Paulo C. Chagas - Unsayable Music - Six Reflections On Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music-Leuven University Press (2014)

Unsayable Music
Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics,

Electroacoustic and Digital Music
Unsayable Music
Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics,
Electroacoustic and Digital Music
Paulo C. Chagas
LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

© 2014 Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire
Pers Leuven, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven/Louvain (Belgium)
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ISBN 978 90 5867 994 9

D / 2014 / 1869 / 34
NUR: 663
English language revision: Stacia A. Raymond

Cover design: Friedemann Vervoort
Foreword
The role of the composer in society has gone through many transformations
over the past 1500 years or so. In his De Institutione Musica, the sixth-
century philosopher Boethius perceived three distinctive types of musician,
arranged in descending order of importance: the critic, the composer, and the
performer. But composers have seldom been confined to a single category of
musical activity. Throughout the Middle Ages, they were often responsible
for important breakthroughs in theoretical (i.e., critical) knowledge, e.g.,
Philippe de Vitry’s seminal advances in rhythmic notation, meter, and
isorhythm (talea and color), which laid the foundation for the Ars Nova of
the 1300s. Prominent among later composers who contributed greatly to our
critical understanding of musical practice was the eighteenth-century theorist
Jean-Philippe Rameau.
However, it was in the nineteenth century that composers frequently
undertook to write about the role of music in society, as well as about
themselves. Schumann and Berlioz were renowned as writers about as well
as of music, but most notable—and notorious—in this regard was Wagner,
who racialized musical thinking and projected his imaginings about stylistic
evolution into the future. The phenomenon of the literary composer persisted
into the twentieth century, with writings by Schoenberg, Hindemith,
Messiaen, and Cage, among many others, dealing not only with their approach
to composition but their personal worldview and philosophy as well.
Paulo Chagas is one of those remarkable composers well versed not only
in the methods and means of musical creation but also in theoretical issues
of aesthetics, semiotics, mathematics, and philology. This book displays an
exceptional grasp of a wide range of complex theoretical and philosophical
issues, all of them nonetheless directly connected to the act of composing
music.
Indeed, it is precisely because of his passionate intellectual engagement
that Chagas’s music always exhibits emotional immediacy as well as technical
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sophistication. Both his works and his ideas draw their inspiration from
the wellspring of daily life and its frequently harsh realities. Chagas was a
victim of political violence when, at age 17, he was arrested and tortured by
the military dictatorship in Brazil in 1971 for collaborating with opposition
groups fighting for democracy. He has described to me his ordeal in the
following way:
I was put in the “fridge,” a small room, refrigerated and acoustically

isolated, and completely dark and cold. Various noises and sounds—
howling oscillators, rumbling generators, distorted radio signals,
motorcycles, etc.—shot from loudspeakers hidden behind the walls.
Incessantly, the electronic sounds filled the dark space and overwhelmed
my body for three long days. After a time, I lost consciousness. This
auditory and acoustic torture was then a recent development, partially
replacing traditional methods of physical coercion that killed thousands
in Latin American prisons between the 1960s and 1990s. Such sounds
injure the body without leaving any visible trace of damage. The
immersive space of the torture cell, soundproofed and deprived of light,
resonates in my memory as the perfect environment for experiencing the
power of sound embodiment.
He was freed from prison only after the intervention of a military officer who
was a friend of his parents. His works continue to explore themes of power,
violence, and control, using the latest technology and theoretical approaches.
Thus, Chagas’s music emanates from a place within himself that is not
only highly personal but also something he shares in common with the
rest of us. The human condition and the relationship between music and
society are recurring themes in his music. His philosophical writings are not
arid speculations written in abstruse academies from the lofty heights of an
ivory tower; rather, they exhibit the same immediacy and involvement with
the world of ideas that his compositions do with the world of sound. Thus,
theoreticians, composers, and lovers of music will all benefit from the insights
and wisdom contained within the covers of this book, which is the product of
nearly fifty years of asking questions, seeking answers, and creating expressive
sound.
Walter Aaron Clark

Professor of Musicology
Director, Center for Iberian and Latin American Music
University of California, Riverside
6
Table of Contents
Introduction 9
1. Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics 13
2. Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin 43
3. Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System 65
4. The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music 103
5. The Temple of Electronic Music:

The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne in the 1990s 159
6. Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition:

The Relationship between Medium and Form 203
APPENDIX I
WDR Studio of Electronic Music:
Works produced from 1987 to 2000 251
APPENDIX II
Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000 257
Bibliography 265
7
Introduction
This book presents critical reflections on key topics of contemporary music

and aesthetics and represents nearly forty years of study. The six reflections
elaborate a myriad of themes emerging from both my artistic experience as a
composer and my research on musical semiotics, electroacoustic and digital
music, audiovisual and multimedia composition. Different approaches are
offered, including from philosophy, sociology, media, and critical studies.
In this sense, the reflections can be used as a guide for navigating through
today’s complexities and uncertainties while seeking musical understanding.
The first chapter investigates musical understanding through the lens of
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy. What is musical understanding? How can
we communicate that we understand a melody? The chapter provides cultural
background on Wittgenstein, and analyzes his contribution to logic, ethics
and aesthetics. Wittgenstein’s philosophy uses music as a tool for reflecting on
the understanding of language and understanding in general. It places ethics
at the core of the aesthetics and recognizes the role of a culture in shaping
aesthetic understanding. The insight on Wittgenstein’s musical universe
leads to questioning the relevance of applying his philosophical method to
investigating contemporary music.
The second chapter introduces my own theory of spectral semiotics, applying
it to the analysis of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1. Spectral semiotics
elaborates ideas from Husserl’s phenomenology of time consciousness, Varela’s
theory of neurophenomenology and Tarasti’s existential semiotics. It explores
digital tools such as sonograms for analyzing Chopin’s music, showing how
his composition relates sound to affect by building fractal spectral patterns at
different temporal levels, which are connected to different scales of affection.
Chapter three develops a view of music as a social system of communication
based on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, including his thoughts
on art and media. Central notions such as the distinction between system
and environment, the concept of form as the calling of a distinction (Spencer-
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Brown), the theory of autopoiesis, and the distinction between medium

and form, are discussed. Luhmann’s theory of art as social system provides
conceptual tools for studying meaning in contemporary art and music. The
chapter also presents other views of music and society by Ruwet, Tarasti,
Attali, and Kittler.
The fourth chapter provides a critical account of the creativity of
electroacoustic music and digital music. It examines the emergence of
electroacoustic music from the background of World War II and the aesthetics
of of musique concrète and eketronische Musik, which are associated with the
studios of Paris and Cologne. Themes of the evolution of electroacoustic music
from the 1950s to the present, including timbre composition, acousmatics,
analog modulation, digital sound synthesis, and digital music are among
the topics discussed. Focusing on critical ideas by authors such as Benjamin,
Flusser, McLuhan, and Foerster, we trace the specific creativity that has
emerged with the use of apparatuses, the transition from the analog to the
digital era, and the role of radio in shaping the experimental creativity of the
Electronic Music Studio of Cologne.
The fifth chapter is a critical documentation of the Electronic Music
Studio of Cologne between the years 1990 and 1999, when I worked there as
Klangregisseur (sound director). The studio is presented from both the artistic
and the technical point of view. Electroacoustic works produced during
this era which will be discussed include: Jean-Claude Eloy (France), Denys
Bouliane (Canada), Luc Ferrari (France), Michel Waisvisz (Netherlands),
Jörg Birkenkötter (Germany), Younghi Pagh-Paan (South Korea), York
Höller (Germany), Jonathan Harvey (Great Britain), John McGuire (USA),
Paulo C. Chagas (Brazil), Marco Stroppa (Italy), Mauricio Sotelo (Spain),
and Karlheinz Stockhausen (Germany). A list of the technical equipment and
a list of works produced are provided in the two annexes.
The sixth and final chapter is dedicated to audiovisual and multimedia
composition. On the basis of Luhmann’s theory of medium and form
introduced in Chapter Three, theoretical ideas of audiovisual and multimedia
composition are investigated and connected with my own works. Myriad
forms of audiovisual and multimedia composition are discussed: musical
theater, electronic music for dance and performance, chamber opera with
multimedia, interactive multimedia theater, music video, audiovisual
installation, music laser installation, interactive multimedia composition, and
digital oratorio.
The title Unsayable Music is a reference to Wittgenstein, to whom I owe
the concept of philosophy as a therapeutic activity as well as the philosophical
method of observing music from the point of view of its practical use.
10
Introduction
Wittgenstein suggests that sound is only the surface of music and that the
musical work conceals something more profound that can hardly be described
by philosophical models or scientific theories. The infinite complexity of
music can only be understood in the context of its use, which includes the
understanding of the cultural and social references that create meaning
beyond what is expressed by sound.
From this perspective, this work relates to the tradition of the 20th
century composers who, in addition to their artistic work, advanced
theoretical reflections on music and composition. I would particularly like
to acknowledge my gratitude to Henri Pousseur (1929-2009), with whom I
studied at the University of Liège, collaborated in many composition projects,
and cultivated a personal friendship. His poetical and insightful writings
captivated my imagination and accompanied me abroad, first from Brazil
to Liège (1980), then from Liège to Cologne (1982), and from Cologne to
California (2004). My gratitude is also due to the University of California,
Riverside (UCR), for providing me with the research environment for this
project.
The development of sound and audio technology with its tools for sound
analysis, synthesis, composition, and performance has created a sort of sound
fetishism that impacts the studies of electroacoustic and digital music. On
the other hand, musicological and musical semiotic studies are generally
devoted to the music of the past, mostly focusing on the heritage of classical
and romantic music, while, at best, touching on works of reference of the
20th century. Therefore, this book aims to bridge the current gap between the
technically oriented approaches of electroacoustic and digital music studies
and the critical approaches of contemporary music informed by musical
semiotics.
In contemporary society, music faces a challenging situation. Never in
the history of humankind have we had so much music available to our ears,
from commercial music to the classical; from the variety of works, genres,
and styles created in different parts of the world to the emerging sounds of
electroacoustic and digital music. However, while in the 19th century the great
musical works were appreciated as artifacts of artistic accomplishment, this is
no longer true today. So-called artistic music suffers from a lack of audience
and visibility. Technology plays an ambivalent role in this process. On the
one hand, it makes music accessible to the masses, opening new possibilities
of musical expression; on the other, it stimulates a different consciousness,
which is related to the specific qualities of the machine, and tends to
eliminate critical thinking, replacing it with automatism and repetition.
In contemporary digital society, the interwoven relationships between arts,
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technology, science, and economics raises many questions about the future of
music and the many ways it will continue to impact our lives.
Therefore, these six reflections aim to address the issue of the changing
status of music in society by providing conceptual tools for a pluralistic
understanding of the diversity of aesthetics related to sound and music. These
reflections aim to relate the traditional categories of musical scholarship to the
new reality of music shaped by technology, which articulates new functions
and domains of artistic and musical creativity. As Wittgenstein says, we have
to penetrate deeper below the appearance of things in order to make visible
the connections that make something meaningful. Following Wittgenstein’s
invitation, we need to understand music by listening to the unsayable.
12
Chapter 1
Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein,

Ethics, and Aesthetics
It is impossible for me to say in my book one word

about all that music has meant in my life. How then
can I hope to be understood? (Rhees 1981, 94)
1. Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and Music
I was first introduced to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

as a graduate student at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, in the late 1970’s.
Reading the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was a formative and life-changing
experience; not only because of the challenging nature of the work, which
requires sophisticated logical-mathematical reasoning, but more so because of
the way the book eradicates any certitude a reader may have about themselves
and the world. As a young man, the main lesson of this study was that if one
has something to say, that it should be said clearly, otherwise it is better for it
to pass over in silence. For someone intending to become a composer, this was
and remains a prompting to look deeply into oneself and inquire about the
real motivation of composing music, to ask what can be said through music,
and to investigate how it can be done. There were no obvious answers to these
questions, but the seed of curiosity had been planted.
Over the years, my interest in Wittgenstein has intensified. I have studied
his writings fervently and continue to attempt to connect his ideas with my
research on musical meaning. The more insight I have developed, the more
fascinated I’ve become by the originality of his thinking and the passionate
tone of his writing. The following reflections aim to share this passion by
focusing on some issues that represent but one personal interpretation of the
countless points of view one might develop by reading him. I am engaged in
a process of continuous self-inquiry guided by Wittgenstein’s voice. This text
includes a significant amount of quotations, as I believe it is important to
acquaint oneself with his unconventional style and relentless search for logical
clarity. His ideas on music reveal a kind of conservative attitude that seems at
odds with his progressive attempt to remove the veils of confusion caused by
the limitations of language. How are we to understand this attitude toward
music? Can we interpret his musical world beyond the original context to
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project them into a contemporary analysis of music? I undertake no attempt

