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Cox - Practice - Fassung vom November 21, 2021 ZZ: 216.000.
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<TB>Notes Toward a Performance Practice for Complex Music<TE>
<NB>Frank Cox<NE>
The music of the last quarter-century presenting the most radical music-immanent developments--
which as a short form, the author will, despite the insufficiencies and controversial nature of this term,
generally call complex music--presents a fundamental paradigm shift in the entire performance
practice of Western art music. With its extreme degrees of both density and fine detailing, and its
coalescence of highly rationalized materials, notated challenges, and organization with an extreme
physicality and almost irrationality of results, it has presented new music performers not only with
"threshold challenges" which are exponentially more difficult than those of earlier generations of new
music, but with performative challenges that are qualitatively new. Perhaps the most vexing of these is
that of responsibly realizing complexes of challenges so difficult, manifold and often mutually
contradictory that all attempts to realize them "perfectly" according to traditional technical standards
are doomed to failure. Such extreme developments, which have rendered inadequate those training
methods and means developed over the last two centuries in order to achieve a higher degree of
performative accuracy and reliability, have widened the rift between contemporary composed
demands and performative capabilities to a degree rarely seen in the history of Western art music. Not
only are competent and willing performers for such music in short supply--to the degree that an entire
generation of radical composers, largely due to the claimed impossibility of their music, has barely
appeared at all in the "new music" festivals of our time--and most of the few current performances of
this music inadequate, but many of the fundamental issues involved its performance are still in need of
the sort of clear basic formulation necessary to develop adequate learning/training methods, these
being the soundest basis for any improvement in technical performative standards.
It is of the greatest importance for the further development--unto the achievement of the furthest
potentials--of a domain which has not yet passed its peak of musically vital results, that ever-more
responsible performances of such music of ever-greater refinement be heard, and that adequate
clarifications of the reasons for such unusual challenges and their musical potentials be presented. At
all levels, the descent into generic compositional, performative, and listening templates must be
prevented, so that the entire domain may avoid sinking into those well-worn categories already
prepared to contain and restrain it, most particularly the often-cited charge that such developments are
merely notational in nature and represent the mere willfulness of mannerism. Not only the vital
musical potentials--including those for a yet-unknown level of performative refinement and
accomplishment--but, more importantly, the sort of visionary urge which summoned such music so
excessively into existence can avoid generic rigidification and can develop into new forms only on the
ground of responsible realization and powerful interpretation.
Thus, although several specific suggestions for training methods will be proposed, this essay will
less provide a set of tools for solving problems than attempt firstly to clarify the nature of the
performative challenges (both explicit and implicit) of this music, and secondly focus on the problem
of defining what a responsible interpretation of this music should aim to accomplish, requiring a
lengthy discussion of current models of new music performance practice. A planned future set of
essays will focus more directly on more concrete challenges, such as extended microtonality, complex
rhythms, and the simultaneous performance of multiple layers of independent, rationally-organized
actions.
<ZB>I.A. High-Modernist Model of Performance Practice<ZE>
The mere presence of musical/performative challenges as extreme and fundamentally new as those
found over the last quarter-century indicates--granted that the music contains a substantially new
expressive/musical content that demands such a radically determinate and unique form of
Cox - Practice - Fassung vom November 21, 2021 ZZ: 216.000. Seite 2
notational/performative realization (in short, granted that these challenges are not merely notational
and/or mannerist in nature)--not only that an essential development of material is in process, but that
1
the underlying relationship between all elements in the "communicative chain" of conception,
notation, performance, and reception is undergoing a fundamental transformation.
These recent transformations in performance practice must be measured against the ideal type of
what the author will call a high-Modernist model of performance practice, now generally considered
synonymous with morally responsible performance. This model is based on the ideal of a noise-free,
"transparent" relationship between all elements of the above-mentioned chain, with a direct functional
relationship between 1) notation, as indicating tasks demanding responsible technical mastery, 2) what
the author will call an adequate "realization," in which all the notes are correct, all the rhythms are
accurately realized, all the dynamics, phrasing marks, etc., are audibly projected, and so on, and 3)
ideal perception, which should be able to measure, based on the score, the correspondence of the
former two aspects, and even more ideally, perceive composed relationships from responsible
realizations (issues of perception are quite obviously too extensive to allow full discussion in this
paper). The properly interpretational level (meeting the unwritten demands lying behind the notated
form of substantial music) should, according to this model, primarily begin after one has mastered the
technical challenges: one aims for an "ideal" performance, balancing the demands of adequate
technical realization with those of the less specifiable interpretational realm. In the "soft" versions of
this model, demands of responsible realization may occasionally be overridden by interpretational
demands, but in "hard" versions, the latter should always be subordinated to the former. This model
requires both clear performative goals (traditionally, the "sound-image" of the piece one aims for from
early stages of learning--both goal and motivation for further practice) and clear, competitively
testable performative standards necessary to the realization of this goal: one must aim for something,
know how one is to improve, and be able to tell whether one is improving or not, ideally in
comparison to other performances of the same piece. Such judgments are independent of the good
intentions of the performer: either one comes close to meeting the high technical standards of the
"authoritative" performances of the classical-music world or one loses all hope of being taken
seriously. The benefits of such standards are manifold, among these both the spectacular improvement
2
1
As italicized, material denotes Adorno's (impossibly broad) definition: 1) the raw materials with which one composes; 2)
at the more abstract level, both historically sedimented tonal/rhythmic/gestural materials and relationships and
rhetorical/syntactic/formal patterns and models, the dialectic of all of these unfolding not only pseudo-naturally (i.e.,
seemingly "of their own accord:" following Marxist theory, all these aspect/elements belong to the superstructure of a
society, which is intimately interwoven with yet ultimately reflects the nature of and changes in the substructure, itself
constantly undergoing a self-consistent dialectical development), but also rationally (i.e., developed according to a self-
consistent system-intrinsic logic: this aspect lies closer to the theories of Schoenberg and Max Weber); and 3) not only
the sum total of the desires, hopes, and sufferings of all individuals in a society, but the collective reservoir of potentials
and restrictions of the society as a whole.
2
In this paper, the author will make liberal use of Max Weber's notion of "ideal types," i.e., extreme "model"
manifestations of certain clusters of approaches and ideas, which should not be assumed to correspond perfectly to
reality. Although one could find particular exemplars which would seem to represent each "type" defined in this paper,
humans are always too complex to fit firmly and perfectly into pre-existent molds, and most musicians to some degree
embody and realize many aspects of all the "ideal types" described.
The author's definition of a high-Modernist model of performance practice is quite clearly such an ideal type: this
model (the presuppositions of which have been generally but not universally accepted) actually comprises a broad range
of approaches and attitudes toward performance practice, 1) in the earlier part of the 20th century largely defined by their
reaction against what were considered the merely willful and musically illegitimate aspects of "Romantic" performance
practice (most particularly, in reaction against Wagnerian theories),* 2) throughout the 20th century reflecting the
imperative of technical perfection (including as substantial components tonal cleanliness, power, and "gloss"), the
leading force in this development being the recording industry, and 3) in the first ca. three-quarters of the 20th century
responding to the radical performative challenges of modern/new music.
Although is difficult to give any "starting-date" for the high-Modernist model of performance, a new manner of
performance was clearly demanded by modern music from the nineteen-teens on: motoric and neo-Classical musics
demanded a more "objective" performance style, whereas the higher-level tuplets, more complexly interwoven textures
and structurally-conceived dissonant combinations of the Second Viennese School required a greater degree of accuracy
in technical performative levels throughout this century (the technical domain allowing the clearest
field for competitive comparison), and the provision of means for hindering too great a preponderance
of artistically illegitimate factors, such as the "loveliness" and size of the performer's tone (this in
general directly proportional to the expense of his/her instrument, therefore to the performer's financial
resources), the force of the performer's showmanship, and/or the performer's marketing savvy/political
connections and power. 3
Later, more absolutist versions of the high-Modernist model, initially developed to meet the
more stringent performative challenges of radical post-WWII new music (particularly serial and
serial-type music, but such absolutism of technical standards being even more necessary for most
mechanistic/Minimalist music), raised the standards of both performative precision and responsible
realization immensely, the latter often treated as absolute and absolutely testable, all at the expense of
the interpretative, intuitive, and stylistic factors which were in earlier periods considered the ultimate
goal of performance. The following discussion of the high-Modernist model of performance practice
in general intends the broader definition, whereas absolutist versions will be more fully discussed
below (see sections II.B and II.C).
<ZB>I.B. Challenges Presented by Complex Music<ZE>
in all domains. The most theoretically powerful formulations of a high-Modernist model were in general provided by
performers and theorists associated with the Second Viennese School, particularly in response to the Schoenbergian
conception of musical logic: responsible realizations are necessary in order that the inner musical logic of any substantial
piece of music be aurally traceable. These have also proven to be broader in application and more enduring than
conceptions more closely bound with passing tastes.
Other tendencies included in this ideal type include those strongly influenced by the recording industry,
"objective" styles applied to traditional music (cf. the overwhelming influence of Toscanini in the U.S.A.), and styles
strongly influenced by popular music. The pioneering period for the high-Modernist model (i.e., the time in which these
ideas were perceived as an original challenge) lasted for several decades, the high-point (i.e., the period during which
such ideas broadly achieved the status of self-evident truths) probably having been reached ca. 1960-1980 (this also
being the "brewing period" for fresh conceptions, such as the original-instrument movement), and the last few decades
having witnessed a steady decay of vitality in this model.
In the realm of traditional music (i.e., music at the core of the Western Classical music repertoire), the recording
industry has so succeeded in enforcing ever-higher standards of performative accuracy (most spectacularly realized by
studio musicians) that, in comparison to "perfect" mastered recordings, most listeners now are somewhat disappointed in
hearing any wrong notes or tonal impurities in live performances. Such artificially high standards of accuracy have led to
the preponderance of rather lifeless, technically "perfect," and often stylistically incorrect performances of traditional
music common at this time (one must note that recent developments, such as the increasing interest in recordings of live
performances and the impetus of a more firmly-grounded stylistic awareness due largely to the original-instrument
movement, have shown signs of change in a more positive direction). Despite the obvious insufficiencies of this situation,
most performers of traditional music, whether consciously or not, largely subscribe to the high-Modernist model as
described above. Many would desire to change the balance toward greater interpretive freedom, but very few would wish
to return to the earlier "Romantic" performance practice (i.e., the negative, "irresponsible" definition of this same, as
described above).
*N.B., "Romantic" performance practice might be considered another "ideal type," but it should not be confused with
either the somewhat parodistic definition of it by its most egregious excesses as seen through the denigrating lenses of the
high-Modernist model (i.e., equated with performative irresponsibility) or the somewhat kitschy "double" provided by
current performance practices of Romantic music, i.e., that one must play this music with a constant wide vibrato, with a
loud, bellowing tone, etc. This latter practice is most emphatically not Romantic, having little or nothing to do with
performance practices current when the music was composed, but is rather a backward projection of present-day
performance practices (and, in the author’s opinion, usually damages the authentic musical/expressive substance of this
music).
3
In actual fact, these factors still play too important a role, but the high-Modernist model at least provides a clear
rationale for treating such factors as musically illegitimate.
Complex music in general, and more recent radical complex music in specific, presents substantial 4
challenges to the high-Modernist model, among these being the following:
4
The author will treat the notion of complex music as a sort of ideal type, thus as a broad categorization whose intent is
more descriptive and explanatory than constitutive. This term is, after several decades, still controversial enough that
not a few composers employing musical means and thought-models which could reasonably be called complex
bitterly resist this label. It is not the author's intention to incite controversy by suggesting names of composers whom he
believes could be included in this ideal type, and he must apologize in advance if anyone should be offended by being so
included.
Firstly, the author's understanding of "complex" is that this is an broad attribute for very different individual
pieces of music bearing certain striking, yet difficult-to-define similarities, composed by different individuals of different
nationalities, often extremely different backgrounds, intentions, outlooks and so on. Secondly, though, however
individual their intentions and outlooks, all these composers employ the common language of music and "speech" of
notation, which transform every individual intention into a general form. If these composers employ (relative to their
time) extremely difficult microtones generating complex intervallic/harmonic/syntactic relationships, high-level tuplets
far surpassing the abilities of most present-day performers and generating entirely new sorts of rhythmic/metric conflicts,
and so on, one can assume that either they are employing--for want of a better term--complex means with a serious intent,
or that they are using these means cynically (and/or self-expressively), with no intention that any interpreter, analyst, or
listener take these seriously. If the latter is the case, then the author would be most happy to exclude such composers
from not only the “complex” label, but from serious consideration (at least in terms of performance practice; such
music might indeed prove texturally striking, although it is unlikely to have great lasting value). For the former case,
the primary question regards whether such composers are willing to accept the fullest and broadest consequences of the
means they employ or not; if so, the author sees no objection in employing the descriptive term "complex" to such
endeavors.
Thirdly, in order to provide some perspective on the author's general attitude, he must state that his primary
concern with new artworks is with their potential for attaining a degree of artistic authenticity, which he believes can
only be attained (the following being a necessary, but not sufficient condition) by considering and treating present-day
material in terms of its projective potentials. Only because the author believes that complex material over the last few
decades has proven and continues to prove--the "testimony" being those authentic artworks composed by individual
composers--to possess perhaps the greatest projective potentials for what one could broadly call the "present," does he
believe that it is worthy of serious discussion. Should such means calcify and the works composed with them descend
into predictability, in short, should complex music become a genre, then complexity will no longer deserve serious
consideration. These issues are addressed in the author's article "Annäherungen an eine Projektive Kunst," in Musik &
Ästhetik 13 (2000), pp. 79-85.
Several articles in the present volume by Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (for instance, his "Complex Music: An Attempt
at a Definition") sketch out the basic issues and broader consequences of complex music in admirable depth and
comprehensiveness. All that the author could further contribute would firstly be a radically "nominalist" emphasis on the
unique contribution of the real individual in this "equation:" although elements such as original creative will and
powerful musical personality are not sufficient, they are nevertheless indispensable to the creation of every radically new
work of art which is compelling and substantial. Secondly, the author places a similarly radical emphasis on fostering the
quasi-subjective potentials (for variation/transformation, for development toward goals, and so on, including the
potentials of acknowledging other quasi-subjectivities and of suffering similar sorts of pathologies to which real
individuals are prone) of all aspects/elements that have attained at least a primordial degree of organization within any
piece. Thus, the author tends to view complexity more as the result of confronting the full consequences of this "wager"
of what one might call rational pan-subjectivism (i.e., treating every element/aspect within the "world" of the piece as
though it were potentially a subjectivity/individual/subject) than as a pre-conceived aim. This "pan-subjectivism" must
not be confused with naïve intuitionism; it evades none of the responsibilities of the traditionally "objective" imperatives
(such as well-formedness, craftsmanship, Schoenbergian "musical logic," and formal balance), but is rather radically
responsible to them. This in the sense that it does not merely heed and obey these imperatives as external laws, but must
rather attempt to understand them "from within," itself accept responsibility for executing all decisions made under their
guidance (cf. Kant's opposition of heteronomous morality and autonomous morality). Even more, it must further develop
them: both independently and in interaction with each other, with the demands of material and with the basic metaphoric
conception of the piece.
Granted these presuppositions, the author largely agrees with Mahnkopf's general categorizations, for example
viewing Brian Ferneyhough as the most significant figure of the first generation of complex music; however, the author
would place greater emphasis on some of the music of Michael Finnissy, especially as he has had such a powerful
influence on many British "New Complexity" composers. One specific difference is that the author views Elliott Carter's
works from the late 1950's through ca. the mid-1970's as milestones fundamental to any project aiming toward a
"determinate complexity:" a complexity resulting from the overload of (contextually-defined) radically specific
relationships and interrelationships among (contextually-defined) specific entities. Such a high degree of determinateness
1) In contrast to the high-Modernist assumption that notation should be a "transparent" link, in
the one-to-one, ideally "noise-free" correspondence between adequate conception, notated task,
adequate realization, and ideal perception (with the deeper intuitive/emotive levels lying "behind"
notation), newer developments treat this "linked chain" rather as an overlapping series of volatile
conflicts between incompatibles. Thus, notation is treated as an essentially "opaque" medium (to
paraphrase Derrida, notation is always already "writing," with all its historical sedimentations), and
such notation demands less "reading" in the traditional sense than decipherment. 5
The present generation of radical complex composers generally accepts the need to specify "non-
rational" aims in the highly rationalized and historically sedimented "language" of notation; the
notational medium is thus accepted as an essential part of the musical substance, and both the
conceptualization of the music (often suggested by advanced notational means) and its precise
realization in notational form are not conceivable without this medium. Yet the limitations of this
medium are not accepted as fixed and absolute: the battle between conception and the great resistances
of the notational medium transform both (often against their individual "wills") from within, forcing
composers to realize their expressive visions more precisely and determinately, and notation to reveal
radically new intrinsic potentials.
This has led to heightened conflicts between what is notationally demanded and what is
accurately performable and perceivable. In many cases, the logic of notational demands and the
possibility of their realization in the "real world" of performance and "ideal" perception--such as the
sufficient time to realize a complex gesture and/or layered complex of notated indications and the
possibility of the accurate perception of these same--blatantly contradict each other.
of relationships and entities is at present only possible in the traditional domains of pitch and rhythm, by-and-large the
limits of Carter's universe (in his case, the limits being the total sum of rational relationships within 12-tone equal
temperment and 9-limit tuplets, with a particular focus on regular rhythms). Yet the author believes that not only all
composers content with these restricted means but also all those exploring new domains are duty-bound to acknowledge
the magnitude of Carter's achievement and should seek to attain to at least this level of determinateness and "musical
logic."
The author views Klaus K. Hübler as perhaps the crucial figure in opening the gates to what he would characterize
as "radical complexity" (similar in intent to Mahnkopf's "complexist complexity;" however, in the interest of brevity,
"radical complex music" will not always be distinguished from "complex music"): the application of highly
rationalized/"logical" modes of organization and self-consistent development--characteristic of and traditionally limited
to the "verifiable" domains of pitch and rhythm--to the inner constituents of sound production: dynamics, tonal quality,
air pressure, bow speed, and so on. The consequences of this step, potential in some experiments of the post-WWII
serialists, promised not only in the musique concrète instrumentale developed by Helmut Lachenmann and his followers
but also in the most radical of Ferneyhough's earlier works (particularly the Time and Motion studies), and occasionally
encountered (in approximate form, tinged by the charisma of the performer) in the efforts of highly skilled non-generic
improvisers, could prove damaging to many cherished conceptions of Western high-art music. These have traditionally
sought to preserve a domain of absolute rationality (i.e., notated pitches and rhythms, ideally "perfectly" translatable into
sounding pitches and rhythms without any physical surplus; thus, a suppression of the inevitable errors in translation
between these incompatible "languages" and a denial of any independent role for the physicality required to produce the
sounds) against the lurking forces of irrationality, represented most clearly by "unharnessed" physicality. The radical
challenges opened up by Hübler are firstly that of the application of rational methods and imperatives to those (non-
pitch/rhythm) domains traditionally considered "irrational," and secondly that a thoroughgoing musical logic unfolded in
the "irrational" domain simultaneously de-rationalizes the supposedly impregnable domain of pure rationality, for
example, disentwining the highly rationalized ensemble of components contributing to a high-culture conception of
"good tone." If one fully comprehends and accepts these challenges, one can no longer write a note or rhythm on a piece
of paper and naïvely expect an undistorted, one-to-one translation between what was heard in the head and an
anonymously "perfect" instrumental realization.
5
The immediate post-WWII generation of radical composers also protested against the limitations of traditional notation,
viewing it at best as a necessary evil, and in wishing to make a clean break with the past often abstractly negated its
historical sedimentations. However, they in general accepted the notion of its functional transparency: notation would
better be dispensed with in order to leap directly to the meta-musical goal (for example, purely verbal/conceptual
instructions) or should be reduced to a sort of compositional flypaper for capturing notes, sounds, pictures, concepts and
so on. In both cases the medium possessed no "density," and could equally well have consisted of spots or notes or verbal
instructions or computer note lists.
2) Many of the more recent composed performative challenges have produced a situation in
which a multitude of more finely-specified quantitative degrees (such as demands for successively
finer microtonal and rhythmic divisions, proportional changes in beat speeds, etc.), when combined
into dense clusters, when layered and overlapped, and when applied to new sonically unstable and
extremely physical musical figures, begin to produce qualitative changes in the nature of the
performative challenge. This problem presents perhaps insuperable conflicts with traditional training
methods (i.e., primarily "resonance training," as explained below) and the traditional performative
goals of adequate realization and ideal "sound image." For example, in a situation in which several
highly detailed strata, independently organized upon different principles (for example, two or three of
these strata defined by differently-articulated tuplets spanning different durations, with each stratum
possessing an internal logic) are layered within a single musical line, neither traditional skills nor the
skills adequate for the previous generation of new music are any longer adequate. Although the
learning of each stratum in isolation through repeated practice is still essential, for certain types of
layered strata and complexes of actions, no amount of careful practice with a metronome or through
the "proper placement" method (see II.C Mediation/Conversion below) will ever be sufficient. Some
types of timbral/textural transitions (to use an example for a string instrument, in one stratum a
"thrown bow" or an accelerando in bowed trill activity--i.e., a slurred trill between strings--overlapped
with another stratum governing change of strings or "vertical" bow motion--i.e., movements in the sul
tasto and/or sul ponticello directions) cannot be practiced in the traditional form at a slower tempo
(i.e., with all aspects of the eventual "at tempo" realization present in a slower tempo, this because
tasks such as a "thrown bow" cannot be slowed-down, and complex interactions described above are,
as regards their physical challenges, qualitatively different at slower and faster tempi), but can only be
practiced in their complete form "at tempo." One is forced to learn a new type of corporal logic, in
which the body, having learned internal logic of each stratum, must simultaneously "think" each
independent stratum while performing the ensemble of different strata. However, when simultaneously
performed, one can ensure neither the accuracy of each independent level nor the total ensemble of
interactions. The combined result is always different and unstable in unpredictable ways.
3) This leads to one of the starkest confrontations with the high-Modernist model of
performance practice: the trust on the part of the listeners that the performer has mastered the technical
challenges of the piece, and the trust of the performer that such a goal is achievable. For the newer
music it is often difficult to say what an "ideal" performance or even an adequate realization would be
