Part One Shibusa: a musician’s perspective · Metaphors, abstract relationships, and even...

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Part One Shibusa: a musician’s perspective

Transcript of Part One Shibusa: a musician’s perspective · Metaphors, abstract relationships, and even...

Page 1: Part One Shibusa: a musician’s perspective · Metaphors, abstract relationships, and even methodic mappings have been developed in order to merge both domains. In the case of music

Part One

Shibusa: a musician’s perspective

Page 2: Part One Shibusa: a musician’s perspective · Metaphors, abstract relationships, and even methodic mappings have been developed in order to merge both domains. In the case of music
Page 3: Part One Shibusa: a musician’s perspective · Metaphors, abstract relationships, and even methodic mappings have been developed in order to merge both domains. In the case of music

Introduction

The Shibusa exhibition is a collaborationbetween the painter Pip Dickens and myselfthat has developed through a kindredapproach to thinking about our respective art forms and the influence Japanese culturehas on our work. Dickens’ fascination with

Japanese katagami stencils was the startingpoint for the collaboration. These fragile andintricate mulberry-paper stencils have beenused for centuries in Japan in the dyeing of textiles (see Figure 1.1). The stencilsthemselves often feature much repetition ofeither geometric or figurative design. However,as the stencils are handmade, this repetition isnever exact. The stencil betrays the humanityof the artisan – the physical trace of cuttingand crafting the patterns. Through an in-depthstudy of the methods of creation and use ofkatagami stencils, a core set of concepts hasemerged in our thinking: the inexactitude of a hand-crafted repetitive physical process, a physical trace, noise (the interruption of aprocess), colour, pattern, repetition, layering,counterpoint and texture. This sharedvocabulary and terminology have provided astarting point from which we have developedour individual practice.

As the project has developed, thecollaboration has become one in which theresulting work is a refraction of multiple layers of influences: my music and Dickens’paintings, while based on the originalkatagami, have assumed their own influence.This is to be expected of such a process.However, for me as a composer and anacademic, the interesting issue has been toascertain the sometimes startling differences in perception we have of each other’s work:examining how the painter hears musicthrough visual metaphors, and how thecomposer looks at paintings as if everybrushstroke is a sound suspended in a virtualspace kinetically interacting with other sounds

Chapter One

Exploding stillnessMonty Adkins

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Figure 1.1 Katagami stencil: Japanese hand-cut stencil for printing on tokimono fabric. Collection of Pip Dickens, © Pip Dickens

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around it. These differences in perception areworthy of further examination, for though akinship between music and painting has beenthe subject of many writings throughout thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries, many of these writings consider aspects of rhythm,colour-timbre and harmony, which, while valid in the construction of music and art, do not examine our perception of the resulting artefact.

Sound and image: an historical perspective

The association of sound and image has been a subject that has fascinated composers andartists for centuries, and can be traced back as far as the investigations of Artistotle andPythagoras into the correlation between thelight spectrum and musical tones. Althoughthe main theoretical texts that discuss therelation between music and painting emergedin the early decades of the twentieth century,most notably centred around those artistsassociated with the Bauhaus and the famousmeeting in 1911 of Arnold Schoenberg andWassily Kandinsky, practical investigation andexperimentation between colour and soundhas its origins further back in instrumentsoften termed ‘colour organs’, such as theclavecin oculaire constructed by LouisBertrand Castel in 1734. In 1720, some 14years prior to the construction of the clavecinoculaire, Castel wrote, ‘Can anyone imagineanything in the arts that would surpass thevisible rendering of sound, which wouldenable the eyes to partake of all the pleasureswhich music gives to the ears?’1 The clavecinoculaire was a device that used 500 candles,240 levers and pulleys, and 60 reflectingmirrors to illuminate a 2-metre-square framewith 60 coloured windows (5 octaves of 12tones, each with a specific hue), each with acurtain that was automatically raised when thecorresponding key on the harpsichord wasstruck. Many such instruments were developedthroughout the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies – Kaster’s pyrophone, Vietinghoff-Scheel’s chromatophon and Thomas Wilfred’sclavilux are but a few examples of instrumentsthat all worked on a similar premise. All theseinstruments were based around the keyboard

as a means of triggering colour–pitchcombinations. In the twentieth century thistradition of using a physical mechanism toproduce an association of sound and colourcontinued with experiments using film tocombine sound and image, particularly in the work of Norman McClaren, OskarFischinger (who created his own colour organ – the lumigraph – in the late 1940s) and Walter Ruttman.

Aside from these mechanical devices aimedat multisensory stimulation, conceptually themost coherent approach is found in RichardWagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk,expounded in his essay ‘The artwork of thefuture’ of 1849, and which he defined as aunification of music, song, dance, poetry,visual arts and stagecraft.2 Although Wagner’sinfluence on future generations of composers is often discussed in terms of his advancementsin harmonic thinking and the emancipation of the dissonance, the idea of theGesamtkunstwerk can be traced throughSchoenberg’s opera Die Glückliche Hand(1910–13) and Scriabin’s Prometheus (1911) –both of which were accompanied by carefullychoreographed coloured lights – and Ives’unfinished Universe Symphony (1911–28), as well as countless contemporary multimedia spectacles.

At the same time as Wagner’s developmentof the Gesamtkunstwek, a shared vocabularyemerged between painting and music thatextended beyond mere metaphor – works in both creative disciplines were discussed ascompositions, panels or improvisations thathave a form. James Whistler went further andtitled his paintings with musical terms such as ‘nocturne’, ‘harmony’ or ‘study’, and most famously the Symphony in White series (1862–7). The purpose of such titles was to emphasise the tonal qualities of thecomposition and to reduce the emphasis on narrative content.

In Karl Gerstner’s book The Forms ofColor, he observes that:

Each musical tone can be defined by threeparameters: 1) frequency (pitch), 2)amplitude (volume), and 3) overtones (tonecolor). Each color can likewise be defined

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by three parameters: 1) color tone (or hue,according to Munsell), 2) lightness (orvalue), and 3) purity (or chroma).3

In the early part of the twentieth centurythe mapping of colour to musical pitches wasthe principal preoccupation of Roy de Maistre,a contemporary of Klee and Kandinsky. DeMaistre’s 1935 painting Colour CompositionDerived from Three Bars of Music in the Keyof Green (Colour Scale on a Musical Themefrom Beethoven) is typical of his work and isbased on a system the painter developed fromSir Isaac Newton’s theories of colour,expounded in the latter’s treatise Opticksof 1704. De Maistre believed that ‘amathematical relationship of frequencies …united the physical phenomenon of light and sound’.4

During the first part of the twentiethcentury a number of composers were alsoactive as painters. Schoenberg painted anumber of expressionist works and maintainedclose contact with Wassily Kandinsky and DerBlaue Reiter group. Schoenberg’s pupil JohnCage created drawings and paintings thatoften used similar chance techniques to thoseemployed in his compositions; indeed SharonKennedy maintains that ‘Cage’s awareness ofsilence in music can be seen through itsabundance of white space in his piece calledStones 2 (1989)’.5 While only Kandinskypurported to experience an intense synesthesicbond between sound and image, it is clear thatthe visual work of both Schoenberg and Cagewere informed by their musical aesthetic.