to draw easy conclusions, but rather, extend an invitation such as the one I
received upon first reading Wittgenstein, to revisit applying his method in
order to learn something new.
Wittgenstein is an “intellectual myth” of the 20th century and certainly
one of the most original thinkers that Western culture has ever produced.1
His philosophy reflects on issues of logic, mathematics, language, psychology,
ethics, aesthetics, and religion. While his method combines the rejection of
metaphysics and the scientific spirit with clarity and a simple, colloquial-like
language, it is pushed to such a level of logical precision that it stretches
the limits of thinking. The unorthodoxy of Wittgenstein emerges as much
in his life as in his thought; his writing is almost incomprehensible and his
unusual assumptions, views, and inquiries cause surprise, confusion, and
discomfort. The growing bibliography on Wittgenstein bears witness to
the fascination unleashed by his work and life inside and outside academic
circles.2 The archives of his work—an enormous body of manuscripts, diaries,
correspondence, notes, drafts, and aphorisms, which only recently became
available, turned out to be a treasure chest for scholarship.3 We can expect
that the fascination will continue and a profusion of new approaches will
appear, seeking to illuminate his legacy through multiple perspectives by way
of the connections between his life and philosophy.
Wittgenstein characterized his philosophy as a therapeutic activity. He
dismissed the idea that philosophy can serve as a theory to explain the world;
he had great antipathy to academic life, which he considered an obstacle
to promoting philosophy as a serious and productive activity. No honest
philosopher, he said, could treat philosophy as a profession. He encouraged
his best students to leave academia and pursue careers such as that of a
physician, schoolteacher, or gardener. Above all, he abhorred a worldview
grounded in science. For him, science and technology have nothing to do with
the fundamental problems of the world because “there is no great essential
problem in the scientific sense” (CV 10; 20).4 Criticizing the devastating
1
Sloterdijk suggested this mythological view of Wittgenstein taking in account both the
still-lasting magic of Wittgenstein’s work—the fascination it causes among readers and
scholars—and the kind of mystical aura surrounding his monastic way of life (Sloterdijk
2009, 125-29).
2
A review of the bibliography on Wittgenstein is beyond the scope of this essay.
3
For an overview of the efforts to make available the sources on Wittgenstein, see The
Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB), http://wab.uib.no [accessed
on August 1, 2013].
4
The works by Wittgenstein are cited according to the usual abbreviations; for Culture and
Value (CV ) I include the pages of both the first and the second English edition (1980,
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Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics
effect that the scientific method and the cult of science exert on culture as a
whole, he took the view that science would have a “theory for everything”
and this characterizes for him the decline of civilization in the 20th century:
“The whole modern conception of the world is based on the illusion that the
so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena” (TLP
6.371). Scientific principles are not appropriate for elucidating, for example,
aesthetics and religion; rather they generate distortion, superficiality, and
confusion.
The intensity of his temperament reflects in the way he struggled with
the problems of philosophy as well in his personal relationships. Several
biographies reveal his strong personality and constant restlessness. He
cultivated an attitude of severe criticism towards the values of society and
the individual, which led to a kind of self-isolation, both personally and
philosophically. Taking refuge from civilization, he often opted for solitude,
living in remote places like the Alps of Austria or the fjords of Norway,
seeking peace, tranquility, and energy to overcome his own suffering. But
the attempt to escape the world resulted often in greater isolation, more
sorrow and suffering, thus creating a vicious circle from which he almost
never escaped (cf. Monk 1990). Sloterdijk (2009) interprets the isolation as
the conscious choice of an eremitic life in order to distance himself from the
world in an era when philosophy was dominated by politics and war illusions.
What is embodied here is the return of a monastic moment in the moral
center of bourgeois culture: “Like no other he witnessed the moral secession
of an intellectual elite from the totality of mediocre conditions” (Sloterdijk
2009, 125). In Wittgenstein’s cult of the artistic and philosophical genius that
engages the duty of self-transcendence as a minimum condition of existence,
Sloterdijk sees a bourgeois version of Nietzsche’s Übermensch (superman). In
other words, Wittgenstein is the bourgeois depiction of Zarathustra, operating
with logical and philosophical precision, the creator of new values, raising
himself above the ambivalence and mediocrity of the world. Carnap observed
in 1927 the impact he caused when he visited the positivist philosophers of
the Vienna Circle:
When he started to formulate his view on some specific philosophical

problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at that
1998). For the citations from Wittgenstein I use basically the English translations, which
I changed—sometimes significantly—when I considered that the translation didn’t
convey correctly the meaning of Wittgenstein’s German text. All emphases are in the
original.
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very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to

light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his
most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous
effort, his answer came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly
created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views
dogmatically […] But the impression he made on us was as if insight
came to him as through a divine inspiration, so that we could not help
feeling that any sober rational comment or analysis of it would be a
profanation. (Monk 1990, 244)
Wittgenstein had a profound interest in music. He grew up in a family of

amateur musicians, who were active patrons of Vienna’s musical circles.
Ludwig’s father, Karl, was a businessman who amassed one of the largest
fortunes in the iron and steel industry in imperial Austria and also played the
violin. His mother was Leopoldine Kalmus, an accomplished pianist who had
extraordinary sight-reading ability. Ludwig was the youngest of the family.
Of their eight children, two dedicated themselves to music: his brother Hans,
the eldest son, was a child prodigy who began composing at age four and had
intended to follow a career in music, before committing suicide. His brother
Paul pursued a career as a concert pianist; he had his right arm amputated
during the First World War but managed to continue performing only with
his left hand. It was for him that Ravel wrote his Piano Concerto in D Major,
the concerto for the left hand.
A number of famous artists performed in the salons of the Wittgenstein
mansion in Vienna in the beginning of the 20th century, such as the young
Pablo Casals, Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler, and the famous violinist Joseph
Joachim with his string quartet. Joachim introduced Johannes Brahms to
the family; Brahms gave piano lessons to their two daughters and regularly
attended concerts in the house. One of the major works of Brahms’s last
years, the Clarinet Quintet with op. 115, was premiered at the mansion.
Growing up among so many musical talents, the young Ludwig became a
great admirer of the repertoire of musical classicism and romanticism. He
only learned to play the clarinet when he was thirty years old, while pursuing
training as a schoolteacher. He had perfect pitch and showed an exemplary
ability to explain music. He was also known for his exceptional talent in
whistling; he used to whistle Lieder by Franz Schubert, his favorite composer,
accompanied by the piano.
Despite his great interest in music, he did not develop any theory or
musical aesthetics. However, the references to music, especially the analogies
between music and language, pervade his philosophy. A significant body of
16
thoughts on music and musical life appears in Culture and Value [Vermischte
Bemerkungen], a collection of notes, aphorisms, and fragments covering the
period between 1914 and his death in 1951, which was first published in
1977. This work addresses themes of philosophy, art, science, culture, and
religion. Some parts are autobiographical and reveal personal beliefs and
traits of his personality: artistic preferences, identification with certain
traditions, and the continuous struggle with the problems of philosophy
and man. The observations of Culture and Value give clear evidence of
Wittgenstein’s musical taste and attachment to the music of the 19th century,
particularly to the German composers and the Viennese tradition: Bach,
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Wagner.
There are also many references to Josef Labor (1842-1924), a Czech composer,
pianist, and organist who became blind at a young age and whose career was
sponsored by Wittgenstein’s family. Ludwig greatly appreciated his style of
virtuosic interpretation.
2. Saying and Showing
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) was the first and only book
Wittgenstein published in his lifetime. It covers a period of seven years: from
1911, when he was a Russell protégé in Cambridge, to 1918, when he was
serving as an officer in the Austrian army during World War I. Published
in German in 1921 and in English in 1922, the Tractatus reflects on the
philosophy of logic and language, metaphysics, and ethics. The text is
organized under seven major aphorisms, which are each followed by a
hierarchy of propositions that give the impression of being increasingly
detailed elucidations [Erläuterungen], but actually function as self-descriptive
commentaries [Bemerkungen]. The writing is dense and poetic without traps
or provocations, without fear of itself appearing incomplete and fragmented.
He does not try to seduce the reader with the illusion of an easy solution or a
final interpretation.
Contrary to what the title suggests, the Tractatus is far from being a work
of logical perfection. In the last two paragraphs, he expresses the surprising
paradox of his whole philosophy:
My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who

understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has
used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak,
throw away the ladder after climbing up it.)
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He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world
aright. (TLP 6.54)
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. (TLP 7)
What does it mean here to “throw away the ladder”? What is the subliminal
message of a text that cancels itself? The reader, who is urged in the beginning
to climb the arduous rungs of a treatise on dogmatic metaphysics, discovers
at the end that he must discard everything he has learned so far in order to
continue. The exhortation to throw away the ladder is a challenge to transcend
the boundaries of logic and rational thought. Wittgenstein addresses his
readers almost like a Zen master that speaks to his disciples by means of
paradoxes. The master leaves us perplexed, hurls us into the abyss of doubt,
takes the ground from under our feet, and invites us to swirl inside the vortex of
the uncertainties of the world. Narrow and winding is the path of knowledge
moving upwards from the illusion of metaphysical clarity to the mystical
ineffability of existence. He rejects the thesis and philosophical doctrines:
“Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work
consists essentially of elucidations” (TLP 4.112).
The central and revolutionary idea of the Tractatus is that any attempt to
say something philosophical results in nonsense. The task of philosophy is
thus to trace the boundaries between what can be said and what cannot be
said but only shown. The relation between saying and showing is not a dualism;
they are incompatible, mutually exclusive categories: “What can be shown
cannot be said” (TLP 4.1212). The saying is what can be expressed through
logical-scientific language using an objective terminology. The showing is
what cannot be said within the positivist discourse, what is excluded from the
objectivity consistent with logical systems. He is concerned with protecting
the positivist discourse against metaphysical absurdity. When he refers to
the limits of language, he is not evoking ordinary everyday language but
the language of science and philosophy. Towards the end of the Tractatus he
affirms: “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical”
(TLP 6.522).
For Wittgenstein, the propositions of logic express only imperfectly the
aspects of reality. “Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of
the world. Logic is transcendental” (TLP 6.13). We can logically understand
even a proposition that makes no sense because it is not consistent with
the reality of the world. Such propositions are, for example, the tautology
18
and the contradiction:5 “A tautology has no truth-conditions, since it is

unconditionally true: and a contradiction is true on no condition. Tautologies
and contradictions lack sense” (TLP 4.461). Tautologies and contradictions
are the limit of language and thought and therefore the limit of the world.
The tautology and the contradiction do not say anything, because they are not
located in the space between the true and the false: “A tautology leaves open
to reality the whole—the infinite whole—of logical space: a contradiction
fills the whole of logical space leaving no point of it for reality. Thus neither
of them can determine reality in any way” (TLP 4.463).
Wittgenstein considered the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to be primarily
a book of ethics. But his conception of ethics is unique. Ethics is a discourse
of human existence that transcends the factual world. The principles of ethics
cannot be defined or analyzed by external characteristics. The main function
of ethics in his view, is to give sense to the world: “The sense of the world
must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything
happens as it happens, in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have
no value” (TLP 6.41). Just as with logic, ethics does not allow itself to be
expressed: “Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the
same.)” (TLP 6.421). But, in opposition to logic, ethics does not show the
structure of the world. The propositions of ethics and aesthetics, as well as
of logic, are pseudo-propositions that say nothing of what they want to say,
but show something that is not what they give the impression of saying. And
unlike logic, ethics and aesthetics are not a “mirror-image” of the world. They
do not describe facts, but simply show. Ethics and aesthetics are predicates of
the thinking subject and not properties of the world.
This conception of ethics is influenced by Schopenhauer’s philosophy in
the sense that man, in knowing himself as a thinking subject, is conscious
of his will. However, while for Schopenhauer “the thinking subject is in the
world which is the manifestation of will”, for Wittgenstein, “the thinking
subject is not a part of the world, but its limit: it is now as metaphysical, as
real or unreal as the will” (Griffiths 1974, 103; emphasis in the original). This
gives a different view of ethics and aesthetics. For Wittgenstein, aesthetics
and ethics can be one in a way that was not possible for Schopenhauer: “To
view the world sub specie aeternitatis is to view it as a whole—a limited whole.
5
A tautology occurs when the same thing is said twice in different words, a kind of
redundancy that is generally considered a figure of rhetoric or the expression of a certain
style. Wittgenstein was the first to apply the concept of tautology to the redundancies of
propositional logic.
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Unsayable Music
Feeling the world as a limited whole—it is this that is mystical” (TLP 6.45).6
He uses the term sub specie aeternitatis as synonymous with transcendental.
It emphasizes the two different ways of accessing reality: the saying and the
showing. The form of showing is the sub specie aeternitatis (transcendental)
observation, which has the world as its backdrop. It is the domain of ethics
and aesthetics:
The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis, and the good life
is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between
art and ethics.
The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst
of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside. (TB 7.10.16)
The aesthetic attitude, as well as ethical experience, belongs to the sphere of

transcendental showing. The aesthetic experience is the observation of the
world as a limited whole from the “outside” by means of a complete single
object: the artwork. To understand the artwork we must first separate it
from its environment. Whoever listens to music in a concert hall, at home,
or using a digital mobile device must first isolate the music from the ambient
noise. After that, the world becomes the world of music, the ambient noise
disappears, and the music takes up all the space. The music becomes the
world. It is this ability of artwork to see the world as a whole through a
limited space of facts—the artwork—that creates the experience of surprise.
The artwork is true regardless of its relation to the world. It conveys, at the
same time, an experience of logic, ethics, and aesthetics. In his Lecture on
Ethics (LE), Wittgenstein links ethics to the existential experience of surprise.
This same observation appears in the Notebooks:
Aesthetically, the miracle is that the art world exists. That there is what
there is.
Is it the essence of the artistic way of looking at things, that it looks at
the world with a happy eye? (NB 4.11.16)
The key to understanding the “mysticism” of this philosophy lies in the

attitude toward the world: “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it
is” (TLP 6.44). Aesthetic contemplation can serve as a logical interpretation of
the world—i.e., can help you see the world correctly and can simultaneously
6
For an account of Wittgenstein’s conception of ethics in relation to Schopenhauer, see
Griffiths (1974).
20
evoke a mystical experience. It helps us to be happy, to live in harmony with

the world. But it is also clear that there is unhappiness in the world and that
is why art can serve as a remedy, as a therapy to find a good and happy life.
When life itself becomes art, then humans live happily. A happy life is the
purpose of existence according to this philosophy, and is expressed through
artwork. Art is an expression and artwork is the complete expression. The
artwork both says about itself and shows itself: “The work of art does not seek
to convey something else, just itself” (CV 58; 67). Art has a “mystical” mission,
especially music. It has to express what ordinary language cannot express, i.e.,
the unsayable, according to the last paragraph of the Tractatus.
3. Logic and Representation: Sound and Melody as States of Affairs
Early in the Tractatus, an example from sound is introduced to illustrate

