Perspectives of New Music

Volume 44, Number 2 (Summer 2006)

CONTENTS

6 “Where Have We Met Before?” For a 90th Bir thdayCelebration of Milton Babbitt BENJAMIN BORETZ

14 “What is about, is also of, also is”: Words, MusicalOrganization, and Boretz’s

Language ,as a music ,

“Thesis” DORA A. HANNINEN

66 A Living Oxymoron: Norman O. Brown’s Criticism of John Cage CHRISTOPHER SHULTIS

88 From a Categorical Point of View: K-nets as Limit Denotators

GUERINO MAZZOLA AND MORENO ANDREATTA

114 General Equal-Tempered Harmony (Introduction andPar t I) IAN QUINN

160 Why We Refuse to Listen MICHAEL KOWALSKI

220 A Search for Emptiness: An Interview with Jonathan Harvey MATTHEW JENKINS

232 Composed Silence: Microsound and the Quiet Shock of Listening THOMAS PHILLIPS

250 Toshi Ichiyanagi, Japanese Composer and “Fluxus”LUCIANA GALLIANO

262 Editorial Notes264 Instructions for Contributors265 Personae267 Acknowledgments

Graphics

5, 13 ROBERT YODER65, 159 VICTORIA HAVEN219, 249 ROBERT SPERRY

© Perspectives of New Music

A Search for Emptiness:An Interview with Jonathan Harvey

This interview took place throughout the afternoon of July 24, 2005 at JonathanHarvey’s house in Lewes, United Kingdom.

Matthew Jenkins: When did you first encounter Buddhism? Did it have a largeinitial impact?

Jonathan Harvey: I came to Christian mysticism strongly in about 1960. Perhaps1959. When I was studying that there were many references to Buddhism andoriental philosophy. I began to read about Buddhism at that time. However, Ibecame more interested in Indian meditation techniques, which were concrete andpractical. Although there were still interests in Buddhist literature, philosophy, andart, there was something a little too abstract, austere, or too distant from God aboutZen. It was only later that I began to get close to Buddhism. That was about 10 or12 years ago. I can point to a work like Forms of Emptiness. It is a choral workfrom 1986 based on the Heart Sutra quoted in Sanskrit. It is entirely a Buddhistwork. I used a lot of Christian texts before that.

It has been a steady growth, but I really started practicing about 10 years ago.Then I didn’t mind that there wasn’t any emphasis on God anymore. I always feltbefore that I had to have a figure or figures that were supernatural in my pantheon.That helped me to relate, because I am a kind of Bhakti person, someone whothrives on the idea of devotion. That involves a human metaphor – a metaphor ofhuman love. Without a figure to interact with I couldn’t grasp the characteristic ofwarmth in this metaphysical strand. I find in Tibetan Buddhism that all of thedeities come back in a very baroque, colorful and strange way. However, they’rein a sense all empty just like every thing else is. The Tibetans have a differentrelationship to these other beings.

MJ: How has your relationship with Buddhism changed your relationship withChristianity and mysticism?

JH: In one very important respect it has made me look more deeply intoChristianity and it’s Indian roots. A fair amount is being written these days, butwhen I was young I don’t think it was written about at all. For instance, thediscovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hamardi manuscripts has revealedall of these suppressed gospels and writings: the gospel of Thomas and the secretletter of John, for example. These texts show a very obvious relationship withquasi-Buddhist teachers. Many people now suggest that Jesus had contact in those

forgotten years of his life with those kinds of teachers. Whether he actuallytraveled south to India or they traveled to his area is uncertain, but it seemsabsolutely clear that there is an entrance there.

I find myself going more towards the Jesus within you rather than the Jesus outthere of St. John’s gospel. It is different from the other three gospels. It was athing of John’s to make Jesus into a divinity. I realize that is a rather one-sidedway of looking at Christianity and what the church teaches now. There is anotherway to look at it. I don’t know who’s right, but I know which I prefer. I prefer theGnostic version of Jesus. His relationship with Buddhism is rather beautiful, close,and full of a kind of mystical light. That is what appeals to me very much.

MJ: Do you practice meditation?

JH: Yes.

MJ: How long have you done so?

JH: About 10 years. I practiced Hindu, or Vedic, meditation for about 20 years.That is when I started daily practice. I just changed from Vedic to Buddhist, but atleast I got into the habit of meditating. I think it is important. It doesn’t do to justread or think about it. Does it?