As digital technologies proliferated duringthe second part of the twentieth century, itmight be assumed that the connection betweenmusic and painting would become lessened in favour of music in conjunction with themoving image. Yet despite the propensity ofvisual music in our contemporary culture,painting is still a significant source ofinspiration for contemporary sound artists andcomposers. The influence of painting on musiccomes in many forms: the initial structuralmodel of Kaija Saariaho’s Verblendungen(1982) was a brushstroke from which thecomposer abstracts simple geometric shapesthat control parameters such as tessitura,

harmonicity and polyphony, and therelationship between the orchestra and the electronics (see Figure 1.2).

Richard Barrett’s Ne Songe plus à fuir(1986) is influenced by a painting by theChilean surrealist Roberto Matta; while morerecently Liza Lim’s The Four Seasons for solo piano is subtitled ‘after Cy Twombly’,demonstrating a kinship with Twombly in theway in which Lim handled her sonic material.In electronic music Richard Chartier’s decisiveforms is derived from and takes its title fromthe biomorphic forms of Jean Arp’s earlywork, while his collaboration with TaylorDeupree on Specification.Fifteen (2006) wasinspired by the Seascapes series of the Japanesephotographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. BernhardGünter’s brown, blue, brown on blue (forMark Rothko) clearly states its inspiration inthe title. Morton Feldman was also influencedconceptually by the work of Mark Rothko,

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Figure 1.2 Saariaho, Verblendungen sketches: shapesfor musical parameters derived from the initialbrushstroke.

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writing in all but name Rothko’s requiem inhis Rothko Chapel (1972). Dore Ashton writeson Feldman that:

His music – hesitant, reticent, disembodiedand non-symbolic in the sense that thesounds have no reference to anything butthemselves – refuses the architecturaltradition of music and aligns itself with theexpansive space of contemporary painting… he himself described the effect of one ofhis pieces ‘as if you’re not listening butlooking at something in nature’.6

One of the reasons why many composersare drawn to the still image rather than themoving image is to do with the nature of ourperception of the static image as opposed tothe moving image and sound. Many musiciansrevel in using their imagination to explode thestillness of painting into musical time, ratherthan following the implied narrative (nomatter how abstract) of a moving image.Through placing one temporal medium inconjunction with a non-temporal one, theartists leave much interpretation open to theviewer. However, as soon as one temporalmedium is combined with another temporalone, in this case music and image, a hierarchyis established – often to the detriment ofsound. The visual component of any filmdominates the senses, with the majority ofsensory information being received throughthe eye. Regarding the connection of artisticpractices and temporality, Hugo Garcia writes that:

One of the most important paradigms inthe audiovisual field is rooted in thedifferent nature of the musical and visualdomains. The musical language isdeveloped over time, while the graphicalexpression is created over space.Metaphors, abstract relationships, and evenmethodic mappings have been developed inorder to merge both domains. In the case ofmusic and static images, the relationshipstend to be more subjective, but at the sametime they possess a subtlety that is lost withthe use of dynamic graphics. On the otherhand, in the case of dynamic graphics, the

music and image share the same timeelement, which makes them more related.7

Though superficially lacking a temporaldimension, a painting nevertheless displaysevidence of the work’s creation. Whereasmusic necessitates an experiential temporality(the perception of the work through time),painting demonstrates a witnessed temporality(the perception of a past process of creation).The muscular ‘memory’ of a physical gesture isimportant as it always carries the trace ofhuman action and betrays its emotive force inthe spectral or paint density. The physicality of an instrumentalist’s performance or therecording of a ball rolling around a jar has acounterpart in the gesture of a painter’sbrushstrokes. A simple analogy is between thenote or sound object that can be split intointensity, duration, pitch, timbre and shape,with elements such as form, colour, texture,location and light. Rudolf Arnheim, in Art and Visual Perception, describes high-levelstructures of the visual domain.8 For example,shapes have weight and direction, and thesetwo elements generate balance. Hugo Garcianotes that:

Arnheim also analyzes the concept ofmovement in two different contexts: first asthe physical displacement of objects in time,considering speed and direction; and also asan illusion in static works, produced by the‘simulation of gravitatory effects’ and thedirection of the shapes. Finally Arnheimanalyzes tension as another perceptualelement that is associated with themovement and the illusion of movementwithout motion.9

In the latter part of the twentieth centurythere were numerous attempts to marry thephysical visual gesture and sonification withinthe musical domain itself. Max Mathews andLawrence Rosler’s Graphic 1 (1968) andIannis Xenakis’ UPIC system (1977) bothtranslate images made by the composer intosound. In the UPIC system composers can map their physical gestures to waveforms forsynthesis, volume envelopes and larger scaleform – the composer can literally draw the

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composition. One of the first examples of sucha sonification of visual data was Xenakis’electronic work Mycenea Alpha (1978). In this work the ‘score’ comprises drawings of interlocking aborescent structures thatdetermine pitch direction, volume and timbre.10

Further software developments thatcontinue in this vein of converting image tosound are Metasynth by Eric Wenger andIannix by La Kitchen. Arguably, muchcontemporary electronic music is primarilycomposed through reliance on the visual andShibusa is no exception. Unlike analoguestudios, in which there was little correlationbetween eye and ear in the treatment of sound(the process was more of a physical one, verymuch reliant on the ears to adjust parameters),many digital studios are now based around thecomputer, with each piece of software havingits own graphic user interface (GUI). Such isthe influence of such GUIs that Oval (MarkusPopp) talks about his work visually – thelayout of sound files in a sequencer window is important aesthetically to him.11

Despite the sonification of images enabledby music software, this does not guaranteethat the listener will perceptually make the connection between the two explicitly. The neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Ternauxmaintains that:

Transferring structural or numericalfeatures from one domain to another mayin many cases result in some quite badcategory mistakes, i.e. mistaking principlesof organization in one domain as valid foranother, totally different domain.12