the properties of the objects that constitute a state of affairs [Sachverhalt]:
“Notes must have some pitch” (TLP 2.0131). Things do not exist as isolated
entities: “It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of
states of affairs” (TLP 2.011). The objects are combined to constitute a state of
affairs and the internal properties of the objects constitute all the possibilities
of combining into states of things; the possibility of its occurring in states
of affairs is the form of an object (TLP 2.0123; 2.01231; 2.014-2.0141).
Anything that exists in the world can only exist in a space that determines
the possibilities of all its internal properties.
The statement that “notes must have some pitch” is an analogy. What
makes a sound a musical sound is its logical space, i.e., the possibilities of
establishing a state of affairs. Pitch is an internal property of the sound, a
logical condition of its existence. The sound needs to be heard, i.e., it has
to be distinguished from the sounds of the world, needs to have a “pitch”,
which sets it apart from other sounds. The pitch, which is determined by the
frequency of the sound vibrations, is an external property that distinguishes,
for example, the sound of a flute from the sound of a contrabass. The musical
scale consists of tones of different pitches—the musical notes. The musical tone
with a pitch—the musical note— is therefore a state of affairs. But, besides
the pitch, the musical tone has other properties such as timbre, intensity, and
duration. The sounds of each instrument have different timbres and the same
instrument can produce tones with varying timbres and intensities.
The sine wave oscillator can generate “pure” electronic sounds with
precise frequencies (pitches). The sinusoidal sound is a logical abstraction that
serves to isolate specific properties of sound vibrations. The musical tones
21
Unsayable Music
are complex phenomena, formed by the sum of vibrating constituents called

partials (or overtones), which determines the quality of the sound spectrum.
An instrumental or vocal sound can be interpreted as a sum of partials
evolving in time. The sound spectrum can be analyzed or synthesized through
mathematical operations and also visually represented. The mathematical
calculations that allow us to analyze or synthesize sounds, as well as the systems
of visual representation (e.g., sonogram), are analogies of sound, which serve
to display states of affairs. Even when it comes to a “pure” sinusoidal sound
generated electronically, it exists within a given logical space.
A musical tone never exists alone. We always listen to various sounds,
a simultaneity of sounds. In music, successive sounds make up the melody
and the simultaneous sounds that constitute chords. A melody or chord is
a complex state of affairs, which can be resolved (analyzed) into a statement
about their constituents (TLP 2.0201). For instance, the melody can be seen
as a sequence of pitches, intervals, movements, etc.; a chord can be analyzed
according to the intervals of its notes, the relation of the root-tone to a scale
degree, the harmonic functionality etc. The individual tones that constitute a
melody or a chord are “independent in so far as they can occur in all possible
situations, but this form of independence is a form of connection with states
of affairs, a form of dependence” (TLP 2.0122). These forms of dependence
and independence, the possibility of occurring in states of affairs, are the
form of a sound object (TLP 2.0141). This form is logical and internal. It
cannot be expressed, it shows itself. The pitch, timbre, and intensity are not
external to the sound, but they are essential characteristics of sound.
Electroacoustic music can be composed of sounds with specific properties
that cannot be translated into the traditional parameters of sound—pitch,
timbre, and intensity. For example, it can be made of “noise” recorded from
the acoustic environment and electronically processed until the original
source becomes unrecognizable; but it can also be made of “noise” generated
by electronic processes of sound synthesis. The noise may have different
characteristics of which the electronic music composition takes advantage.
In this case, the noises constitute the sound objects of the music and the
musical logic is the result of the connections of these objects in their possible
states of affairs. From an external point of view, the noise can be described as
a sound that is much more complex than any instrumental or vocal sound,
and therefore much more difficult to put into words that are commonly used
to describe musical notes. The concept of pitch may not apply because one of
the characteristics of noise is to be formed of non-periodic sound vibrations
that do not have a clear pitch. However, the spectral complexity of noise is an
external property; what matters is to know its internal properties, the possible
22
states of affairs that determine its form. The logic of these states of affairs can
be related to different types of knowledge and practices, for example, to the
knowledge of the apparatuses and programs for creating and manipulating
electronic sounds; the space of the states of affairs may reflect the mode of
operation of these devices, as Flusser shows (cf. Flusser 2000; 2011).
A concern of the Tractatus is the relationship of a representation to what
is represented. This relationship is investigated through the concept of image
[Bild]. The image consists of several elements and has in common with reality
the logical form, which is the form of the reality. Wittgenstein makes an
analogy to music to explain the relationship between image and reality:
A gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, sound-waves,

all stand to one another in the same internal relation of depicting that
holds between language and the world.
They are all constructed according to a common logical pattern. (TLP
4.014)
The expressions “musical idea”, “musical thought”, and “musical theme” are
synonymous for melody. They share the same logical construction of musical
notation, which, in turn, has in common the same logical construction of
the gramophone, of the record’s grooves, and of the digital representation of
sound. All these forms of representation share an internal relationship that
is similar to the relationship between language and the world. There is a
logical rule that allows us to reconstruct the symphony from the score or
from the grooves of the vinyl record or from the numerical combinations of
the computer. It is precisely this rule that makes for the similarity of these
internal settings that seem to be so different in nature. This rule, according to
Wittgenstein, is the “law of projection”, which relates to the translation of an
idea or a thought, from one context to another.
“In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by
the senses” (TLP 3.1). In analogy to that, we can say that in a melody, a
thought is expressed in a way perceptible to the senses. And for Wittgenstein,
just as it is clear that a phrase is not a blend of words, the theme in music is
not a blend of notes (TLP 3.141). What constitutes a phrase or melody is that
its elements (the words or the notes) stand in a determinate relation to one
another. Both the phrase and the melody are “articulated”. Whoever does
not understand the meaning of a melody does not understand the music.
However, the melody is not a meaningful proposition; it says nothing: “A
melody is a kind of tautology, it is complete in itself; it satisfies itself” (NB
4.3.15). The only thing one can perceive in the melody is its logical structure.
23
Unsayable Music
A melody is just a melody as music is just music. The melody—and thus the
music—shows what cannot be said. That is why the melody is a privileged
instrument to capture reality in its structure, as different melodies point to
the diversity of what cannot be said.
4. Philosophy as Therapy: Understanding the Melody
The second philosophy presented in Philosophical Investigations is a collection of

fragments, notes, aphorisms, and reflections that covers the period 1930-1948.
The focus of these reflections makes the shift from logic to grammar and is an
incomplete book, aiming to show the impossibility of giving a description of
the world as a whole. This work is in a style very different from the Tractatus;
no more logical propositions but a disconnected discourse focused on ordinary
language and operating with comparisons and analogies. Wittgenstein explores
the complex nature of the mind, the restlessness of simultaneous thoughts
that characterizes our experience. He proposes a therapeutic exercise of
reflection for releasing us from the compulsivity of language; he points to the
obsessions and traps of our language, as if language would conspire against us:
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means
of our language” (PI §109). Language produces illusions that are deeply rooted
in us because of the limitations of our language. He wants to point to these
illusions, which are the source of our misunderstanding. “Philosophy simply
puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since
everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden,
for example, is of no interest to us” (PI §126).
For him, “The problems of life are insoluble on the surface and can only
be solved in depth.” (CV 74; 84). Music shows that we have to dive into the
depths, beyond the surface of the sounds, to understand its complexity:
Music, with its few notes and rhythms, seems to some people a primitive
art. But only its surface is simple, while the body which makes possible the
interpretation of this manifest content has all the infinite complexity that
is suggested in the external forms of other arts and which music conceals.
In a certain sense it is the most sophisticated art of all. (CV 8; 11)
Music is the most refined of all art because it hides its complexity in a simple
surface. The surface of music gives access to a complexity that we try to
understand by using language. Wittgenstein’s ideas on music influence the
way he reflects on language, exploring the connections that may exist between
24
the linguistic phrase and the musical phrase. What does it mean to understand
a spoken phrase? What does it mean to understand a melody? He articulates
these thoughts in the Brown Book, a series of lectures dictated in 1934-35,
which is considered a preparatory work for Philosophical Investigations.
Observing the strange illusion that possesses us when “repeating a melody to
ourselves and letting it make its full impression on us, we say ‘This melody
says something’, and it is as though I had to find what it says” (BrB II §17),
he claims that the melody doesn’t say anything that we can express in words
or pictures. And if we recognize that, we should say that, “It just expresses
a musical thought.” In other words, he emphasizes the idea of melody as a
tautology, a phrase that expresses itself and nothing more. Everything that is
said, is said by the melody itself, and not by something outside it. How does,
in such a view of music, individual perception and subjectivity come into play?
Wittgenstein is not concerned with providing a subjective explanation of
music. Rather, he puts himself in the position of a musician, reflecting on
the different ways to play a melody: “But surely when you play it you don’t
play it anyhow, you play it in this particular way, making a crescendo here,
a diminuendo there, a caesura in this place, etc.” (BrB II §17). How do we
justify playing the melody in this manner and not differently? He says that we
can explain the specific performance by comparing the melody to a phrase:
“At this point of the theme, there is, as it were, a colon” (BrB II §17). He
considers the “right” tempo of the melody. As we know, playing a melody in
a different tempo can create a completely new meaning. He asks:
“What it is like to know the tempo in which a piece of music should

be played?” And the idea suggests itself that there must be a paradigm
somewhere in our mind, and that we have adjusted the tempo to conform
to that paradigm. But in most cases if someone asks me, “How do you
think this melody should be played?”, I will, as an answer, just whistle it
in a particular way, and nothing will have been present to my mind but
the tune actually whistled (not an image of that). (BrB II §17)
There are two interesting things to observe here in Wittgenstein’s rhetoric:

First, the idea that it should be a paradigm in our mind telling us how to play
the melody, what the correct tempo is, the dynamics, the punctuations, etc.
Secondly, the view that the melody can be represented through something;
for example, I can whistle the melody to show someone the correct tempo of
the melody. But both assumptions turn out to be wrong, as he explains: What
is present in my mind is the whistled melody and nothing else. Wittgenstein
does not deny that understanding a musical theme may consist in finding a
25
Unsayable Music
form of verbal expression that is thought of as equivalent to the theme. The

same applies for the understanding of a facial expression: We can say, “Now
I understand the expression of this face” (BrB II §17), and what happened is
that we found a word that conveys the expression. However—and this is the
crucial point—the verbal expression we associate with the musical theme or
the words we use to describe the face are not the understanding itself.
“Consider also this expression: ‘Tell yourself that it’s a waltz, and you
will play it correctly’” (BrB II §17). Here, the word correct indicates that
the musician knows what a waltz is, because he has learned the rules for a
successful performance and the verbal image of the word waltz triggers this
implicit knowledge. He invokes the understanding of a musical phrase as an
analogy of understanding language because he wants to say that, in music,
understanding comes from within, from doing the performance, and not
from a reference to something outside projected onto it:
What we call “understanding a sentence” has, in many cases, a much

greater similarity to understanding a musical theme than we are inclined
to think. But I don’t mean that understanding a musical theme is more
like the picture one tends to make oneself of understanding a sentence;
but rather that this picture is wrong, and that understanding a sentence
is much more like what really happens when we understand a melody
than at first sight appears. For understanding a sentence, we say, point
to a reality outside the sentence. Whereas one might say “Understanding
a sentence means getting hold of its content; and the content of the
sentence is in the sentence”. (BrB II §17)
The concept of philosophy as a therapy (PI §254) conveys the idea that our
concern with building models of elucidation is an obstacle to our progress,
something that binds us and prevents us from developing our thinking. The
goal is not to produce new stable conclusions, but lead us to change our way of
thinking and approaching problems. McGuinn suggests that Wittgenstein’s
philosophy, “aims to engage the reader in an active process of working on
himself; it also underlines the fact that the reader’s acknowledgment of
Wittgenstein’s diagnoses of philosophical error is a vital part of his method”
(McGuinn 1996, 22). This therapeutic approach is essentially a slow process:
“My sentences are all to be read slowly” (CV 57; 65); the patient is gradually
led to a new understanding of the nature of the problems that were disturbing
him; this understanding allows him to recognize that he was seeking pleasure
in the wrong way, and this should bring him peace.
26
Wittgenstein’s writing style is complex and distinctive. He shapes the

philosophical process as an internal dialog using the voice of an interlocutor.
The voice is introduced either indirectly through observations or directly
through the use of quotations marks. The dialog presents the situation in
which someone succumbs to the traps of language while the therapeutic
voice examines concrete examples of how to seek clarity and understanding.
Due to these multiple voices, his style has often been compared to music
and particularly to polyphony. We can say that the different voices with
their specific timbres play individual roles in the thematic development; they
appear and disappear, join other voices in new contexts and connections.
Wittgenstein introduces the concept of Übersicht, which is translated
in English as “perspicuity”, to define a philosophical attitude that seeks to
understand things by making visible their connections. This is a significant
difference from an understanding produced by a theory of explanation, which
is the common case in metaphysics and science. An Übersicht is the kind of
understanding produced, for instance, by a work of music, a poem, or other
work of art. Our language lacks Übersicht, because of the grammar, which
obscures our capacity to see the connections between things:
A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command

a clear view of the use of our words. Our grammar is lacking in this
sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that
understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Here the
importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases.
The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance
for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at
things. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?). (PI §122)7
Polyphony is but one of many musical metaphors that have been proposed
for interpreting Wittgenstein. Eggers, for example, analyzes this method
as a “musical” elaboration of material that can be viewed in different ways.
Wittgenstein operates with figures emerging from an unspeakable background;
he develops a technique of changing points of view [Blickwechsel], moving
from one figure to another or detaching figures from a noisy, unutterable
background (cf. Egger 2011, 232). This unspeakable background is what
7
“Weltanschauung” It is a fundamental concept of German 19th century philosophy.
It indicates a comprehensive conception of the world of an individual or a particular
community inside geographic borders or sharing values such as linguistic, political,
cultural, etc.
27
Unsayable Music
allows music to develop audible meanings. When we listen to a musical

