (bowed and with
“gravity excitation”) and sine tones.
The
ensemble for this piece was suggested by Greg Stuart, and I immediately went
for it. The image of 16 suspended cymbals was really striking (even before one
heard anything).
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| 16 suspended cymbals (with the composer) |
After
writing fields have ears (4) I wanted
to work again with the idea of change.
In this case the basic change that takes place over the 45 minutes is from the
vibration of a solid (i.e., the cymbal bowed) to a kind of physical
“evaporation” as the mode of excitation changes to gravity (beans, rice and
then finally, millet falling on the cymbals). Like ricefall and some of the pieces from the fields have ears series, the ground is laid out as a grid prepared
with other surfaces (including tile, metal, wood, paper, ceramic, dry leaves
and even four drums in the center), which can be heard as the various grains
fall from the cymbals. The ground comes to the fore in the center of the piece
(when “the beans begin to fall”) and gradually disappears as the grain changes
(in several stages and combinations) to the very light millet. The sine tones
accompany, and at times instigate the change.
Hearing Metal 2 and Hearing Metal 3 were planned to work both separately and together.
The structural movement from heavy to light and the placement of the silences
are stronger when the two pieces are heard together. The moment when gravity
starts in Hearing Metal 3 is a larger-scale
transformation when heard in the 107 minute context of the two works together.
(If you have the discs and the patience, give it a try!)
Hearing Metal 4
(Birds in Space), 2010/2011
(unreleased, 25’00”). Glockenspiel, electric guitar, sine tones and samples (of
glockenspiel, energy chimes and crotales).
As a
kind of coda to the large-scale dimensions of the first three members of the
series, I wrote Hearing Metal 4 as a
piece that Greg and I could play live. Greg had suggested that I consider Brâncuși’s
Bird in Space as a reference and this
fit perfectly in the trajectory of the previous two parts of the series
(essentially completing the transformation from ground to air).
This piece
moves up the notes of a high A major scale, using each tone of the scale as the
starting point for an expanding and contracting shape, made with layered
glockenspiel, crotales and sine tones, and etched into the surrounding silence.
Hearing Metal 4 (excerpt)
My
deepest thanks to Greg Stuart. It probably goes without saying at this point
that none of these works would have been remotely possible without his artistry
and the ridiculous amount of work he puts into them.
We
(Greg and I) would like to acknowledge the support of Antoine Beuger, Jon
Abbey, and Yuko Zama in the release of the recordings. (It probably also goes
without saying that the discs of the first three are available from erstdist.)