in the first place, because it is often impossible for all performative indications to be realized in any
one performance. At the same time, the deeper interpretational levels cannot wait for technical mastery
of the notated challenges, because this may never be achieved. Such a situation easily prompts the
suspicion that the notated challenges were never meant to be realized, and that instead of being the
"icing on the cake" of responsible interpretation, an intuitive/improvisatory element has usurped the
role of adequate realization.
The degree and nature of the more recent challenges undercut the possibility of competitive
testability at its core: the degree of finer microtonal/rhythmic challenges surpasses all standard training
methods, and the nature of many timbral transitions in the newer music and the lack of aural
determinability of the goal-state make it impossible for a listener to say with certainty whether one has
arrived at the intended goal at all (as one example, in a movement to sul ponticello, can one aurally
mark if and when the goal position--which is not an exact placement--was achieved?).
The lack of competitive testability leads almost inevitably (and despite the best of intentions) to
an ever-greater acceptance of technical sloppiness. In the performance of radical newer music, this
situation has all too often allowed a degree of performative irresponsibility in relationship to the
notated challenges which would never be acceptable in the performance of better-known music. When
the degree of microtonal and rhythmic challenges surpasses the training of almost all standard-practice
musicians who form the basis of the modern Classical "culture industry," when even supposed experts
in new music cannot hear the difference between responsible and technically incompetent
performances, a great danger exists that instead of performers being challenged to achieve a higher
standard of performative accuracy seemingly elicited by the notation, a complete lack of standards
could come to rule, and thereby lead to a triumphant return of those illegitimate elements--such as
mere bullying and willfulness (circular justifications such as: "It is right because I am a great artist and
I intuit that it is right"), and/or the lack of responsibility to answer to criticisms or even the lack of any
shared grounds for criticism--which the high-Modernist model aimed to eliminate.
This situation often leads critics to claim, in a comparison of the notation and relatively few
performances and recordings of complex music which have thus far appeared, that the entire domain
of complex music is merely a manneristic result of notational developments, and the performance
practice for this music consists largely of fakery. Or, from an opposite direction, many musicians
would claim that the demands are too high for human performers, and the only proper domain for the
realization of such music is that of computer music; unfortunately, this misses the point completely,
precisely because such music is generally conceived as a dramatic conflict between human performers
and the tremendously difficult tasks they face. Although the author believes both opinions are
misguided, they do contain a germ of truth: not only is mere fakery in the performance of such music
common, but many examples can be found of challenges that surpass the present-day potentials of
adequate realization and sometimes even the digital capabilities of humans; the gap between the
notated challenges of this music and present-day capabilities is so wide that it seems that one must
despair that performances of such music can ever even reach a degree of adequacy.
<ZB>II. New Music Performance Practice: Situation<ZE>
<ZB>II.A. Absolute Self-Assertion<ZE>
The seemingly unbridgeable gap between the notated challenges of complex music and any realistic
hope of reasonably adequate realization according to the stringent terms of the high-Modernist model
has led many of the few interpreters of complex music into attitudes which detour from the high-
Modernist ideal of responsible realization altogether: although adequate realization of complex music
is not and may never be possible, it must nevertheless be performed, and one must therefore make a
wild stab at realizing the spirit of the music. Such an ideal type of performance practice could be
labeled "absolute self-assertion" (or, more charitably, "energetic/intuitive striving"), and is most
commonly found among the first generation of performers of all radical new developments, in the case
of complex music, most notably among accomplished classical performers making a brief excursion
into new music and accomplished improvisers searching, in kindred music, for new tasks and new
ideas (improvisatory music and complex music often resembling each other in the extreme energy with
which they explore new textural/sonic complexes). Such performers generally share the assumption
that there is a hallowed domain, often referred to as "artistic intuition" and/or "artistic freedom," which
must remain sovereign over the notated tasks.
Such a blessed domain--when converted into an absolute "good" or even a "heroic" virtue—too
often leads to a glorification of its opposition to the mere drudge-work of properly realizing the
notated pitches, rhythms, dynamics, etc. Considering its supposedly absolute nature, this domain of
"absolute freedom" is surprisingly perishable, threatened with extinction the moment responsible
realization of notated tasks is required. In the most extreme cases of such approaches, performers
refuse on principle to go through the difficult learning process demanded by complex music in order
to realize their freedom through the music. Too-often such performers treat the music as a glorified
form of spatial notation, or as a "cue-sheet" for their musical habits, unfortunately without bothering to
discover the proper "space" for their actions or the proper placement for their "cues" (the proper
duration of measures, the proper tempo, etc.). When freedom is defined as merely the negative of
responsibility, the content of the freedom will usually sink to the adolescent level of the definition--at
its worst, a generic narcissism. Bare intuition deprived of challenges tends to be extremely
conservative, and the freedom of the individual interpreter can only be meaningfully realized when all
his/her abilities are directed toward meeting and realizing new tasks at least sufficient to them, or even
better, beyond their present reach. 6
On the other hand, a certain truth can be found in such approaches--for the most energetic of
complex music, very often the raw gestural energy and the larger-scale vectors and formal shapes can
be more powerfully and energetically realized through such "intuitive" performances than by
traditionally high-Modernist analytical, responsibly detailed approaches. The main problems with the
most arbitrary of such performances are that 1) they lack specificity and are highly generic: for
example, all (as notated) densely-detailed tonally/rhythmically/dynamically/timbrally variegated
complexes tend to become merely generically complex-like fast flurries of actions (i.e., lacking the
non-generic specificity which was its main justification for existence), and 2) they lack syntax: the raw
energy is only non-rational, and cannot rise to the level of defining the precise relationships indicated
by the score. Such performances can only serve to give a general overview of the piece, but cannot be
accepted as sufficient to music of any great specificity.
<ZB>II.B. Absolute Responsibility/Culpability<ZE>
At the opposite end of the spectrum, extreme formulations of the high-Modernist model, which the
author will treat as the ideal type "absolute responsibility/culpability," assume both that the performer
has an absolute responsibility to perform all notes, all rhythms, all dynamics, etc., precisely as notated,
and that an absolute one-to-one relationship between notation, responsible realization, and ideal 7
perception is the only acceptable musical situation. Some degree of "human input" is generally
allowed, but this may not overstep the strict (and for many, absolute) limits defined by responsible
realization of the notated tasks. 8
6
Many composers of complex music have been and are so grateful for any performance of their music that they accept and
praise wildly insufficient realizations. This can be understood on a human and professional level, particularly when the
performer is famous and can help one to survive as a composer. But it would be a great mistake to draw any conclusions
from this approval, and in this case the musicological category of "composer's intention" reveals its shortcomings with
particular clarity: one should always distinguish the human--with his/her worldly position and needs--who composes,
from the composer as embedded in the individual artistic vision of the composition: these two are neither identical nor
even synchronous with each other.
7
Throughout section II.B., "responsible realization," unless otherwise indicated, will be used in this absolutist sense, in
keeping with advocates' intentions to reduce the entire issue of personal responsibility to a matter of quantitative
measurement.
8
One could claim that the absolutist ideal type described above is excessive and has no existence in reality, most
obviously because no one in his/her right mind would maintain, for example, that humans could ever perform as
"perfectly" as machines. The author's response would be 1) that the definition of an ideal type obviates this objection
precisely because an ideal type is an abstraction from reality, the primary question being whether or not such a model
accurately corresponds to a cluster of beliefs which can be found in reality, which is indisputable: any attempt to deny
such a connection must confront the plenitude of spoken, written, and recorded demands for performative perfection
which have accumulated over the last few generations; 2) it matters little what concessions to reality
musicians/composers/critics, et al. mean in their "heart of hearts" when what they say and the values they expressly
advocate contradict what they mean. Perhaps the clearest example of the confusion of fuzzy intent with actual meaning
can be found in the common misuse of cognates of "perfect" ("perfectly," "perfection," etc.) in high-cultural circles as an
illegitimate means of forcing assent for positive evaluations of specific performances/performers and/or advocated
performative ideals. Following a tactic well-known in advertising, current loose connotations of "perfect" ("extremely
good," "the best that I know of," etc.) are illegitimately treated as though they were denotations of this term (i.e., as
though the word "perfect" literally meant whatever I like very much, aim for, etc.), whereas strict denotations (such as
"an absolute degree of flawlessness") are demoted to the level of a connotation which feels absolute but means literally
nothing.
The paradox latent in every attempt to apply the attribute "perfect" to any performance/recording is perhaps most
explicitly revealed in Western composed art-music, which comprises both 1) a fixed, highly rationalized written form,
and 2) a highly-developed performance tradition; the latter, although on a technical level extremely rationalized, also
contains many conventional and other not fully-rationalized elements. In other highly developed performance traditions
Absolutist formulations of the high-Modernist model have in general denied that radical
complex music can (at this time or perhaps forever into the future) be responsibly realized according
to the standards defined above, and that even if it were, the notated tasks as perfectly realized could
never be accurately perceived. Thus, the logical conclusion from these premises is that such music
should not exist, or at the most can be valid only as "paper music." In fact, the newer complex music
has revealed and intensified theoretical aporiai lurking in the most absolutist versions of the high-
Modernist model, among these 1) (Section II.B.1) that, as regards adequate realization of musical
substance, absolutely-defined responsible realization is both necessary (i.e., any realization not
"perfect"--however this might be defined--will inevitably damage the musical substance) and sufficient
lacking such a fixed text, "perfection" is ultimately determined by traditional authority (the master teacher) and tested by
informed judgment (experts and trained audiences), and assertions of "perfection" can thus be more easily accepted (at
least from the outside) as part and parcel of that fabric of "necessary fictions" necessary for any culture. The performance
traditions of Western art music also include many elements which cannot be notated or perfectly quantified, but it is no
longer a simple matter to decide firstly who is qualified to judge in these matters and on what basis, and secondly the
legitimacy and extent of this authority. Developments in Western art music have been so manifold, complex, and
extreme, and the literature chronicling and explaining them so vast that it would be absurd to maintain (despite the
commonness of such claims in the Classical music industry) that any person could attain deeply-ingrained training in all
or become a fully-informed authority in anything larger than a small segment of the total repertoire. In addition, both the
extent and complexity of present-day music systems and the imperative toward openness inherent in free societies
militate--whatever the exigencies of the real world--against the success of any attempt to assert that the aesthetic
judgments of any one human or group of humans possess unquestionable legitimacy.
If it were possible to trust in a system of disinterested mutual critical oversight, then expert judgment in these non-
quantifiable domains (which cannot be proven but require both highly-developed taste and open discussion) might have
some chance of attaining broad legitimacy corresponding to that of traditional authority. The fact that critical oversight
only rarely functions properly in the Classical music world--which has a great number of highly-qualified people and a
broad base of informed opinion--due to artistically illegitimate pressures (commercial, nationalist/regionalist, careerist,
etc.) should lead one, considering the relative and narrowness and seclusion of the "new music" system, to doubt to a
greater degree the functionality of critical oversight here, especially when one notes that substantial newer material
developments constantly make moot the "wisdom" which alleged experts (i.e., those in power) were taught during their
school days.
Within modern societies largely dominated by mass-taste, the lack of universal legitimacy of judgments in such
"fuzzy" domains only accelerates the tendency to convert all such unspecifiable aspects of performance-practice into
their kitschified (or, to coin a neologism, "massified") doubles, which is to say, into pseudo-quantifiable form. The
clearest case of this in the Western high-art musical world is the requirement, enforced by the recording industry, that
any performer hoping to be accepted into this system be capable of constantly maintaining a "vibrant," "refined" and
"expressive" tone. Translated into the vernacular, the tone must be "booming," be lacking any traces of human
inadequacy (for example, any uncontrolled "noise"), and be realized with a constant gluey vibrato, each aspect
functioning, in fine Pavlovian fashion, as a sonic signifier to a push-button signification: high-energy tone = passion,
tonal gloss = "culture"/breeding, wide vibrato = expression (this last equation--widely accepted among Classical
musicians--is particularly difficult to understand, unless the entire range of human expression and its potential realization
in musical form be absolutely equated with a [studiously prepared] funeral lament).
At the same time, this affective domain is also confronted, above all throughout the last ca. 200 years, by ever
more-precisely-detailed "texts," which seem to represent an authoritative model for the accuracy of performance. If any
performer at least implicitly accepts the necessity of a strong relationship between notation and realization, and also
accepts the text as authoritative (both premises of the high-Modernist model), then (s)he must not only aim for
traditionally-defined "perfection." Even if the highest level of accomplishment by such standards is achieved, (s)he will
in addition always be haunted by "error" as absolutely defined by the score; no highly-trained and ethical performer
would intentionally commit errors, much less so when the performance is recorded and the errors preserved for posterity.
Error, according to this fundamentally Platonic model of "mirroring" (powerfully criticized by late 20th-century French
philosophers such as Deleuze/Guattari) is absolutely wrong, and should simply not be; all discussions of the degree and
quality of error thus have to do with concessions to an error-prone reality, rather than with the possibility of assessing
error as a positive value. In a highly rationalized discourse such as Modern and late-Modern music, the temptation is
irresistible to remove judgment of error from the domain of mere opinion and to fix it in quantifiable and testable form,
and errors of correspondence between notation and performance are much better candidates for this than factors not
specified or specifiable by notation (such as questionable and even tasteless stylistic and interpretational practices). The
broad diffusion of computers and other mechanical means of absolutely testing such correspondences seemingly allow
one an authoritative specification of error, i.e., no longer dependent upon fallible opinion but rather provable and
repeatable. It should be obvious that the author considers all such attempts to mechanize judgment as deeply misguided.
(i.e., that non-notatable factors traditionally left to performative intuition and interpretation are merely
an appendage to responsible realization), and 2) (Section II.B.2) that a one-to-one relationship between
notated tasks, adequate realization, and ideal perception can be treated as absolute. Attempts to discard
the projective content of absolutist theories while maintaining absolutist pretensions are dealt with in
9
Section II.B.3, followed by concluding comments in Section II.B.4.
<ZB>II.B.1. Absolute Standard of Responsible Realization as Necessary and/or Sufficient.<ZE>
In order to indicate the shortcomings of absolutist notions of responsible realization most clearly and
concisely, the author will focus primarily on rhythmic issues, particularly on the ideologies of
"absolute placement" and "absolute rate of speed," in short, on the entire "time-point ideology:" that 10
one must place each attack in the absolutely proper place in the time grid (usually measured by
chronoi protoi, clearly-articulated beats, and/or "guidance beats") and realize regular rhythms at the
11
absolutely proper rate in relationship to the meter, other parts, etc., which rate should conform to an
absolute metronomic speed. To various degrees, these assumptions, according to which performance
can be provably right or wrong as tested by mechanical/electronic means (such as the metronome, tape
counter, computer, etc.), underlie the performative standards of many performers of the most
12
rhythmically stringent music in the high-Modernist tradition, most particularly serial and serial-type
musics. Such a performative standard is most suitable for music requiring a high degree of
mechanical/digital accuracy, i.e., music whose rhythm is founded upon mechanically regular attack-
pulses (whether these are explicit or implicit), the most spectacular realization of which is found in
ensemble performance.
Because all sound-events must be precisely placed, the main focus of such theories must
necessarily be oriented toward the initiation of "sound-events." As a result, they foster a performative
approach in which all instruments come to resemble one another in an attack-oriented style lacking
sustained continuations or strong "tonal" connections (i.e., a bel canto type of legato) between events.
In the most extreme formulations of this approach (particularly in the American serialist tradition), all
9
The author always intends by "projective" its radical, world-opening sense; see ibid., "Annäherungen an eine Projektive
Kunst.”
10
This term is borrowed from Milton Babbitt's sophisticated time-point theory, which makes perhaps the strongest
theoretical case for absolute performative accuracy; unfortunately, space does not permit a discussion and critique of this
theory.
11
In ancient Greek musical theory, "metros" originally meant quite simply "measure" (a measure of time), implying
primarily a stream of regular units, and the chronoi protoi were the smallest theoretical regularly-occurring (i.e.,
"measured") "atoms" underlying all rhythm. This rhythmic model is obviously additive in nature and is suitable for
describing essentially melodic/percussive/heterophonic music, but it is clearly insufficient for describing the more
complex multiple-leveled quality of later Western "meter," which was developed to enable compositional and
performative control of such factors as polyphony, harmonic syntax, and complex relationships between horizontal and
vertical domains. The author will use the term "meter" exclusively as implying this more ramified definition, and for the
Greek metros the author will use the terms "regularity" or "speed;" for "chronos protos," the author will occasionally use
the terms "fast counting-unit" or "smallest common denominator."
Due to the mystique of classical antiquity, Greek rhythmic conceptions have exerted an enduring influence on
Western rhythmic conceptions perhaps out of proportion to their substance and certainly outlasting their relevance. Both
"metros" and "chronos protos" were theoretical, projective ideals conceived in a time in which their "perfect" realization
in the world was not possible, but they have too-often been treated as though they possessed an eternal validity, thus
obtruding upon the imperative that every age set its own projective ideals. At the present time, their realization by
electronic/mechanical means is trivially simple, because these concepts (at least as translated into terms which the present
day can understand) are essentially quantitative and thus are easily translated into machine/computer-"language."
Modernized versions of these conceptions underlie most high-Modernist theories of rhythm, which have often been
absolutized into a sort of cult of mechanical accuracy.
12
The less the articulative rhythm of the music is unambiguously defined by such constant attacks or clearly-articulated
beats, the less the metronome can be used as measure of accuracy, and the more electronic/digital means of testing
become necessary.
musical events are described in terms of (theoretically) instantaneous attacks, for which the piano,
percussive instruments and mechanical/electronic instruments are obviously the most suitable means.
In such an ideology, the only interpretive "free-room" for performers is that of accentual emphasis and
some tonal shaping within sustained events.
Although a performance style of such limited range might indeed be appropriate and sufficient
for certain types of post-WWII music, the degree to which it is insufficient for practically all other
music that has ever existed should be fairly self-evident. Any awareness not only of historical
performance styles but of other living performance traditions should make clear how inappropriate
such a style--which, in its universalistic form, denies the validity of all other performance styles--is for
other kinds of music, or even for all instruments whose sound cannot be activated with a percussive
attack. Most claims for the universal validity of such a style have been explicitly based on the notion
of technical progress, but these cannot explain why the style does not merely aim at improving the
technical standards of different performance styles, but at replacing these styles in toto. Implicit in
such claims must lie unacknowledged shreds of avant-gardistic programs in the Hegelian/Marxist
tradition, such that, for example, earlier performative/compositional contradictions are "overcome"
(aufgehoben) by the present style.
The claim that such a style is necessary for the performance of certain types of (post-WWII)
music is defensible. Yet when one considers such a claim from a broader historical viewpoint, it
unwittingly convicts such music of possessing an appeal by-and-large limited to the period in which it
was written. Performance styles change every few decades, and change radically over centuries;
whatever music can only be understood as performed in the style of its time will not speak at all to
listeners only a few generations removed. The opposite is the case for the works at the core of the
Western Classical tradition, which have been performed in many different styles and arrangements
while still conveying something of deep value.
When one inquires into whether the perfection claimed by the theory is at all possible, the
similarity of this ideology to religious doctrines of absolute culpability becomes apparent: every
attempt by humans to realize such tasks will only prove their own fallibility. Even disregarding the
dreadful aesthetic level of the performances which would thereby result, the simple fact is that no
human will ever be able to perform with perfect intonational accuracy even the simplest of diatonic
figures (the experiment of banning vibrato completely and testing the results with a computer would
quickly prove the truth of this assertion), or to realize perfectly even the simplest of even-note figures
(for example, steady 16th-notes) indicated by notation. What is more, it cannot be seriously
maintained that such an absolutely perfect performative realization was ever or will ever be absolutely
necessary to the realization of the musical/expressive content of any substantial music, at least that
intended to be performed by humans. Such a standard of accuracy is impossible for humans to attain
and is only perfectly realizable by the "superhuman" means of machines, against which standard
humans can only be judged as imperfect; however such realization is not "above the human," but
rather below it, a trivial task for a counting machine.
Due to both such obvious theoretical insufficiencies and the disappointment with the majority of
computer realizations, most adherents of absolutist theories have moved toward a "realistic
absolutism," in which responsible realization (still measured absolutely) is considered necessary and
sufficient as a musical goal, but to which the addition of an indeterminate "spicing" of "human input"
is considered optimal.
The weakest point in such a theoretical allowance lies in its restriction of "human input" to a
mere appendage to absolutely-defined realization. Thus, the entire domain of performative "free
room," traditionally necessary for projecting and relating multiple musical elements and functions, is
defined as theoretically unnecessary to responsible realization: i.e., the "free room" can only appear
after responsible realization has been achieved and cannot overstep its absolutely-defined limits.
Focusing the discussion on rhythmic issues, this performative "free room" is traditionally necessary 1)
to prepare events so as to ensure tonal consistency on imperfect instruments in the face of great
physical challenges; 2) to give the proper expressive and qualitatively-differentiated shaping to
musical figures (a clear example can be found in the timing of intervals in traditional performance
practice: in the bel canto tradition, larger intervals often require slightly more time than smaller
intervals, this expressive deformation both arising from the physical challenges of making strong tonal
connections and giving larger intervals greater expressive weight); 3) to shape and clarify the syntax of
relationships between events/complexes of events, define the general pace, and shape larger-scale
transformations; and 4) to adjust for the conditions of different performing spaces. In absolutist
theories, these aspects are generally treated as mere concessions to the "human factor" or "human
input," but in actual fact they are usually essential to a projection of the musical substance, if it is to be
realized by real humans performing on real instruments.
Despite the abstract allowance for "human input," absolutist theories can still provide no logical
justification for allowing performative "free room" in any case of complicated rhythmic interaction
demanding great rhythmic precision. This theory demands exact time-point placement, which will not
be achieved if the above-mentioned rhythmic alterations are allowed. If these are not allowed, the
theory can provide no coherent rationale for the retention of "human input" when machines could
perform such tasks far more accurately. This sort of irreconcilable conflict often leads to ever-
heightened rhetorical emphasis on "the necessity of human input," which "necessity" is, according to
the theory, precisely unnecessary. Typical of absolutist theories, the nearer one approaches the reality
of actual performative situations, the more glaring their theoretical shortcomings become, and the
greater the number of "patch-up" and "allowance" operations become necessary. However, these
inevitably lead to ever-greater logical incompatibilities: in the case of rhythm, any "inaccuracy" is
equivalent to an absolute error, yet "human input" is necessary to give life to performance, as long as
this "human input" does not perform any rhythms at any other than the absolutely proper times. In
such theories, there are almost no immanent conceptual means allowing for performative inaccuracy
or performative "free room" to project relationships, connect events and groups of events, etc. If any
such performative deviations are allowed, then the theory as absolute collapses.
<ZB>II.B.2. Absolute Correspondence between Notation, Performance, and Ideal Reception.<ZE>
The theoretically absolute one-to-one correspondence in absolutist high-Modernist theories between