Synesthesia and perception

While the Shibusa project does not attempt to translate music into the visual or the visualdirectly into music, it is nevertheless importantto establish how certain audio-visualcorrelations have been scientifically tested.One such example is the association of lowfrequency with dark colours. We all generallymake the assumption that there is arelationship between the two and that it feelsright. However, explaining why this is the case

is more difficult. In his article ‘Synesthesia-likemappings of lightness, pitch and melodicinterval’, Tim Hubbard writes that scientifictests as early as the 1940s demonstrated that‘auditory stimuli that are lower in frequencytypically evoke visual sensations of stimuli thatare darker, and auditory stimuli that are higherin frequency typically evoke visual sensationsof stimuli that are lighter.’13 Hubbard goes onto demonstrate that:

A clear relationship was seen between thedirection and size of an auditory melodicinterval and the visual luminosity judged asbest fitting with that interval. Lighter visualstimuli were judged to fit best withdescending intervals. Additionally, the sizeof melodic intervals … led to preferencesfor more extreme levels of lightness ordarkness; specifically, visually lighterstimuli were preferred for larger ascending intervals than for smallerascending intervals, and visually darkerstimuli were preferred for larger descendingintervals than for smaller descendingintervals.14

This correlation was further refined in thework of Roy D’Andrade and Michael Egan,who demonstrated that ‘colour-emotionassociations were not due predominantly tohue … but to the degree of saturation andbrightness of the colour’.15 This differencebetween the saturation of a colour and itsbrightness can been seen in the emotionalintensity that is inherent in the three paintingsMark Rothko produced in 1955–6, eachcomprising yellow, orange and gold. Althoughall three paintings comprise the same colours,the saturation of each differs radically. As aresult, the paintings create a perceivedintensity that ranges from a distant, almosttransparent afterglow, to scorched desert sandsin the heat of the midday sun.

Hubbard’s use of the term ‘synesthesia-like’is an interesting one. It can be suggested thatmuch of our everyday experience results fromthe synchronous perception of the audio andthe visual. The scientist and painter BulatGaleyev maintains that ‘synesthesia is anessential aspect of language and, more

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generally, of all figurative thinking, includingall imaginative thinking for all kinds of art,including music.’16 Daniel Levitin goes further,maintaining that:

At a very early age, babies are thought tobe synesthetic, to be unable to differentiatethe input from the different senses, and toexperience life and the world as a sort ofpsychedelic union of everything sensory …the process of maturation createsdistinction in the neural pathways … what may have started out as a neuroncluster that responded equally to sights,sound, taste, touch and smell becomes aspecialised network.17

If we all, as is suggested, start out as beingin some way synesthetic, why is it that in someof us this remains into adulthood while inothers there is a clear separation between thesenses? Ani Patel, in his ‘shared syntacticintegration resource hypothesis’, demonstratesthat an infant eventually creates dedicatedneural pathways, but that these pathways in maturity may share some common resources.18 The different ways in which theseneural pathways mature in each individualaccounts for the differing colour associationsof similar phenomena. One such example is inthe association of musical keys with colours.

Although there have been numerous suchtables produced over the past 300 years(Newton, 1704; Castel, 1734; Jameson, 1844;Bishop, 1893; von Helmholtz, 1910; Klein,1930; and Belmont, 1944), many of whichinformed the production of colour organs andother such instruments, the comparison of twoRussian composers, Alexander Scriabin andNikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, working in thesame cultural milieu at the turn of thetwentieth century, will provide a usefulexample (see Figure 1.3).

It is conjectured that Scriabin was as much influenced by theosophist readings of colour as he was by any truly synethesicperception of music and colour, while Rimsky-Korsakov is acknowledged as asynesthete. Another composer who was asynesthete is Olivier Messiaen (1908–92).Messiaen wrote ‘I see colours when I hearsounds, but I don’t see colours with my eyes. I see colours intellectually, in my head’. In the Traité de rythme, de couleur, etd’ornithologie the composer describes thecolours of certain chords from ‘gold andbrown’ to the more elaborate ‘blue-violetrocks, speckled with little grey cubes, cobaltblue, deep Prussian blue, highlighted by a bit of violet-purple, gold, red, ruby, and stars of mauve, black and white. Blue-violet is dominant.’19

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Key Alexander Scriabin Rimsky-Korsakov

B major Mid-blue/pearl Dark blue

B♭ major Dull deep pink Darkish

A major Green Rose/pink

A♭ major Lilac/light violet Grey/violet

G major Orange Brown/gold

F# major Bright blue/violet Grey/green

F major Deep red Green

E major Sky blue Sapphire blue

E♭ major Crimson Grey/blue

D major Yellow/golden Golden/yellow

D♭ major Intense violet/purple Dusky

C major Intense red White

Figure 1.3 Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov: mappings of musical keys to colour.

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As is clear from the differing colour charts of Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov and the writings of Messiaen, there is no single mapping of colour to sound that isuniversally agreed upon. While each composeris consistent to their own mapping, thesemappings are highly individual. Suchindividuality does not invalidate the impact on the composer’s work. Indeed it may evenexplain why certain composers create thework they do. The fact that each composerholds strongly to their own particular pairingof colour and key demonstrates Patel’s sharedsyntactic integration resource hypothesis at work.

Messiaen’s limited modes of transposition(essentially a series of uniquely constructedscales) and the predominance of symmetry in his work often eschew traditional notions of Western teleology. This allows theestablishment of fields or chords of harmoniccolour around which the other musicalmaterials radiate or emanate. This formalapplication of the synesthetic correlation ofcolour/music is seen even more overtly in thework of the American composer MichaelTorke. Torke, in an interview with GeoffSmith, says:

I had always had a synaesthetic reaction tomusic which I felt was a personal andmaybe even dangerously indulgent thingeven to talk about: someone taught me thatto create a form you have to establish aframe of reference like establishing a room,and then you move out of the room andreturn to it somehow … then I thought ifyou’re in a room and there’s a party goingon, why would you want to leave it?Couldn’t you create some kind of formwhere you never leave? And then the ideathat, if you found a harmony thatassociated with a colour, you could neverchoose to leave that harmony; the piecewould then be about that colour, or thecolour would identify the building block I decided to use.20

In the work of Torke we find synesthesianot merely informing the particular harmonicmakeup of chords (as in Messiaen) or in keys

(as in Rimsky-Korsakov) but determiningformal aspects of the work. If harmony –traditionally the structural driving force of awork – remains static, then other parametersmust be brought into service to propel thelogic/fabric of the music.

