DISSONANCE, SEX AND NOISE: (RE)BUILDING (HI)
STORIES OF ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC
Miguel Álvarez Fernández
Universidad de Oviedo
Departamento de Historia del Arte y Musicología
ABSTRACT
This article presents a reflection on some ideological
problems that surround the creation of a history of
electroacoustic music. The analysis of the role and
evolution of a musical concept through the history of a
musical tradition can show the strategies used in the
creation of a historical narration. As an example of
these rhetorical devices, the article briefly tracks the
presence of dissonance and noise in diverse musical
traditions through the last century. Thus, two parallel
historical narrations are presented. Some apparent
differences between them are questioned when the
concepts of dissonance and noise are regarded as ‘the
other’ for each respective musical tradition. An analogy
connecting music and sex (as different ways for
contacting ‘the other’) is also discussed. The concept of
‘the other’, standing for what is and must be usually
hidden and repressed, works as a limit for the identity
of any ideological construction, including the Western
subject. The analysis of ‘the other’ and how it is
repressed or emancipated can therefore reveal important
aspects of the identity of a musical tradition.
1. INTRODUCTION
Thinking about the history of electroacoustic music
demands the definitions of the concepts of history and
electroacoustic music. The former would exceed the
purposes of this article, but some reflections on this
issue will be pointed out. Regarding the latter, such a
definition involves not only an idea of technology but
also (and as far as we do not include this into the
concept of technology) an aesthetical approach to
music. Then by analysing the history of each of these
ideas about technology1, or the history of each of these
aesthetical approaches to music, we can find different
histories of electroacoustic music.
It is possible to trace one history of
electroacoustic music through the analysis of the role
played by dissonance in its development. We can also
use the concept of noise as a guide through the
evolution of the music that makes use of electroacoustic
technologies. Two different histories may appear, with
their own different pasts. And from each of these pasts,
we may be able to foresee even more diverse futures.
2. DISSONANCE
One of these histories roots itself in the middle of the
last century, with its center at the WDR studios in
Cologne. Names such as Robert Beyer, Herbert Eimert,
1
As Jonathan Sterne does in [16].
Werner Meyer-Eppler or Karlheinz Stockhausen appear
at the beginning of this history. Of course we could
track at least part of its origins in Paris during the
previous years, but that period can be also thought of as
only the preparation of what was going to be born in
Germany some time later.
Part of this history of electroacoustic music, as
it was explained before, is constituted by the history of
the aesthetical approach to music present in the work of
the aforementioned. This particular approach is strongly
associated to serialism, and we can find a very good
testimony of the close relationship between serialist
thought and these early electroacoustic practices in the
first number of die Reihe journal [10].
Serialism was not only an aesthetical approach
to electroacoustic music. It had begun in the domain of
what we could name today as composition with
‘traditional’ instruments. Since 1948, it had its center at
the Summer Courses of Darmstadt (where most of the
authors mentioned before met each other), and it
nurtured many instrumental pieces and musical
thoughts.
There is one aspect of the serialist approach to
composition, and to music in general, that gains special
importance for the purposes of this article. It has to do
with the relationship between new music and history.
For the most representative composers of this
movement, new music was somehow detached from
history. The serial procedures permitted one to compose
following completely different rules than the ones that
constituted tonality (which, by the way, could only be
considered as a system after the appearance of
serialism). And tonality was, according to this history,
the core of the Western classical tradition. From this
point of view, serial music could be easily seen as
something “out of history” or, if we prefer, a new “zero
point” in history.
From our growing historical perspective we
cannot avoid questioning these ideas. Strong
connections bind the serial approach to music with
previous musical practices. Serialism, through its
extreme interpretation of some aspects of Webern’s
work, not only inherited many ideas about music from
the Second Viennese School, but also many elements
that Webern, Berg and Schoenberg themselves had
received from their tradition. Between these
assumptions we can underline, for example, a strong
influence of the idea of absolute music [9], or a
characteristic understanding of the idea of progress in 3. SEX
art.
Music (and art in general) can be regarded as a medium
between ourselves and ‘the other’ (or, if we prefer, ‘our
The idea of progress involved in the notion of
other’). Sex can also be considered, in a similar way, as
music that these first electroacoustic composers took
another access to ‘the other’ or ‘our other’. This ‘other’
over was closely associated with the concept of
perhaps has found its best conceptualization through the
dissonance, as it has been developed by Adorno1.