notated tasks, adequate realization, and ideal perception, is not only--as a projective ideal, within the
limited domains corresponding to the theory--one of their greatest virtues, but also--when
ideologically converted into a supposed reality--perhaps their most fundamental theoretical flaw.
Absolutist versions of the high-Modernist model would maintain that, as regards an adequate
realization, the score denotes precisely what is intended: a notated "C" indicates an absolute tone and a
group of notes specifies both absolute notes and absolute intervals to be reproduced with absolute
accuracy, regardless of the instrument, dynamic, timbre or context; and a notated rhythm indicates a
group of attacks to be reproduced with absolute accuracy in relationship to an absolute time grid (as
discussed above). A degree of non-specificity and performative "free-room" is generally granted to the
less-testable domains of dynamics, timbre, etc., but such allowances tend, in a vicious circle, to reduce
the extent of the validity of the theory to what can be easily specified by notation, i.e., notes and
rhythms. The author would maintain that the rationality and seeming fixity of the notational form
hides many conflicts lurking under the surface of notation.
Unfortunately, notation can specify only a limited number/degree of actual musical/sonic
phenomena/qualities; if other only "weakly"-notatable factors such as 1) dynamics, timbral qualities,
transitions between timbres and dynamics, etc., 2) combinations and interactions between musical
parts/elements/aspects, 3) stylistic factors, and 4) deeper-level aspects such as musical momentum,
harmonic rhythm, prolongational rhythm and intensification, and so on (i.e., a potentially infinite field
of phenomena/qualities/interrelationships) are theoretically allowed anything more than a dispensable
role, then the entire notion of an absolute one-to-one correspondence is fundamentally damaged. If one
admits that such "human input" factors reside at least partially beyond that domain which is precisely
notatable yet are essential to the responsible interpretation of any substantial music, then any theory
which reduces performative responsibility to the absolute realization of notated tasks must be
convicted of irresponsibility.
As regards those domains that should be the most accurately specifiable by notation, the precise
meaning of notational and rhythmic symbols is not as unequivocal as the high-Modernist model would
presuppose.
In the pitch domain, this model assumes 12-tone equal temperment (hereafter abbreviated to "12-
tone ET") with the piano being the standard measure. The limited validity of this measure becomes
particularly clear when dealing with both pre- and post-"high-Modernist" music and non-Western
music: 12-tone ET is appropriate for only a minuscule portion of music ever written, and even within
the Western musical tradition, the essentially same notational symbols have over the last few centuries
indicated several different tuning systems: an uncritical acceptance of 12-tone ET would drain the life
out of performances not only of most traditional music (intended for Pythagorean, just, or mean-tone
[including well-tempered] systems), but even a great deal of modern music.
Even if 12-tone ET is explicitly intended, employing the piano as a standard and reliable
measure of 12-tone ET is highly suspect. Due to the unpleasant timbral results, very few pianos are
actually tuned in exact 12-tone ET (and, it must be remembered, no piano-tuning holds for long):
numerous tuning adjustments, including often-extreme degrees of octave-stretching, are made in
accordance with taste, state of the instrument, and other such factors. Advocates of this model would
be more convincing if they insisted that synthesizers be the only standard measure.
Yet further difficulties constantly arise: firstly, different families of instruments (and different
instruments within these families) have different "tuning constructions" and performance practices
which often conflict with 12-tone ET; secondly, even the fixed-pitch instruments have variable
13
tunings and tuning standards, and thirdly, "A"-standards vary broadly (by more than a quarter-tone)
from place to place, which has a catastrophic influence on the relationship between fixed-pitch and
more variable-tuning families.
Even granted that all these technical/training problems could be overcome, one must admit that
the 12-tone ET standard is only weakly assimilated by most present-day musicians and as accurately
performed is considered unmusical by many of the finest musicians: 12-tone ET is only a practical
compromise and is sonically/functionally deeply flawed, such flaws generally "solved" by the
imposition of a wide vibrato which smears over all finer intonational distinctions (a fuller discussion
of these issues will appear in a later essay discussing tuning systems more comprehensively). 14
Similarly, the mechanical regularity of rhythms as specified by notation is inappropriate for