work, we are necessarily recognizing figures that are formed on a background,
which, at the same time, is not openly manifest. In a musical work one
cannot simultaneously realize all layers of expression. There is no fixed point
functioning as a stable state of affairs for interpreting music. In the field
of music there are states of affairs, but these are intentional, i.e., they are
objectifications of subjects. The listener is an integral part of the process of
musical meaning.
For Wittgenstein, there is no prototype of understanding. We apply the
word understand according to each situation. The aesthetic understanding,
especially the musical understanding, is a paradigm of the hermeneutic
understanding of language. With this the musical analogy, he guides us
through the labyrinths of understanding: “Language is a labyrinth of paths.
You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the
same place from another side and no longer know your way about” (PI §203).
Music has a more transparent grammar and therefore can help to elucidate
the grammar of language, which is more opaque.
Nevertheless, he does not transform the musical phrase into a paradigm
of understanding; he is not concerned with developing a general model of
comprehension based on musical understanding. For Chauviré (1986),
Wittgenstein uses the analogy between the melody and the phrase in order
to achieve an Übersicht [overview] of the different applications the word
understanding can have. He uses the analogy as a bilateral tool, going back
and forth between music, language, and other kinds of representation such
as pictures, faces, gestures, etc. The analogy creates a reciprocal relationship
that serves to illuminate both terms of the comparison. He doesn’t want us
to think that music is the model of understanding; he suggests exploring
some internal similarities that may exist between relative cases. The analogy
points to the similarities but also to the differences between different cases of
understanding. Instead of paradigms to explain everything, his philosophy
has to operate with partial models that are instruments of making analogies.
These instruments are called objects of comparison [Vergleichsobjekte].
According to Chauviré, Wittgenstein rejects the dogmatic—even perverse—
use of paradigms in all research including philosophy, psychoanalysis (Freud),
ethnology, physics, and mathematics (cf. Chauviré 1986, 1161).
28
5. Language Games: Musical Understanding
Wittgenstein’s theory of language games became one of the most powerful

arguments of modern and postmodern pluralism (Sloterdijk 2011, 128). What
is a language game? It is an object of comparison for exploring similarities
and differences that help to clarify some aspects of the language:
Our clear and simple language-games are not preparatory studies for
a future regimentation of language—as it were first approximations,
ignoring friction and air-resistance. The language-games are rather set
up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of
our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities.
(PI §130)
The analogy between the melody and the sentence is an example of a language
game. Chauviré distinguishes some strategic functions of this specific
language game: (1) there is a similarity of family between the musical phrase
and the verbal phrase; (2) there is no prototype of understanding; (3) musical
understanding emphasizes important aspects of understanding. What is the
understanding of a musical theme? How can we say that we understand a
melody? Similarly, as he wrote in the Brown Book, he asks himself:
Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme

in music than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a
sentence lies nearer than one thinks to what is ordinarily called
understanding a musical theme. Why is just this the pattern of variation
in loudness and tempo: One would like to say “Because I know what it’s
all about.” But what is it all about? I should not be able to say. In order to
‘explain’ I could only compare it with something else which has the same
rhythm (I mean the same pattern). (One says “Don’t you see, this is as
if a conclusion were being drawn” or “This is as if it were a parenthesis”,
etc. How does one justify such comparisons?—There are very different
kinds of justification here.) (PI §527)
By saying that music conveys nothing but itself, Wittgenstein rejects the causal
approach according to which music has the essential function of producing
affects and emotions, the meaning of which is intentionally incorporated into
musical signs. The belief that music expresses nothing but itself is in line with
the idea of musical autonomy.
29
Unsayable Music
It has sometimes being said that what music conveys to us are feelings
of joyfulness, melancholy, triumph, etc. etc. and what repels us in this
account is that it seems to say that music is an instrument for producing
in us sequences of feelings. And from this one might gather that any other
means of producing such feeling would do for us instead of music.—To
such an account we are tempted to reply “Music conveys to us itself !”
(BrB II §22)
This notion of musical autonomy can be easily mistaken for self-sufficiency,

as if music had the capability to speak about itself. The crucial idea is that
the understanding of music cannot be explained causally. Although, if there
could be something through which we could express our understanding
of music—such as a word we utter, or a facial expression or gesture, these
expressions can demonstrate understanding, they say nothing about the
essence of the understanding. The understanding is embedded in music, in
a melody, a phrase, a theme, etc. Wittgenstein asks how one can recognize
that another person understands a musical thought. He makes an analogy
between someone listening to music, drawing a face, or playing an instrument
with understanding; he asks how this understanding is to be communicated:
What does it consist in: following a musical phrase with understanding?

Observing a face with a feeling for its expression? Drinking in the
expression on the face?
Think of the demeanor of someone who draws the face with understanding
for its expression. Think of the sketcher’s face, his movements;—what
shows that every stroke he makes is dictated by the face, that nothing in
his sketch is arbitrary, that he is a delicate instrument?
It is really an experience? I mean: can we say that this expresses an
experience?
Once again: what does it consist in, following a musical phrase with
understanding, or, playing it with understanding? Don’t look inside
yourself. Ask yourself rather, what makes you say that’s what someone else
is doing. And what prompts you to say that he has a particular experience?
Indeed, do we ever actually say that? Wouldn’t I be more likely to say of
someone else that he’s having a whole host of experiences?
I would perhaps say, “He is experiencing the theme intensely”; but ask
yourself, what is the expression of this? (CV 51; 58)
30
What emerges here is the issue of internal experience, which is recurrent in

Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Understanding is not caused by an external factor,
but is internal. The understanding of a musical phrase (or a work of music)
is like the sudden emergence of an acoustic configuration for which we give
an interpretation. We understand music like we recognize the expression of
a face or a drawing. Understanding arises out of an impulse; it happens like
a “click” in our mind (Chauviré 1986, 1165), an explosion of meaning that
leads us to connect things and through which we experience the unity: “I
want to remember a melody and it escapes me; suddenly I say ‘Now I know
it’ and I sing it. What was it like to suddenly know it? Surely it can’t have
occurred to me in its entirety in that moment!” (PI §184)
Wittgenstein refers frequently to gesticulations [Gebärde] and gestures
[Geste] to illustrate the problem of understanding. The metaphor of gestures
is a recurrent one in Culture and Value and Philosophical Investigations:
This musical phrase is a gesture for me. It creeps into my life. I make it
my own (CV 73; 83).
I should like to say: “These notes say something glorious, but I do not
know what.” “These notes are a powerful gesture, but I cannot put
anything side by side with it that will serve as an explanation.” (PI §610)
What is being emphasized here is the notion that musical understanding does
not consist in the gestures and movements you can make while listening to
music. Gesture is only a reaction in line with the sensations we may have,
the movement we may make, or even the words that can accompany our
understanding. Wittgenstein disassociates everything exterior that points to
the understanding from the understanding itself:
Understanding and explaining a musical phrase. – The simplest

explanation is sometimes a gesture; another might be a dance step, or
words describing a dance.—But isn’t our understanding of the phrase
an experience we have while hearing it? And what function, in that case,
has the explanation? Are we supposed to think of it while we hear the
music? Are we supposed to imagine the dance, or whatever it may be, as
we listen? And supposing we do,—why should that be called hearing the
music with understanding?? If seeing the dance is what matters, it would
be better that, rather than the music, were performed. But that is all a
misunderstanding. (CV 69; 79)
31
Unsayable Music
Understanding of music is expressed in a certain way, both in the

course of hearing and playing and at other times too. This expression
sometimes includes movements, but sometimes only the way the one
who understands plays, or hums, occasionally too parallels he draws and
images, which, at it were, illustrate the music. Someone who understands
music will listen differently (with a different facial expression, e.g.), play
differently, hum differently, talk differently about the piece that someone
who does not understand. His appreciation of a theme will not however
be shown only in phenomena that accompany the hearing of playing of
the theme, but also in an understanding of music in general. (CV 70; 80)
Gestures and gesticulations appear as primitive language games with aesthetic

value. Although gestures are not articulated like language, they say more than
a thousand words compared to traditional aesthetic discourse. The gesture as
the first and last image of a silent understanding appears as a primitive and
ultimate manifestation of an aesthetic appreciation, which it is impossible to
formulate orally with accuracy. The gesture may be considered an external
index pointing to a specific understanding, but understanding itself is
internal. If it were external there would be a rule whereby a certain gesture
would be correlated with a certain understanding. Gestures do not belong
to listening with understanding, but are part of the music in the same way
that music can trigger emotions and emotions can be associated with the way
we listen to music. For Wittgenstein, the gesture realizes the impossibility of
describing what we feel and therefore the inadequacy of logical and scientific
theories for clarifying music.
6. Rules and Forms of Life
If music expresses nothing but itself, how do we make aesthetic judgments?

How can we set standards to compare works of art? How can we communicate
about art using language? Wittgenstein repeatedly emphasizes that words
such as “beautiful” and the like can be used as interjections, but play no real
role in discussions of art. In the notes of his lectures in Cambridge taken by
his students, he says:
It is remarkable that in real life, when aesthetic judgments are made,

aesthetic adjectives as ‘beautiful’, ‘fine’, etc., play hardly any role at all.
Are aesthetic adjectives used in a musical criticism? You say: “Look at
this transition”, or “The passage is incoherent”. Or you say, in a poetical
32
criticism: “His use of images is precise”. The words you use are more akin
to ‘right’ and ‘correct’ (as these words you use are ordinary speech) than
to ‘beautiful’ and ‘lovely’. (L&C §8)
This seems exaggerated, since it is common sense to use such adjectives to

qualify our feelings towards works of art. However, Wittgenstein is not
concerned about ordinary conversations. He reflects on the use of language
when it comes to discussions between experts—such as scholars—about the
rightness or wrongness of works of art, in the sense that it can be debated,
accepted, or denied. As Schulte claims, the idea of aesthetic standards to
judge the value of works of art seems to be in contradiction with the “more
common view that aesthetic judgments ultimately depend on personal
taste, on education and culture” (Schulte 1990, 77). It seems that we learn
to appreciate art by following rules, or we are drilled to learn rules—“as
in music you are drilled in harmony and counterpoint” (L&C §15)—and
artistic judgments are made according to rules, including those of the artists
themselves:
The rules of harmony, you can say, expressed the way people wanted
chords to follow—their wishes crystallized in these rules (the word
‘wishes’ is much too vague.) All the greatest composers wrote in
accordance with them. (You can say that every composer changed the
rules, but the variation was very slight; not all the rules were changed.
The music was still good by a great many of the old rules.—This thought
shouldn’t come in here.) (L&C § 16)
The issue of rules seems, however, not to apply to extraordinary works of art,
the so-called “masterpieces”.
When we talk of a Symphony of Beethoven we don’t talk of correctness.

Entirely different things enter. One wouldn’t talk of appreciating the
tremendous things in Arts. In certain styles in Architecture a door is
correct, and the thing is you appreciate it. But in the case of a Gothic
Cathedral what we do is not at all to find it correct—it plays an entirely
different role with us. The entire game is different. It is as different as to
judge a human being and on the one hand to say ‘He behaves well’ and
on the other hand ‘He made a great impression on me’. (L&C §23)
The problem here is that the concept of rule as a standard for judging the
correctness of a work of art has both a positive and a negative value. On the
33
Unsayable Music
one hand, there are the “normal” works that are supposed to follow the rules
(of harmony, or of counterpoint); if they break the rules they are considered
flawed or imperfect. On the other hand, there are the “masterpieces”, where,
if they break the rules, this can be considered as an intentional act that gives
the work a special meaning. However, as Schulte notes, if a masterpiece sets its
own standards, as in the case of Beethoven’s symphony, how can we consider
that it breaks rules? And when we exclude the possibility that a correct work
breaks rules, then it doesn’t make sense to talk about “correctness” (cf. Schulte
1990, 80). Pointing to the same problem, Gmür asks if there is a rule that
determines when the rules must be broken in order to indicate that a work
of art has to be considered a masterpiece. For him the answer is no (Gmür
2000, 167).
Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro is an example of how rules are
broken and the composition still seems “correct”.
The ‘necessity’ with which the second idea succeeds the first. (Overture to
Figaro). Nothing could be more idiotic than to say it’s ‘pleasing’ to hear the
second after the first!—But the paradigm according to which everything
there is right is certainly obscure. “It is the natural development.” You
gesture with your hand, would like to say: “of course!”—You could too
compare the transition to a transition (the entry of a new character) in
a story, e.g. or a poem. That is how this piece fits into the world of our
thoughts and feelings. (CV 57; 65)
The paradigm of “correctness” here would be explicit if a second idea

would follow the first one. But Mozart gives only a hint at the paradigm;
he indirectly calls for the rule and, at the same time, causes surprise by not
following it. The rule functions as an object of comparison [Vergleichsobjekt]:
Following the rule would be a logical consequence, a musical construction in
the domain of “saying”. Breaking the rule unfolds a meaning that cannot be
explained through crystalline logic, pointing to something that is external
and cannot be expressed, only indicated; it is the domain of “showing”. As
Schulte claims, only when one develops a “feeling” for the rules and learns to
“indicate” it, is one able to interpret the rules in a broad sense, determining
cases that are left open by the rules.
Wittgenstein’s philosophical method is not focused on building new and
astonishing theories or elucidations, but on the examination of language. Since
he considers the problems of philosophy to be rooted in the “misunderstanding
of the logic of language” (PI §93), the remedy he presents asks us to look closely
at the structure of the practice of our language, to study specific cases. We
34
are always in a rush to build models that seem appropriate but, when applied
to concrete examples, reveal themselves as useless. Wittgenstein’s therapeutic
method leads us to investigate individual cases in order to see clearly what
is at stake; we begin to recognize not only the emptiness of our models, but
also that all we need to understand how a given language functions is already
there before our eyes.
The concept of understanding is not related to the idea of something
“going on in our minds”, but suggests the ideas of readiness, willingness, and
ability. Understanding is therefore linked, in a complex and multifaceted way,
to our participation in a particular form of life. So the answer to Wittgenstein’s
question, “What is musical understanding?”, can only be given by means of
an investigation of the concrete practices of music in society, the language
games that connect music with culture and life. Musical understanding
implies not only understanding what music is in general, but also the variety
of its uses—activities, expressions, gestures, images—that imply knowledge
of other aspects of culture:
Understanding music is a manifestation of human life. How could it

be described to someone? Well, above all I suppose we should have to
describe music. Then we could describe how human beings react to it.
But is that all that is necessary, or is it also part of the process to teach
him to understand it for himself? Now, teaching him to understand
would be teaching him what understanding is in another sense than a
theory that does not do this. And again, teaching him to understand
poetry or painting can be part of an explanation of what understanding
music is. (CV 70; 80-81)
Music is part of our very particular form of life and we recognize in it