In the Shibusa collaboration there areharmonic centres at work that are derivedfrom Dickens’ sketches and paintings as wellas traditional Japanese objects. Shibusa is aJapanese word that defies simple translationinto English. Shibusa is a positivist universalbeauty; it is a term that refers to a particularaesthetic of simple and understated beauty,which nevertheless is sophisticated andsomewhat austere – a ‘concept [that] revolvesaround the skillful blending of restraint andspontaneity’.21 Harada writes that shibusa ‘isthat quality which is quiet and subdued. It isnatural and has depth, but avoids being tooapparent, or ostentatious. It is simple withoutbeing crude, austere without being severe. It is that refinement that gives spiritual joy.’22

Within this aesthetic, particularly in Japanesecrafts, shibui objects appear initially to besimple but on further inspection reveal awealth of detail that balances overallsimplicity with more detailed inner complexity.It is this carefully designed balance ofsimplicity and complexity that enables thecontinued appreciation of the shibui object.

In an interview for the magazine HouseBeautiful in 1960, Yanagi S�etsu, late directorof the Museum of Folk Crafts in Tokyo,defined shibusa in terms of seven attributes:

simplicity;implicitness (the intrinsic meaningfulness

of the shibui object to avoid it being superficial);

modesty;tranquillity;naturalness (if too much self-consciousness

or artificiality is displayed then the object cannot be shibui; David and Michiko Young write that: ‘some of the best ceramic artists in Japan create pots that look uneven. They have an “imperfect” quality that results from allowing the clay to growspontaneously on the wheel instead of

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forcing it to conform completely to the hands’23);

normalcy (shibui art is a positivist art that does not countenance deformation and abnormality);

imperfection (David and Michiko Young write that ‘because shibui objects are natural they often have irregular textures. Bizen pottery provides a good example. The Bizen potter oftenleaves irregularities in the clay, such as small stones, that project from the sides of the pot or leave small pits on its surface’24).

Shibui objects may include various textileproducts whose design is the result of usingkatagami stencils in the printing process. Thecolours of shibusa are often muted, earthen ordark. For example, in interior decorating andpainting, grey is added to primary colours tocreate a silvery effect that ties the differentcolours together into a coordinated scheme.Shibui colours range from pastels to darkhues, depending on how much grey is added.After much experimentation with sounds froma broken piano – initially an importantconceptual link with Dickens’ ‘destroyed’brushes – I returned to my original instrument,the clarinet. The timbral similarity of all thefinal compositions, achieved through using theclarinet as a source for further electronicprocessing, acts as the grey that ties thedifferent colours together. Even though someof the processed sonic material ends up quitedifferent from the original clarinet sounds,there is still the spectral trace of the original.This trace comes about from the acoustics ofthe clarinet itself. By developing a bindingfamily of processed sounds from clarinetsamples, this provides a ‘bed’ for the realclarinet to produce different contrastingtimbral colours around it.

The clarinet itself has a particularly mellow,deep, chalumeau register, a rounded mid-register and a bright upper register. For me,the clarinet creates a range of colours: thelower chalumeau register is purple, the mid-range clarino register is green and the highaltissimo register is yellow. The reason Iperceive these ranges as having different

colours, rather than the clarinet per se ashaving a particular tonal colour, is in part dueto the harmonics that the instrument producesin each of the registers. In the lower registerthe fundamental tone and odd harmonics areemphasised, with the even harmonics beingweak. Moving into the mid-range of theinstrument, the even harmonics start tobecome stronger – changing the tone of the instrument. In the upper register thestrength of the even and odd harmonics is virtually equal.

Like Rothko’s use of colour saturation in the trilogy of yellow, orange and goldpaintings of 1955–6, so in Shibusa changes inthe intensity of breath pressure when playingthe clarinet can alter the sound significantly.The instrumentation, pitch range, dynamicrange and textural counterpoint are all thusderived from visual stimuli. What is notderived from Dickens’ paintings is the form of the work. This is due to the fact thatmusical time implies very different formalconsiderations from those that determine theconstruction of paintings. Here Jean-PierreTernaux’s words echo loudly – the mechanismsfor creating a visual formal balance in a two-dimensional a-temporal artwork cannotsimply be transplanted to a temporal mediumsuch as music. This does not mean, however,that the painting cannot stimulate thecomposer to rethink musical form in the lightof the processes at work in a painting.

Formal considerations

Although not a result or synesthesia, there are a number of composers who have alsodeveloped different approaches to form as aresult of the engagement with painting. TheAmerican composer Morton Feldman and theEnglish composer Bryn Harrison both viewtheir manuscript paper as a frame to besubdivided in time, just as a painter willsubdivide the canvas. Feldman’s late works (intheir original form) all use the same format ofnine bars to a page – in some instances using asymmetrical layout of repeat marks from pageto page and never letting a repeated sectionspread across a page. Similarly, Harrisondivides his page into irregular-length bars

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and continues this same page layout for thewhole composition. The manuscript pagebecomes a visual means of organising sound in time. Harrison has said that:

I treat a bar not as a unit of emphasis butas a space in which to contain the musicalmaterial. It is a visual space, really. There isa visual identity to the music that is notdirectly heard but has an implicit effect onwhat you hear.25

A number of painters and techniques haveinfluenced Harrison’s compositional thinking,including Robert Rauschenberg, AgnesMartin, Brice Marden and Bridget Riley. ForHarrison, the work of the latter two paintersin particular conveys an allusion to nature andnatural forms, but nature presented in anabstract manner – the essence of nature ratherthan trying to depict something from natureitself. Harrison comments that:

I’ve always been interested in what a stillimage can convey in the way certainpainters have sought to encapsulate a senseof movement in stasis. I’m interestedconversely in what you can do with soundin that there is always getting from onepoint to the next in music, but how you cannonetheless convey a sense of stasis orrested motion through music almost to

present music that steps outside of time as aconscious linear progressive construct.26

In Harrison’s Surface forms (repeating)(2010) there is a conscious attempt to conveya sense of structural stasis through a density of surface detail. Shards of melodic figurationsurface momentarily but are reabsorbed intothe interwoven musical fabric, before thenbecome perceptually individuated. There islittle sense of evolution of the material in anytraditional sense; rather, the compositionalstructure is constructed from temporallyasynchronous instrumental ‘loops’ (with subtlealterations between each instance of the loop)– for example, the vibraphone and harp repeata 40-second passage whereas the vocal loopspans over a third of the piece. This approachstimulates a sensation in the listener similar tothat of looking at a monochromatic painting.Harrison’s influence for this method ofworking is the series of White Paintings (1951) by Robert Rauschenberg. Harrison,like Rauschenberg, is aiming to express pureexperience rather than figuration.