almost all music ever written and stylistically absolutely wrong for most earlier music; even for
The standard Western orchestra, for example, consists of instruments with great tuning flexibility (such as bowed string
13
instruments and, to a lesser degree, brass and some woodwind instruments), instruments with more stable/fixed tuning
constructions which can to varying degrees be altered (such as the woodwind instruments), and instruments with fixed
tuning, some of which can be more easily retuned (pianos and harps, for example), others of which (such as vibraphones,
orchestral bells) cannot be altered but must be replaced. Constant "tuning wars" are thus to be expected, not only within
each group (the fierceness of such battles within the string family alone are legendary: the violins pushing upward, and
tending toward Pythagorian large major 3rds and high leading-tones, the cellos/basses attempting to maintain stable bass
tones, the violas caught in the middle), but also between groups (for example, the upward tendencies of the high strings
conflicting with the greater stability/fixity of most woodwind instruments, forcing the latter to either sound flat or change
reeds/alter the instrument in order to match the constantly rising "soprano" pitches); in addition, different
temperature/humidity conditions affect the intonation of each instrumental family differently.
One could claim that these incompatibilities are slight in comparison to the perceptual stability of tones, i.e., all
14
"incorrect" performances of a "C," a group of intervals, etc. can be perceptually assimilated to their ideal form. Although
this notion of perceptual stability is one of the key concepts which could lead toward a more valid theory of performance
practice, it opens a gaping rent in any absolutist model: it admits precisely that gray area—i.e., that performative error is
not absolute and might even be perceived as "correct"--which is a priori denied by the theory.
modern music many notated rhythmic figures were never intended to be performed with machine-like
precision.
Because it is obvious that such absolutist standards of notational specificity cannot be
universally applicable, one must either maintain that they are applicable from the period of high-
Modernist music on into eternity, or accept that they apply only to high-Modernist music, with later
developments demanding different standards. If the first choice is made, then one must on principle
deny all subsequent musical developments that do not conform to the theory, which is clearly absurd.
The only logical conclusion is that such standards treated as eternal are false, and that the theory must
be adjusted for future musical developments.
This reveals several basic aporiai lurking within any notational system: notation is both too
unclear and too precise: it can represent barely more than it is designed to indicate and much less than
what is intended to be expressed; but it also indicates a great deal which is not intended. Even the
simplest indications presuppose a vast amount of previous technical, theoretical and stylistic
knowledge for their realization, and can only barely indicate the entire (to use a dangerous term)
"spiritual" domain intended by composers and implicit in material. Yet the highly rationalized form of
notation, when uncritically accepted as an absolute standard, indicates a great deal which cannot be
seriously maintained to have been intended (such as "absolute" pitches, mechanically equal attacks
which humans cannot produce, etc.). This is not to argue that the stability of notational form and its
connection to performative standards is a mere illusion, but rather that any responsible theory of
adequate performative realization on the basis of a score must both acknowledge the many stylistic
and theoretical presuppositions underlying any style of music, and work these as fundaments into any
theory of adequate realization, rather than hiding them or shuffling them into the purely "intuitive"
realm: informed choice and taste are necessary from the very beginning.
<ZB>II.B.3. The Collapse of Projective Aims and the Triumph of Professional Absolutism<ZE>
The last type of absolutist theory consists largely of borrowings from the standards and pretensions of
the present-day Classical music industry (occasionally from the commercial music industry as well)
transcribed into tame contemporary-music form, the main purpose being an attempt to legitimize the
insecure domain of contemporary music as a professional discipline. As one example, perhaps the
most binding imperative in the Classical industry is that performers maintain an illusion of absolute
technical mastery, this in general accomplished through the unbroken maintenance of a high-energy,
glossily "beautiful" tone. This cannot be universally applied to contemporary music, as performers are
occasionally required to produce somewhat unpleasant sounds; therefore, other means must be found
for projecting a similar illusion, which might be characterized as that of technical perfection. Among
other things, this requires that all members of the group play with the same agreed-upon intonation at
the agreed-upon time, thus giving the impression of perfect ensemble. Most fitting for demonstrating
technical “perfection” are spectacular homophonic/unison passages and passages of rhythmic
heterophony and unison; by mastering such challenges, new music groups additionally appear capable
of meeting the mechanistic imperatives of the commercial music industry. Such theories in principal
accept the potential for human error--although professionalism demands that it be eliminated wherever
it can be clearly identified--and honor the individual input of the interpreter only so long as this
illusion of technical perfection is maintained, which is in general as much as to say: as long as the
notes and rhythms are properly performed, a "clean" tone with good tonal focus is maintained unless
otherwise demanded, and that the performance gives the impression of being in perfect control. These
theories are most applicable to an what the author will call "official new music," comprising styles of
composition oriented more toward refining, inflecting, and rearranging aspects of already-discovered
domains than with opening up fundamentally new domains; since the late 1970's, such music,
supported and propagated by the most renowned "new music" ensembles and performers, has
succeeded in becoming an almost international idiom within the contemporary-music system.
If such theories went no further than making a claim for thoroughgoing professionalism, then
there would be a great deal in them with which the author would heartily agree. Yet the scope of the
professionalism here required is extremely narrow, largely limited to the most notatable/testable
aspects (i.e., the pitches/intervals 12-tone ET and rhythms whose morphology is little more advanced
than that found in progressive music from immediately after WWII). It also contains a lurking
absolutism, one which has, however, shed the projective "dead weight" of post-WWII radical theories:
all error is absolutely wrong, yet human error in the face of excessive challenges is inevitable;
therefore, if leading "new music" ensembles/performers cannot at this time responsibly realize such
notated demands, then the demands themselves are unreasonable: whatever cannot be played
"perfectly" does not deserve to be performed at all. 15
Although it is difficult to treat such patchworks of clichés, defense mechanisms, and shreds of
rational thought as coherent theories, because such a general ideational framework is treated as self-
evident among most prominent groups, conductors and performers in the contemporary-music world
and has, in the author's opinion, wreaked incalculable harm to the further development of the art form,
these views must be answered at length.
All such claims to performative perfection are, as discussed above, spurious; what their
advocates actually mean by "perfectly" can only be the "at the highest possible level." The aim of
maintaining rigorous performative standards must always be applauded, but in an art form which goes
by the name of "new music," any decision to limit one's concern for maintaining standards to those
domains which are relatively secure (i.e., extremely conservative pitch and rhythmic challenges) is, at
the least, highly questionable; even worse would be to treat the relative reliability of these domains as
an absolute standard for condemning all those domains which have not yet achieved this degree of
stability as unworthy of consideration. If the highest level of professionalism in the domain of new
music is desired, and the advocates of such theories consider themselves the watchdogs of
professionalism, then it is difficult to understand what argument they could advance against requiring
that anyone who claims to be a new music performer learn some of the skills appropriate to the
challenges placed by more recent radical music. If one dares to make absolutist claims for
professionalism in the pitch/rhythmic realm, how could one avoid requiring that potential new music
performers spend years assimilating the challenges presented by microtonality? Why should they not
at least be required to learn quarter-tones thoroughly, not to speak of finer equal-temperment divisions
or the entirely distinct realm of extended just intonation? And how could it damage professional
standards to require that professional new music performers master the control over graded mixtures
of noise and tone, or different degrees and ranges of "decoupled" physical motions (for example, for
string instruments, varying degrees of bow pressure/bow speed/vertical bow placement and precise
transformations of all these components) and the precisely-rhythmicized superimposition of these
same? If arguments grounded upon professionalism are the basis for denying the validity of such
skills/domains, then one is in the position of claiming that a true professional should treat such newer
challenges unprofessionally (i.e., such challenges are unworthy of a "true professional" and thus can
be safely ignored). If absolutist arguments are used for the same purpose (i.e., more recent challenges
are, in contrast to the absolutely provable realms, unprovable--at the present and perhaps intrinsically--
and must therefore be rejected), then one must be able to secure the stability/provability of the
conservative pitch/rhythmic challenges absolutely.
Yet even these supposed islands of reliability are not incontestable: were one to actually measure
with electronic devices the supposed perfection in the pitch/rhythmic realms of most well-known "new
music" ensembles and performers, even if one focused one's efforts only on most conservative
challenges, one would be surprised at imperfection of the results. The following plain facts must be
16
Many such musicians even go so far as to assert or imply that by refusing to even attempt such challenges they are
15
maintaining the highest performative standards for their respective instruments, surely a paragon of twisted reasoning.
This is particularly true in the rhythmic realm. Outside of machine-like regular-iteration challenges (found above all in
16
Minimalist and other mechanistic-type musics), which have been assimilated extremely well in some quarters, more
recognized by all those claiming an absolute technical superiority for any performer and/or group.
Firstly, a great deal of technical progress still needs to be made by all performers even in these
relatively secure realms, i.e., that there is absolutely no truth-value (if truth-value is at all a concern in
the "closed society" of contemporary music) to the common claims that leading groups of performers
possess "flawless intonation" or "perfect rhythm." Secondly, even among the most renowned
ensembles, not only taste but purely sociological/psychological factors such as authority, prestige,
charisma, public relations, careerism, ego-battles, and "groupthink," play a far greater role in choosing
and enforcing operative performative standards than rational argument or the enforcement of absolute
standards tested by appropriate technological means (which would at least provide some truth-value to
the claims of absolute technical reliability). Thirdly, even granted that in the pitch/rhythm domains
absolute reliability were already achieved or even achievable, one must admit that this (admittedly
astonishing) accomplishment should be treated only as a means, not as an end, and may even be
inappropriate for many musics: for older music, a less "perfect" realization of the pitches and rhythms
might express the musical substance far more powerfully than a "perfect" realization (the "perfect"
accomplishment of 12-tone ET, for example, being in itself--as this intonational system is only an
abstract compromise--musically insignificant, and only truly sufficient for a very small range of
music). In the broader view, all such performative accomplishments are only a relatively solid ground
from which one must always aim to achieve yet higher levels of refinement and face new sorts of
challenges.
Even if they were to accept such facts and arguments, professional absolutists could still console
themselves by recalling the tremendous technical progress--above all noticeable in the ever more
brilliant performances of what are presently considered "new music classics" (surely an oxymoron)--
that has been accomplished over the last few generations of performers due to the increasing
professionalization of new music, and might therefore feel justified in insisting that future
performative standards progress further along this route. Yet this would only end up further convicting
performers who uphold technical-absolutist theories of self-contradiction or even hypocrisy. Firstly, in
recognizing that technical standards will continue to rise in the future, one implicitly admits that future
listeners will judge even the most "perfect" of present-day performances as technically insufficient,
thus both removing the last supporting leg from any absolutist argument and exposing all present-day
technical absolutists to a future belittlement similar in nature to that which they presently exercise so
often upon those they deem unworthy. Indeed, the only ethical decision for any technical absolutist
who accepted these arguments would be to cease performing immediately, in order to avoid lowering
performative standards. Secondly, it is impossible to deny that these same spectacular performative
advances occurred at all only because certain composers some decades ago placed radically new
performative challenges which initially seemed completely unreasonable, precisely the sorts of
challenges which present-day technical absolutists refuse to even consider.
A more fundamental issue of the responsibilities of any "new music" performer is thereby
revealed; it would require (at least) a separate essay to due full justice to this issue. For the present, the
author can only challenge the advocates of technical absolutism to think--and apply their standards--
consistently, such that they understand the full consequences of the form and type of absolute
standards that they advocate. Perhaps the most compelling argument against such absolutism would be
complex notated and implied rhythmic challenges are often astonishingly "imperfectly" realized, even by
ensembles/performers treated as paragons of accuracy. Such inaccuracy cannot be attributed solely to the weak rhythmic
training found among most professional musicians, but is also a result of the varying roles the rhythmic aspect of
interpretive "free room" (discussed above) plays in shaping any interpretation; in such questions, informed and musically
intelligent critical oversight must play an essential role. In the domain of complex music, these are notably lacking: very
few present-day critics/reviewers, in comparing the printed music with the performer's realization, could honestly claim
they had any idea what was performed correctly or incorrectly; even fewer could, in the face of such precisely-notated
challenges which still must be brought to life, provide intelligent justifications for the sorts of rhythmic distortions which
any fine musician intuitively makes. For a further discussion of these issues, see the author's article "Arditti String
Quartet spielt Elliott Carter," in Musik & Ästhetik 17 (2001), pp. 25-35.
the following: granted the proven fact that few (if any) world-premières of the masterworks forming
the core of the present Western repertoire were initially performed "perfectly" or even "well" (even
measured by technical standards of their own time, not to speak of present-day higher technical
standards), would such advocates claim that none of these works should have been performed until
they could be performed at the highest possible level? If this is asserted, then such advocates must also
agree to the consequences: radical composers such as Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, or Schönberg should
never have been performed in their own lifetimes, which is as much as to say that they should have
ceased to compose. Perhaps such advocates should also consider the likelihood that, in demanding
such unreasonably high performance standards for radically new pieces, they are unwittingly robbing
future times of the sorts of works that they might very well have come to treasure.
One of the most important consequences of the general success of such professional-absolutist
attitudes has been a wholesale retreat from the most radical material potentials of the early post-WWII
music. One would not expect that most "new music" performers would have great interest in radically
new challenges, as many of these are Classical-music professionals taking a break from their usual
fare; the same goes for younger composers who are or wish to be professional successes in the system,
as this success would be endangered if their music presented any unconventional difficulties. More
disturbing is that so few voices of leading figures in the "new music" system--of critics, thoughtful
conductors/performers and above all composers who could sway others to at least consider issues more
fundamental than the state of one's own small career, indeed, whose position of authority demands that
they fulfill this responsibility--have been raised in an attempt to prevent this wholesale settling dead in
the middle of the road. Most troubling in this regard is the spectacle of once-radical composers, after 17
having arrived in the institutional "mainstream," scrambling to re-cast their work in the most
conventional possible form: retreating to spatial notation, accepting pale compromises of the harsh
dynamic and timbral contrasts in their earlier music, even studiously erasing microtones and
complicated tuplets from their early music. One hears in the recent music of such composers a glossy,
placating "museum" quality difficult to distinguish from the ossified neo-Classicism against which
they once mobilized all their idealistic energies. This quality is even more notable in music of their
students/epigones, who have not even rebelled against the musical language of their "parents," but
have instead clothed themselves comfortably in it. 18
The entire domain of "new music" now seems to be engaged in acting-out a grand simulacrum:
the energies, resources, and considerable skills of new music groups, rather than being devoted to their
true role of forging new performative standards in the attempt to realize the challenges of radically
new domains, are instead dedicated to the play-act of "heroically" mastering challenges of the most
blatantly conservative and even commercialistic sort. This fatalism with regard to the inevitability of
human error in the face of radical new challenges has led to the erection of a sort of firewall protecting
the fragile domain of the "absolutely secure" from further material advances. Although the attempt to
banish/regulate error absolutely can be understood on a human level as a means of legitimizing oneself
This critique is focused on those forces contributing to the stability of the new music system, because these will
17
inevitably tend to exclude all radically new content. Thus, ossification will be the norm so long as the idealistic grounds
for the system's existence are suppressed and/or allowed to remain empty formulas (i.e., are not constantly renewed
through open discussion). In order that this critique not be misconstrued as a polemic against individual composers (many
of whose works the author admires a great deal), no names will be mentioned. In general, one could say that the radical
composers intended are those who presented the most extreme new challenges in the first two to three decades after
WWII.
Cynicism tempts one to ask whether the main purpose of the entire new music system has not become that of producing
18
"official new music." If enough talented people within this system--concerned only with the rewards it can offer them--
confuse the smooth functioning of the system with its legitimacy, if the Modernist aims fundamental to justifications for
the mere existence of a new music system--i.e., the realization of original, substantial musical visions as advancing the
state of human perception and "knowledge," and potentially providing for the future cultural goods of intrinsic value--are
forgotten or no longer trusted, if the system as a whole completely loses the capacity for self-questioning and radical self-
renewal and becomes solely devoted to the defense of that which has been already accomplished, then perhaps it has lost
its reason for existing.
and one's discipline through the illusion of complete control, it can also be condemned on this level for
both its deficit of projective energies (in a field which by reason should be devoted to fostering these
same) and its seeming denial of one of the most precious of human capabilities: the potential for
failing. On the logical level, however, this attempt stumbles into blatant absurdities. Once one
theoretically allows for a degree of human error, unless one can determine precisely how much
performative error/"free room" and of what quality is permissible for both all existing "new music"
and all future new music, i.e., unless one can achieve an absolute specification of "responsible
realization" of eternal validity (yet whose "eternal" validity actually begins only at the moment of this
specification!), then it is scarcely permissible to draw such an imaginary line and maintain that any
newly-composed music whose present-day realization cannot meet such an indeterminable level of
performative accuracy cannot and therefore should not be performed.
<ZB>II.B.4. Conclusions<ZE>
Both the high professional aims of all absolutist theories and the idealistic thrust of some are deserving
of admiration, demanding immensely higher technical standards of performance (realized by some
new music musicians to an astonishingly high degree ) and rigorous training methods necessary for the
19
responsible realization of such standards. Such absolutist theories are not absolutely "wrong:" they are
largely valid within the limited scope of the musics for which they are appropriate; but they are
incomplete, and become ideological when they overstep their boundaries and illegitimately claim
universal validity, banning all aspects and domains which either intrinsically resist clear definition or
have not yet attained clear and definite form to the abyss of absolute error. As ideological, they have
led to a false bifurcation: either any performance meet such absolute standards or it must be judged
absolutely false; music, performance, and perception are either absolutely rational by these standards
or absolutely irrational. Ironically, by such standards, almost all music ever performed was performed
"wrongly."
More importantly, simplified versions of such absolutist theories have, over the last few
generations, all too often served as pseudo-scientific justifications for evading the challenges of
radically new music, with the absurd result that most "new music" performers trained in absolutist
theories refuse--on "moral" grounds (!)--to perform the most radically new music of our time. If the
defenders of such absolutist theories of performance end up, despite their rhetoric of moral
accountability, asserting such impossibly high standards of performative accuracy as could only be
realized by machines and therefore deny on principle human performance of radically new music, then
they can with justice be accused of abrogating their own responsibility--as performers ostensibly
committed to the performance of new music--to achieve, in the confrontation with substantial new
challenges, ever-higher performative standards.
<ZB>II.C. Mediation/Conversion<ZE>
The first two "ideal types" were described in the extreme terms of absolute non-acceptance or
acceptance of the high-Modernist model, whereas the third ideal type might be considered a more
forgiving form and further development of the high-Modernist model: a mediation between the
stringent demands of this model and both a) an acceptance that absolutist standards cannot be applied
directly to the extreme performative demands of radical complex music, and b) a desire to privilege an
The striving to achieve such accuracy and the tremendous dedication and training necessary to come even close to
19
achieving it are worthy of the highest admiration, but such intrinsically human aspects have only become explicitly
thematized in the more radical complex music, because only with the advent of such music has the potential for
performative error become intrinsic to the musical substance. This latter possibility presents a fundamental paradigm
shift in performance practice, and would be absolutely denied by the high-Modernist model. This issue is still awaiting
fully grounded philosophical and theoretical explication.
intuitive performative energy which is often necessary for the responsible interpretation of such music.
This ideal type would be represented by those performers who have not only developed the technical
skills sufficient to master the challenges of earlier and present-day official new music, but who have 20
additionally attempted to responsibly realize the extreme challenges of complex/radical complex music
through means which the author has termed "mediation" and/or "conversion" and who perform such
music with the proper intuitive energy. 21
In general, such performers attempt a responsible mediation (certain compromises with "reality"-
-among other things, due to the shortage of rehearsal time--being intrinsic to the task of performing
such music) between great specificity of the challenges of radical complex music and highly-refined
present-day skills. Fairly stable and accurate realizations are usually achieved through operations of
converting newer challenges into the terms of already-assimilated skills:
1) In the realm of pitch, quarter-tones are converted into tones lying in-between the "stable" 12-
tone ET well-learned by such performers.
2) In the realm of complex rhythmic challenges (higher-limit tuplets, nested tuplets, overlapped
tuplet layers, proportional changes in beat speeds, etc.):
2a) complex textures (especially in ensemble situations) are converted into a spatial grid, with
attacks measured by their placement before or after other events in the same or other instrumental part,
before or after a "guidance beat" (usually the conductor's beat), etc. For higher-limit tuplets with
missing attacks (for example, isolated attacks on the 5th and 9th elements of an 11:x tuplet) and nested
tuplets, the most common manifestations of this approach consist in a conversion of notated tuplet
events into decimal equivalents in relationship to the "guidance beat;" 22
2b) complementary to the above method, in order to ensure the proper speeds for regular streams
of attacks, the rates of all tuplets, secondary tuplets, etc. are converted into "absolute" metronomic
equivalents, i.e., an 11:9 16ths at MM64 is converted into a metronomic speed of ca. MM313 (which
could be treated as 16ths in relationship to an imaginary beat at the speed of ca. MM80); this method
These "present-day skills" including 1) the ability of maintaining accurate and stable 12-tone ET intonation in the face
20
of wide registral leaps, complicated rhythmic/textural/timbral challenges, and so on, 2) in the face of complex
pitch/textural/timbral challenges, the ability to maintain steady beats, to remember and reproduce basic metronomic
speeds with fair accuracy, and to perform with fair accuracy and stability simpler beat-based tuplets up to the 7- or 9-
limit* (i.e., 5:4, 7:4, 9:8, etc.) and 3) the ability to fairly accurately and stably reproduce notated dynamics,
timbral/textural challenges, and so on.
The challenges of complex music include 1) microtonality (usually 1/4-tones), 2) higher-limit tuplets (13:9, etc.),
nested tuplets (multiple layers of tuplets), overlapped/incomplete tuplets (for the former, multiple layers of tuplets
overlapping each other, for the latter, situations such as one in which only 4 of 7 septuplets are present, the fifth marking
the start of a new "beat" and/or measure), proportional changes in beat speeds (i.e., meters such as 4/28, 6/36, etc.), and
quickly-changing tempo indications demanding precise realization, and 3) multiple layers of independent, rationally-
organized actions.
The more recent radical complex music demands a much finer level of accuracy in all these domains (for example,
microtonality extended into 1/8th and 1/12th tones, tuplets extended to higher limits--21:x, 23:x , etc.), and often treats
rhythmic problems more metrically than the earlier music, most notably in the thoroughgoing usage of tuplet meters.
*The terminology "x-limit" is borrowed from Ben Johnston's extended just intonation system. The 7-limit, for example,
comprises all whole-number proportional intervallic relationships up to and including the 7th over- and undertone.
Applied to rhythm, this would comprise all possible tuplet relationships up through septuplets: both 7:2, 7:3 ... 7:6 and
2:7, 3:7, ... 6:7, including all duple variants of either element (thus, for 7:2, 7 quarter-notes versus 2 whole-notes or 2
half-notes, and so forth). Anyone claiming to have mastered the 7-limit should, analogous to the level expected of
performers of extended just intonation, upon being given only a few regular beats at any reasonable speed, be able to
perform any over- or under-tuplet up to and including septuplets in relationship to the beat, then take this beat and play
another 7-limit tuplet against it, and so on.
Prominent among the "first generation" of musicians to face the challenges of complex music, and who led the way in
21
the discovery and development of the presently-discussed means were British groups, above all the Arditti Quartet, which
has set a new standard of technical accomplishment for all new music quartets.
For example, given a quarter-note beat, for the tuplet 11:7 16ths starting on the 2nd 16th of the 1st beat, the xth attack of
22
the tuplet (in the formula, converted into 1.75[= seven 16ths]/11) would occur at [(x - 1) * 1.75/11] + .25, the 5th attack
thus lying at .886... of the first beat, the 6th attack at .045... of the second beat, and so on.
obviously requires a high level of ability to memorize and accurately and instantly reproduce absolute
metronomic speeds; 23
2c) lastly, a mediation is made between the proper relative placement of events and proper
individual speeds of events; such mediation must also be extended to the specificity and energy of
musical gestures/figures, the overall musical momentum, and so on.
3) Similar mediation/conversion operations are also used firstly to realize the extreme challenges
in the less specifiable/testable domains of gesture/figure, texture, dynamics, sonic quality, and
complex interactions of events, and secondly to mediate between these and the more
traditional/testable domains of pitch and rhythm.
4) A further mediation lies more in the interpretive area and is less precisely specifiable. Most
complex music demands for its responsible interpretation a degree of what the author will call
"intuitive/expressive striving," that intangible performative energy which arises in the gap between
what is learned, what is earnestly striven-for, and what can be achieved in responsible performance of
any music. With radical complex music, this energy is often built into the tasks of the piece and is a
substantial part of the musical content; thus, it is the natural result of any attempt at responsible
realization of such music. Even when the individual indications and strata in such music are
responsibly learned, because the full ensemble of indications and strata in many cases cannot be
"perfectly" realized, such interpreters in performance make an energetic and intuitive attempt to
realize as much as possible of the most significant aspects. Many accomplished performers of this
music have achieved an extremely high level of intuitive ability in this domain (see footnote 21).
Such approaches and methods, generally used by the most accomplished interpreters and groups
performing complex music, are often the fastest and most practical means of coming close to realizing
and responsibly interpreting the extreme challenges of this music, above all in ensemble performance.
Up until ca. the early 1990's these had led to immeasurably higher standards of performance of such
music than had hitherto been achieved. Although the above-mentioned approaches/methods are
important and often necessary, 1) if they are considered sufficient for the challenges--both explicitly
notated and implicit--of the earlier complex music, then either the music must be judged too-
complexly notated for its actual substance or the approaches must be judged as insufficiently
responsible to the musical substance, and 2) they are clearly no longer sufficient for the more extreme
challenges of the recent complex music.
Whereas absolutist theories treated the connections between elements of the "communicative
chain"--particularly those between notation and performance--too rigorously, these approaches lean
too far in the opposite direction of ignoring the necessity for any law-like stringency in their
relationship, instead converting all conflicts into a matter of negotiation. The following criticisms of
these methods do not deny their great value as preparation for practice or as methods of checking for
accuracy, but apply most of all to their employment as adequate "translations" of the musical
substance, i.e., as the goal of practice. Such fast methods of learning are too rarely sufficiently
corrected and/or compensated by thoroughly-grounded methods of learning corresponding more
directly to the notated and implied tasks.
In the following critique of such approaches/methods, in the interest of clarity and due to
limitations of space, the author will again focus primarily on rhythmic issues.
Any high-level new music performer must have memorized at least a small basic repertoire of tempi that can be used as
23
"absolute" reference points. These usually consist of lower-limit proportional tempi around the central tempo for new
music, MM60. Such a repertoire might consist of MM40/MM48, MM60, MM72, MM80, MM96/MM100, MM120,
MM144/MM160, deeply ingrained through long practice with the metronome (the most solid memory of such tempi in
general comes from those standard works of the common-practice era which one has earlier learned), all other speeds
then being related (i.e., as "a bit faster" or "a bit slower") to these speeds. In truth, perception of tempi is never exact, but
at least a few such tempi can be relied upon in normal circumstances.
1) The approaches/methods described above are often insufficiently responsible to the notated
tasks, both to what is precisely indicated and to what is implied. This applies most of all to the
"conversion" methods described above.
As regards the "proper-placement" method and the usually concomitant conversion of the
placement of attacks in terms of decimal equivalents, the conversion into an abstract "time-line" often
damages the rhythmic web of music which is conceived metrically (meter meant in the strongest, i.e.,
multiple-leveled, sense), most particularly in the case of tuplets, which in the author's view are most
productively conceived-of as temporary counter-meters existing in a precise dissonential relationship
with the meter and other strata. The "decimalization" approach is in particular both musically and
perceptually suspect. If a performer is truly thinking in terms of decimal divisions, then even the
simplest tuplet would turn into a complex decimal equivalent: a simple triplet would become 3
dectuplets plus 1/3 of a dectuplet, septuplets would produce even more complex fractions, and such
complications would become even more unmanageable with higher-limit tuplets and nested tuplets.
Quintuplets are difficult enough to conceive as decimally fixed "places" (.2, .4 of a beat, etc.), but
dectuplets (.1, .2, etc.) are even more so, not to speak of yet finer decimal distinctions. This is because
humans do not intuitively divide such spans decimally, but by duples and (only by dint of long
training) triples. Decimal units (outside of the duple division) have no direct correspondence to
24
human performance or perception, and finer decimals--hundredths, thousandths of seconds, etc.--are