MJ: It is not the same.

JH: It is not a philosophy to be intellectualized about, but one to be lived.

MJ: Which schools of thought speak to you more closely? Why?

JH: Tibetan. The New Kadampa traditioni is the one that I follow, but all Tibetantraditions speak to me closely. They’re similar actually. It just happens that themonk I have teachings from is from the New Kadampa tradition. It is close to theDalai Lama’s, but not exactly the same. I have had a lot of contact with ZenBuddhists. I like the rather more colorful and…I was going to say psychologicalschools, but Zen is also psychological. The Tibetans are skillful. They know whathuman minds are like and how much they love things to grasp onto. The Zenmasters are a little bit severe. They make great demands, which I couldn’t alwaysfeel comfortable with. Maybe my mind is too weak!

MJ: Have you ever lived in a monastery?

JH: I have only lived in Christian monasteries. In some ways they are quite closeto Buddhist monasteries. I think the monks themselves would admit that and

would even like me saying it. They often take great interest in Buddhist thoughtand find many things in common. In February I went to some Buddhistmonasteries in North India in the foothills of the Himalayas and lived just oppositea monastery in a guesthouse. I was there every day. I didn’t really call it ‘living ina monastery,’ but I talked to a lot of the lamas there. Some of them weremarvelous people. They were very devoted and would go into solitude and retreatsfor three months and often longer. I just received a letter from a friend whorecently came out of a three-month retreat. He is planning another for six or ninemonths. They speak to no one. They hardly survive, because they eat so little.Their research into consciousness and the spiritual is incredible. I admire thatenormously. I love the people. They are so charming.

MJ: What area was the monastery in?

JH: Rajpur. It is north of New Delhi near the mountains close to the Tibetanborder.

MJ: In Uttar Pradesh?

JH: Yes. That’s right.

MJ: When did it occur to you that the notion of emptiness was an appropriate lensto view music through? How so?

JH: I think it was after I started taking fairly regular lessons and classes with theTibetan group about 10 years ago. It began to dawn on me slowly that this is whatmusic is all about. In fact, I would almost say all art, but particularly music. As Iexplain in the essayii, it is remarkable once you see that. To me it is as clear asdaylight - what we love in music is what we call emptiness. It is a kind of realitythat is being shown us in as clear as possible way in this serious art of music. Notin bad music, but in music that we call good. We call it good, because it is empty.That is really my thesis. If it is banal or chaotic then it doesn’t have emptiness. If itis somewhere in between there and it has something ambiguous, subtle, teasing,mysterious, or all the other magical things we want in music then it is because it isempty.

MJ: Is it subjective?

JH: It depends on each person’s education and ability to receive the patterns. Oneperson could receive Schoenberg’s patterns and to another person it is just chaos.There are emotional are filters too. I think sometimes we can receive aTchaikovsky piece and another time we can only receive a Stravinsky piece. It is

different from person to person. You could call it subjective. Every mind isdifferent from every other.

MJ: Do you think that it was music or Buddhism that fueled this realization?

JH: It was Buddhism. If I hadn’t studied Buddhism, I would have never realized it.I would have never come to it clearly. Emptiness is quite difficult. I go to theseclasses and see the puzzled faces on people who have even been practicing for ayear or two. Even quite intelligent people find it hard to grasp emptiness. It is notan obvious thing. It goes against everything that we have been led to believe in ourculture. I don’t think it is the same in Eastern cultures. Emptiness is natural fromthe age of three onwards. It is in their way of thinking, but for the West it is not inour way of thinking. It is counterintuitive and it is possible that I would havenever grasped emptiness without my Buddhist teachers.

MJ: Did you have any experiences before this realization that you viewed musicthrough the lens of emptiness?

JH: Yes, in my love of ambiguity and disguise. For instance, I have been doingelectronic music since Princeton in 1969. Since those days the shifting quality ofsound has always fascinated me. Once you get a computer on it you can changeanything into anything. It is just like emptiness. Nothing really exists, except forthe labels you stick on. That became important for me in listening to my and otherpeople’s music. Whether by Beethoven, Machaut, or Boulez, the music dependson that quality of flux. Things change into each other and set up seemingly strongideas and dissolve them. It has certainly been with me for a long time.

MJ: Is the notion of emptiness suitable for all music?