Such an approach prompted fellowcomposer Nicholas Williams to comment that‘I like what I hear, but I am not sure what I am listening to’.27 For Harrison, this is aninteresting response. He comments:

I think more texturally – if texture is themain thing you’re listening to and a fluidityof cycles that continually return, then whatare we listening to? It is about experiencingthat sense of stasis, the sense of suspendedmotion – a state of flux.28

In his Six Symmetries (2004) for largeensemble, Harrison draws directly on thestructures of Bridget Riley. In the secondmovement of the work Harrison uses acurvilinear grid derived from Riley’s use ofarcs on a sixth of a circle to determine theentry of the instruments (see Figures 1.4, 1.5and 1.6). Harrison, in a discussion of theinfluence of Riley on his work, has said:

What you see is beautiful and organicdespite its detailed construction. They[Riley’s paintings] seem quite simple,

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Figure 1.4. Harrison, Six Symmetries: sketches for ‘Riley’ curves.Reproduced with permission, © Bryn Harrison

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but when you start to break them downand go in you find all sorts of relationshipsbetween things within them. It’s work thatwarrants a long time of looking … The way colours converge along narrower linescreating the sensation of a third colour thathasn’t been painted but is neverthelessperceivable is something that interests me.This concept comes through in the music in the way in which pitches converge toproduce an incidental harmony.29

Although Harrison is strongly influenced by painting, Six Symmetries is the first piece in which he consciously tried to recreate thetechnique used in a painting in one of hiscompositions. Harrison comments that:

I was interested in seeing what kind ofharmonic correlation it would producethrough sound, the way the curves bunchup and separate in places. It is another wayof working with rhythmic placement thatallows me to step back from the process.Up to that point I had used a lot of numbersequences to determine duration – usingrhythmic points that get closer and moveaway from each other, then superimposingthose to create different levels of density.Using Riley’s techniques was another wayof creating a canonic rhythmic form thatwas out of my control. I like the way thatthe canonic lines would get ahead of eachother, sometimes behind, sometimesconverge. I’ve since absorbed thiselongation and contraction of rhythmicmaterial from Riley as another techniqueinto my working method – I don’t need to use number systems to do that any more.30

In Harrison’s work, painting is thus astimulus to think about musical materials innew and novel ways. His concern to create thesensation of stasis in a time-based medium, the density of his orchestration to create akaleidoscopic surface layer of instrumentaldetail and his use of rhythmic canons all stemfrom his consideration of painting techniques– not solely the resulting image, but theprocess that is used to create that image.

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Figure 1.5 Harrison, Six Symmetries: ‘Riley’ curves on rhythmic grids.Reproduced with permission, © Bryn Harrison

Figure 1.6 Harrison Six Symmetries, movement 2, page 17: ‘Riley’ curvesas they appear in the completed score. Reproduced with permission, ©Bryn Harrison

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The American composer Aaron Cassidy is another for whom painting suggests notmerely a prompt for different ways of thinkingabout music but a complete re-evaluation ofthe nature of composition and the relationshipbetween the composer, performer andaudience. Cassidy’s recent work has beenprofoundly influenced by the work of FrancisBacon, particularly when refracted throughGilles Deleuze’s text Francis Bacon: The Logicof Sensation. Bacon’s unconditioned, unfilteredpure physicality and Deleuze’s exquisitelywritten philosophical critique of the paintingsare both reflected in Cassidy’s music – amultilayered, highly intellectualised complexmusic that celebrates the raw animality of thehuman condition. As such, it is a resurgenceand development of expressionism. The musicis not trying to express emotive states, butrather it is trying to perform sensation:

Bacon constantly says that sensation iswhat passes from one ‘order’ to another,from one ‘level’ to another, from one ‘area’to another. This is why sensation is themaster of deformations, the agent of bodilydeformations … The violence of sensationis opposed to the violence of therepresented.31

This desire for the artwork itself to be theobject of sensation rather than the conveyor ofsensation is fundamental to Cassidy’s workand is implicit in the manner in which hechooses to ‘notate’ his music in the score. InCassidy’s scores there are no traditional ‘notes’– no specific denominators of frequency. In hiscompositions the score assumes a role veryunlike that in traditional classical music. Intraditional scores there are indications ofpitch, rhythm and dynamics conveyed througha symbolic notation that has been codified andrefined for centuries. Practised musicians can‘read’ a score and form an impression of themusic. In such scores the physical actions ofthe performers are rarely specified – though we have become used to view the expressivemovements of a concert pianist as cues for our emotional understanding of the music.Cassidy’s scores propose these physicalgestures as the starting point for the music

itself. Instead of taking a rhythm or a set ofpitches and subjecting them to developmentaltransformations, in Cassidy’s scores there is anotation for physical gestures that decouplesthe mouth, the fingers and other means ofsonic production, resulting in a series of bodilyactions that can be isolated as units ofperformative action and deformed – just asBacon deforms his material through theprocess of smearing. The score thus presentsnot a traditional notated score for performancebut rather a call for choreographed actionsfrom which the sound will result. Cassidy hascommented that:

The original materials of my compositionsare bodily and gestural. I see those gesturesas already being musical – not just having amusical significance, but as physical actionsthat have a musical identity. I take thosegestures and map them on to differentsurfaces, instruments and different kinds ofresistance, so they generate different kindsof sonic results.32

Cassidy’s ensemble piece And the scream,Bacon’s scream, is the operation throughwhich the entire body escapes through themouth (2010) takes Bacon’s Three Studies forFigures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) andsubjects it to structural, figural andphilosophical analysis to inform all aspects ofthe composition. In the composition there is aspecific seating plan that is influenced byBacon’s treatment of perspectival depth in histriptych. The trumpet–trombone and oboe–clarinet duos form an inner ring. A secondaryring is formed from a trio of violin, viola andcontrabass. The third outer ring comprisesharp and percussion. This arrangement isdirectly drawn from the planar arrangement ofelements in the paintings. Deleuze writes:

A round area often delimits the place wherethe person – that is to say, the Figure – isseated, lying down, doubled over, or insome other position. This round or ovalarea takes up more or less space: it canextend beyond the edges of the painting oroccupy the center of a triptych.33

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Bacon isolates the Figure, often by placingit inside a cube or precipitously perching it ona curved bar. In And the scream, Cassidy hastwo instrumental duos that act as soloists,essentially as the Figure. Although there is aclear hierarchy between these ‘solo’ and the‘hyper-instrument’ lines in the ensemble, thereis always a sense of fluidity or flux betweenthese layers. As gestures are deformed andweave through the ensemble parts, so therelationship between the solo and hyper-instrument lines is constantly beingreconstituted. Deleuze discusses the planarnon-perspectival aspect of Bacon’s painting,writing that:

The rest of the painting is systematicallyoccupied by large fields of bright, uniform,and motionless color. Thin and hard, thesefields have a structuring and spatializingfunction. They are not beneath, behind, orbeyond the Figure, but are strictly to theside of it, or rather, all around it, and arethus grasped in a close view, a tactile or‘haptic’ view, just as the Figure itself is. Atthis stage, when one moves from the Figureto the fields of color, there is no relation ofdepth or distance, no incertitude of lightand shadow. If the fields function as abackground, they do so by virtue of theirstrict correlation with the Figures. It is thecorrelation of two sectors on a single plane,equally close … He distinguishes threefundamental elements in his painting,which are the material structure, the roundcontour, and the raised image.34