not human perceptual (or even usual notational) units, but units of mechanical/computer measurement.
Although one can with validity check for performative accuracy using mechanical/computer means,
such accuracy bears no absolute relationship to perception--as but one example, tuplets can often be
performed with greater qualitative distinctiveness and musical "accuracy" by means of slight agogic
deformations; thus, any claims of human performative/perceptual accuracy as absolutely measurable
25
by such means are specious.

Many such performers have learned to "smooth-over" decimal placements through assimilation
of the proper metronomic rate and proper gestural shape and grouping, but the tuplets are too-seldom
thought of or performed as precise proportional "dissonances" to the meter. Thus this approach is
largely a-metric: one is reacting to and placing events in relation to the (guidance) beat, but there is not
an integral relationship to the meter; one can rarely prepare and commit one's attack weight
analogously to the "landing" on strong beats in the traditional, multi-leveled conception of meter. 26
This leads almost inevitably to the floating, "pointy" (attack-point) characteristics of most
For most instruments, rapid articulative possibilities are intrinsically grounded on duple groupings, i.e., back-and-forth
24
motion (thrown down-and-up bows for bowed string instruments, pressure-regulated tongue motions for wind
instruments, left- and right-hand patterns for percussion instruments, and so on); articulations by triple groupings for
these instruments are achieved only by laborious practice of extensions of the duple principle, whereas higher-limit
articulative groupings--quintuple, septuplet, etc.--are in general achieved only through combinations of duples and
triples. Only with digital-articulative instruments (primarily keyboard instruments) are basic combinations on the basis of
triples, quadruples, and quintuples possible, but even here higher-limit groupings are again dependent on combinations of
more basic triple and quadruple groupings (quintuple groupings for these instruments are rarer because the thumb is
usually treated as an "extra finger"). Thus, all higher-limit tuplets on all instruments known to this author are almost
inevitably realized by combinations of duples and triples, which sorts of combinations for performers inevitably become
basic ground for intuitively dividing any duration. The theoretical connection of perception to such basic performative
groupings is obviously difficult to prove, but it is difficult to believe that perception is entirely uninfluenced by the basic
articulative possibilities of instruments.
This agogic "free-room" applies most of all to lower-limit tuplets; depending on the context, the general rule applies: the
25
higher the tuplet limit and the more rhythmically determinate the texture, the greater the need for iterative accuracy; this
rule can be explained by the author's employment of the concept of the "necessary degree of accuracy" for any task,
explained below.
Such positive comments concerning traditional metric practices should not be interpreted as a reactionary desire to
26
return to the metrical system of common-practice music. Rather, the author would wish to both radically extend the
structural/technical potentials of meter while retaining, through analogical re-constitution, the greatest virtues of the
traditional metrical system, particularly its ability to provide multiple qualitatively differentiated yet analogously related
levels of musical functioning.
performances using this approach: attacks are not "weight-attacks" but only "sting" attacks either
operating in a metric vacuum and/or avoiding whatever beat exists.
The metronomic-speed approach is extremely useful as a means of ensuring approximately-
correct speeds, but again tends to be a- or anti-metric. When one converts tuplets into abstract speeds,
27
one is not "thinking" and learning a task grounded in a musical context, but rather a speed/beat which
could be completely unrelated to the context: proportional speed/duration relationships with the meter
tend to be weakened, the qualitative "feel" of the tuplet tends to vanish, the rhythmic/metric syntax can
be damaged, and what should be a rich and complex set of musical relationships can very quickly
become a rather simple overlaying of unrelated strata. 28
A second criticism is closely related to the first: if one treats such methods as sufficient, then one
is not deeply learning the skills necessary for the notated tasks, and one is not practicing the individual
tasks themselves (as indicated by notation), but a mere approximation these same, in both cases always
adding-on "irrational" inflections to known skills. If one constantly converts such a tuplet as 9:7 into
decimal/metronomic speed equivalents, one is not learning the tuplet itself (the full learning of even
relatively simple tuplets adequate to the full range of their musical potentials and "meanings" requiring
long training), and if one merely places microtones between the well-learned and stable 12-tone ET
tones, then one is not learning the microtones and microtonal intervals themselves (these also requiring
long training in order to achieve the exponentially greater degree of precision demanded by the
microtonal realm). In both cases, one is not treating the tuplets and microtones as aspects/relationships
that could rise to the level of the music/functionally "real," but as merely "irrational" approximations.
Similarly, if one learns specific tasks within each piece in terms of conversional "approximations," one
cannot deeply learn the tasks themselves properly through the standard means of "resonance training"
(described below): one is always learning something else then the actual task.
2) As regards the task of responsible realization of the "threshold" challenges of more recent
radical complex music, the above-mentioned means are clearly no longer sufficient. At least two
examples make this clear: 1) the ability to place 1/4-tones approximately halfway between the stable
tones of 12-tone ET is not adequate to the challenges of 1/8- and 1/12-tones. If the latter are to be
more than a mere irrational appended to another irrational, at least the level of 24-tone ET (i.e.,
quarter-tones) must be thoroughly learned and functionally "real" (this term refers to aspects which
have achieved stability and system-intrinsic rationality; in the case of quarter tones, for example, this
requires that both all 24 tones and intervals be stably reproducible undergoing transposition,
octave/registral transfer, in complex linear passages, and so on); and 2) in the case of highly rational
and thoroughgoing employment of proportional changes in beat speeds (especially in faster tempi), the
mediation/conversion approaches listed above are by and large useless: in such situations there can
often be no adequate "guidance" beat, and speed-relations between bars must be learned
proportionally, not in terms of metronomic speeds (although these can be useful as a check); more
pertinently, such means are completely inadequate for achieving the qualitative metrical differentiation
often demanded by such music.
In conclusion, as regards both older and more recent radical complex music, the above-described
approaches/methods are in themselves adequate neither to a precision and specific tension of
This approach offers many advantages to performers, among these that memorized metronomic speeds can be reliable
27
references when one is faced by complex notated demands or complex circumstances. The greatest problem with relying
on these tempi is that in live performance, and especially when one is under great stress, one's absolute sense of time and
therefore ability to accurately reproduce metronomic speeds is usually distorted (generally in a faster direction).
On the other hand, such an approach makes more sense in the case of multiple levels of tuplets, i.e., in musical contexts
28
in which deeper-level tuplets (i.e., tuplets spanning larger spans upon which multiple levels of secondary, tertiary, etc.
rhythms are specified) function as temporary "beats." In this case, it makes absolute sense to convert the deepest tuplet
(the temporary "beat") into a metronomic speed. The general rule is as follows: in a situation of nested tuplets, the deeper
the level of the tuplet (i.e., the further away from the musical surface), the more appropriate metronomic-speed
conversion is; and the closer to the surface level, the more tuplets should be treated as precise quasi-intervallic speed
relationships.
realization/interpretation corresponding to the determinateness of the musical substance, nor to the
development of finer and more precise performative skills corresponding to both explicit and implicit
notational demands: the idealistic imperatives of such music require the setting of ever-higher goals
and standards for precise realization and the development of skills necessary and sufficient to this end.
Such a claim for the necessity of higher levels of performative accuracy is in no sense an argument
that accuracy is sufficient for vital interpretation of this music, but the striving for such accuracy,
along with the concomitant ensemble of learning methods and highly-developed skills allowing one to
come close achieving it, are necessary conditions for any vital interpretation. In addition, only through
such progressive refinement of abilities can the ground be prepared for future compositional visions,
some of the most vital of which are certain to be grounded upon yet more precise distinctions.
What must be retained from this ideal type is the "intuitive/expressive striving," which is
indispensable to the interpretation of radical complex music. However, this striving ought never be
allowed to reduce itself to a form of theater, but must correspond to the determinacy through which
the musical vision is incorporated; i.e., the "ground" from which one projects yearnings should not be
treated as a fixed "flat-earth" of traditional and already-learned skills, but as a ground in constant
development, constantly re-configured in the shape of fundamental material developments and piece-
specific imperatives.
<ZB>III. Towards a Performance Practice for Complex Music: Theory<ZE>
<ZB>III.A. Revision of the High-Modernist Model<ZE>
Although the theory the author proposes is most immediately oriented toward enabling responsible and
vital realizations/interpretations of complex/radical complex music, it will be so formulated that it
could be applied to the interpretation of a broad range of music. Those elements of the above
approaches that are valid and pertinent will be retained, as will the main outlines of the high-
Modernist model. This will, however, be substantially revised and treated as a limited case within a
broader theory.
The author would suggest four primary revisions of the high-Modernist model:
1) A fundamental assumption in the author's model is that any substantial piece of music consists
of multiple internally coherent organizational levels and significant transformational processes which
are both analogically self-similar and functionally differentiated, thus presenting any performer with a
rich field of potentially significant qualities, relationships and tensions existing at different structural
levels and different temporal levels of unfolding. The corollaries to this assumption include the
following: a) the potentials for articulating significant relationships in any piece of music are if not
infinite, at least multiple and cannot be theoretically predetermined, and b) it is not possible to realize
all such levels in any single performance, because many of these exist in fundamental conflict with
each other. As no single performance can be judged adequate to all these demands, there can be no
such a thing as an absolutely authoritative realization. Either high-Modernist "realization" must be
more broadly defined or one must allow a place for the seemingly discredited "interpretation."
Because music-making is an eminently human activity, and human potentials--in both their seemingly
infinite grasp and their frustrating real limitations--are intrinsic to this activity, the author's preference
is to privilege responsible interpretation, with responsible realization treated as subsidiary. Such
issues lie under the surface of traditional music, but are only explicitly thematized in the most recent
radical complex music, with its rationalized specification of multiple tasks that are often mutually
contradictory.
2) The assumed direct communicative chain between conception, notation, responsible
interpretation (including not only technical performative standards but factors such as performative
energy and intuition), and reception/perception should be recast as translation rather than direct (one-
to-one) correspondence, the latter model tending to reduce everything to the quantifiable--i.e.,
primarily technical/mechanical--level. Each domain in this chain should be seen as qualitatively
different from the others: each has its own independent structuring, imperatives, and history, and could
be treated as a separate "language." Following this analogy, the translation between domains (as with
29
human languages) must begin by acknowledging their fundamental differences, then attempt to create
analogical bridges (which are necessarily unstable). Some aspects can be fairly directly translated,
particularly those which can be converted into a highly rationalized/standardized form which can be
tested for accuracy: in these areas, a one-to-one transcription, demanding the highest degree of
accuracy, can reasonably be demanded. Other aspects require complete re-formulation: conception
may surpass what can be notated, performed, or perceived; notation can specify tasks which cannot be
performed, and even if they were performable, could not be accurately perceived; performance can
realize that which cannot be notated, and cannot be determinately perceived; and perception/reception
converts all it actively or passively receives into its own form. Despite the impossibility of achieving a
perfect correspondence between these domains, the effort to attain responsible translation is necessary,
firstly because composed music would be meaningless without it, and secondly because only through
such efforts is the fundamentally human task of musically responsible interpretation possible.
3) It is necessary to retain the highest technical standards demanded by both the high-Modernist
model (such as competitive testability, adequate realization, and ideal perception) and its more
absolutist formulations (such as the striving for absolute accuracy). However, the measure of
performative responsibility ought to be grounded less on the external threat of punishment of mistakes
(absolutely equated with failure), than on a Kantian positive striving to live up to self-acknowledged
moral imperatives for responsible interpretation in confrontation with the musical tasks and musical
substance. Such a conception of morality is no less forgiving than the absolutist model, but rather than
claiming that judgments as to "success" or "failure" are best left to non-human "judges" (for example,
trusting computers or other electronic devises to deliver absolute judgments on the correspondence
between notation and realization), it lays the ultimate responsibility for such judgments in human
hands: for the listener/critic, demanding aesthetically informed and intelligent judgment, and for the
interpreter, demanding (in addition to these) the exercise of personal conscience. The latter is all the
more important when, as is common in the case of the newer complex music, there is a complete lack
of competitive comparison for measuring performative accuracy.
4) Those more "spiritual" aspects of interpretation such as "intuitive/energetic striving" and
30
what one might call the metaphorical domain of interpretation (such as an understanding of the
composer's basic intentions, and the expressive world and/or underlying metaphors of the piece), must
be allowed a central place in any valid theory of performance practice, although they should never be
allowed to usurp responsible realization of the notated tasks. Paradoxically, this domain cannot be
determinately specified--it is neither specifiable by notation, testable, nor precisely determinable by
discursive means (although immanent, self-critical dialectical interpretation--for example, in the
Adornian tradition--can provide illuminating thought-models)--but is nevertheless necessary to any
vital interpretation. One might, again allowing a Kantian formulation, treat this domain as a formal
necessity for the vital interpretation of any substantial music, but a full theoretical explication of this
possibility cannot be achieved in the limited space of this paper.
<ZB>III.B. Performative/Interpretational Standards for Complex Music<ZE>
This analogy to human languages becomes impermissible the moment it is treated pseudo-scientifically, i.e., as
29
"authoritative" (because it uses the vocabulary of one of the sciences) evidence or proof. Yet it is extremely useful and
suggestive in clarifying the differences between these domains, and as such can be provisionally accepted.
This, in the Hegelian tradition, pertaining to the "Geist" of the artwork; such a term does not specify a completely non-
30
rational aspect, as would befit an Anglo-American interpretation, but rather the "rational" realizing itself through its
dialectical conflict with the "non-rational."
As full discussion of the above issues would fill an entire volume, the main focus of the remainder of
this paper will be on the most pressing issue which this new theory must address, namely how and to
what degree such a theory could enable the highest level of performative standards for and most vital
interpretations of radical complex music. To deal with this question adequately, one must clarify the
aims to which high performative standards are directed, what standard of accuracy would be
appropriate for the music, and what training tools and methods would be sufficient for achieving these
aims.
The issue of performative standards in the performance of radical complex music is essential,
but must be properly oriented to the musical tasks. A great part of the compellingness of any vital
interpretation results from 1) the gap between present levels of technical/interpretational abilities and
the notated (also implied) tasks/projective challenges of any substantial music, 2) (assuming sufficient
technical skills and musical insight) the desire and efforts made to master these tasks and challenges,
3) the degree of resolution necessary for technical mastery and valid interpretation of such tasks and
challenges, and 4) the impossibility in any one performance of simultaneously realizing all of these
tasks and challenges at all musical levels, both a) requiring interpretational intuition and judgment in
order to maintain both sufficient musical coherence (the more traditional imperative of interpretation)
and sufficient tension between/among all aspects within any musical level and between/among
different levels (which imperative has become explicit in the more recent complex music), and b)
leaving in the wake of any single interpretation (none of which can ever "succeed" with a clean
conscience) the residue of further tasks and challenges.
For radical complex music, the nature of such performative challenges is not merely
technical/interpretive but to a great degree moral, in the autonomous sense of self-formulated and
self-accepted imperatives: regardless of the generally low standards of accuracy for the performance of
such music and regardless of whether any hearer can judge the difference between "correct"
performance or not, if one accepts the imperatives of such tasks/challenges, one is duty-bound attempt
to realize/interpret them in as thoroughgoing and responsible a manner as possible. One must develop
the proper means of learning the skills implicitly defined by the tasks, one must attempt to achieve the
highest technical standards of performative realization (i.e., analogous to the most demanding
standards of the classical/commercial music industries), and one must finally realize/interpret such
music as "perfectly" and responsibly as possible. The measure of success or failure is not "perfection"
(which is at any rate only an ideal, not a reality), but "better" and "worse," determined by the technical
task, the musical substance, and the level of performative accomplishment and meaningful
receptive/perceptual understanding at any time. Performative imperfection (inevitable in any music,
most glaring in often-performed pieces, but for any performer of radical complex music, a precisely
predetermined fate) is not a measure of absolute failure but perhaps the most powerful proof of the
"human-ness" of the challenges; but one's failings, according to the self-accepted terms of the
imperatives, must act as a goad driving one to further exertions toward responsible
realization/interpretation of the music. These require immensely concentrated efforts which may prove
insufficient, but the degree of adequate realization/interpretation cannot be measured by any absolute
technical standard or machine: the less any external standard could guarantee it, the greater the extent
and degree of moral responsibility becomes. One must work on each piece as though an authoritative
realization/interpretation were possible, although it will in fact never be so.
For a performer, such a moral challenge is forgiving of human shortcomings, as every
responsible interpretation (granted sufficient technical abilities and musical insight), according to the
imperatives one has chosen to accept (as seriously attempting responsible interpretation of the musical
tasks and content, in comparison with other responsible performances of the same piece, if they exist)
is in essence valid, and, given that no single interpretation can ever fully exhaust the vital interpretive
potentials of any substantial piece of music, none can invalidate the others. At the same time, one
faces a moral imperative of infinite intensity and scope: one must not only come to grips with extreme
technical challenges, but also with the imperative of realizing a potentially infinite field of
relationships which would require more than a lifetime to assimilate and sufficiently project, the
complete ensemble of which is never possible of being realized in any one performance; in this regard,
Kantian immanently-defined and self-accepted moral imperatives can be far less forgiving than
absolutist--i.e., heteronomous--moralism. Such a moral challenge demands a constant striving for ever-
higher internalized standards of realization: as soon as one has achieved a certain level of
interpretation, one must set higher standards, attempt to bring out new details, relate more aspects, and
so on, with the primary aim being one not merely of smoothing out all tensions, but of mediating
between clarity and precision of detailed realization and the maintenance of sufficient
musical/relational tension. Any notion of performative responsibility must therefore be grounded on
the imperative of maintaining the tension between what is imagined and what can be done, to the
degree of resolution necessary for the task and the musical vision.
The primary performative goal should therefore not be that of a single, absolute solution,
but that of fostering and realizing the greatest possible field of musical tensions of the greatest
specificity and vitality. WORK ON Two intertwined concepts are therefore valuable: 1) the
necessary degree of musical tension--between conflicting aspects within the same musical level,
between the most significant conflicting aspects at different levels, and between different levels, and
2) the necessary degree of resolution for each and any of the tasks elicited by the piece. The latter
concept, borrowed (with all due caution) from the sciences, deals with the ever-changing relationship
between firstly the aim of research and secondly the conceptual means and available technological
means and procedures appropriate to this aim. As applied to music, one must discover 1) the proper
level of focus and 2) the degree of resolution proper to the task, so that the significant difference of the
results is meaningful to the task and maintains sufficient musical tension with the multiple levels of
musical functioning. 31
If the degree of performative resolution is too fine for the musical substance (which is clearly the
case in computer models of pieces), a lifeless interpretation may result, but if it is not fine enough, the
musical substance can be deeply damaged. The necessary degree of resolution is clearly not an
absolute standard, but is grounded in and relative to the performative/meaningfully
perceptive/receptive capabilities in any period. The limit conditions are always real, but are rarely
31
All analogies are dangerous when employed as proofs, but as a limited case of the relationship between "performance"
and perception, the analogy to phonetic theory is useful. A phoneme is not a single, stable physical entity, but is defined
contextually within the phonetic system of any language: it is a theoretical unit defined by a set of distinctive features
which functionally distinguish it from other phonemes within any language (more technically, phonetic distinctions are
determined by "minimal pairs" in any language). A range of pronunciations of a phoneme (allophones of a phoneme) is
acceptable so long as the distinction between similar words is clear. Thus, in the actual functioning of any language,
phonetic distinctions are always contextual: certain phonemes in certain contexts permit a wide range of realizations and
in other contexts require a higher degree of resolution, whereas other phonemes almost always require a high degree of
resolution.
Analogously, no notated musical challenge in isolation must be perfectly realized as a necessary condition of its
being perceptively meaningful, but the greater the number and hierarchical/syntactic complexity of intertwined
challenges, the greater the necessity for more-precise realization. A relatively simple set of examples can adequately
illustrate this issue: a single notated stream of constant triplets, quintuplets, septuplets, etc., ought to sound regular (the
necessary degree of resolution at this level), but need not be perfectly aligned with the beat. However, once the beat level
is clearly articulated (for example, by another stratum or at another level), the necessary degree of resolution rises (i.e.,
the tuplets should be realized at approximately the proper proportional speeds in relation to the beat, and every xth tuplet
should coincide with the beat). Once another tuplet stratum appears, (for example, quintuplets versus septuplets), the
necessary degree of resolution rises dramatically (alignment with the beat, proper proportional speed in relation with both
the beat and the other tuplet, and proper additive articulation of the chronos protos common to both tuplet levels--in this
case, 35 chronoi protoi per beat, articulated by additive 7- and/or 5-groupings). The necessary degree of resolution
should rise even more dramatically with the appearance of further tuplet strata, with nested tuplets, with proportionally
changing beats, etc. Another level of challenges appears when tuplets are missing: when each stratum is only loosely
defined, the ensemble of strata must be defined only in terms of a "time line": one must simply place all events before or
after other events in relations to a "guidance beat." Yet once each tuplet stratum begins to be defined by either regular or
patterned articulation, and/or in relationship to an articulated beat, and so on, the necessary degree of resolution becomes
extremely fine.
absolutely specifiable, because they are continuously redefined by the musical/expressive horizons the
most radical compositional visions in any period project. However, although standards of resolution
change with time, a general vector of a higher technical level of performance in response to finer
32
notational specification is undeniable.