JH: I think so. I think all good music, or music that has been liked, is suitable.That is an important qualification. I am trying to think of any music that I don’tlike that I would not call empty or not think to have an element of emptiness to it.Then we get into areas like chant or chanting on one note. They do not haveemptiness. I don’t know. Often chanting on one note depends on many otherthings like the ‘sacred’ acoustic, the words, the situation and the ritual. Therecould be borderline cases. I think a lot of other music doesn’t have anything to dowith emptiness. It just doesn’t make it clear. It is nothing. It is just a mess. It is notmusic except in some technical sense. Just banal…

MJ: What parameters or characteristics are more suitable for the notion ofemptiness? Or, is it just within one’s self?

JH: The perception of ambiguity. The things I was talking about in my essayiii.

MJ: You suggested that Lachenmann and Sciarrino lend themselves to emptiness.

JH: Yes. There is an interesting trend that is everywhere evident in the youngcomposers that I see in the various classes I give around Europe. I am not talkingabout in the States so much. I think the influence isn’t nearly so great there. Thetrend of breaking up the solidity of sound is one I see happening since about thebeginning of the 20th century. I don’t think that Lachenmann and Sciarrino areBuddhists, but they are concerned with what I am talking about in my essay. It isthis unnamed thing, which we could call emptiness. It is to do with the fascinationof the changing, the establishing and the changing, or the flux of reality. Nothingis what it seems. When you listen to Lachenmann it is clear that you have a violinthat doesn’t seem to be a violin from the sound it is making. At times yourecognize a bit of ‘violinness’ about the sound it is making. Half of the time it issomething completely different from the violin to all intents and purposes. All ofthese disguises and destructions of fixed labels are important to their music andaesthetic. Lachenmann is passionate about destroying the conventional, traditionalgestures.

MJ: Do you mean cultural constructs?

JH: Constructs. Yes.

MJ: Is it a proper state of mind or the musical object that aids this type of listeningexperience? Or both?

JH: It is all in the mind. There is nothing beyond mind!

MJ: In light of Nishida’s theory of pure experience, do you think an egolessmusical experience is possible such as the self and the musical object collapse intoone for a more pure experience?

JH: Yes. That’s quite a higher state when you experience unity with objects -seemingly out there objects. One gets glimpses of it. That is an important statetowards which music aspires. People often say, “I was completely lost in themusic…I was lost…The ego was lost.” In a good listening experience, this is quitecommon, but only fairly briefly.

MJ: Like an entrancing type of experience?

JH: Yes. Ecstatic standing outside oneself. There is no separation between mindand object. No duality anymore. That is the idea of uncertainty.

MJ: How do you perceive the ego and what is its role in the musical experience?

JH: The ego is illusory, but the illusory ego certainly plays a role in a lot ofmusical experiences. It kind of does a dance. It dances around in its illusory way.Of course we think it is real. I think we are in someway involved as egos, but inambiguous music you constantly get tripped over. The ego is put through its paces.It often gets a bit disorientated. That is nice. Some people can occasionally getafraid if the music gets powerful, loud, or domineering. It knocks the ego out of itssecurity. The Rite of Spring must have frightened a lot of people in its time. Thereare many successors to that. The role of the ego is certainly present. Studying howthe ego is battered and assaulted would be a fascinating study somebody shouldwrite about. The ego is kind of shown to be illusory if you are watching carefully.

MJ: Perhaps in extremely quiet and still music as well?

JH: Yes. That is really where I think the ego can be put to rest. It can stopjumping around and the mind can become tranquil and expand into vast emptyspace.

MJ: Do you think the ego relates to the notion of beauty? What is beauty?

JH: That is a very interesting question, because beauty is partly sexual. Sexualityhas a lot to do with the ego and so on. Beauty transcends sexuality and becomessomething different, but the borderlines are fascinating. Aren’t they? It’s anextremely good and difficult question and it is absolutely at the heart of theaesthetics and, above all, ethics. I think it could be approached in a long book,perhaps by someone who is old.

MJ: (Laugh)

JH: (Laugh) But, not before.