In a discussion of the formal arrangementof the ensemble and how this affects thematerial of the piece, Cassidy has stated that:

One of the ideas for the piece from the verybeginning was the instability betweenforeground and background – each of thethree layers has a different function andrelation to material types. The first layer ofsoloistic material has largest dynamicrange. The second layer has a lesserdynamic range and all the materials in thismiddle realm are recombining physicalgestures from the foreground layer – so

material from trumpet and slide [trombone]might now appear in the left-hand motionof one of the strings, or fingering patternsin the clarinet end up as fingering patternsin the contrabass. The middle layerinstruments are doing this modelling ofgestures that have appeared before but nowwith different articulating layers. Thebackground layer is a stretched version ofmaterials that have appeared before. Ontop of this physical layout each player hastheir own set of foreground/backgroundroles – the use of mutes on strings andbrass provide additional layers ofcompression of sound independent of their foreground–background role in the ensemble.35

Cassidy’s treatment of his musical materialis clearly derived from Deleuze’s discussion of the Figure – the Figure that is ‘contractedand aspirated, sometimes stretched anddilated’.36 This treatment of materials can beseen in the examples from Cassidy’s ownanalysis of his work below. What is importantto emphasise is that this manner of treatingmaterial – the deformation of physical gesturesthat act upon an instrument – often results in a radically different sonic outcome from the original.

Figure 1.7 clearly shows the decoupling ofphysical gestures. In this example the bowingindications appear on the upper stave and theposition on the fingerboard in the lower stave.

In Figure 1.8 each line of the upper andlower stave are assigned to a finger hole or keyon the oboe – the different blocks indicatingfully closed/open finger holes and a number ofstages in between.

In Figure 1.9 the gestural material in thecontrabass comprises a stretched version of theviola’s bowing figuration: a deformed versionof the viola’s fingerboard material from Figure1.7 and a stretched and deformed version ofthe oboe’s fingering patterns from Figure 1.8.

In And the scream, as in Harrison’s Surfaceforms (repeating), there is an intentional self-similarity in the timbral palette across thewhole duration of the piece. Despite theradical aural difference, both works aredeliberately amorphous and formless. In

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Figure 1.8 Cassidy, And the scream, oboe (solo) bar 50.

Figure 1.9 Cassidy, And the scream, contrabass (ensemble ‘hyper-instrument’ material), bars 52–4.

Figure 1.7. Cassidy, And the scream, viola (solo), bars 46–8.

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Harrison’s work the asynchronous loopscreate a constantly shifting surface texture that‘hovers’. In Cassidy’s work the multiple layersof physical action interact with one another indifferent ways at different times. The sonicresult is the violent collision of independentlayers of activity. Cassidy states that in Andthe scream:

This happens across nine instruments thatare structurally not aligned – you get theseconstant flittering shifts of timbre andgesture. This is happening in Bacon’s work too – the sense of two or even fourphysical motions attempting to happensimultaneously and the smearing is the result.37

Cassidy’s re-evaluation of musical material,notation, structure, physical gesture and stagepresentation extends far beyond any previousconsideration of the relationship betweenmusic and painting. In combining theintellectual critique of Deleuze and thetreatment of the body from Bacon, Cassidyhas developed a startling and unique musicalapproach that would be impossible withoutBacon’s original paintings.

While Shibusa does not present such aradical re-evaluation of musical materials asCassidy’s compositions (such a re-evaluationwould not be appropriate for a work informedthe aesthetics of shibusa), nevertheless, themusic is aesthetically and materially governedby the concepts and processes that underpinthe creation of shibui objects. Following anexamination of katagami stencils and themanner in which they were used to producecertain effects when printing on textiles,Dickens and I arrived at four fundamentalmodels on which to base our work:

the smudging and blushing of colours and motifs into one another – something that is drawn predominantly from Japanese kimono designs;

the layering of different patterns on top of one another and allowing certain aspects of one or another layer to come to the fore at determined points;

repetitive patterns that are imperfect and are interrupted – the idea of lines breaking and reforming to give gestaltgood continuation; the repetition hereis not always exact, reflecting the human hand rather than the use of the machine to create repetitive patterns (there is a peripheral analogyhere to the inexact grids in the paintings of Agnes Martin);

interlocking linear motifs that are clear in their group trajectory but remain independent lines.

The resulting music of Shibusa is thus theresult of reflection on the inherent qualities ofshibui objects; the pastel-dark huespredominant in shibusa mixed with a bindinggrey; the four models outlined above; andfinally the sketches and paintings of Dickens.

Although our conceptual starting point issimilar, it is clear that the processes thatDickens and I initially go through to developwork is different. Dickens’ approach is toexplore through countless sketches the ideasand concepts around which the work is based,often superimposing computer drawings andpainted fragments to create hybrid digitalsketches. It is upon reflection of these sketchesthat certain ideas and concepts come to thefore and can then be reviewed to be exploredfurther in numerous complementary ways.These sketches form the foundation fromwhich to generate further ideas for paintings inthe studio. None of these sketches is simplyreplicated, as the process of painting itselfsuggests new alternative possibilities. For me,compositional sketches are never merely ideasfor something else, but rather they becomemore and more refined until they areintegrated into the final composition. Findingthe correct instrumentation is essential to thecompositional process and itself informs theway in which the material is developed.

Another difference in our working methodconcerns the framing of time or the picture.When I first showed Dickens the temporalframework at play in the first part of the workthere was an initial shock at the means bywhich this was arrived. Whereas Dickensdevelops her paintings intuitively from a pool

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of initial ideas, the four compositions thatmake up Shibusa work have a simple butpredetermined temporal frame. The term‘frame’ is important. In Shibusa timings areused in a manner akin to Harrison’s andFeldman’s framing of the page by a certainnumber of bars. In painting there are somepre-considerations given to the size of thepainting even before a single brushstroke hasbeen made, involving the stretching andpriming of the canvas itself. Similarly for methe way in which I start a composition is toestablish limits – essentially a frame. Theselimits are often to do with the overall balanceand shape of the composition rather thanspecific details. In an interview in 1997 Ilikened my process of composition to a puzzle– one in which the overall shape of the pieceswas determined but the details of the pictureitself was not preconceived.38 The importantthing to note in this process is that I do notsimply inject my materials into this a prioristructure. The final musical composition isarrived at via empirical means. Adjustments tostructure, flow and internal balance arecontinually made as the details of thecomposition unfold.