In every period, the gap between compositionally specified tasks and the current state of training
methods and realization (not to speak of the musically deeper level of implied challenges and the
current state of understanding of these same) was and is a powerful motivating force for the efforts of
certain musicians to develop new methods and means to realize such tasks. Although one could claim
that the discrepancy between present-day performative means as compared to current projective
compositional visions (i.e., for radical complex music) is perhaps quantitatively greater now than that
which existed in earlier times (for example, in comparison to Bach's or Beethoven's most difficult
music in their times, with the proviso that each period has required different technical standards of
accuracy) the qualitative nature of this gap is essentially the same. In any "present," the standards of
adequate realization/interpretation for the challenges of any radically new music are always
insufficient, and idealistic energies are always required in order to realize and responsibly interpret
them.
In order to discover the necessary degree of tension and degree of resolution, (at least) the
following questions are necessary: what is the nature of musical/performative task (requiring an
understanding of the kind of profiling that is necessary [figural, gestural, motivic, harmonic,
polyphonic, etc.], the hierarchic level of the task, its relationship to other tasks, etc.) and what degree
of performative realization would be necessary to realize this task so that it would be most
musically/perceptually etc. significant in the relevant context (i.e., the degree of profiling and the
permissible degree of error at the proper level)? These concepts (here only offered in provisory form)
have the potential of clarifying not only some of the most significant issues of performative
realization of radical new music, but many of the most consistently troublesome conflicts between
historical and present performative practices as well. 33
32
Within the 20th century, additive and lower-limit tuplet tasks which once seemed impossible are now regarded as trivial;
one marvels at both the artificial barriers thrown up in both earlier and present times to prevent such challenges from
being realized, and the timidity of the vast majority of our predecessors who claimed that such music was absolutely
impossible.
33
One clear example of such a conflict is the fact that many of the skills necessary for the performance of modern music,
such as consistency of intervallic size (necessary for a the proper ET realization of pan-tonal, atonal, or even microtonal
music (granted that the general imposition of wide vibrato in our time has damaged many finer intonational distinctions)
and quasi-metronomic regularity of attacks, are in general wildly inappropriate for music of earlier times, because they
do not correspond to the tasks: such standards are both too fine and too abstract for earlier musics. For example, for most
music from the high-Baroque to the early-Romantic period, the relative simplicity of harmonies/modulations and rhythms
as notated (such notated tasks, on a purely technical level now mastered to an astounding degree by even the youngest of
present-day musicians) does not adequately describe the intrinsic and implicit musical conflicts which are the living
substance of this music. Both 1) the intrinsic tuning conflicts between linear (including expressive intonational
deviations), harmonic, and polyphonic aspects--certain aspects best "solved" (or better, dynamically exploited) by just or
mean/tempered tunings--and 2) the conflicts intrinsic to the Western rhythmic/metric system, such as the implicit
rhythmic conflicts between individual figures/gestures, dance styles, and shared group rhythmic/metric momentum of this
music, are badly "resolved" by "equal" (intervals and rhythms [i.e., chronoi protoi]) means, which eliminate a great deal
of both the intrinsic and implicit musical/expressive tensions inherent in the music. Although many progressive
composers of the common-practice period, from the grounds of their respective historical situations, clearly wished for
such standardized and reliable "equal" means,* one must recognize these were projective ideals, which, had they been
abstractly/"perfectly" realized, would almost certainly have proved disappointing (or at the least insufficient). On the
other hand, too coarse a degree of resolution (which seemed to be the norm not only in Beethoven's time) was (and still
is) obviously insufficient and irresponsible.
On the positive side, because--in general--higher technical standards demand a higher degree of reliability of
reproduction, one can expect these also to result in a greater reliability in the realization of a broader range of tasks; the
astonishing rise in performative standards and accomplishments in early music performance over the last ca. quarter-
century is but one example of the benefits of such technical improvements. If ever-higher technical standards are properly
oriented to (musically) substantial projective tasks, then their contribution is almost unequivocally positive. Yet once the
<ZB>III.C. Appropriate Training Methods/Means<ZE>
Two elements essential for the responsible realization of any notated tasks are proper training methods
sufficient for achieving a high standard of performative reliability/accuracy and the corresponding
technological means necessary for facilitating and reinforcing these training methods.
The training methods for traditional music have over the last two centuries become well-
established in the form of "resonance" training, i.e., repeated practice with reliable and accurate
"training tools" to the point that one "tunes in" with the model with a "feedback intensity," the proper
form being "burned" into the muscles and the memory. This training is both digital and tonal (i.e.,
sonic) in nature: all attacks must be produced with intonational, rhythmic, and tonal
consistency/reliability, regardless of physical difficulty, width of interval, change of register, dynamic,
etc. (all of these generally less extreme in traditional music than in radical post-WWII music).
After a long period of contention regarding proper training tools, this last century has seen a
stabilization and general acceptance of "standard measures:" the piano/keyboard instrument as
standard measure of tuning and the metronome as standard measure of rhythm. Although the author
would argue that neither is either value-neutral or fully appropriate for all traditional music, the
acceptance of such standard measures has so clearly led to higher technical standards of performance
that they have long been regarded as essential tools for any musician.
The radical compositional developments since the middle of the century have presented
fundamental challenges for both resonance training and its concomitant training tools. For the radical
challenges of the immediate post-WWII period --such as constant changes in tuplet articulations and
34
tempo, extreme and sudden changes in register, dynamics, and sound quality--both resonance training
and standard pitch/rhythmic training tools for testing accuracy were only barely sufficient. For the
more recent radical music, presenting more extreme sonic/tonal contrasts, much-finer microtonal and
rhythmic distinctions, and overlaid levels of independent rationally-organized actions, the traditional
methods and tools of resonance training are no longer even barely adequate. As regards the
pitch/rhythmic challenges alone, the standard tools are clearly inadequate: the piano can quite simply
not perform quarter-tones (not to speak of finer microtonal divisions), and the metronome can realize
neither quickly changing tempi, additive and/or divisive meters, nor tuplets, and as regards the yet
more radical challenges of rationally-specified overlaid actions there are no standard methods or
training tools which are even barely useful. The gap between those standard measures appropriate for
earlier music and present-day notated tasks has become so great that many have argued and still argue
that these radical new challenges, because they cannot be reliably practiced and learned with the piano
or metronome, are therefore beyond human capabilities. This is surely a perverse conclusion, firstly as
these training tools are sophisticated mechanical devices and as such already far surpass human
capabilities, and secondly because these are merely means to an end, not ends in themselves. If such
training tools are no longer sufficient to newer challenges, then the tools should be jettisoned, not the
challenges: what is needed are training tools appropriate to recent extreme challenges, that is to say,
facilitating more responsible realization of these challenges.
projective motivation for this technical improvement is forgotten, these standards quickly fall into the trap of an
exclusive orientation on the perfection of technical/mechanical tasks, which "perfection" is, in general, stylistically
inappropriate for all music whose internal syntax is not strong enough to productively resist it.
*Although 12-tone ET was not unknown in the 17th-18th centuries, there is little evidence that it was more than a
theoretical abstraction and/or curiosity, only realizable in clavier works (there is also some evidence for microtonal
woodwind ornaments in French music of the time, but these clearly played no role in subsequent musical developments).
The author intends by this works of the difficulty of Boulez' peak early works and those of Barraqué, the early works of
34
Stockhausen (such as the early Klavierstücke), certain works of Cage's such as the Music of Changes and, of course
Xenakis' works (although the most challenging works by Xenakis came somewhat later, and the nature of some of these
challenges lies closer to those of complex music).
The author would argue that although for more recent complex music, resonance training--the
most efficacious method for achieving higher performative standards--is not practical in its traditional
form, analogical training methods are possible, and that the proper technological means for such
training (at least as regards the pitch/rhythmic challenges)--i.e., computer programs/programming
languages capable of creating sequenced models of pieces --are already commonly available.
35
Although these means do not provide a magic elixir automatically resolving all conflicts, they can at
least provide training tools that are essential to the proper learning of such music.
Several basic objections to computer-assisted methods of learning persistently appear, among
others 1) the composer doesn't desire this degree of accuracy, 2) such methods inevitably lead to dull,
lifeless renditions of computer-like perfection because the interpretive "free-room" has been
eliminated, or 3) the learning process is itself unnatural.
As to 1), the author's general answer would be that the composer should find the proper
notational means to express his/her intentions, as there presently exist a wealth of notations for
indicating approximate pitches/microtones and rhythms. Although performance standards for the
realization of new challenges are variable and in constant transition, notation is never innocent, but
presents imperatives of ideal realizations. It would be the height of arrogance to merely assert that
"this extremely precise rhythm or microtonal indication does not at all mean what it explicitly
specifies, but only what I say that it 'means;'" if such historically-sedimented exactitude of notational
means is employed, one cannot blame the performer for at least attempting to realize that much of
what is specified. Granted the validity of the author's theoretical model, there is no objection per se to
compositionally specifying impossibly precise or even mutually contradictory demands (all the better
when the composer viscerally comprehends how extreme and/or contradictory these demands are), but
this by no means exempts the composer from the responsibility of acknowledging--should any
performer somehow overcome all such impossible challenges--that which he/she has written. If one
desires something lying beyond all present-day notational means, one must create the proper
notational form to describe and elicit it. 36
As to 2), three responses are in order. Firstly, as discussed above, no human has yet performed
with absolute computer-like perfection because this is impossible: "perfection" for humans, although
valuable as an ideal, is unattainable in reality. On the other hand, if the notated intervals and rhythms
and rhythmic relationships are learned properly and well, then any mistakes made are determinate to
the task and are intensely human in the best sense--among the greatest virtues of humans being that
they are fallible and corrigible. Momentary bodily/psychological failings are inevitable, but any
performers who have striven intensely to thoroughly assimilate such challenges can at least claim that
they have done their best in attempting to fulfill their duty to the piece and to the art form; yet every
failure (and, even better, every "success" as well) should be the ground from which one should
realistically measure one's own shortcomings and strive to achieve ever-higher levels of performative
accomplishment. Secondly, boring interpretations are always possible, whether or not one has
This term in large includes all mechanical/computer means of providing click tracks of all degrees of complexity; in
35
specific, it refers to "perfect" models of the pitches and rhythms of a piece, usually made with a sequencing program and
a synthesizer. The latter are more appropriate for works employing microtonality/extended just intonation and advanced
rhythmic/metric means.
Many composers claim (and with good right) that the main intent of their notational demands was to elicit a
36
performative struggle to achieve the notated goals, which confrontation can admittedly unleash tremendous and unique
(therefore irreplaceable) performative energies. The primary problem with this claim is that notation fixes for future
generations what was written, not the "auratic" qualities surrounding it. Thus, in the future, for whatever presently-
composed complex music will continue to be performed, performers will continue striving to learn the skills necessary for
realizing notated tasks with increasing accuracy. Perhaps future composers and performers will come to see these tasks as
absurdly simple as triplets or quintuplets seem to most "new music" musicians now. The author has no simple answer to
this issue, but as a composer believes that the more thoroughgoing the musical logic and expressive vision are
analogically realized in notation, the clearer the multiple intentions will be for future generations. Therefore, the
composer must specify as clearly as possible what is most important: not only raw performative tasks, but the inner logic
and expressive vision of the piece.
practiced with the metronome or computer or any other device. Thirdly, although the higher degree of
specification in the newer music reduces the intonational and rhythmic "free-room" in size, it does not
reduce it in nature; on the contrary, this "free room," because the degree of resolution is finer, can
become even more focused and determinate, potentially even richer in significance, if one can achieve
a reliable realization of the finer distinctions elicited by the notated tasks. 37
As to 3), most reasonable outside observers would recognize this objection as either patently
absurd or so cryptically formulated that no rational discussion on its basis is possible. However,
because this and other similar attitudes regarding "nature" are so widespread and so unquestioned in
the world of music, and are so often used to justify refusing as "unnatural" any new challenges and/or
new methods of learning, it is necessary to inquire briefly into the grounds for the common belief that
traditional training methods (i.e., based on resonance training) are "natural."
The most obvious initial question regards what is meant by "natural." Upon discussing this
question with many musicians, one will quickly discover that very few have any clear idea, or at least
any clearly-articulated conception, of what they mean by this term. One can occasionally find
intuitively-derived conceptions which are not unreasonable (especially those focusing on the physical
factors involved in proper training) but unfortunately, musicians too often employ the term in an
oracular-absolutist manner as a means for justifying everything that they already know and are already
doing. There exists, however, at least one obvious problem with this usage: although traditional
training methods might indeed feel natural for all those rigorously trained into them, by no stretch of
the imagination could one reasonably claim that practicing a highly technical etude or centuries-old
high-art piece several hours a day with a constantly ticking metronome constitutes any sort of natural
process. Only if one understands "natural" as a culturally-mediated term, and surrenders the attempt to
treat it as an essentialist value, can one begin any productive inquiry at all.
At the start, it must be noted that traditional training methods are the collective fruit of centuries
of individual efforts in facing difficult new technical tasks. Although illegitimate factors--such as
personal aggrandizement, tribalism and pure politics--are as prevalent in the field of music
performance as in any other field, in the main technical questions have been open to mutual criticism
and have been oriented toward testable goals, the proof lying in the ever-higher technical
accomplishments over the last several centuries. Thus, one can broadly assume that these methods
achieve their goals fairly well and reliably, and contain relatively few physically harmful elements;
one could call any training method that fulfills these conditions "rationalized."
Granted this precondition, it is almost inevitable that anyone deeply trained in any rationalized
method will perceive it as "natural," quite simply because one has--through endless hours of practice--
accustomed oneself to it. Correspondingly, any new method and task will feel "unnatural" until one
has accustomed oneself to it; the entire question here is one of comfort or discomfort, not of nature.
Similarly, all rationalized learning methods will tend to achieve (not perfectly, but fairly effectively)
the intended results: granted that one has been taught efficacious methods of learning, it will feel,
upon properly concentrating one's efforts during the repetition of difficult passages, quite "natural" to
Objection 2) actually contains the germ of a valid criticism of the process of learning from computer models, which has
37
to do with the lack of abstraction in the learning process: performers might become accustomed to memorize sequences
of sound-cues and mistake the realization of these cues for interpretation of the music. This and other related issues are
dealt with later in the paper (see, for example, footnote 42).
None of these three responses to objection 2) deals explicitly with the chasm separating the highest level at which
one can assimilate any challenge in the practice room and the highest level at which one can perform it. Thus, even in the
impossible case that one had learned all notated tasks "perfectly," this is still no guarantee that in live performance they
will ever in ensemble be performed "perfectly"--given purely physical factors such as nervousness, tension, exhaustion,
and so on--or even should be so performed. All live performance must answer to "categorical imperatives" proper to its
own domain, such as maintaining sufficient overall performative energy and momentum, balancing-out the most dynamic
presentation of all local details with stylistic/expressive self-consistency of the whole, discovering the most compelling
balance of local details, overall momentum, and formal clarity, and so on: these imperatives obviously demand an
occasional sacrifice of accuracy of local detail.
eventually accomplish something. However, whether something feels natural, uncomfortable, pleasing,
terrifying or anything else has nothing to do with its being natural, and this feeling can certainly in
itself not explain why or how these methods function so effectively. 38
In order to deal adequately with these issues, one must momentarily leave aside
psychological/philosophical explanations and acknowledge the findings of the natural sciences,
particularly physiology/kinesiology. The truly natural element in traditional methods such as
"resonance training”--their particular genius--is that they train muscle memory both extremely 39
efficiently and efficaciously. Muscle memory is one of the most primitive elements of human
physiology, but is also perhaps the most indispensable for the performing arts. It is first of all
extremely "unintelligent:" it can only be properly trained through endless repetitions of a model that
must be reliably reproduced in order to be learned at all. Yet once muscle memory has assimilated a
task, it is to some degree "hard-wired" into the system. In addition, in learning to achieve even the
simplest task (and it must be repeated that although a certain type of concentration is necessary while
learning, most of the actual learning occurs beneath the consciously-willed level), a complex ensemble
of muscular movements must be trained to work in interaction. Thus, at this level--which is the basis
for all higher-level accomplishments--one must learn many things at once in order to learn any task at
all. All the best will in the world will achieve nothing without a development and refining of muscle
memory, which for any accomplished performer requires decades of concentrated practice and
physically-grounded concentration to accomplish.
If at least this much is granted, and if it is accepted that the notated tasks of complex music are
to be taken seriously and that these tasks demand a far greater refinement than those of traditional
music or official new music, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it is necessary for the
responsible realization of both complex music and radical complex music to find adequate means of
training muscle memory for these finer tasks. For these sorts of tasks (FC out), the author has not yet
found any learning means more appropriate than computer models. The primary question here is
firstly that of being certain what the proper task is (provided by the computer model), and secondly
being able to repeat the task correctly and often enough that muscle memory can assimilate the
"correct" version (i.e., "tuning-in" to repetitions of the computer model) and one is able to reproduce a
correct realization of the task reliably. If other learning tools than computer models can meet these
requirements, then they should be employed, but they must satisfy at least these preconditions for any
responsible realization to be possible.
Beyond the practical problem of convincing musicians to accept computer models as non-
harmful, useful, and even necessary training tools for assimilating--through resonance training--at least
certain types of tasks posed by radical complex music, lies the more basic problem of the effectiveness
of resonance training at all for these tasks, whether one attempts to assimilate them by working with a
metronome or computer or any other device. For example, in cases such as that of constantly changing
tuplets spanning differing durations (i.e., 9:7, 4:5, 7:6, 3:4 and so on) or that of constant proportional
changes in beat speeds (i.e., /36, /32/, /28 and so on, especially difficult when combined with different
"numerators:" 7/32, 6/36, 7/24, 4/20 and so on), even when one practices with a computer model, one
will never attain the same degree of "feedback intensity" achievable, for example, by repeating
constant 16ths with the metronome, this mechanical constancy allowing one to perceive clearly every
intonational/rhythmic/dynamic/timbral deviation. At the present time there is probably no completely
If personal testimony may be allowed into this discussion, the author can attest that although he initially found practicing
38
with computer models unusual and somewhat uncomfortable, after some ten years of experience and some fifty new
pieces learned with these means, he has come to find this method of learning just as much or little "natural" as practicing
with the metronome, chromatic tuner, or any other technological device.
This term will be used as a shorthand for the technical term "pre-patterned movement:" through repetition, certain
39
movements become pre-patterned to the degree that one trigger impulse sets into action a complex sequence of
movements, which under normal circumstances would have required separate movements and might not have been
possible to achieve at all (and certainly not with such a high degree of reliability).
satisfying solution to these sorts of problems (which does not mean either that adjustments in the
resonance-training model cannot be made which would more effectively--if not "perfectly"--deal with
such problems, or that these problems will for all future times prove insoluble). It is certainly possible
to convert all the changing iterative speeds to a constant practice speed in order to achieve the
"feedback intensity" necessary for attaining fine tonal control, but it is also just as necessary to
rigorously train the muscle memory in the proper task of reproducing the finely-gradated changing
iterative speeds. Such conflicts can be partially resolved by the same methods used in learning
traditional pieces: one learns the first task thoroughly, then the second task, then both together, and so
on. For a piece in which practically every bar has a different proportionally-related beat speed (not to
speak of tuplets within such bars or even secondary tuplets), this requires the patient and thorough
learning of all the quasi-intervallic speed relationships of the basic metric/rhythmic patterns from
which the piece is built: the first pair until a certain degree of feedback intensity is attained, then the
second pair, and so on, then the first three, and so on until all the relationships of the piece are
thoroughly assimilated. 40
This is obviously a formidable task, and demands that a special bond of trust be established
between composer and performer. The degree and extent of the performer's contribution is clearly set
by the imperative that (s)he attain the level of a responsible realization/interpretation, but the
composer's responsibilities in this "relationship" are too often forgotten or ignored. The composer
must have a realistic understanding (even better, a "bodily" understanding attained through long
experience performing an instrument) of precisely how much time and what expense of efforts
(including idealistic energies) are necessary for the responsible realization of such difficult tasks. The
performer must have complete trust that the composer is competent in all aspects of his/her field, is
possessed of a musical vision as original as the compositional means employed, and that (s)he has
devoted his/her most extreme efforts toward a realization of this vision as determinate and unique as
the performer's own efforts to learn it.
In the author's experience, the process of learning from computer models, although necessary, is
not in itself sufficient for the responsible realization/interpretation of radically new works. Some of
the dangers involved in learning only from computer models include (most notable when the notated
challenges are not well-assimilated) the tendency to learn only by ear, without sufficiently mediating
such "oral" learning with the notated form, and the tendency to "play under" and simply match the
model, rather than realizing the notation through the well-developed (and testable) repertoire of
patterns aiming toward an ideal sound-image. 41
As one example of such a training method, see "Performer's Guide to Di-remption" in the performance score to Di-
40
remption (Smith Publications, 1992); the fruits of such exact training methods can be heard in Jonas Larsson's brilliant
performances of the piece.
Although the effect of this sort of learning for the listener is difficult to specify, one could describe it as giving the
41
impression that the performer is not listening to what (s)he himself is playing, but to an unheard signal, i.e., what is heard
by the listener is rather bland and abstract, because the performer is not projecting what (s)he has learned outward (one
notices this tendency often in instrument-plus-tape pieces, in which the performer is bound to a set of aural signals given
by the click track). This is relatively easily to solve, only requiring sufficient experience and awareness of the problem.
Perhaps most importantly, it is necessary to stop practicing with such models long enough before the performance that the
sound intended can be created and projected without direct reference to this model.
In this regard, one unexpected potential of learning from computer models should briefly be mentioned: it revives
in altered form a mode of learning common to both pre-notational cultures and highly-refined improvisatory practices,
and almost forgotten in the high-art Western training, which is to say the direct oral learning of repertoire from living
"masters." This aspect is particularly promising in the domain of radical complex music, whose performers lack the
orientation provided by ideal interpretations, cannot from the notated tasks derive an ideal sound-image for the piece, and
often stand in need of even a single "competing" performance by which to measure their own efforts. By means of this
quasi-oral training, the piece can become fixed in the inner ear: if one makes a mistake, one can recognize that it is a
mistake, in contrast to the sort of pure willfulness and often abstractness found in many performances of radical complex
music. On the other hand, this enthusiasm must also be qualified: "ideal" interpretations provided by humans and oral
training methods are intrinsically significant, not a mere set of aural signals produced by a machine.
Most of the shortcomings of working only with computer models lie less in deficiencies in the
learning method than in the lack of critical feedback available when only one performer has learned
the piece, requiring of the performer a sort of artificial synthesis of responsible critical feedback.
Working with a computer model may indeed install a proper pitch/rhythmic model in the ear, but this
is no guarantee that the performer has deeply learned the relationship between the written tasks and the
sonic model, can adequately realize the pitch/rhythmic aspects without the computer model, has
adequately assimilated all the other dynamic/timbral/textural aspects which the computer model can
only weakly imitate, or can adequately realize any of these tasks on his/her instrument at all. For all of
these aspects, the author has found it crucial to "cross-check" all that he has learned with the computer
model not only with traditional training methods, but also with both high-Modernist and
mediation/conversion methods. First of all (and this should be assumed for all the tasks and methods
discussed in this paper), it is absolutely necessary that traditional resonance-training be used as often
as possible in order to ensure the degree of tonal consistency and control necessary to project to the
listener the fine distinctions learned by the fingers/tongue/etc.: lacking this tonal consistency, even the
most perfectly-performed regular iterations will sound uneven, and the far subtler rhythmic alterations
42
of complex music will vanish entirely. Chromatic tuners (i.e., devices which measure cent-deviations
from 12-tone ET tones, many of which can additionally reliably measure quarter-tones) are crucial in
this verification-process, as they simultaneously test both tonal consistency and pitch accuracy.
Correspondingly reliable, standardized and inexpensive methods for checking rhythmic accuracy are
not yet available; in this domain, constant cross-checking with regular-iterative resonance training
("feedback intensity") is necessary. In addition, however well certain tasks may have been "burned"
into the muscle and aural memory, a constant "absolute" verification of the results is also necessary,
for which the "mediation/conversion" methods (II.C above) are particularly useful. Even if the
microtones involved are too fine and any given passage too fast for chromatic tuners to track all notes
reliably, one should at least ensure that the 12-tone ET tones are tuned properly and that every
appearance of the same note in any passage be nearly identical in intonation (for string instruments,
one can also test notes reliable against open strings and harmonics of open strings, granted that the
strings have been carefully tuned and that one knows the precise deviations of overtones from ET
tunings). Similarly, in complex rhythmic passages it can prove nearly impossible, however diligently
one has worked in the practice room, to remember the precise relative speeds of different tuplets and
nested tuplets, and after a few such small deviations from precisely-notated proportions one can end up
at a completely different speed than intended. In all such cases, testing at least the most important
43
proportionally-derived speeds/tempos against internalized repertoire of absolute speeds ingrained