Freudian notions of unconscious and subconscious, and
According to him, what modern music offers is not
it is remarkable that these ideas were born in the same
sensuous pleasure but dissonance, caused by the
Vienna-fin-de-siècle where Schoenberg radically
convergence of the immanent dynamic of art and the
transformed the concept of dissonance.
external reality, or by the inclusion of the non-
integratable in the process of artistic integration. For
Following this conception, both in sex and
Adorno and for his musical tradition, dissonance, as an
music ‘the other’ would represent what is and must
expression of negativity, plays the role of ‘the other’. It
remain hidden, unknown and alien to our world, to
represents the empirical ‘other’, strange to the concept
ourselves. And in both cases our different ways to
of (absolute) music. Modern music, to avoid being
approach to ‘the other’ evoke words like repression,
fetishized, constantly negates its artistic confine and
domination or tolerance4. Coming back to Freud, this
maintains the mobility between itself and this empirical
‘other’ can always reveal itself through the error, the
‘other’.
lapsus. Searching for what ‘error’ means in the context
of a specific musical practice can thus help to uncover
Dissonance was ‘the other’ for classical
this music’s ‘other’.
Western music, and so it was for the electroacoustic
music that, as we have seen, followed a particular
It is even possible to establish an analogy about
branch of that tradition. This process took place in a
how changes in our conception of ‘the other’ tend to
historical moment when dissonance was already
happen in the domains of sex and music. In this regard,
‘emancipated’, but this fact did not affect dissonance’s
we can remember how Spanish composer Agustín
important role. The dialectic relationship between
González Acilu (born in 1929) describes the
consonance and dissonance inherited by the serial
transformation that his sensibility experimented when
music composed for traditional instruments was merely
his traditional music background (deeply root in
transposed to the music composed with electronic
tonality) was firstly confronted to the composition of
media.
atonal music. He describes this process as a change in
his “auditory morals” (“moral auditiva”) [8], and
The decades that followed the appearance of
compares his increasing tolerance to the phenomenon of
this new music constitute a period that, borrowing the
dissonance with the acceptance that Spanish society
expression from Georgina Born, we could designate as
was meanwhile beginning to show for the bikini
“the institutionalization of the musical avant-garde” [4].
swimsuit. It is also interesting to note the strong
The main aspects of the musical thought in question
presence of the idea of progress both in the thought of
extended, during the second half of the last century, to
the musicians that expanded the concept of dissonance
some of the most important centers of music education
and in the social acceptance of different sexual
and research in Europe and the United States2.
behaviours (usually regarded as a matter of ‘social
progress’).
As a result, the value of dissonance as ‘the
other’ in the growing context of electroacoustic post-
4. NOISE
serial music was strongly diminished, as Adorno
himself pointed out3. This phenomenon could be Tracking the presence of noise in different musical
understood as an intrinsic transformation operated in manifestations could lead us to another possible history
this particular musical tendency, or as the result of a of electroacoustic music. Again, the starting point of
general historical process. Following the second, this history is movable, though the beginning of the last
adornian interpretation, this process would have century seems like a good possibility. Parallel to the
increased ‘culture industry’s’ capacity for making us conception of Schoenberg’s musical revolution, some of
understand everything (including ‘the other’ in the form the earliest electroacoustic devices (such as radio,
of dissonance) as a commodity. phonographs or the first technical attempts of
introducing sound in cinema) started to spread. Many
composers (dissonant or not!) remained deaf to the
implications of these new technologies on the ideas of
1
And discussed in [2]. sound and music, but for many artists (not necessarily
2
Remarkable manifestations of these issues can be found in [4] and musicians) they represented a turning point in the
[12], the latter representing a great summary of the implications of histories of sound and music.
structuralism in electroacoustic music. Maybe we can also observe this
phenomenon as an inheritance from the desires expressed by
Schoenberg when declaring that his discovery of the twelve-tone
composition method would “ensure the supremacy of German music 4
Tolerance, as a concept that we can only apply to ‘the other’, can be
for the next hundred years” (cf. [18], p. 234) understood as just the other side of the same coin represented by
3
Cf. [17], p. 36. repression or domination.