For me, the seven attributes of shibusa canbe split into two, reflecting the more tangibleand less tangible concepts at work. The firstgroup comprises simplicity, implicitness,modesty and tranquillity. The second groupcomprises naturalness, normalcy and

imperfection. The concept of seven-ness andits split into groups of three and four isfundamental to the temporal and structuralparameters of Shibusa, both on a macro andmicro level. The lengths of the four pieces arederived from the lowest whole number ratio ofthe 3:4 ratio (9:12), resulting in pairs ofmovements with lengths of 9 and 12 minutes.

In shibusa I – (sendai threnody) theinterweaving ribbon-like motif that occursfrequently in Dickens’ paintings and sketcheswas taken as a starting point (see Figure 1.10).Unlike Harrison, who took the arcs in BridgetRiley’s paintings to configure strict points ofrhythmic entry, I took the encircling of oneline by another to express long melodic lines, each following their own trajectory. At points they cross and coincide. At otherpoints the trajectory of the lines is momentarilyinterrupted. Rather than create a compositionwithin a strict tempo scheme with contrapuntallines, numerous improvisations were recordedon clarinet in the studio. These free asynchronouslines were then reassembled and edited in amulti-track editor. As a result, the lineshopefully convey a sense of naturalness,normalcy and imperfection, rather than beingtoo self-consciously crafted. All the melodicmaterial is also governed by the intervals ofthe third and the fourth, as well as theirinversions – the fifth and the sixth. As a resultof focusing on only four main intervals, themelodic line continually reorders and reworksthis small pool of material to create a strongsense of unity that is both intrinsically simplebut complex in its multiple possible outcomes.

In shibusa II – (entangled symmetries) theconcept of seven-ness is again structurallyimportant. The overall structure of the workwas derived from a two-stage process. Thefirst stage was to develop a foundation inwhich the relationship of 3:4 is fundamental.It was decided to have three sections ofmaterial with a fourth as a coda. The intervalratio of 4:3 is that of a fourth. So each of thethree sections rise a fourth, using the samesonic materials as their foundation. As aresult of each section rising a fourth, thetemporal relationship between each sectioncan be expressed in compound 4:3 ratios –16:12:9. Each section also divides internally

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Figure 1.10 Dickens, example pencil sketch towards Shibusa paintings.

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by the ratio of 4:3, as there are two iterationsof related material in each section. The densityof material also increases throughout thesections from roughly 9:12:16 sonic layers,although this was eventually determined moreintuitively. Thus the most complex sonicinteraction occurs in the third of the foursections of the composition. In thiscomposition the principal concepts at workare those of irregular repetition, interruptedtrajectories, the seeping of one sonic layer into another and the occlusion of layers of material.

shibusa III – (kyoto roughcut) has astructure that is split into two main sectionswith the ratio 4:3 – the first section ischaracterised by interruptions of lineartrajectories and the continual ‘smudging’ or‘blushing’ of one gesture into another. Thelatter section is characterised by noise-basedlooping figurations.

The final part of the work, shibusa IV –(permutations), again draws on theinterlocking ribbon motif from Dickens’paintings, but does so on a more conceptuallevel. I wanted the final part of the work to beas simple as possible – essentially a melodicfigure that repeats over and over, with eachrepetition being subtly different. Having triedand rejected a microtonal melody for beingtoo ‘affected’, I recalled the change ringingtechniques I had heard so often as a boychorister. Change ringing differs from otherforms of bell ringing in that there is noattempt to make a melody – merely the ringingof the bells in a preordained mathematicalpermutation. This technique is inherentlysimple, beautiful, rigorous and withoutaffectation. I chose to use the simplest pattern‘Plain Hunt’, using six tones (two sets ofthree). The resulting permutation is shown inFigure 1.11 (the ‘1’ is shown in bold todemonstrate the weaving ribbon effect).

1 2 3 4 5 62 1 4 3 5 62 4 1 6 3 54 2 6 1 5 34 6 2 5 1 36 4 5 2 3 16 5 4 3 2 1

5 6 3 4 1 25 3 6 1 4 23 5 1 6 2 43 1 5 2 6 41 3 2 5 4 61 2 3 4 5 6

This technique resulted in 12 permutationsof the basic sequence. This was split into twogroups, one comprising five permutations and the second comprising seven permutations(this is almost equivalent to a 3:4 ratio). Each permutation was then written so that ‘1’started each permutation and wrapped aroundback to the beginning to finish the sequence –

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Figure 1.11 Change ringing permutations for ‘Plain Hunt’.

Figure 1.12 Permutations of the initial six-note cell used in shibusa IV –(permutations).

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so [3 5 1 6 2 4] became [1 6 2 4 3 5] and so on (see Figure 1.12). The first set of fivepermutations is presented exactly. The secondgroup is presented with occasional changes ofphrasing; for example, instead of two groupsof three notes, the phrasing is sometimeschanged to a group of three and a group offour notes. As a result, the phrasing ends upcrossing from one permutation to another.

The changes in the second set ofpermutations reflect both the idea of‘imperfection’ in shibui objects and also thenotion of complexity in simplicity – a simpleidea becomes more complex in its presentationthrough subtle shifts of phrasing, even thoughthe ‘object’ (in this case a permutation ofnotes) has not changed at all.

Temporality in Shibusa

In this last section of the work, the listenerfirst attends to the shape of the melodic phraseand perceives a sense of closure after each ofthe first few occurrences. However, as thefiguration is repeated over and over, this senseof closure is lost. The experience becomes oneof stasis, of viewing the same object over andover from different perspectives. The sonicmaterial essentially becomes directionless,devoid of predictable change, and creates anauditory aura perceived as continuing‘present’. This sensation of directionlessness inmusic is what the philosopher Don Ihde terms‘surroundability’. Gordon Fitzell, discussingIhde’s concept, writes that:

The concept refers to an envelopingsensation or ‘auditory aura’ that emanatesan ‘ambiguous richness of sound’ … Fromthe perspective of temporal experience,surroundability constitutes the opposite ofdirectionality. Whereas directionality refersto a perception of predictable change alonga particular dimension, surroundabilityrefers to an experience devoid ofpredictable change. Within such aperception, the onset of each event is‘enriched by the depth of those [perceivedevents] which have just preceded it“equally” present’.39

Prior to the emergence of the Darmstadtavant-garde in the late 1940s and early 1950s,musical time was considered to be primarilylinear, centred on the teleology of tonalstructures. Many electronic and instrumentalworks still follow this notion of musicallinearity, defined by Bob Snyder as ‘ametaphor of physical causation … an attemptto make musical events seem to cause eachother’.40 In the post-war era there have beennumerous composers who have consideredalternative modes of temporality in their work.Pierre Boulez wrote that:

A composition is no longer a consciouslydirected construction moving from a‘beginning’ to an ‘end’ and passing fromone to another. Frontiers have beendeliberately ‘anesthetized’. Listening time is no longer directional but time-bubbles, as it were.41

Stockhausen formulised this thinkingfurther in his concept of ‘moment form’,42

while Morton Feldman aimed at adisorientation of memory through constantchanges in short fragments of material. Tounderstand how compositions such asSpecification.Fifteen (2006) by RichardChartier and Taylor Deupree, themonochromes series (2009) by the electronicmusic duo Tu M’, and the works of ElianeRadigue and Bryn Harrison extend thetraditional linear concepts of temporality, it isuseful to consider them in relation to EdmundHusserl’s exploration of experiential time.43

In his theorising on the structure ofconsciousness, Husserl developed the notion ofa subjective time-consciousness that is distinctfrom objective time. Within this framework,Husserl developed the notion of ‘inner time-consciousness’, the main focus of this being anindividual’s ‘temporal span’ – essentially howone’s memory stores information throughtime. Husserl maintained that the temporalspan comprises three main parts that areinseparable: primal impression, retention, andprotention. Fitzell writes that:

Devoid of substantial directionality, a nonlinear temporal experience permits

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no protentions of closure, onlynondirectional protentions of continuance.Unlike linear music, which features readilyapparent and often predictable temporaltrajectories, nonlinear music curtails alistener’s ability to anticipate conclusion.The effect is one of enduring presentawareness.44

What the last movement of the work,shibusa IV – (permutations), presents is anextreme case of perceived parametricconsistency; continuity that Thomas Cliftonrefers to as ‘sameness succeeding itself’.45 Thissensation of stasis is perceived because of therepetition of small melodic phrases. In thesecond part of the composition, shibusa II –(entangled symmetries), there is a local senseof moment-to-moment progression. Due to thelarge-scale tripartite repetition of the openingmaterial the listener is unaware of theremaining duration – the repetition of materialthat rises a fourth at each occurrence couldcontinue indefinitely. However, in this process,the listener remains aware of local duration,sensing no protentions of closure but instead acontinuity of ‘phases’ rather than a teleologicalprogression.

In choosing to present the music in thisatemporal manner, allied to the focus onirregular repeating patterns, the 3:4 ratio andconcept of seven-ness, imperfection, simplicityand asymmetric forms, there is a suggestion of what Yanagi S�etsu terms ‘scars andspontaneous irregularities’46 and ‘beauty withinner implications. It is not a beauty displayedbefore the viewer by its creator; creation heremeans making a piece that will lead the viewerto draw beauty out of it for oneself.’47

Notes

1 D. Conrad, ‘The dichromaccord: reinventing the elusive color organ’, Leonardo 32:5 (1999), 393.

2 B. Millington, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 23 June 2011).

3 K. Gerstner, The Forms of Color: The Interaction of Visual Elements (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986).

4 N. Hutchinson, Colour Music in Australia: De-mystifying De Maistre (1986),http://home.vicnet.net.au/~colmusic/ maistre.htm (accessed 15 May 2011).

5 S. Kennedy, Painting Music: Rhythm and Movement in Art (Nebraska: Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, 2006), 8.

6 D. Ashton, The Unknown Shore: A View of Contemporary Art (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1962), 205–6.

7 H. Garcia, ‘Improvisatory music and painting interface’ (M.Sc. thesis, MIT, 2004),37.

8 R. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

9 Garcia, ‘Improvisatory music’, 32–3.10 I. Xenakis, Mycenea Alpha,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yztoaNakKok (accessed 16 May 2011).

11 S. Inglis ‘Oval. Markus Popp: music as software’, Sound on Sound (2002), www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct02/ articles/oval.asp (accessed 21 June 2011).

12 J.-P. Ternaux, ‘Synesthesia: a multimodal combination of senses’, Leonardo 36:4 (2003), 321–2.

13 T. Hubbard, ‘Synesthsia-like mappings of lightness, pitch and melodic interval’, American Journal of Psychology 109:2 (summer 1996), 219–39.

14 Ibid.15 R. Hupka, ‘The colours of anger, envy fear

and jealousy: a cross-cultural study’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 28:2 (March 1997), 156–78.

16 A. Sarno, ‘Mark Rothko: a cross modal approach’, Elements (spring 2006), 63, www.bc.edu/research/elements/issues/ 2006s/elements-spring06-article7.pdf (accessed 14 May 2011).

17 D. Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession(London: Atlantic Books, 2006), 127.

18 A. Patel ‘Syntactic processing in language and music: different cognitive operations, similar neural resources?’ Music Perception16:1 (1998), 27–42.

19 O. Messiaen, Traité de rythme, de couleur, etd’ornithologie (1949–1992) (Treatise on rhythm, colour and ornithology), completed by Yvonne Loriod (Paris: Leduc, 1994–2002).

20 G. Smith and N. Walker Smith, American Originals: Interviews with 25 Contemporary Composers (London: Faber & Faber, 1994): 243–4.

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21 D. Young and M. Young, Spontaneity in Japanese Art and Culture (2006), http://japaneseaesthetics.com (accessed 3 June 2011).

22 J. Harada, A Glimpse of Japanese Ideals(Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shink�kai, 1937), 31.

23 Young and Young, Spontaneity in Japanese Art.

24 Ibid.25 Bryn Harrison, interview with M. Adkins,

University of Huddersfield, 18 November 2010.

26 Ibid.27 Ibid.28 Ibid.29 Ibid.30 Ibid.31 G. Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of

Sensation (1981), trans. D. W. Smith (London: Continuum, 2003), 26–8.

32 Aaron Cassidy, interview with M. Adkins, University of Huddersfield, 25 April 2011.

33 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 1.34 Ibid., 3–4.35 Cassidy, interview with M. Adkins.36 Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 13.37 Cassidy, interview with M. Adkins.38 http://soundandmusic.org/

thecollection/node/1347039 G. Fitzell, ‘Time-consciousness and form in

nonlinear music’ (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 2004), 14.

40 B. Snyder, Music and Memory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 230.

41 P. Boulez, Orientations, ed. J.-J. Nattiez, trans. M. Cooper (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1986), 178.

42 K. Stockhausen, ‘Momentform’ in Textzur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musikvol. 1, (Cologne: Du Mont, 1963) 189–210.

43 E. Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1928), ed. M. Heidegger, trans. J. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964).

44 Fitzell, ‘Time-consciousness’, 22.45 T. Clifton, Music as Heard: A Study in

Applied Phenomenology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 104–5.

46 S. Yanagi The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty (Tokyo, New York: Kodansha International, 1989), 192.

47 Ibid., 124

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