through long practice with the metronome is necessary.
<ZB>IV. Conclusions<ZE>
All of the issues discussed immediately above are primarily concerned with the means of achieving a
higher level of accomplishment for what are essentially traditional tasks (however finer the distinctions
One simple test of this assertion can be made with the "perfect" reproductional means of a synthesizer and a sequencing
42
device: even if a series of absolutely regular fast iterations is perfectly reproduced by the computer, if every note has a
different attack-type, timbre, dynamic, duration, and so on, the iterations will no longer be perceived as regular.
When one considers that for most musicians there exists very little well-grounded training for even the lower-level
43
tuplets, one can easily imagine how easy it would be to mistakenly perform a 5:4 proportion (1.25x) in place of a notated
4:3 proportion (1.33...x). Taking a fairly simple case, if one started at MM60 and was instructed by the notation to make
two 4:3 proportional tempo changes but instead performed two 5:4 tempo changes, one would end up at MM93.75
instead of the proper MM106.66...; with one more such mistake, the deviation would reach the scale of MM117.19 versus
the proper MM142.222... One need only imagine how chaotic the performed results for complexly-notated works rife
with higher-level tuplets would be (for example, starting with tuplets such as 11:7, for which practically no musicians
receive any training at all) if one relied solely on proportional speeds.
may be), that is to say, for pitches and rhythms, and it is hoped that the author's case for the
44
usefulness and even indispensability of computer models in these domains has been convincing. Yet
before concluding an essay whose primary aim is that of laying a solid groundwork for a theory of
performance practice for complex music, at least one long-deferred issue specific to complex music
cannot be avoided: what of those entirely new sorts of challenges and complexes of challenges which,
although from their mere notational presentation appearing highly rational and "controllable," seem to
defy any attempt at their assimilation through any of the above-discussed methods? Perhaps a short
passage from the author's cello solo Recoil shown in Example 1 (explanations of the notational
symbols are given in the same example), can demonstrate the kinds of tasks to which the author is
referring and give some idea of their difficulty.
As far as the more traditional types of challenges are concerned, the tasks shown here are already
forbidding enough: atonal, thoroughgoing 12th-tone (72-tone ET) intervallic organization, several
layers of nested tuplets and non-regular iterational rhythms, and, what is more, separate rhythmic
organization for the left and right hands (the last complex of tasks exponentially more difficult than
any single task in isolation). Such challenges alone lie so far beyond the pale of the earlier-discussed
The author would wish to emphasize that although the process of learning microtones/complex rhythms and verifying
44
that one can reliably reproduce these tasks is not in essence different from the process of learning the tasks of traditional
music or high-Modernist music (this having to do with certain unchanging imperatives--such as reliable reproduction of
tasks--for any "language" of performance, whether for live performance or performance in a studio), that although in
certain respects the pitch/rhythmic tasks of complex music are only quantitatively different than traditional tasks (24-tone
ET instead of 12-tone ET, higher-level tuplets instead of lower-level tuplets), there remain stubbornly non-quantifiable
residues from any attempt at total quantitative reduction. But one example will suffice: ET microtones are not merely
quantitative binary/ternary "splittings" of the intervals of 12-tone ET (itself, although a thoroughly quantified abstraction,
still possessing a latent, although emaciated opposition between the "rationality" of diatonic centers and the
"irrationality" of chromatic tones and modulations), but are--experientially, perceptually, and in terms of their
performative assimilation--qualitatively different than the chromatic tones/intervals of 12-tone ET. ET microtones will
continue to possess an irrational "surplus" (at the least in the West) at least (and a long time thereafter!) until sufficient
numbers of musicians and listeners grow up hearing rationalized ET microtones/intervals around them, until most
keyboards are tuned in ET microtones, until a sufficient number of masterworks composed with ET microtones demand
of all educated musicians their assimilation and until sufficient numbers of leading musicians/critics can critically enforce
higher levels of their realization.
It is not impossible that all this might come to pass--the assimilation of 12-tone ET over the last century proves
that such a large-scale project can achieve its goals--but the author believes that it is extremely unlikely, unless
extraordinary transformations take place. The last two goals are conceivable: if enough masterworks employing
microtonality are composed, then all musicians involved with new music (assuming this term will have any meaning for
the following generations) will have to learn these works and leading musicians/critics will willingly work toward
achieving higher technical standards. This situation, however, would not change at all the "irrational" quality of ET
microtones for the vast majority of new music performers; no matter how rigorous their training in and thorough their
assimilation of microtones, these will still have come too late for the microtones to constitute anything but an artificial
"second nature." Only if one grows up hearing ET microtones in the surrounding world and is surrounded by instruments
which are intended to produce these tones/intervals is thoroughgoing "naturalization" of them possible. The author can
offer his personal experience in this issue: although over the last ca. 15 years he has practiced ET microtones literally
thousands of hours with computer models and verified his intonation endlessly with chromatic tuners, he doubts that he
will ever be able to perceive and reproduce some quarter-tone intervals as well as talented younger musicians who have
grown up in some Middle Eastern countries (this granted the difference between a thoroughly rationalized, atonal 24-tone
ET vocabulary which is the author's concern and the less manifold challenges of an essentially modal usage of quarter-
tones found in much Middle Eastern music).
It is unlikely that a widespread "naturalization" of ET microtones can come about in any other way than
both/either the broader diffusion of the tradition-based music of those cultures in which such intervals are "natural,"
and/or an infusion of microtones (perhaps connected with the former potential) into the popular music of the future.
Either possibility would allow those growing up in microtonally-disadvantaged cultures (such as Western culture in the
main for at least the last millennium and certainly during the entire common-practice period) the potential for deep
assimilation of these intervals. Until this comes to pass, it is very possible that those new-music musicians trained at least
partially outside/on the edge of the "center" of Central-Western Europe (for example, those growing up with traditional
Turkish/Middle Eastern/Greek music or in certain countries in Eastern Europe) will possess great advantages over those
who are only trained in the somewhat backward Western traditional skills.
training methods that the author (and only performer to date) found that they were almost completely
irrelevant, and that working with a computer model was the only realistic solution. However, for the 45
non-traditional tasks/complexes of tasks indicated in this excerpt, a computer model can provide little
help: constantly changing precisely-indicated bow speeds (thirteen such bow speeds possible, these
always measured in relation to the indicated dynamics; see Example 1 for an explanation of the
symbols), alternation of col legno, battuto and normale, bow vibrato (with at least seven different
speeds) and on top of all this, an independent layer of vertical bow movements with at least eleven
possible vertical bow placements. Here computer models can do little more than provide an "attack-
point map" specifying when indicated actions should occur. They can almost certainly provide no
useful "sound-image," because many of the indications specify not specific types of sounds toward
which coordinated physical movements are oriented, but rather different types of independently-
organized physical movements whose sonic outcome is the result of their interaction. Indeed, this lack
of a definite sound-image toward which one can orient one's efforts would seem to obviate resonance
training entirely.
One seems therefore entitled to raise the following questions: are the fine distinctions called for
by the composer at all necessary? Is there any chance that a performer could reliably realize these
distinctions in isolation, not to speak of their realization in ensemble; and if (s)he did, would even the
best-informed listener be able to perceive that all this had been accomplished; and, even more, would
it make any significant difference to the musical/expressive substance of the piece? And, lastly, is
there such an original, substantial content to the piece that would justify this extremity of notated
tasks? If the answer to all these questions is "no," then perhaps the entire project of treating these
"irrational" domains with such finely rationalized distinctions is a vain undertaking.
Due to the prevalence of these sorts of questions among musicians confronting complex music,
it is necessary to deal with them, however little the author wishes to do so (or wishes it were even
This required one year of preliminary practice of 12th-tone scales with computer models in order to assimilate (with
45
some degree of stability) the 12th-tone intervals, and another five months of intense practice with the sequenced model of
Recoil (in addition, extensive "brush-up" work is necessary before every concert).
The author would by no means wish to imply that his best efforts toward realization of the tasks described above
have as yet achieved the degree of accuracy and reliability that he would wish to attain. All he can assert is firstly that he
has worked so long with computer models of the main pieces in his repertoire that he knows their "sound images" by
heart, and secondly that with further practice with computer models and repeated performances, his performances of
these pieces have steadily become more accurate and reliable. In the long run, spectacular improvements in performative
standards can only be attained through competitively-tested standards of accomplishment, but when there are no other
performers willing to take on such tasks, measuring one's accomplishments against the unforgiving abstract model
provided by the computer is not the worst of all possible stopgap measures: if there is a steady improvement in
performative accomplishment, then the learning method has at least this much to speak for it.
In the author's prognosis, such computer models will become increasingly necessary in the near future. Only the
smallest minority of performers is willing to face the radical compositional/performative challenges of this time, a
situation likely to get worse the more fossilized (or completely irrelevant) the high-cultural aims/pretensions underlying
the "new music" system are likely to become. But one example can be given, drawn from the pitch/interval domain, in
which--it must be remembered--a more exacting level of training exists than in all other domains. The performative
challenges of thoroughgoing (atonal) 12th-tone intervallic organization (i.e., 72-tone ET) lies at least one performative
generation beyond the present time, for which the thorough assimilation of quarter-tones is perhaps the most pressing
concern. At present, as only a few composers have comprehended the significance of 12th-tones in constituting the next
"grand project" of ET microtonal subdivision (the reasons for this assertion are manifold, the most important being firstly
the potential for functional differentiation--for example, upward and downward "leading tones" to functionally "real"
quarter-tones--and secondly the potential of 12th-tones for connecting ET with the just intonation system), it will
obviously take some time before a significant repertoire of substantial music employing these means is formed. Seeing
that it has taken about a half-century's worth of substantial quarter-tone music for a minority of present-day "new music"
performers to accept thorough assimilation of quarter-tones as a duty, the next stage will clearly require several
performative generations to accomplish even this much, leaving in the meantime only a few isolated "outsiders" at all
interested in these potentials. Thus, in the near future, it is likely that those few who continue to accept radically new
challenges will be forced to rely on their own resources and will have to set their own standards of accomplishment, for
which computer models will prove of the greatest value.
necessary). In short, he has heard their like hundreds of times from those doubting that such composed
tasks have any basis in reality. Leaving aside the doubts of performers simply irritated by the difficulty
of the tasks (and often clueless as to how to meet them), one very often discovers, lurking behind the
reasonable form of such queries, a sensibility deeply troubled both by the flood of unstable new
sounds and by their raw physicality, both of these all the more troubling in that they can neither be
funneled into known musical/perceptual categories nor ushered out of the rational realm entirely. The
easiest solution to a difficult problem is to wish it away entirely, and for those desiring to cast doubt
on or invalidate this entire project, these sorts of questions surely create a great tactical advantage.
Only a negative answer them can be partially proven (using a somewhat circular argument, i.e.,
nobody can presently realize these tasks, therefore they are [at the present time, the only reality "we"
can know] "unplayable," "unreasonable," etc.); a positive answer cannot be proven, because it is
impossible to know what is possible until it has at least been attempted. Because every substantial,
radically new piece defines a project for the next several "generations" of performers (as well as
critics, listeners, etc.), even a partial justification of the new demands it places must wait until the
proper conditions are created for their accurate realization.
Therefore, instead of either attempting to thoroughly convince others that these questions should
receive positive answers (an endeavor which would require at least a book-length response) or
dismissing the questions through the ad hominem tactic of throwing into doubt the questioners'
motives and/or competence, the author will take a completely different tack. He will fully admit not
46
only the validity of these questions, but the likelihood that later judgments of many works employing
radical new means will return negative answers to at least some of these questions (especially the
questions concerning perceptibility and musical substance). He will also fully admit the central
contribution of such queries toward ultimate aesthetic evaluations of the domains opened up by all
radically new works. He will even consider it as an absolute imperative for any composer placing
47
extreme performative demands that (s)he consider the issues they raise with the greatest seriousness,
especially during the self-questioning phase focused on discovering the material means absolutely
necessary for a piece.
Yet however valid and pertinent these questions are, and--more importantly--however reasonable
doubts might be concerning the aesthetic value and potential of realms which cannot at the present
(and perhaps into the future as well) be responsibly realized by performers, much less accurately
perceived by listeners, it must never be forgotten that all such questions are only means of
understanding and judging the challenges of both already-existing works and those likely to arise in
the future. They must never be allowed to be pseudo-scientifically converted into criteria for deciding
The previous paragraph's characterization of a sensibility troubled by radical complex music should not be taken as an
46
ad hominem attack on the arguments--the value of which is fully acknowledged in the present paragraph--of either
traditionalists or academic high-Modernists, but is intended more as a characterization of attitudes (often strongly
influenced by partisan ideologies) which the author has often encountered. Granted that the primary aim of radical
complex music is not that of producing a shock-sensation within the "new-music" system (whose dimensions,
perspectives, projective weight and "real world" impact are fairly minuscule), the mere fact that so many aspects of this
music so deeply perturb so many listeners, critics and musicians, and above all so many highly-trained musicians/critics,
is a sign that it (without necessarily wishing to do so) has struck some very sensitive nerves at the core of not only
official new music, but of the entire Western high-art musical project.
The author believes that the artistic potential of these new domains--i.e., all those domains banned by post-WWII new-
47
music composers/theorists from the privileged realm of rationality (the "primary" parameters) into the non-rational (=
supportive/ornamental/expressive) ghetto of the "secondary" (or, for these new domains, one is tempted to maintain,
"tertiary") parameters--will ultimately depend upon their attaining a degree of differentiated rationality; which is to say,
on their attaining a central, differentiated role in the unfolding of compelling and substantial musical argument. If these
domains as differentiated are absolutely necessary to the unfolding of such a musical argument, then a differentiated
perception (at least roughly corresponding to the finely notated distinctions) will also become necessary. If either the
musical argument made through the necessary contribution of these means is judged trivial or a differentiated perception
of these means is not necessary to the unfolding of a substantial musical argument, then the means will be judged as
aesthetically unnecessary.
whether these should exist or not. In short, the jury is not yet out concerning the aesthetic potential of
48
these new realms, but these must (at the least) be allowed a fair hearing, as the aesthetic criteria for
their rejection cannot yet be determined.
What is more, such questions are raised only as long as the aesthetic value of difficult works is
still in question, or to be more precise, so long as the longer-term significance of their composers is
not yet decided. Once any composer has--whether justly or not--been "certified" as one of the elect
49
and seems likely to achieve a secure berth in the canon of Western music, anyone performing his/her
works in a larger forum will be held to a high performative standard, no matter how "impossible,"
"unreasonable," physically dangerous, etc. the tasks of these works actually are or once seemed to be. 50
The burden of proof here will lie on the performer, not on the composer. Similarly, analysts will shift
from asking whether the notated distinctions are significant, to competing with each other in justifying
how they are significant.
Although the author believes strongly that many of what are likely to be recognized as the finest
works of the last quarter-century have crossed into these new domains (whether fleetingly or with the
intent to abide), and that great aesthetic potentials--if intelligently developed--lie dormant in them, he
is under no illusion that such statements alone are likely to convince any performer to attempt these
challenges. However, two promising potentials of these domains for all performers (in particular, for
all new music performers) can be suggested, the first more practical, the second more idealistic.
The first should interest any performer aiming to attain the highest possible quality of
interpretation: because these new domains demand far finer dynamic/textural/timbral distinctions than
51
For an incisive criticism of the seeming reasonableness of "Criterion Philosophies," see "Addenda: Facts, Standards, and
48
Truth," especially "2. Criteria" and "3. Criterion Philosophies" (pp. 371-374) in Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its
Enemies, vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 1966). If the author may be allowed a loose paraphrase (and elaboration),
Popper argues that in confronting any compelling and substantial issue/phenomenon, the presence or absence of clear
criteria for deciding the truth or falsity of any statement concerning this issue/phenomenon has no bearing on its real
existence. Thus, there are many compelling and substantial issues/phenomena (Popper gives the case of an illness--
tuberculosis--which defied medical understanding for centuries) which truly exist, whether or not they can presently be
fully understood. Scientific progress in comprehending such issues/phenomena can only be attained by means of tentative
theories thrown open to the jury of experimental falsification.
Although the last step in Popper's argument cannot be directly applied to the aesthetic realm (other imperatives--
such as compellingness and art-intrinsic substantiality of the "arguments" offered by any work--being more significant
than their potential for falsifiability), until this point one can find a strong argument made by one of the greatest 20th-
century proponents of the scientific method against hyper-rational attempts to funnel troublesome yet substantial
issues/phenomena which presently elude rational specification (are non-testable, non-specifiable, etc.) into the abyss of
the absolutely irrational.
By whatever mysterious means this is decided: one hopes (against hope) that there is some justice in such decisions; that
49
purely aesthetic factors--despite some notorious present-day examples to the contrary--will in the long run prove more
compelling than aesthetically irrelevant factors such as nationalist/state pride, or either system-political or commercial
success.
One must only recall the legions of violinists who every year develop tendinitis from practicing Paganini Caprices or the
50
countless singers who have ruined their voices attempting to sing Wagner operas too soon, to realize that the standard
works of the traditional canon claim far more victims (very likely proportionally as well) than those of new music.
Indeed, the more the standards of modern high-energy tone production are wedded to reified/mechanized versions of
traditional challenges--found, for example, in the arpeggio-work of most Minimalist composers--the greater the physical
peril for the performer: certain pieces of Philip Glass or Arvo Pärt are far more dangerous for a performer then most
pieces by Xenakis or Ferneyhough, composers who once represented the peak of radical excess.
And in turn, some of the challenges of these latter composers are far more hazardous and physically impossible (in
Xenakis' case, often literally so) than the entirely new sorts of tasks proposed by younger radical complex composers.
Yet, at least within the "new music" system, at present only the younger composers are charged with and--by a sort of
contagious magic--simultaneously convicted of having proposed "dangerous" or "unplayable" tasks.
Assuming on the performer's part interpretational integrity and finely-developed taste, the author would maintain that
51
quality of interpretation has in general to do with the fineness and variety of local distinctions (which manifold, when it
cannot be productively subsumed to higher levels, risks being perceived as (FC out) the result of overly sophisticated
pseudo-distinctions), whereas compellingness of interpretation has in general to do with larger-scale factors such as
explicitly demanded by any previous music (whether or not these can as yet be directly "translated"
into stable, aurally specifiable distinctions), there is a great likelihood anyone who seriously attempts
to meet such challenges will--always assuming that (s)he maintains his/her traditional skills--end up
developing a much broader and finer palette of tone colors and sound-qualities than those who perform
only traditional music and conventional contemporary music.
This can quite clearly be demonstrated in the more traditional domains of pitch and rhythm. No
matter how well one has assimilated 12-tone ET pitches/intervals (and here assuming the highest level
of native ability and professional accomplishment, i.e., possessing perfect pitch and capable of the
most reliable intonational reproduction), if one has learned only these, then all other pitches/intervals--
including sonically "real" just intervals, not to speak of other ET microtones or stylistic/expressive
inflections--must be consigned to an irrational realm lying somewhere between these islands of
absolute rationality. Yet once one has to some degree assimilated just intonation and 24-tone and/or
72-tone ET, one begins to perceive a whole spectrum of tones and intervals lying in-between the
chromatic intervals which one earlier not been able to perceive as real entities. For example, one can
no longer dogmatically hold to the opinion that only a single "absolutely rational" 12-tone ET half-step
exists when one is able to recognize and reproduce both several stable types of half-steps as well as
smaller intervals lying in-between these. This knowledge can obviously serve the cause of expressive
differentiation: for the modern practice of small leading-tones, one can more precisely grade the
degree of the deviation, which also allows one to reproduce it with greater reliability. But it can also
serve the cause of functional differentiation as well: for the performance of much music preceding
thoroughgoing chromaticization, precise differentiations possible in just intonation (simulated well by
72-tone ET)--such as those between diatonic (large) and chromatic (small) half-steps--allow for a
degree of syntactic clarification and specificity of harmonic relationships not conceivable with 12-tone
ET. Indeed, this knowledge can clear up many unnecessary conflicts concerning basic issues of
intonation for common practice music, most of which depend upon a grounded training in just
intonation.
A similar argument applies to the newer domains. To limit the discussion largely to tone-quality,
one traditionally considers "good tone" as something absolute; all tone-qualities surrounding this small
center are generally considered "special" (flautando, sul ponticello, etc.) or insufficient ("harsh,"
"amateurish," etc.). Yet once one has begun to assimilate the finer tonal/textural distinctions called for
in radical complex music, one can begin to perceive and accurately reproduce a rich field of fine
distinctions in tonal color which one had earlier only vaguely perceived as irrational deviations from
the norm.
In order to explain this more fully, the author shall return to the new sorts of challenges
presented in his cello solo Recoil (Example 1). In order to make any sense at all of the welter of tasks
presented for the right hand alone, one must firstly be able to reliably reproduce each type of task in
isolation. For the factor of bow speed ("s.," "s.+1," "s.-1," etc. [see Example 1 for an explanation of
these symbols]) one should firstly practice all degrees of bow speed in relation to each dynamic level,
for example, maintaining a forte dynamic while changing bow speeds by at least seven stably
differentiated degrees (at least from "s.-3" = "scrunch tone" to "s.+3" = flautando), first linearly: "s.-3,"
"s.-2," etc., then according to basic patterns: for example, "s.-3," "s.+3," "s.-2," "s.+2," etc. Secondly
(and conversely), one must be able to maintain a stable relationship of bow speed to dynamic, for
example to maintain a bow speed of "s.-3" (an equal mixture of noise and tone) while one changes
dynamic levels, first linearly: pp, p, mp, etc., then according to basic patterns: for example, pp, mf, p, f,
mp, ff, etc. Thirdly, one should be able to stably reproduce simple exercises consisting of overlaid
patterns of these two aspects, for example: "s.+3"/mp, "s.+3"/p, "s."/p, "s."/f, "s.+2"/f, and so on. It is
clear that anyone who has assimilated such challenges will have a much broader tonal palette than
maintenance of momentum and clear expressive distinctions (the broadness of which distinctions runs the risk of
becoming manneristic, or even unintentionally descending into self-parody).
before: in place of a generic conception of flautando, one will be able to produce several (at least
three) fairly precise degrees of flautando; the same goes for "good tone" (a normal: "s," a tighter: "s.-
1" and a looser: "s.+1") for tense tonal qualities (in the "s.-x" domain) and for "scrunch tones."
Similarly, the differentiation of five degrees of ST or SP called for by Recoil (not to speak of the
vertical bow movements between these "stations") demand that one invent exercises whose
assimilation will enforce a degree of predictability in the reproduction of these unusual tasks. This can
best be achieved by learning the positions of the nodal points on the string, i.e., the positions at which
one can produce harmonics and, for stopped notes, bowed harmonics: one should be able to reliably
find each main nodal point and bow precisely on it until the harmonic sounds, then move between
nodal points, and so on. Although the distinctions called for in Recoil may eventually prove to be
overly fine, any performer who has learned this piece (or any piece presenting similar challenges) will
at the least be certain of the degree to which an indication such as "SP" actually comprises a range of
much finer distinctions, which one will thereafter be able to reproduce with greater reliability. This
knowledge can also be employed to combat the common tendency among many composers to treat
such timbral indications as equivalent to synthesizer "patches," an approach which both naïvely de-
physicalizes sound production (denying both human physical efforts and the unstable interaction of
these efforts with real musical instruments) and reveals a static conception of sound. 52
Although much of this vastly more differentiated spectrum of tonal qualities will very likely
prove inapplicable to the performance of traditional music, assimilating the tasks described certainly
cannot harm one as a performer at all, and indeed may allow one to attain for the first time a truly
grounded and rational understanding of the elements of which "good tone" actually consists. Such
tasks force one to completely re-think all that one had previously taken for granted, and allow one
firstly to rationally and piece-by-piece analyze the components of "good tone" (however one defines
this) and secondly to re-synthesize them to meet the demands of any situation: in each register of the
instrument, for each string, in each dynamic; precisely how tense, how bright, how "sweet," with what
precise color; in each performance space; and so on.
A second great potential of these domains is, as mentioned above, more idealistic. All players
who have seriously attempted to master the challenges of radical complex music can testify to the
transformative effects these challenges have on one's relationship to the instrument. The previous
paragraphs dealt with the functional benefits of the new resources which result from this new
relationship to the instrument, that is, with their value as "enhanced" means (i.e., finer
intonation/rhythmic/timbral etc. distinctions) oriented toward traditional interpretational ends,
which are the themselves means to further ends, such as the "bringing to life" of the works of long-
dead "great composers." Although such projects are indubitably of great value, the radical
compositional/performative developments of the last quarter century are, in the author's view, so
clearly valuable [FC word ?] developments of aesthetic and human potentials--and therefore of
fundamental cultural worth--that these should never have to go begging for legitimization in traditional
domains. In short, the overlaid layers of independently-organized action-structures found in much
radical complex music not only demand the development of new skills, but open the possibility of a
new sort of "corporal thinking" transcending means/end-oriented training (for example, of traditional
It is the pseudo-technical precision of such timbral indications which ages them so brutally; this same is very likely to
52
eventually age the finer distinctions demanded by present-day radical complex music, unless these avoid the trap of being
reified into specific sound qualities/textures, etc. Expressive indications of a more traditional nature such as molto
agitato, Bewegt, "fearful" and their like were once convicted by the high-Modernist model of lacking any criteria for
their realization, but in retrospect it is becoming increasingly clear that all purely technical performative indications
favored by the high-Modernist model (i.e., lacking any expressive "surplus") become victims of the progress of collective
scientific/technical knowledge. What was once considered overly precise becomes, within a performative generation,
impossibly vague: an indication such as "SP," a generation-or-so ago an extremely precise indication, might to a present-
day performer who has assimilated the new timbral/textural domains mean literally nothing ("which 'SP'?"); whereas
indications such as molto agitato or "aggressive" (granted their broadness and even naïveté) might still convey something
across performative generations.
virtuosity). In this, recent developments in radical complex music lie very close to peak developments
in modern improvisation, with the main differences lying in a greater degree of abstraction and
individuation of tasks in the former. Both, however, value that which is so consistently denigrated in
53
Western philosophy--the physical body and physical motion--without fetishizing the physical domains
54
at the expense of the mental/ideal (which would amount to simply inverting the terms of appraisal).
In the attempt to accord to these domains the respect they properly deserve and prevent this from
descending into a sentimentalization of their "otherness," a fitting thought-experiment would be that of
treating human bodies and physical motions as though they were potentially self-conscious. A
corresponding (autonomous) moral imperative for one's treatment of these domains might be
formulated as follows: physical bodies and what they can accomplish should never be treated as mere
means to ends, but as entities/actions (intelligently) striving to attain ends. Although they should
perhaps not be permitted to determine these ends (a common aesthetic shortcoming of modern
improvisation), this imperative requires that these domains be accorded the respect entitled all
subjectivities. This implies a respect for their corrigibility: their ends must in the end be judged as to
their aesthetic value, and the degree and quality of the corporal intelligence must also be laid open to
criticism.
Although the development of such a corporal thinking has much to offer in its own right, the
aesthetic value of its results will take longer to judge. At the least, it can offer valuable correctives to
at least two basic dangers facing composed art music. Firstly, it combats the tendency to fetishize the
text of music, the roots of which tendency are not difficult to discover: one trusts that which one can
see, and can come to trust only that which endures long enough to submit it to full scrutiny. Music in
live performance enters the consciousness only through the untrustworthy sense of hearing, and its
real, provable existence in the world is coterminous with its occurrence; thereafter it can only continue
to exist in fragments (in fading memories) or in a shadow form (the frozen "double" preserved by
recording media): it is thus a pre-eminently sterblich phenomenon. In contrast, with texts one can read
55
and re-read, compare and analyze, and a work's enduring presence in written form seems to allow one
53
In both improvisation and the performance of complex music, the new skills one assimilates can in general be applied to
other contexts; but in complex music, unlike improvisation, the specific tasks one learns remain specific and are not (or at
least should not be) generalizable.
54
Although the author's use of "fetish" and its derivatives is certainly not intended psychologically, it is intended
negatively: it is employed to criticize all totalistic claims that any element in the communicative chain might be sufficient
for constituting (or directly conveying to the listener) a manifold artistic experience, thus serving as a sort of "universal
currency."
55
For a discussion of the author's use of the terms sterblich and Sterblichkeit, see Franklin Cox, "Musik und das Heilige,"
in Le Sacre, ed. Hinrich Bergmeier, (Biennale Neue Musik Hannover, 2001), pp. 86-90. As none of the English terms one
might choose as a translation--"perishable," "dying/'die-able,'" or "mortality," "vulnerability to dying," etc.--can combine
all the inflections of meanings intended by the author, the German words will be used. On the aesthetic level, these terms
are meant by the author as positive evaluations, as explained in the following citation (p. 88; here given in the original
English version):
<PB>"By 'sterblich' I do not mean a work which exists only at this moment only to quickly vanish, but a work which
presents an ecstatic 'dyingness,' a this-ness which privileges the moment of the work's presence to the degree that for its
duration all existence hinges on its continuing: should it be suddenly stopped or interrupted, all of the experience-being
which this work uniquely creates would in a moment cease to be."<PE>
Implicit in the usage of these terms is an orientation of the author's scale of values so as to privilege that which
will imminently vanish from the world. The corollary is a suspicion of all that art which asserts a sort of ersatz-
immortality, i.e., that which denies death without ever having attained life (which latter, in the author's view, involves
attaining a degree of Sterblichkeit). In this respect, the author views the potentials of mechanical reproduction in a far
less positive light than did, for example, Walter Benjamin (footnote to "Musik und das Heilige," p. 90):
<PB>"Jean Cocteau often maintained that film records death at work, but I would maintain that film (as with all
reproducible media) imprints a false, death-denying eternity upon every moment; whereas the situation of live
performance is infinitely more sterblich, because the unique situation of live performance--including all the expectations
of the audience members, the fears, hopes, physical/spiritual capabilities of the performers, the unique atmosphere of the
occasion, and so on--cannot by any means be recorded or reproduced. This is death at work, and is
unreproducible."<PE>
the fixed perspective necessary for authoritatively judging its weaknesses or proving its value. Yet it 56
is this illusion of certainty to which traditional disciplines are prone--a denial of both error and
Sterblichkeit--that necessitates a constant forgetting of the fact that music does not exist wholly in the
text. This forgetting is not confined only to historical musicology or music theory, but is central as
well to high-Modernist conceptions--indeed, perhaps made even more extreme by these conceptions--
for which the composer's "Musical Idea" was to be adequately and authoritatively recorded in the text
(which imperative, on the positive side, demanded that composers specify their aims ever more
concretely in the notational medium). Taking this conception to its logical end, many "true-believers"
in these notions have asserted or implied that their music resides in the text (and in analyses of the
text) and need not even be physically realized in the world, as this would represent only a pale
transcription, a "shadow," of the true piece. Two fundamental contributions of complex music have
been those of firstly shattering this naïve fetishization of the text and secondly (and concomitantly)
demanding serious theoretical consideration of the physical domain--the physical qualities of
instruments, the drama of performers attempting to overcome insuperable difficulties, the development
of a corporal thinking necessary to partially master these challenges, the perishability of every single
performance--without ever denying the necessity of notation, with its law-like stringency. There are no
easy solutions to such problematic issues, but complex music has at least partially broken free of a
conceptual dead-end threatening to choke off the further development of art music.
Secondly, a focus on corporal thinking can throw into relief the shortcomings of the opposite
tendency, that of fetishizing mechanical reproduction. Here the medium is equated with the music: in
seeking to break free of both the dead hand of the text and the exigencies of live performance, both
text and human sound producer are discarded, supposedly enabling the listener to attain direct access
to the music. Central to such conceptions is a suspicion of all previous media--notation, performance
practice, live performance, etc.--for their insufficiency, their unreliability, etc., in short for the "noise"
they introduced into the communicative chain (similar to the high-Modernist argument discussed
above), and a privileging of "current" media (some 40 years ago LP's/tape, 15 years ago DAT's/CD's,
and so on), each celebrated in turn for making possible a "noise-free" transcription and giving greater
control to the listener. The paradoxes in such viewpoints should be obvious. If any medium is
maintained to be absolutely noise-free, then no newer, more perfect medium can ever be discovered:
thus, any provable claim in behalf of newer, more "noise-free" medium should logically negate all
absolutist arguments for noise-free transcription. Yet if noise is admitted as inevitable to all media
57
(thus, that a degree of translation--in the author's sense--is always necessary) FC close paren missing,
then there must be some distance between the "thing itself" (i.e., the music) and the listener. In fact,
Among the oldest tenets in aesthetics is that "the greatest works will stand the test of time," that "that which has proven
56
its value shall endure" (Horace wished to write poems that would, based on their aesthetic worth, "outlive the pyramids").
Granted that there is a degree of truth in such statements, i.e., that certain works have survived for centuries due to their
perceived cultural/aesthetic value (this is especially valid for periods of scarcity: when recording and preserving works
was labor-intensive, expensive and difficult), the mistake is too often made of believing that a necessary connection
exists between the intrinsic value of a work and the duration of its survival. Not all works that have survived are
intrinsically great artistic/cultural achievements: many of these still remain with us quite simply because they were the
most effective in and useful for legitimizing the regimes of newly-arrived conquerors, for confirming the elite status of
small priest/educated classes, for convincing laboring classes to accept their lot, and so on (this is not to argue that it is
impossible that "useful" works--such as Vergil's Aenaid or Shakespeare's history plays--cannot be intrinsically great
artworks); and many survived due to dumb luck. And, conversely, not all of the highest cultural achievements of past
cultures existed in a form that could be recorded: the greatest achievements of many cultures--highly developed arts of
epic recitation, entire dance and performance traditions--have vanished forever, and present-day cultural traditions and
languages are dying out at an accelerating rate. These distinctions are important to remember in this period of
information abundance, during which, according to some statisticians, a greater quantity of recordable information is
transferred and recorded every day then existed in the entire world but a short time ago. It is a comforting thought to
believe that now everything that is of cultural worth can be saved, but this is quite simply not the case.
Many of these superficial confusions can be traced back to basic misunderstandings as to what words such as
57
"medium"/"media" actually mean: a "medium" is a means of transcribing/transmitting information, and no noise-free