 The concept of noise was specially affected by
the artistic use of these technologies. Maybe we could
borrow the idea of ‘emancipation’ in order to describe
what happened to noise through the work of the
Futurists (mainly after Russolo’s ‘Art of Noises’), or
composers like Varèse or Cowell. But the presence of
noise in music does not describe a straight line (like the
one that the history of dissonance tended to draw). Its
evolution not only passes through the names of
composers, but it also crosses the work of (sound) poets
and inventors (as Schoenberg would define John Cage).
Noise occupies as well a very important place in the
field of popular music, through its different shapes
(blues, jazz, rock & roll, rock…), each one of them
presenting a more or less direct connection with the
classical Western musical tradition.
In the last decades, and thanks to the
increasing access to computer technology and audio
production tools, new forms of popular music (such as
techno, house, ambient…) have appeared. It is difficult
to find many features shared by all these different forms
of music, but we can affirm that dissonance has not
played the same role in them as it did in the tradition of
Western classical music. In a certain way, noise
substituted dissonance in its relationship with music.
And, from this point of view, the tolerance to
dissonance that contemporary classical music has
progressively developed would be comparable to the
increasing acceptance of distorted guitars and grainy
voices1 showed by popular music.
This phenomenon is especially clear in some
forms of popular music that have built an aesthetic
approach from their link with noise. Glitch, post-digital,
or simply noise are some terms coined for practices and
styles of music that use a technology inherited from
what was used in Cologne during the fifties. And, as
Kim Cascone expressed in a well known article devoted
to the “Aesthetics of Failure”, “(…) more specifically,
it is from the ‘failure’ of digital technology that this
new work has emerged: glitches, bugs, application
errors, system crashes, clipping, aliasing, distortion,
quantization noise, and even the noise floor of
computer sound cards are the raw materials composers
seek to incorporate into their music” [5]. While in
Western classical music the error produced dissonance,
in post-digital music the error generates noise.
The error, the musical lapsus, is a common
way for ‘the other’ to emerge. And noise appears as ‘the
other’ all through the history of these musical practices.
Following Freud’s theories, the lapsus linguae can
guide us to the unconscious [11]. Masami Akita, an
artist whose background comes mainly from popular
music expresses his view about the relationship
between music and noise in a brief sentence: “Noise is
the unconsciousness [sic] of music” [1].
1
The reference to Barthes and the genotext also appears in [13], p. 58:
“Maybe we should listen out for the noise in the voices of Kristin
Hersh, Tim Buckley, Prince, Michael Jackson”.
As it was shown before, some strategies of
approaching ‘the other’ are shared by sex (understood
as a Western cultural production) and the musical
tradition that takes dissonance as its ‘other’. But we can
find very similar means for referring to ‘the other’
through the history that tracks the presence of noise in
music. Henry Cowell evokes in these words a common
strategy, repression: “Although existing in all music, the
noise-element has been to music as sex to humanity,
essential to its existence, but impolite to mention” [6].
Repression is a characteristic way of
approaching ‘the other’ in our culture. As Jacques Attali
wrote, “Not an essential myth which does not call upon
the musician as a protection against the noise, perceived
everywhere as a threat from which it is necessary to be
protected. Not a myth which does not describe the
music like the shaping, the domestication, the
ritualisation of the noise (…)” [3]. Even the visionary
Russolo, in his “Art of noises”, shows his desire of
disciplining noises, assigning pitches to them and, by
so, making them fit into a norm: “We want to give
pitches to these diverse noises, regulating them
harmonically and rhythmically” [14]. Murray Schafer
also tells us about the repressive attitude of our musical
tradition when he writes that “Noises are the sounds we
have learned to ignore” [15].
As another example, the desire for reaching
newer limits or extreme aspects of ‘the other’ can also
be found in different sexual and musical practices. In
the interview quoted before, Akita refers to Merzbow
(his own recording name) in the following terms: “If
music was sex, Merzbow would be pornography”2.
Pornography, by showing what is usually hidden,
represents a form of transgression. In this sense, its
evolution can be described as a constant search for new
limits, a conquest of uncharted territories. These are not
very different goals than the ones pursued in the works
of Merzbow, nor in Schoenberg’s compositions.