the same repertoire of gestures through which we understand each other.
Therefore we can consider that music is a language. Understanding music
and understanding language is embedded in a network of language games.
Understanding is not possible without a musical environment; outside it
music does not have game partners and loses its meaning. If a work of music
ceases to be performed, it loses its meaning as a game; if it comes to be played
again, it acquires a new meaning related to the new era. An example of this
is the rediscovery of Bach’s music in the 19th century; another example is
the “authentic Baroque music” played on historical instruments in the 20th
century. If we fail to listen to a work of music, it is because we think that it no
longer works for our form of life. It was not the music that changed, but our
culture. Music is rooted in the practice of life.
35
Unsayable Music
7. Musical Melancholy
“Schubert is irreligious and melancholy.” (CV 47; 53)
Melody is the primary focus of Wittgenstein’s reflections on music. There

is also a focus on theme, reinforcing the analogy between a musical theme
and a phrase in language. He says: “The theme interacts with the language”
(CV 52; 60).
Wittgenstein formulated thoughts on many composers: Bach, Mozart,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, and also
Joseph Labor (1842-1924). He discusses things he likes and dislikes in both
a given composer’s music and life. He appreciated the music of the first half
of the 19th century; Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms were his favorite
composers. Labor’s performance impressed him; in 1947 he wrote on Labor’s
playing: “He is speaking. How curious!” (CV 62; 71). Wittgenstein reflects
on the relationship between music and language when he analyses Labor’s
performance: “What was it about this playing that was so reminiscent of
speaking?” (CV 62; 71). He argues that the similarity between music and
language is not a secondary thing but something “important” and “big”.
There is some music that describes itself as language; however, there are other
ones that don’t want to become a language at all. He notes that the differences
he sees in music should not be taken as a “judgment of value” (CV 62; 71).
In other words: there is no paradigm for defining what music is, we can have
different understandings of music.
Wittgenstein appreciates Schubert’s melody deeply. Gmür suggests that
Schubert was his favorite composer, mainly because of his identification
with Austrian culture (Gmür 2000, 186). Wittgenstein believes Schubert’s
melody to be full of moments that he calls Pointen (cf. CV 47; 53). The
French word pointe, which conveys ideas such as “head”, “tip”, “peak”, etc.,
has been imported into the German language (Pointe) with the meaning of
“punch line”. He uses also another German word from ordinary language
in connection with Schubert’s melody: Witz. This word means short story
in German, or a smart and creative language game. But Witz can also mean
a joke, something told for the purpose of causing a laugh. Witz is thus a
synthesis of many meanings, a word that opens up an ambivalent analogy.
He is not suggesting that Schubert’s music functions like a joke, yet he is
suggesting that there are moments of climax—Pointen—that transform our
expectations like the punch lines of jokes. The Pointen are “thoughts” he
admires, along with Schubert’s capacity for transforming conventions into
36
some deeper expression.8 He briefly analyzes the last two bars of Schubert’s
song Der Tod und das Mädchen [Death and the Maiden]: we first listen to a
figure that seems conventional and ordinary until we understand that “here
the ordinary is filled with significance” (CV 52; 60).
Wittgenstein makes many critical remarks on Mendelssohn, characterizing
the essence of his music by saying that “there is perhaps no music by
Mendelssohn that is hard to understand” (CV 23; 27). He calls Mendelssohn
a “reproductive” artist (CV 38; 43) and asks: “What does Mendelssohn’s music
lack? A ‘courageous’ melody?” (CV 35; 40). Wittgenstein uses the analogy of
surface/depth once again, this time, referring to the music as primitive on the
surface and meaningful in its depth—to criticize Mendelssohn:
Within all great art there is a WILD animal: tamed.

Not, e.g. in Mendelssohn. All great art has primitive human instincts as
its ground bass. They are not the melody (as they are, perhaps, in Wagner),
but they are what gives the melody depth and power. (CV 37-38; 43)9
In contrast, Wittgenstein admires the “strength of the musical thinking in

Brahms” (CV 23; 27), and “Brahms’s overwhelming skills” (CV 25; 29). He
saw a kinship between Brahms and Mendelssohn; they composed similar
music but the difference is that “Brahms does with complete rigor what
Mendelssohn did half-rigorously. Or: Brahms is often Mendelssohn without
the flaws” (CV 21; 18). Brahms is a boundary for Wittgenstein’s thoughts on
music. In 1930 he said to his friend Drury: “Music came to a full stop with
Brahms; and even in Brahms I can begin to hear the sound of machinery”
(Rhees 1981, 127). In other words, he thinks that music comes to an end
when the sound of machinery starts to shape musical creativity. What would
he had said about electroacoustic music?
Wittgenstein’s conception of music, like his conception of language, is
contextual. The understanding of music is determined by the culture. The
work of art must be understood and judged in the cultural context in which
it is created. Music refers to itself, and to the specific culture—the time and
space in which it emerges. It includes the totality of “forms of life”—all
manifestations of culture of that time, including architecture, film, religion,
8
Hatten’s analysis of Schubert, focused on gestures, brings also this idea that Schubert’s
music operates with a synthetic element that articulates simultaneously different
meanings; this synthesis is accomplished by gestures (cf. Hatten 2004).
9
The word “depth” is here used to express the “complexity” that lies below the surface of
music, to which the melody is associated (See Wittgenstein’s definition of music (CV 8;
11) quoted above.
37
Unsayable Music
etc. For him, art has an intimate relationship with ethics because it is both a
commitment to a happy life and the revelation that makes happy life visible.
Artists have something to teach the world both through their work and life.
The artist and his work are one.
Beethoven was an ideal figure to Wittgenstein. Beethoven “talked and
wrestled” with problems that “no philosopher has ever confronted”, and
“perhaps they are lost”. Beethoven experienced and described the development
of Western culture as an “epic”, and he did it with precision (CV 9; 12).
What is the epic of a culture? For Wittgenstein, the epic of a whole culture
is to be sought in the works of its greatest figures, and in a time when these
works foresee the end of this culture, “for later there is no one there any
more to describe it” (CV 9; 12). As pointed out by Gmür (2001), Beethoven
embodies the qualities of passion, willpower, dedication, and persistence in a
time of adversity, which impressed Wittgenstein. Beethoven showed through
his art that one can overcome suffering and adversity; he shaped his artistic
creativity and production in the perspective of the eternal and transcendental
that achieves the unity of work and life.
8. Summary
Wittgenstein’s philosophy doesn’t provide any musical theory or aesthetics.

Rather, music is a tool for reflecting on the understanding of language
and understanding in general. He uses the analogy between music and
language as an object of comparison for illuminating different aspects of the
investigation. There is no prototype of understanding. There is a similarity
between understanding language and music but music has a more transparent
“grammar” than language and therefore can make things that are hidden
by language appear more clearly. However, he proposed no philosophy of
understanding. Any attempt to develop a comprehensive account of musical
understanding based on Wittgenstein’s ideas would lead to nothing but a
fallacious misunderstanding.
Wittgenstein formulated with intensity and precision a close relationship
between ethics and aesthetics—“(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)”
(TLP 6.421). Both are part of the ineffable; the ethical and aesthetical attitude
towards the world is the one that shows the “good life”. The artist’s attitudes
and decisions are a matter of both ethics and aesthetics. It doesn’t matter how
the world is, how much misery there is in the world, the work of art has to
show the possibility of seeing the world as it is, as something transcendental.
The idea that we are not able to explain the world in a logical sense, together
38
with the attitude of acceptance, leads to a “mystical” view: “There are, indeed,
things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are
what is mystical” (PI §6.53).
Wittgenstein emphasizes the autonomy of music: music doesn’t say anything
but itself. On the other hand, he recognizes that aesthetic understanding
is only possible within a culture through the contextual references to the
“forms of life”. To describe an ensemble of aesthetic rules means to describe a
specific culture. Musical understanding cannot be reduced to the mechanical
application of explicit rules; the expressive game of musical rules obeys a
tradition that is mostly implicit, which determines the choices. The rules
allow us to recognize the full expression of music.
His reflection on music is focused on the music of the 19th century that
belonged to his particular Austrian cultural context. He gave no thoughts to
the music of his own time, for example the atonal and serial music of Arnold
Schoenberg, with whom he shares similar points of view.10 This leads us to
question whether Wittgenstein’s ideas on music apply only to the music he
reflects on or to other kinds of music. Are his thoughts useful but limited to
the music of the past? Or can he help us understand music no longer rooted in
the European tradition or music that seeks formal models outside melodic and
harmonic structures of tonality, such as atonal music, electroacoustic music,
or digital music? On the other hand, should we consider the possibility that a
shift has occurred in which music became a different kind of language with
a different grammar? Or even that music itself lost the ability to articulate a
language that can be understood by a large community?
In opposition to the narrow focus of his musical universe, Wittgenstein’s
philosophical method opens new perspectives for understanding music in
a broad sense, including listening, composing, performing, analyzing, and
teaching. He develops a concept of “grammar” that is not focused on language
considered as a system of signs, but on the practice of using language. This
concept invokes the idea that language is a spatial and temporal phenomenon
(PI §108) that has to be understood as a language-in-use with its distinctive
patterns of use that constitute what he calls the “grammar of our concepts”
(cf. McGinn 1996, 13). His therapeutic voice tells us to look carefully into the
detailed structure of our practice of using language in order to cure ourselves
of the temptations of misunderstanding.
For Wittgenstein, understanding is not a process of going inwards but
of looking at the complexity of patterns that characterize our form of life.
Music—similar to language—is not an abstract system of signs conveying
10
For a comparison between Wittgenstein and Schoenberg, see Eggers (2011).
39
Unsayable Music
some kind of meaning, but a particular form of life that displays structures
that are constituted by the activity of making music. He invites us to look
at the way we determine musical concepts, how in our musical practice we
constitute regular patterns by following rules, how we choose to follow some
rules and dismiss others and how we apply words like “correct” or “incorrect”
to make aesthetic judgments about music.
Understanding music cannot be reduced to the mechanical decoding of a
system of signs. For instance, although we learn to play a musical instrument
through “ostensive teaching”—by establishing an association between names,
gestures and repeated movements performed with the instrument—, this
kind of ostensive training can lead to quite different understanding of music.
In the same way, while listening to music we can use some words or make
gestures that accompany or manifest our feelings, but they don’t constitute
the musical understanding itself. For Wittgenstein, aesthetic appreciation
consists of assessing the significance of an artwork or performance without
comparing it to a pre-existent model or reality. The aesthetic pleasure emerges
from the sense of “correctness”, similar when a musician finds the correct
expression for performing a certain work of music; for instance, the correct
expression of a particular raga in Indian classical music, or the appropriate
interpretation of a piano sonata by Beethoven.
Music is autonomous in the sense that it doesn’t need to express anything
external. Music is complete in itself. Everything that can be said is said
through the music. This idea of artistic autonomy can help us to understand
meaning in the ordinary language as an internal process—the particular way
signs are being used to say something. For Wittgenstein art, and especially
music, is capable of expressing what ordinary language cannot convey with
words. Art can place us outside the world and give us the opportunity to
observe the world from the exterior, the experience of transcendence. This is
the mystical mission of art.
The relevant message of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is a double-sided
one. On the one hand, he sparks intellectual passions by pushing us to
investigate the limits of what can be logically explained. On the other hand,
by placing ethics at the core of the aesthetic experience, he urges us to work
on ourselves and for humanity. The ethical attitude is at the same time a
way of action and knowledge, an encouragement to dispel ignorance through
clarity, transparence, and profound commitment. The mystical mission of art
emerges through these ethical values. It requires, at the same time, a struggle
with the roots of our confusion—which lies in the “misunderstanding of the
logic of language” (PI § 93), in order to establish the clarity and transparence,
40
and a pragmatic approach to creativity in order to make visible what language

passes over in silence—the unsayable.
41
Chapter 2
Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality,

and Affect in Chopin
1. Spectrum as Existential Metaphor
The concept of spectrum emerges as an existential metaphor of sound and

music in the digital era. A simple definition of spectrum is the representation
of sound energy as a function of frequency. The conversion of acoustic
vibrations into digital signals (Digital Signal Processing) allows the direct
numerical calculation of the frequency content of sound. For that, the most
widely used algorithm is the Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT). It emerges
from the scientific knowledge of waveforms in general, specifically periodic
vibrations. Any sound, no matter as complex it seems, can be described as a
system of periodic vibrations that are multiple of a fundamental frequency.
The FFT algorithm, proposed by the French mathematician Joseph Fourier
in the late 18th century has been successfully implemented in computers as
Discrete Fourier Transformation (DFT), a digital signal processing algorithm
allowing very fast calculations of samples of digital signals.1
Digital signals may be processed in either the time domain or the frequency
domain. DFT can convert signals from the time domain to the frequency
domain and vice-versa. This allows different representations of sound: the
waveform representation is interesting for visualizing time and the spectral
representation for frequency content. A waveform can then be transformed
into a corresponding spectrum and vice-versa. The sonogram (or spectrogram)
is a spectral representation of the sound. Figure 1 shows the sonogram of a
female voice saying the phrase: “My father works in a mysterious place”. On
the top, we see the waveform, on the bottom the sonogram. On the sonogram
1
For a short overview of digital audio processing see Rossing et al. (2002, 634-51); for
an introduction to the digital signal processing and applications in computer music see
Moore (1990), Steiglitz (1995), and Loy (2007); the articles on Strawn (1985) provide a
useful introduction to the development of musical signal processing with computers.
43
Unsayable Music
the horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis the frequencies;
there is a third dimension given by the variation of the black color, which
represents the amplitudes. The more intense the color, the stronger sounds
the frequency. For example, the black lines on the bottom indicate the voice’s
frequency energy is concentrated in the lower register of the spectrum. The
sonogram provides a clear visualization of how the sound evolves in time in
terms of frequency and amplitude.
Figure 1: Sonogram of the phrase: “My father works in a mysterious place”
One of the great advantages of digital spectral representation is that it reveals