means of transcription has yet been discovered.
what electronic/tape/sample etc. music does is collapse elements of the communicative chain--
notation, performance, medium of transmission, medium of recording--into the medium and in a sense
deny that anything but the medium exists (indeed that it is just a medium). There is a text to the music,
but one that can only be read by a machine: it consists of fragments of magnetized particles, etc. which
the machine reads literally, without imagination or criticism. And there is a performance practice, but
one frozen forever at the moment of the work's creation (this contributing to the swift aging of
electronic music). The illusion of absolute presence claimed by electronic music is bought at a high
price: one surrenders the gap between lifeless medium and imagined/heard result, between the ideal
indicated by notation and the reality of what is actually performed, this changing radically over the
generations and constantly revealing new aspects of any piece capable of withstanding such
"criticism."
The notion of corporal thinking should not in its turn be fetishized, but at the least it forces
attention onto the human element of music-making. Firstly, if it is admitted that an essential part of
any piece of music is the corporal knowledge necessary to realize it, then this part of the work will die
if this knowledge is lost and/or forgotten. Although every individual must develop his/her own
58
corporal vocabulary, the corporal knowledge of a performance tradition cannot be attained by any
individual working in isolation. It is a collective fund of knowledge built up over generations, it is
only weakly recordable by any medium and can continue to live (and this against great odds) only
through human efforts, which include the imperatives of both maintaining and constantly renewing the
tradition. Secondly, if corporal thinking is admitted to be essential to art music, then all attempts to
maintain that music "is" the notation, the medium, the live performance, etc. are fundamentally
misguided. The work of musical art is both all of these and none of them. Notation, performance,
reception, recording, and mental reconstruction are its (better or worse) translations, and the creative
strife among all of these is necessary for revealing a portion of what it "is."
This knowledge may permanently disappear, although the early music movement has (ironically) proven that the brute
58
endurance of texts can provide invaluable assistance--admitting the gaps in knowledge and the unavoidably "distorted"
perspective, and granting the necessity of concentrated, idealistic human efforts--in the revival of long-dead performance
traditions.

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Cox - Practice - Fassung vom November 21, 2021 ZZ: 216.000.

<ZB>I.A. High-Modernist Model of Performance Practice<ZE>

<ZB>I.B. Challenges Presented by Complex Music<ZE>

challenges to the high-Modernist model, among these being the following:

<ZB>II. New Music Performance Practice: Situation<ZE>

<ZB>II.A. Absolute Self-Assertion<ZE>

<ZB>II.B. Absolute Responsibility/Culpability<ZE>

Section II.B.3, followed by concluding comments in Section II.B.4.

<ZB>II.B.1. Absolute Standard of Responsible Realization as Necessary and/or Sufficient.<ZE>

<ZB>II.B.2. Absolute Correspondence between Notation, Performance, and Ideal Reception.<ZE>

The theoretically absolute one-to-one correspondence in absolutist high-Modernist theories between

Similarly, the mechanical regularity of rhythms as specified by notation is inappropriate for

human performance or perception, and finer decimals--hundredths, thousandths of seconds, etc.--are

by such means are specious.

<ZB>III. Towards a Performance Practice for Complex Music: Theory<ZE>

<ZB>III.A. Revision of the High-Modernist Model<ZE>

<ZB>III.B. Performative/Interpretational Standards for Complex Music<ZE>

notational specification is undeniable.

<ZB>III.C. Appropriate Training Methods/Means<ZE>

proportionally-derived speeds/tempos against internalized repertoire of absolute speeds ingrained

"medium"/"media" actually mean: a "medium" is a means of transcribing/transmitting information, and no noise-free

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