5. CONCLUSIONS
‘The other’ always represents a focus for our fears and a
menace to our identity. Being one of the limits of this
identity, ‘the other’ is indispensable in order to define it
(the Latin word definire reveals this aspect).
We can therefore define a musical tradition by
describing its ‘other’. Concepts such as dissonance or
noise have played this role in different Western musical
practices. An analysis of the different strategies implied
in the relationships between these traditions and their
‘others’ shows similarities that transcend categories like
high/low culture and help to redefine concepts such as
‘progress’, ‘emancipation’ or ‘transgression’.
These different ways of approaching ‘the other’
not only appear in different musical traditions, but also
in other cultural productions like our conceptions about
sex. Probably repression is the most common
2
Cf. [1], p. 60.
mechanism that mediates between us and our ‘other’, [9] Dahlhaus, C. La idea de la música absoluta
just like between a musical tradition an its ‘other’. (translation by Ramón Barce), Idea Books,
From this point of view, when this ordinary practice of Barcelona, 1999.
repression fails, in the form of an error, ‘the other’
[10] Eimert, H., Boulez, P., Stockhausen, K.,
appears. So the concept of error can be useful to
Meyer-Eppler, W. and others die Reihe, I
distinguish which elements are considered
(English version), Theodor Presser, London,
manifestations of ‘the other’ for a particular subject or
1958.
tradition.
[11] Freud, S. Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
Dissonance and noise have been constantly W. W. Norton, New York, 1989.
repressed and expressed through processes that
[12] Holztman, S. Digital Mantras. MIT Press,
constitute the histories of two different musical
Cambridge, MA., 1994.
traditions. It is possible to identify in both traditions
moments in which ‘the other’ is not repressed but [13] Reynolds, S. “Noise”, in Audio Culture.
integrated. This process of integration normally implies Readings in Modern Music (C. Cox and D.
depriving ‘the other’ of all its particularities, or Warner, eds.), pp. 55-58. Continuum, New
annihilating all the conditions of possibility for ‘the York, 2004.
other’ to exist.
[14] Russolo, L. L’Arte dei rumori. Edizioni
Futuriste di “Poesia”, Milano, 1916.
As a result of such a process, dissonance stops being
‘dissonant’ (as happens in serial music), and noise [15] Schafer, R. M. The Soundscape. Our Sonic
cannot be ‘noisy’ anymore (as is clear when listening to Environment and the Tuning of the World.
some of the new musical styles mentioned before). This Destiny Books, Rochester 1994.
may be understood as a possible end for the different
[16] Sterne, J. The Audible Past. Cultural Origins
histories previously presented, or as a starting point for
of Sound Reproduction. Duke University Press,
new histories that wait to be told.
Durham, 2003.
6. REFERENCES [17] Stockhausen, K. and R. Maconie Stockhausen
on Music. Marion Boyars, London - New York,
[1] Akita, M., “The Beauty of Noise: An Interview
1989.
with Masami Akita of Merzbow”, in Audio
Culture. Readings in Modern Music (C. Cox [18] Stuckenschmidt, H. H. Schönberg. Vida,
and D. Warner, eds.), pp. 59-61. Continuum, contexto, obra. Alianza, Madrid, 1991.
New York, 2004.
[2] Álvarez Fernández, M. “Disonancia y
emancipación: comodidad en/de algunas
estéticas musicales del siglo XX”, available at
http://www.tallersonoro.com/espaciosonoro/04/Arti
culo1.htm.
[3] Attali, J. Bruits. Fayard, Paris, 2001.
[4] Born, G. Rationalizing Culture. IRCAM,
Boulez and the Institutionalization of the
Musical Avant-Garde. University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1995.
[5] Cascone, Kim “The Aesthetics of Failure:
‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary
Computer Music”, Computer Music Journal,
vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 12-18, Winter 2000.
[6] Cowell, H. “The Joys of Noise”, in Audio
Culture. Readings in Modern Music (C. Cox
and D. Warner, eds.), pp. 22- 24 Continuum,
New York, 2004.
[7] Cox, C. and Warner, D. (eds.) Audio Culture.
Readings in Modern Music. Continuum, New
York, 2004.
[8] Cureses, M. Agustín González Acilu. La
estética de la tensión. ICCMU, Madrid, 2001.