the micro-structure of sound. In Figure 2, the sonogram displays the beginning
of the previous phrase, the word “my”, which has a very short duration of only
270 milliseconds. We can visualize its spectrum in a window of the same size
as the one representing the phrase. By comparing the two sonograms, we
recognize two different forms of sound. In the first sonogram we see that the
sequence of events, corresponding to the individual words of the phrase, form
a certain rhythm. In the second sonogram we see a single event stretched over
the whole duration of the window, displaying the spectral micro-structure of
the word “my”. If, instead of speech, these two sonograms were representing
music, we would have two different musical forms, the first one consisting of
a sequence of segments and the second one of a single segment. However, as
we see here, the formal distinctions we can make on a spectrum depend on
the temporal level we choose to represent it. With the sonogram we are able
to visualize sound at different scales of time, which gives us the opportunity
to analyze music from different temporal perspectives.
44
Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin
Figure 2: Sonogram of the word “My”
Spectral representation has become a tool for analysis, synthesis and

manipulation of musical sounds. It provides an understanding of the sound
material that benefits not only electroacoustic and digital music composition,
but also musical analysis and semiotics. My theory of spectral semiotics
(Chagas 2010) proposes a phenomenological approach to investigate sound
and music using sonograms and other digital tools. The research on spectral
semiotics, which is informed by the compositional practice with digital
tools, aims to develop analysis techniques that can be applied to any kind
of music, as well as to experiences related to sound and music ranging from
consciousness, perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, affect,
and performance, to the level of meaningful social and cultural interactions.
As an interdisciplinary field of studies, spectral semiotics interfaces with
disciplines such as composition, music theory, musical analysis/synthesis,
musicology, acoustics, psychoacoustics, computer science, cognitive science,
semiotics, and cultural studies. My investigation on spectral semiotics focuses
on the relation between sound, music and temporality. Husserl’s theory of
time-consciousness (Husserl 1966; 1990) and Varela’s neurophenomenology
of time-consciousness (Varela 1991) provides the theoretical framework for
associating time-consciousness to sound-and-music-consciousness. I am
particularly interested in studying the role of affect in the constitution of
temporality in sound and music. Listening to music is not a passive experience,
but an active process of perception and action that creates both meaning and
affect. How does sound relate to affect? What kind of emotions does music
trigger in us? How do we understand the different kinds of affect? These are
but a few of the questions that have instigated my research.
45
Unsayable Music
In the following, I propose an application of the spectral semiotics

approach to the analysis of Chopins’ Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1. By focusing
on the constitutive role of temporality and affection in the sound and music
composition, I intend to demonstrate how spectral analysis can expand the
understanding of Chopin’s music. The references to existential semiotics
emphasize the convergence between spectral analysis and musical semiotics
in the investigation of musical meaning and affect.
2. Polyphony and Transcendence in Chopin
The radical inventiveness of Chopin’s compositions represents a striking

paradox to the romantic stereotypes that characterize the wide reception of
his music. Chopin’s significant body of work, mostly written for the piano,
contains a broad palette of musical innovations that makes it a paradigm
for scholarship and composition studies, while it is at the same time highly
accessible to a wide range of listeners. My hypothesis is that Chopin’s music
unfolds a sound poetics of affects that resonates at the most basic level of
human experience and consequently achieves in the listeners the readiness for
accepting the high level of complexity and inventiveness of his music. Charles
Rosen, in his brilliant study on the music of the Romantic generation (Rosen
1990), demonstrates how the poetic force of Chopin is related to his ability
to create a consistent and diversified polyphony that integrates compositional
features by articulating meaning at different levels of temporality and
signification. Chopin’s music achieves the “transformation of the vulgar into
something aristocratic. Its power depends in part on our unconscious sense of
how commonplace the material originally was before it reappears in an aura
of iridescent sonority” (Rosen 1990, 395).
Chopin’s polyphonic language embraces contradictory elements such
as salon music and the operatic bel canto, conventional ternary forms
(ABA) and unconventional narratives, periodic phrasings and shifts of
phases, harmonic commonplaces as well as radical variations of texture and
sonority. According to Tarasti, Chopin lived at the center of the literary-
musical culture of Romanticism, “in an age that perceived the narrative
content as an essential level of signification” (Tarasti 1994, 138).2 One of his
2
Tarasti proposes an analysis of musical narrative articulated as categories of temporality
(temporal organization), spatiality (organization of tonal space), and actoriality (thematic
or actorial elements). For a semiotic investigation of narrativity in Chopin see Tarasti
(1994, 138-80), particularly the extensive analysis of Chopin’s Ballade in G minor
Op. 23.
46
most remarkable achievements is the reinvention of counterpoint. Chopin

transforms the baroque and classical melodic line into a vector of narrativity.
The long sustained melody—a major characteristic of his music—is,
according to Rosen, an influence of Bellini’s opera that Chopin translated
for the piano. Chopin’s writing for this instrument is charged with the
affect of the human voice. The dramatic gestures of the music express the
transformation of the vocal apparatus into the mechanical medium of the
piano as if the piano could embody the ego and bring human existence to a
level of transcendence. In terms of Tarasti’s existential theory, the music of
Chopin accomplishes the semiotic operations of negation and affirmation
through which transcendence is realized (Tarasti 2000, 21). The piano first
negates the biological foundation of the human self by transforming the
body into machine, but the composition transmutes the machine into a kind
of living system and reaffirms the organism.
Chopin’s musical approach intentionally assigns an existence to
commonplace objects and transcends it by subjectively changing them.
For example, he introduces melodies that seem conventional, devoid of
any freshness or originality, but that reveal an inexhaustible potential of
imagination, musical creativity and emotional fullness. The composition
achieves musical transcendence using both traditional techniques and radical
innovations. It transforms banality into sublimity by deploying a network
of motives that rhythmically change their appearance and constantly shift
between voice lines. Chopin’s polyphony makes transparent the dynamic
of permanence/change that connects the embodied ego aware of emotional
change (Varela 1999, 304). The creation of individual lines in the inner parts
(Rosen 1990, 302) is an example of change within permanence. It transforms
the virtual, abstract structure of polyphonic lines into an “exquisite spacing”
of “vibrant inner voices” filled with subtle shifts of phase and “astonishing
experiments in harmony” (Rosen 1990, 471). Chopin’s music unfolds both the
permanence of the self-identified ego and the stream of change characterizing
the dimension of the living present in the sense of Husserl’s phenomenology
(Held 2003, 47).
Tarasti analyzes transcendence as a dynamic shift between two Daseins3
that appear as transference of signs. The transcendental transfer is a six-
step process oscillating between affirmation and negation. It starts with the
3
The concept of Dasein refers to the human experience of being. It is a core concept
of Heidegger’s existential philosophy, which inspired Tarasti’s theory of existential
semiotics. See discussion of existential semiotics in “Communication and Meaning:
Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein.
47
Unsayable Music
negation of the original Dasein followed by the affirmation of Nothingness,

to the negation of Nothingness, to the partial affirmation of Dasein, to the
negation toward affirmation, and then finally to the return from negation,
which constitutes at the same time a new affirmation that possibly creates
a new Dasein (Tarasti 1990, 31). The transfer can also been seen as an
interaction between pre-signs, act-signs, and post-signs. In Chopin for example,
we may consider as pre-signs popular and classical music genres such as
waltzes, polonaises, preludes, études, nocturnes, ballades, sonatas, and
fantasies; as act-signs the semiotic processes activated by the composition;
and as post-signs the new meanings achieved through the metamorphose of
these signs. In the third Ballade, for instance, the sonata style and the ternary
form function as pre-signs of conformity and stability (permanence), which
are transformed “not by harmonic events or by thematic contrast but by
fluctuations of sentiment, by variations of intensity” (Rosen 1990, 322). Such
changes belong to the domain of post-signs (interpretants) and are activated
by ambiguities and disruptions in the narrative flow that accomplish the
remarkable concretization of pre-signs into act-signs in Chopin’s music.
3. Time Consciousness and Affect
Husserl considered temporality a fundamental substrate of the pheno-

menological research. Time accounts for the way we experience things in
the world and build consciousness. The structures of consciousness are what
make it possible to perceive the unity of any object as a manifestation of
time consciousness. In Husserl’s Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness
(Husserl 1991), time is a proto-level of perception, the emergent process
that occurs when we become aware of the sensations and feelings that
create the experience of the living present. Time provides consciousness with
formal continuity at the most fundamental level.4 Inner time-consciousness
constitutes an ultimate “substrate of consciousness where no further reduction
can be accomplished” (Varela 1999, 268). Time-consciousness is a process
of individuation emerging from the unity of the ego and is equal to self-
consciousness. The temporal experience is a paradox oscillating between the
present as unity and as flow of consciousness. They are mediated through acts
of consciousness or what Husserl calls “experiences” [Erlebnisse]. Therefore,
phenomenology distinguishes three levels of the constitution of temporality:
4
Cf. Held (2003) for an account of Husserl’s time-consciousness as a phenomenology of
living experience.
48
1. The first level of temporal objects—the perceived unities of the consciousness.

2. The second level of immanent acts of the consciousness.
3. The third level of the absolute self-constituting and time-constituting flow
of consciousness.
With this tripartite definition, the phenomenological method acknowledges

that inner-consciousness shares the same temporal features as physical objects;
that the perception of time cannot be disassociated from the mental acts;
and also that it occurs in an extended horizon including the past, present
and future. Husserl explains inner-time-consciousness through a significant
number of musical metaphors. Listening to a melody is a recurrent one. He
correlates the tones of a melody with the first level of temporal objects. “The
tone in its durations” is a temporal object (Husserl 1991, 24). Further, the
melody is an example of how the present is experienced as an extended frame
of simultaneity. When a melody sounds, says Husserl, the individual tones do
not disappear without leaving a trace. They reverberate in the flux of inner-
time consciousness. The objective time flows as a straight line in which every
point is a now, an extended present surrounded by past and future nows.
Listening to a melody is an example of how time-consciousness refers to
distant intentional experience that occurs both in the past and in the future.
Past and future are part of the intentional stream of consciousness through
retention (memory) and protention (expectation). One hears every tone of a
melody as a now and hears the whole melody as a now. “At any given time
I hear only the actually present phase of the tone, and the objectivity of the
whole enduring tone is constituted in an act-continuum that is part memory,
in smallest punctual part perception, and in further part expectation”
(Husserl 1991, 25).
Husserl’s melody metaphor emerges from the notion that music is a temporal
experience. Spectral semiotics distinguishes music-sound temporality at
different levels, from sound-objects, to intentional music-objects, to the absolute
musical flow. Since time does not detach from temporal objects-events, sound
does not detach from temporal sound objects-events and music does not
detach from temporal music objects-events. According to Husserl, temporal
objects-events have a double aspect: duration, which correlates to intentional
direction, and unity, which correlates to individuality. Translating these ideas
in terms of sound and music objects-events we can say:
• The duration of sound and music objects-events depends on intentional
directions such as an envelope, a crescendo or a diminuendo, an ascending
or descending scale, the profile of a melody, or musical structure.
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• The unity of sound and music objects-events depends on the fact that they
stand out as distinct wholes against the background of other events.
Varela’s approach to time, at the crossroad of neuroscience and phenomenology

(Varela 1999), emphasizes the crucial role of affection in the constitution
of time. In opposition to Husserl, Varela considers the experience of time
as a dynamic, recurrent constitution. This idea supports my own account
that listening to music is a multi-stable auditory perception, an experience
of simultaneity (polyphony) as the listener must separate musical sounds
from the environment (Cf. Chagas 2005). The listener is an active agent
in the constitution of meaning for both sound and music. Addressing the
question of how something can show up as present but also reach a temporal
horizon, Varela proposes a non-linear account of time based on the cognitive
integration of three scales of duration:
1. The 1/10-second scale (between 10 and 100 milliseconds): the level of
basic identification of elementary events perceived as non-simultaneous;
the minimum distance needed for two stimuli to be perceived as non-
simultaneous.
2. The 1-second scale: the level of relaxation time for large-scale integration,
which corresponds to the time of completing neuronal interconnections;
the time it takes for a cognitive act to be completed.
3. The 10-second scale: the level of descriptive-narrative assessments; it is
linked to our linguistic capacities, which constitutes the flow of time as
related to personal identity.
In terms of music, these three temporal levels can correlated with:

1. Identification of elementary sound objects: perception of pitches, timbres,
dynamics, chords, and intervals.
2. Relaxation time for integration of sound objects: perception of motives,
melodies, gestures, harmonies, and textures.
3. Descriptive-narrative assessments for large-scale integration: perception of
phrases, cadences, and formal structures.
Varela assumes that consciousness is based on neural activity and embodied

agents, a process “involving multiple levels of interconnected, sensorimotor
activity (Varela, Thompson and Rosh 1991, 206). The neuronal activity is
described as an assemblage of nonlinear oscillators. The single oscillators
are coupled and synchronized in the neuronal process and a percept of
multi-stability emerges as a cognitive act. According to his dynamical-
cognitive approach, the constitution of time is related to the perception and
50
identification of patterns occurring at different levels of temporality. This

happens for example, when auditory perception distinguishes a sound in the
acoustic environment. An auditory pattern of multi-stability emerges as sound
qualities such as pitch, loudness, or timbre. The perception of percussion
sounds, for instance, is shaped by the transient aggregates that briefly occur
at the attack phase. Other sounds such as voice and strings require more time
to be identified. Such an approach discloses a non-linear, dynamic conception
of time, which presents itself as having a complex texture.
Varela accounts for the role of affection in the constitution of time in the
context of active involvement in the world. He uses the word transparency to
indicate an unreflective absorption that can interrupt the flow of experience.
Transparency is a “readiness or dispositional tendency for action” in the large
horizon of our lives, an “expectation about the way things in general will turn
out” (Varela 1991, 299). It is not limited to individual action, but extends to
the historical and social human experience. Varela relates the constitution of
affect to a loss of transparency. A panoply of “affective tonalities” correlates
to different degrees of breakdown in transparence and the multiple ways
it happens. Following this concept, he proposes three categories of affect:
emotion, the tonality of the affect that accompanies a shift in transparency;
aff ection, a broader dispositional orientation; and mood, an affective
background.
These three categories can be distinguished as three scales of affect
homologous but not necessarily isomorphic to the three scales of temporality
(Varela 1999, 300):
1. Emotion: the awareness of a tonal shift that is constitutive of the living
present.
2. Aff ect: a dispositional trend proper to a coherent sequence of embodied
actions.
3. Mood: which exists at the scale of narrative description over time.
4. Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1 in C-Sharp Minor: Temporal Levels
The following observations constitute an application of spectral semiotics

theory. By exploring digital tools for sound analysis, one may gain insights
into the relationship between sound, temporality, and affect in Chopin’s
Nocturne op. 27 no. 1 in C-sharp minor, composed in 1835. Chopin’s music
develops sound objects and music objects unfolding textures of simultaneity
perceived at different levels of temporality. These structures then build
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interdependent spectral patterns connecting the perception of temporal levels

to three scales of affection: emotion, affect, and mood.
The sonogram of Figure 3 shows the spectral information of the C-sharp
nocturne. The gray and black lines represent the structure of partials given
by the FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) analysis in terms of frequency,
amplitude, and phase.5 It is relatively easy to visualize the patterns of sound
energy. By inserting marks on the sonogram, we can distinguish sound
objects and music objects constituting textures of simultaneity at different
temporal levels. The digital tools give us access to the different scales of time,
from the level of sonic vibrations to the levels represented by single notes,
melodies, harmonies, larger sections and finally the overall form of the piece.
Figure 3: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1
Figure 4 consists of three sonograms showing three different levels of time

segmentation. The number of segments decreases from top to bottom. The
top sonogram represents the first temporal level of short unities. The first
segment corresponds to measures 1-2, the second to measures 3-6, and the
third to measures 7-10, and so on. The second temporal level is shown on the
middle sonogram with the first segment extending from measures 1-10, the
second from measures 11-19, the third from measures 19-28, and so on. The
bottom sonogram shows the large ABA form of the piece defined by measures
1-28, 29-83, and 84-101.
5
I used the software AudioSculpt version 2.9.4v3 by IRCAM, Paris, to analyze a recording
of the nocturne by the pianist Ivan Moravec (CD Elektra Nonesuch 9 79233-2, 1991).
52
Figure 4: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1. Th ree levels of temporal segmentation
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The sound objects and musical objects defined by the segments share three
temporal levels with a similar spectral pattern in a bell-like, symmetrical
shape in three phrases: it begins with low spectral energy, grows smoothly,
building a peak of energy in the center, then fades away towards the end.
Since the bell-like pattern is also reflected in the piece as a whole, we can
say that the overall form of the C-sharp minor nocturne reproduces itself
recursively, creating temporal unities that are fractals of the main sound
structure. As each time-segment is a reduced spectral-temporal instance of
the whole, the result is that Chopin’s nocturne develops an organic spectral-
temporal structure unified through self-similarity.
5. Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1 in C-Sharp Minor: Analysis
A brief description of Nocturne op. 27 no. 1 in C-sharp minor will show

the relationship between sound, temporality, and affect. Figure 5 presents
the complete score of the piece. At the beginning (section A), we hear an
arpeggio figure on the left hand spread over 1 ½ octaves The combination
of the intervals of fifth and octave—c#2, g#2, c#3, g#36 —gives a sense of
emptiness, a negation of Dasein. The music seems to emerge from nothing.
Then in measure 3, the melody completes the harmony with the minor third
e5 immediately followed by the major third e#5, so that the minor chord
is first accepted and then abandoned. In addition to the shift to major, the
harmony introduces the interval of minor 7th—b3—on the left hand, a
move that completely changes the sonority. This represents a new movement
away from the Dasein, by which, according to Zielinski, Chopin creates “a
wonderful effect in regard to the sound and expression, which almost sends
a shiver down one’s spine” (Zielinski 2008, 495). Both harmony and melody
affirm, since the very beginning of the music, the dark and gloomy mood of
the nocturne, mysterious and filled with a certain sense of the tragic (Zielinski
2008, 494).
The hesitant melody is sparely shaped; it emerges from the harmony, rises
chromatically at a slow pace, draws a clear descending motive for a short
moment, and fades away. At measure 11 it develops a strong outline but at
the same time, acquires an emotional tone of distress, as if each attempt at
6
I use the MIDI note system for distinguishing the octaves. The middle “c” of the piano
(261.63 Hz) is notated as c4, the octave below as c3, the octave above as c5, and so on. I
use small caps for indicating notes and capital letters for tonalities.
54
Figure 5: Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 1, complete score

© 1980 by G. Henle Verlag, Munich, printed by permission
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56

57
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58

59
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“doing” (a negative modality) would drop back into the sufferance of “being”
(an affirmative modality.) The Phrygian cadence—d4 to c#4—at the end of
the phrase (measure 18) re-affirms the acceptance of this mood. The harmony
of the arpeggios is elaborated in great detail while the leaps of large intervals
and the constant harmonic changes create an anxious and uneasy affect. A
tonal ambiguity dominates the beginning of the piece as no cadence in the
key of C-sharp appears in the first ten bars; then, as soon as the tonal center
is affirmed, Chopin creates a texture of colorful dissonances by superposing
different harmonic functions; for instance, the dominant is built upon the
bass note c#2, which is the virtual root of the tonic. The repetition of the
theme (measures 19-26) is marked by the addition of a second voice filling the
empty space between the upper melody and the lower arpeggio. As pointed
out above, this kind of internal line is a typical feature of Chopin’s polyphony.
Here, it oscillates between the negation of emptiness, through increasing
density and then, to the affirmation of the basic feeling of strangeness through
the utterance of the new voice as a mirror of the self. Section A concludes with
the emptiness of the transfigured arpeggio figure (measures 27-28).
Section B, Più mosso, measures 29-83, begins with a very animated
mood, a significant contrast to the introspective mood of the beginning. The
temporal flux is given by the figure in triplets rushing through chromatic
ornamentations. On the right hand, a short motive of two bars with an
ostinato character is repeated, ascending and with increasing volume. The
rhythm becomes compelling and sharper through the introduction of shorter
durations (measure 37) and obsessive repetitions (sempre più stretto, measures
41-43). The evolving progression leads to a passionate explosion of energy
(appassionato, measure 45), which is marked by fuller harmonic chords and
wider arpeggio figures (measures 45-48), culminating in an abrupt and
unexpected hard changing of tonality from E major to A-flat major (measure
49) followed by a melodic and harmonic release (measures 51-52). The
dotted figure on the fourth beat of measure 51 produces the memory of the
melancholic mood of section A.
After the first explosion, the music starts a new progressive increase
(measure 53) with a more refined sound and an uncanny mood filled with
“strange unrest and terrifying affect” (Zielinski 2008, 495). The interlocking
of static and moving elements provokes disturbing changes. For example,
the arpeggio is transformed into a bass ostinato figure modulating between
the a-flat tonic and the chromatic ascending notes; the melody moves
both upwards in half-tone steps and downwards in fourths and fifths; the
harmonic sound affirms the virtual tonality (A-flat major) by repeating the
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fundamental tone and simultaneously negates through modulation (E-flat

minor, F minor, etc.).
The dissonant harmony aggravates the emotional retention that
culminates in a new phase of successive explosions (measures 65-80). The
music progresses quickly through the flow of abundant chords, developing a
whirlpool of emotions through continuous and abrupt changes of dynamics,
harmony, tempo, rhythmic density and character (con anima, m. 63; tenuto,
measure 64) It releases both affirmative affects such as the “energetic, heroic
and victorious”, as suggested by Zielinski (2008, 496), and negative affects
such as fragility, fear, and loss. The accumulation of chromatic material
leads to the most dramatic moment of the piece (measures 82-83): First, the
inflated repetition of the dominant diminished chord (b#, d#, f#, a) in ff f and
crescendo expresses extreme emotions such as pain, passion, ecstasy, and rage.
(cf. Zielinski 2008, 496). Second, the concluding recitativo in parallel octaves
sweeping through the low spectrum (measure 83) reinforces the intentional
retention of temporal experience—the expansion of the now—producing the
affect of achieving transcendence.
The reprise of the A section is abbreviated to 10 bars (measures 84-93).
The coda in C-sharp major (measures 94-101) brings a new affect, marked
by a consistent harmonic color. The polyphony of two interleaved voices—
an external and an internal one—introduces a motive in parallel thirds that
includes the figure of dotted eight-note and sixteen-note (fourth beat of
measures 94, 95, 97), which is a memory of the melancholic mood of the
beginning of the piece. The interval of fifth (c#2/g#2) on the bottom of the
arpeggio figure of the left hand (measures 94-97) is what achieves a grounded
affect; on the right hand, the two falling internal melodies moving parallel
and delayed—c#4, b#3, a#3, g#3 and e#3, d#3, c#3, b#2—shape this affect
with unmistakable emotional tones such as peace and calm. The music slows
down as the motive in parallel thirds (measures 96-98) is repeated with double
duration. The major third c#3/e#3 of the right hand (measure 96) affirming the
tonality of C-sharp major introduces the affect of transcendental achievement;
at the same time, the arpeggio figure of the left hand (the superposition of
two intervals of fifth c#/g#) introduces the affect of emptiness, a reminder of
the very beginning of the piece. These two complementary affects flow in the
last three bars into a mood of peaceful acceptance, which is emphasized by
the slow pace of the Adagio. The piece activates a gentle movement towards
non-attachment: first the harmony migrates through the spacious, luminous
region of the subdominant (measure 98); then it ascends from the low spheres
of the sound spectrum to crystallize into the chord of C-sharp major at the
middle register (measure 99); finally, bypassing the dominant cadence, it
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returns to the deep spectrum, falling into the soft, warm chord of C-sharp
major (measure 100). One way to interpret this is that the concluding affect
is one of reduced fear and a deeper acceptance of death.
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Chapter 3
III – Communication and Meaning:

Music as Social System
Niklas Luhmann’s theory for analyzing contemporary society is characterized

as a “transition towards a radically anti-humanistic, a radically anti-regionalist,
and a radically constructivist conception of society (Luhmann 1997, 35).1
This system theory breaks with the Western philosophical tradition that
assigns a central role to the subject as a frame of reference in accounting for
the dimension of the social. It is a radical move away from humanism and
towards a model of a society based on the concept of communication. The
focus of analysis is not the human behavior and the social institutions, but
the communications that occur within systems.
Luhmann’s reflections on art, which include a significant number of
essays (Luhmann 2008) and the book Art as a Social System (Luhmann 1995;
2000) develop a complex and precise understanding of the differentiation
of modern art correlated with the differentiation of modern society. In this
theory we find robust concepts for dealing with issues in contemporary art.
The following investigations will explore some aspects of this theory in order
to develop a reflection on music as a social system focused on communication
and meaning.
The first part discusses key concepts of the theory of social system and
presents a preliminary account of contemporary music within this framework.
The second part examines different views of sound, music, and society. The
method employed confronts Luhmann’s theory with other approaches,
1
Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) was until recently practically unknown for English
readers. The first volume of translation of his magum opus Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft
[The Society of Society] was published in 2012 (Luhmann 2012). Luhmann’s thinking
is complex and his writing style is difficult to translate. This affects the receptivity of
his work. The Introduction to Systems Theory (Luhmann 2013) presents the transcription
of series of lectures in which Luhmann explains the theory for a larger public. The oral
style makes it more accessible. For a comprehensive and critical reflection on Luhmann’s
theory cf. Radical Luhmann (Moeller 2012).
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including some in opposition, that function as objects of comparison for

assessment in the hopes of bringing to light more concealed aspects. By
seeking to create dissonance and heterogeneity, a deeper and more insightful
understanding of music in the contemporary world may open new paths for
future exploration.
1. System and Environment
Luhmann’s theory of social system, as Knodt observes, challenges the

humanistic tradition at the level of its most fundamental presuppositions:
(1) The principle of a unified, autonomous subject; (2) the idea of the
social as a derivative sphere of intersubjectivity; (3), the corollary of
communication as an interaction between subjects; (4) the notion of
communication as a transmission of mental contents between separate
consciousnesses; (5) the corresponding idea of language as a representation
of such contents. (Knodt 1995, xxiv)
System theory begins not with unity, but with the difference between system
and environment. The difference is both a self-reference and an observation.
There is no difference between self-reference and observation, for the one
who observes something must distinguish himself from that which he
observes. This concept of difference is inspired by George Spencer-Brown’s
mathematical logic of calculus, which is expounded in Laws of Form (Spencer-
Brown 1969), a book that influenced second-order cybernetics.2 Spencer-
Brown defines form as a call to draw a boundary that marks a difference. In
other words, one draws a distinction that creates a difference between system
and environment. By creating this distinction, one is referring to oneself and,
at the same time, observing the distinction. Spencer-Brown’s logic of form
2
Norbert Wiener introduced the term “cybernetics” in the scientific discourse as “the theory
of communication and control in the machine and in the living organism” (Wiener 1956,
269). Second-order cybernetics develops a more consistent epistemology by including
the observer as part of the system. It reshapes the cybernetic concept of circularity by
focusing on the circular dynamic of reflexivity. Heinz von Foerster postulates the idea
that we experience the world by constructing a reality. The fundamental cognitive
operation performed by an observer it a distinction that separates reality into an inside
and an outside (cf. Foerster 2003c).
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Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System
tells us to draw a distinction; otherwise nothing will happen at all. “Creation