MJ: Perhaps yourself!? (Laugh)

JH: (Laugh) One day. I think there is a rather interesting intention in TantricBuddhism in the use of beauty to more quickly obtain spiritual ends. It involvesusing your imagination, but it is kept a secret because it can be abused. One is notsupposed to talk about it unless it is to people who have had the instructions andteachings from a master. It is a fairly sensible precaution. The typicalsensationalists of modern day life could abuse it. It is an approach to beauty thatcan be extremely powerful and can lead quickly, so the monks say, to theattainment of an awakening. It is extraordinary and old. It has been kept secret.

MJ: Is beauty emptiness?

JH: No. Beauty is the means to emptiness. It is a kind of technique if you like.Those of us who are dealing with art and emptiness inevitably come across thequestion: “What is beauty?” Beauty has a lot to do with emptiness. I wouldn’t goso far as to say, “It is emptiness.” There are so many objects that are called‘virtuous objects’ in Buddhism that are extremely beautiful. For instance, onecould call ‘goodness’ beautiful. As Kant said goodness and the beautiful are thesame. To observe someone being kind or compassionate to another person isbeautiful. In that sense, beauty is close to the virtuous objects. As I said, it is acomplicated question. There are many types of beauty. One would have to unpackthem all.

MJ: Do you see the composer as a shaman like figure?

JH: I think so. It is not a bad description. Of course shamans can deal with adarkness that has to do with bad or unvirtuous things. That is the other half ofshamanism. The composer as somebody who mediates between higher, other, orinvisible forces is absolutely a correct supposition, I think. Some composers, butnot all composers fit that description.

MJ: Is the composer a complex set of cultural constructs and any distinct voiceperceived is just an illusion of personality?

JH: I kind of believe that, but then people say to me, “You have a voice. I can pickout your music.” And, I say, “Can you? Well, I am not aware of it.” I just writewhat I want to write. If it sounds like someone else, I am just not too worried. Mycompositions are different from one to another, but I guess one can’t avoidconnections with others’ worlds unless one is an enlightened person. Then itprobably wouldn’t happen. I don’t know quite what the music of an enlightenedperson is. When you think of the late quartets of Beethoven there is a great qualityof Beethoven in them. In many ways they seem to transcend everything.

MJ: They’re ambiguous in many ways.

JH: Fundamentally, the voice as a bundle of stuff that has been collected from ourhistories, environments, and karma is a good description.

MJ: Do you think that the composer’s intent of encoding a score with extra-musical meaning aids in communicating the message behind a programmaticwork?

JH: Yes. The intention of the subject and the music can come as a completepackage. It is no different from painting a picture of an object. It is both a markmaking and a reference. Music can’t escape its references. It always relates to anagitated or calm heartbeat or breath; a running, dancing, or gesture movement; orspeaking, exclaiming or chanting. It just can’t escape. There is reference all over.Whatever people might say, there is no neutral level. If you write a title orprogram, it is just extending what is already there. It certainly helps the listener toenter into what is in the composer’s mind. On the other hand, if nothing isconsciously in the composer’s mind, what are you going to title it except perhaps“Symphony” or something?

MJ: Does music communicate meaning?

JH: Yes. Yes. The extra-musical meaning is strong, but ultimately empty. That isthe strength of music. We know emotions of tragedy, comedy, romance, andmysticism are strongly portrayed in music, but ultimately music is just notes andvibrations in the air. It is not even that. It is just things in our brains and minds.We can see in the music that they don’t have any real existence. They areconstructs in our minds, ways our minds think, and ways our minds can makesense of things. Yes and No. There is the conventional answer and the ultimateanswer, the Buddhist one.

MJ: What are the differences between a religious Buddhist music, such as Tibetanchanting, and non-religious music that describes its self as Buddhist, such as oneof your Buddhist Songs? Is there no difference?

JH: We obviously have the rite and the concert hall. There are times when aconcert hall tries to become a rite. Oftentimes there are composers who want toachieve that. Perhaps some do. Whether the two remain in separate compartmentsis an interesting borderline issue too. As I was saying earlier about the chant onone note, the music that is used in a rite doesn’t contain such a high degree ofinherent emptiness in the musical sense. It is doing something else. The music isconveying techniques for meditation, purification, and for making people happy –assuaging the fears and torments of existence. It is about many things other thanbeing about emptiness. That music is functional, rather than simply being anempty music, existing as a picture of this wonderful vision of illusion that we arecalling complex, or sophisticated, music. There is a difference in function onecould lay out like that, but the borderlines can be blurred.

MJ: Speaking of some of your pre-existing works, is there any connection betweenthe works that attribute themselves to the notion of emptiness, such as Forms ofEmptiness and Wheel of Emptiness?

JH: I don’t think there is a fundamental difference. I think in the Buddhist works Iam more conscious of emptiness. Sometimes I tried to make it clear for thelistener, but, no, I don’t think there is a fundamental difference.

MJ: Did you want to write works about emptiness or did the titles occur to youafterwards?

JH: In the case of Wheel of Emptiness and Forms of Emptiness, I wanted to writeabout emptiness. With Wheel of Emptiness I knew more about it than in ’86 withForms of Emptiness. In Wheel of Emptiness I did it using two ideas of flux: firstlychaotic and formless music and secondly music of extreme form, as twocontrasting objects of material. In Wheel of Emptiness I was showing the way inwhich we take objects and fetishize them. We give them labels and see them asindividual things. You highlight the contradictions of the dialectic in the processof perceiving emptiness when you juxtapose a profusion of notes that are alwayschanging against constructs which are fixed and don’t change at all. In ameditation on emptiness, you also have to find, identify, examine and realize theobject of negation as ‘truly existent’. You then ‘see through’ the object, and fail tofind its verifiable existence apart from the mind that makes it appear. You thenmeditate on emptiness. It is essential you start with something that seems not to beempty. Then you demolish it. That is what I was doing [in Wheel of Emptiness].This process is like the collage artists that put a scrap of newspaper or a bus ticketinto their painting. They just stick it on. It sticks out as an object, which doesn’tnormally belong to the world of painting. It is fun. It doesn’t belong to the worldof painting, but someone like Picasso could make it belong by sheer showing ofthat deceptive real existence. It is not really a bus ticket. It is part of the paint, partof the flux of form or formlessness – part of the stardust from which we all comefrom and beyond. It is a false form. It is an interesting way to compose for me.Bird Concerto with Pianosong is another piece in which I do exactly the samething.

MJ: What about the work From Silence?

JH: It is a little bit Buddhist. I wrote some of the texts myself. They are ratherBuddhist. It uses monastic Christian texts from a somewhat Buddhist point ofview. Would you say, “Is Mozart’s such-and-such a symphony a Buddhist work?”How could I answer that? Yes. It is for me, but it doesn’t say much. All of themusic that I like is Buddhist.

MJ: Are your Buddhist Songs meant to be a religious or spiritual experience?JH: They were written for Buddhist occasions. They are fairly simple and meant tobe functional music. I set texts they use and know in Buddhist circles. The songs

are ‘church music’ and they are Buddhist certainly in their structure, butsimplified.

MJ: Those were all of my formal questions. Is there anything you would like toadd?

JH: I am writing an opera on a Buddhist theme, which is a combination of things.It is about Wagner and his death at the time he was in Venice lodging in thePalazzo de Vendramin. He was writing his essay on the feminine in culture andhad just started to write about the Buddha in this Buddhist legend. He suddenlydied of a heart attack. Buddhists, as you may know, say that what you are thinkingabout at the moment of death is the supreme mind of your life. It is the mostimportant state of mind of your life. At any rate, I take this moment of Wagner’sdeath and follow his mind. It is obviously a fantasy of mine. The opera exploreswhat happened to him at the gate of death and what he thought about thiswonderful theme in which the Buddha appears. That is the whole evening. Wehave Wagner on the stage speaking, not singing, with his family; and an Indiancast, one of which is the Buddha. It is a beautiful story, an old Indian legend. It is aclash, or dialectic, between 19th-century romanticism and Buddhism. Wagnerknew quite a lot about it for his time, but I think he misunderstood it. His vision ofnirvana was rather bleak and nihilistic in some ways. It lacks the laughter of trueBuddhism. Playing his vision of Buddhism off of the Buddha’s is at the back ofthe story.

i The essence of the New Kadampa tradition, a Mahayana school founded by MasterAtisha (AD 982-1054), is cherishing others and proving oneself on the spiritual path to beable to benefit all living beings. It centers on meditation and how acts of daily life canlead towards enlightenment. Contemporary New Kadampa Buddhism, also known asKamdampa, centers around Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s teachings and temple, The ManjushiCenter, in England.ii Harvey, Jonathan. Music and Buddhism.... Paddison, Max and Deliège, Irène.Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives. Aldershot: Ashgate,forthcoming.iii Harvey, forthcoming.