is the imposition of a mode of distinction” (Luhmann 2013, 49).
For example, visualize an empty sheet of paper on which a circle is drawn.
We can say that the form is the boundary that marks the difference between
the circle and the empty space of the paper. Or if we listen to someone singing
the first note of a melody, we can say that the form is the boundary that
marks the difference between the note and silence. What is the next step?
Will something else be drawn on the paper? Will a second note follow? And,
if so, how is the form of the connective operation to be described?
Every distinction, whether it is the drawing of a circle or the singing of a
note, is a boundary that makes the distinction between two sides: the system
and the environment. This concept of form then has three consequences: 1) the
system is a form with two sides, 2) the system needs only one operation, and
3) the system’s operation re-enters in itself. The notion of form with two sides
can be expressed through the opposition between a marked and an unmarked
space. The form is the distinction that marks this difference between the
marked space (the system) and the unmarked space (the environment.) The
system has one operation, which is the distinction. This operation possesses
connectivity as it is copied into itself and is the re-entry of the form into the
form, or the re-entry of the distinction into the distinction.
The recursive process, through which the same operation reproduces
itself, creates the network of differences that structures the system. This
structuring is a process of self-organization and it is related to two other
concepts. The first one is autopoiesis—a term first introduced in 1972 by
Chilean biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, used to define
the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells. The second is self-referentiality.3
Based on these concepts, Luhmann distinguishes between three kinds of self-
referential, autopoietic systems: living systems (cells, brains and organisms),
psychic systems (consciousness), and social systems (societies, organizations, and
social interactions.) (cf. Luhmann 1990d, 2).
Social systems are based on communication and emerge when
communication develops. Communication is not a living unity, a conscious
unity, or an action. It is the only distinction and the only operation of
social systems. Each communication is a connective operation and a
social system that operates with communication always includes re-entry,
3
The concept of self-reference applies to a system that refers to itself. Baraldi, Corsi and
Esposito give the following definition: “Self-reference occurs when the operation of the
observation is included in what is described, when it describes something to which it
belongs itself ” (Baraldi, Corsi, and Esposito 1997, 163).
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i.e., the communications that shape the system are recursively produced.
Communication needs time in order to connect. This operation leads to a
temporal decoupling of system and environment so that the system develops
structures to articulate temporality at different levels. Communication
develops connectivity and temporality by processing a synthesis of 1)
Information: a selection from a repertoire of referential possibilities. 2)
Utterance: a selection from a repertoire of intentional acts. 3) Observation:
the distinction between utterance and information. (cf. Knodt xxvii). This
synthesis of information, utterance, and understanding is the elementary unit
of a social system.
A communication has to transmit that it is a communication and, at the
same time, mark what was articulated in order to maintain the autopoiesis.
This is the paradox of the re-entry or of the difference between system and
environment into the system. The distinction that re-enters itself is the
same and, simultaneously, not the same. The observer can appear as an
external observer or a self-observer and can either see that another system
is observing itself or see himself as somebody who observes himself. In this
way, the observer has to resolve the paradox using the distinction between
observers. The system uses the distinction between information, utterance,
and understanding for self-observation. A system develops in complexity when
the observations of operations are turned into observations of observations
and eventually into observations of the system itself. Observations are based
on the fundamental distinction between system and environment, or the
difference between inside and outside as system constructions:
Given the impossibility to behold the fullness of being, and to make the
system transparent to itself, the system develops a complex structure of
distinctions by directing the process of observations inward or outward
depending on which side is referred: the “inside” or the “outside”.
(Luhmann 1997, 87)
The notion of communication as a process of observations that articulate

temporality relates the theory of social systems with the phenomenological
tradition. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology studies how objects are
experienced in consciousness. The central structure of an experience is its
intentionality, which phenomenology approaches from the point of view of
a subject. Phenomenology of time-consciousness accounts for the way we
experience time. It investigates the structures of consciousness that make
possible the perception of an object across successive moments. Husserl
(1966; 1991) analyses how consciousness simultaneously operates in different
68
scales of time, for instance by developing anticipations and projections,

creating short-term and long-term memory. The perception of time occurs
by means of temporal objects and events that are not only unities in time
but also contain temporal extension in themselves. Husserl uses melody as
a metaphor of time consciousness. When we listen to a melody, we observe
each tone of it but also the entire melody as a communication system. When a
tone sounds, we experience its duration and hear only the single present tone
but the elapsed part of the melody is present to us both as a memory and as
expectation. For Husserl, the perception of temporal objects correlates with
the intentional acts of consciousness, so that everything happens in relation
to an observing subject.4
The fundamental distinction between system and environment (or
inside and outside) can also be explained through the difference between
self-reference and hetero-reference. Putting in simple terms, self-reference is
subjectivity while hetero-reference is objectivity. The distinction between
self-reference and hetero-reference reveals the influence of semiotics on the
theory of social systems. In Saussure’s linguistics, this distinction enforces
the simultaneous processing of signifier [signifiant] and signified [signifié].
Luhmann argues that “only language forces consciousness to keep signifier
and signified—and, in this sense, self-reference and hetero-reference—as
permanently separated while nonetheless processing them simultaneously”
(Luhmann 2000, 9). In contrast to conscious systems (human beings),
communication (social systems) combines self-reference and hetero-reference
by continually reproducing the distinction between utterance (self-reference)
and information (hetero-reference) under conditions that generate the
possibility of understanding (Luhmann 2000, 11). For Luhmann, conscious
systems (human beings) cannot communicate, while communication systems
(social systems) cannot perceive. Compared to consciousness, communication
executes an extremely slow, time-consuming sequence of transformations.
System theory separates conscious and social systems and thus eliminates any
subjective interpretation of the process of communication.
4
See Husserl’s On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917)
(Husserl 1991; German original Husserl 1966); the text can sometimes be read almost
like a treatise on musical composition. See also my essay “Spectral Semiotics: Sound
as Enacted Experience. A Phenomenological Approach to Temporality in Sound and
Music” (Chagas 2010), in which I introduce a new field of musical semiotic studies based
on Husserl’s phenomenology.
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2. Operational Closure and Autopoiesis
Conceiving the unity of difference poses a challenge for system theory. The
distinction between system and environment is produced by the system
itself. The system cannot get in touch with the environment through its own
operations. The relation between system and environment is something that
does not simply exist, but rather is connected to the system concept itself. This
is what is expressed by the concept of operational closure, which, according to
Luhmann, “is linked with a rupture of the epistemology of the ontological
tradition” (Luhmann 2013, 80). Operational closure is the key concept for
describing system in terms of self-organization and autopoiesis. The system
doesn’t import anything from the environment. It has nothing but its own
operations; all system structures must be created through it’s own operations.
The system must be in operation to create its own structures.
The view of society as an autopoeitic system constitutes a radical
application of the theory of autopoeisis that emerged in the second wave of
cybernetics with the neurophysiologists Maturana and Varela. The starting
point for autopoiesis is the idea that the structures and operations of a
living organism are connected in a kind of circular network. It combines
the notions of distinction (Spencer-Brown) and observer with the cybernetic
principles of autonomy, circularity, and self-organization to describe living
organisms as systems operating with operational closure: “Living systems
operate within the boundaries of an organization that closes in on itself and
leaves the world on the outside (Hayles 1999, 136).5 Such systems constitute
“networks of productions of components that recursively, through their
interactions, continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes
that produced them and constitute, in the space in which they exist, the
boundaries of the network as components that participate in the realization
of the network” (Maturana and Varela 1980, 78-79).6 Autopoietic systems
5
For an historical overview of the theory of autopoiesis see the chapter “The Second
Wave of Cybernetics: From Reflexivity to Self-Organization” in Hayles (1999, 131-
59). For a musical application of the theory of autopoiesis see my essay “Polyphony and
Embodiment: A Critical Approach to the Theory of Autopoiesis” (Chagas 1995).
6
The complete definition: “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as
a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of
components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously
regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii)
constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components)
exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network” (Maturana
and Varela 1973, 78-79).
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constitute different domains of interactions from the molecular domain of

biochemical interactions to the cognitive and linguistic domains of society.
Operational closure is what distinguishes autopoietic systems from
machines. They “not only produce and eventually change their own structures
[…] but everything that is used as a unit by the system is produced as a
unit by the system itself” (Luhmann 1990d, 3; emphasis in the original).
Luhmann’s radical move was to rethink the social so that it meets the
requirement of operational closure of autopoietic systems. Social systems
are operationally closed and operate by distinguishing and reproducing
communication as the sole operation: “Communication is autopoietic in that
it can only be generated in the recursive relation to other communications, so
only in a network in whose reproduction every single communication itself
participates” (Luhmann 1997, 83). Communication remains an internal
operation of the social system, which introduces a temporal dimension to
the autopoiesis. Communication is not just a one-time event, but an ongoing
operation that continually reproduces itself. From the point of view of
autopoiesis, communication distinguishes itself from biological processes
through the capability of self-observation.
The original meaning of the Greek word “poiesis” is production in the sense
of “making of a work.” Maturana explains it “as something that produces
something else outside itself—namely a word” (Luhmann 2013, 78). Poiesis
indicates the possibility of production without having control over the causes,
in opposition to creation in the context of things that are already given. In
combination with “auto” it means that the system is its own work. Maturana
and Varela are strongly opposed to the application of the theory of autopoiesis
to social systems and Maturana specifically, refuses to accept communication
as a social system.7 Addressing this criticism, Luhmann argues that the
theory of autopoietic systems is both underestimated and overestimated.
What is underestimated is the theory of operational closure, which represents
a radical rupture with the humanistic tradition of epistemology and ontology.
What is overestimated is the explanatory capability of the concept itself.
7
Varela affirms that the term autopoiesis “should be restricted to systems, whether natural
or artificial, that are characterized by a network that is, or resembles very closely, a chemical
network” (Varela 1979, 15). Maturana argues against Luhmann that his application
of autopoiesis to explaining the social “does not illuminate the social phenomena and
processes, but rather hides them” (Maturana 2002, 106). Maturana’s emotional rejection
is rooted in his humanistic approach to society. He claims that Luhmann “excludes”
human beings from society and—even worse—reduces them to merely their function.
According to Maturana, humans become “slaves” in Luhmann’s social system, which
cannot be a social system at all, but a “tyranny” (Maturana 2002, 107).
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Luhmann considers the theory of autopoiesis as a metaphorical meta-theory,

an approach that answers questions such as “What is life” and “What is a
social system of communication”?
3. Art and Communication
According to Luhmann, communication can no longer be understood as a

“transmission of information from a living being or conscious system to any other
such system” (Luhmann 2000, 9). Communication is a distinction that creates
a form in the medium of meaning and executes a time-consuming sequence
of transformations recalling and anticipating further communication within
the network of self-created communications by combining self-reference and
hetero-reference (Luhmann 2000, 11). Art makes perception available outside
the standardized form of language. Communication through art extends the
possibilities of language, supplementing writing and verbal exchange. Art
intensifies the awareness of communication: “Music, for instance, intensifies
the experience of simultaneity by blocking any meaningful hetero-reference,
any kind of representation” (Luhmann 2000, 21).
Art has the ability to bypass language by coupling consciousness with
communication differently. The work of art “is produced exclusively for the
purpose of communication; […] art communicates by using perceptions contrary
to their primary purpose” (Luhmann 2000, 22; emphasis in the original).
This is the key concept for understanding the specific communication
of art. It creates a different kind of relationship between perception and
communication: “one that is irritating and defies normality—and just this is
communicated” (Luhmann 2000, 23; emphasis in the original).
Art must always present something artistically new; otherwise its
communication breaks down or turns into general social (linguistic)
communication. Artistic communication occurs through works of art,
and more precisely by means of distinctions located within the work or by
means of forms that the work of art makes available for communication.
Art cannot communicate without form, otherwise nothing could be
observed. The individual work of art is a compact object of communication,
a “condensation of communications” (Luhmann 2000, 51). However, an
isolated work of art doesn’t make the communication system of art; it must
be integrated into the reproductive network of art. The autopoiesis of art
goes in two directions: On the one hand, the work of art is available for
observations that are subsequently integrated into the work’s form; one can
imagine new variants of certain ideas, new ways to put things together and
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reshape what is being done. On the other hand, the work of art becomes
a topic for conversation through language. The differentiation of the art
system allows manifold ways to articulate the relationship between self-
reference and hetero-reference. Self-reference emphasizes the internal reality
of the artwork; hetero-reference the external references. However, there is
no self-reference without hetero-reference; rather, the formal combinations
of the artwork have to construct internally the distinction between the two.
The function of art, Luhmann argues, is to make the external world appear
within the internal world of the artwork. Art gives visibility to an ambivalent
situation in which every time something is shown in the world, something
else is concealed; art makes observable the unobservable. This is the paradox
of art (cf. Luhmann 2000, 149).
Art is therefore an autopoietic social system as well as an autopoietic
subsystem of society. From this point of view, music is simultaneously an
autopoietic social system and an autopoietic subsystem of the system of art.
Within music we can distinguish multiple autonomous systems; for example,
we can distinguish musical systems on the basis of sound materials (acoustic,
electroacoustic, etc.) or on the basis of functional categories (performance,
reproduction, etc.) that music makes available for communication. The
purpose of art, as viewed by Luhmann (and also by Wittgenstein), is to
introduce surprise into the world. Art explores possibilities to relate perception
to communication by creating objects that cause surprise and admiration.
If we translate the concept of surprise with creativity, we can say that art
produces and reproduces creativity as a form of communication. Artistic
creativity unfolds a process of observation through the perception and
communication of objects and events.
The autonomy of art means that art defines itself according to its own
standards, or to put it in terms of Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form, by drawing
its own distinctions. The work of art is a chain of recursive operations that
constructs its own reality. A work of music, for instance, begins with an
arbitrary distinction, a sound, which is followed by other sounds; each new
sound introduces possibilities for subsequent distinctions while restraining
some choices. The dynamics of artistic creativity can be compared to a process
of establishing order from chaos or necessity from contingency. The structure
of modern society makes it possible for art to be an operationally closed and
therefore self-referential system. In opposition to Adorno, Luhmann claims
that artistic autonomy is not achieved vis-à-vis society, but within society:
“The autonomy of art attained in modern society is not something that
excludes social dependence; on the contrary: art shares the fate of modern
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society precisely because it seeks to find its way as an autonomous system”

(Luhmann 1990c, 193).
4. Medium and Form
The theory of the social system draws a sharp distinction between consciousness
and society: consciousness perceives and society communicates. That means
a subject can only perceive but cannot communicate. This consideration can
be perplexing: How do we define meaning without referring to a subject or
without a subjective reference? How do we trace the distinction between
the production and reception of the work of art? Taking this into account,
Luhmann introduced the distinction of medium and form. The difference
between medium and form exceeds the self-imposed limits of system theory
and opens up the spaces beyond communication.
Medium is designed as a loose coupling and form as a tight coupling of
elements. A medium for example, can be light or air. We don’t see the light
or hear the air; we see objects and hear sounds. In the media the elements
are disconnected, in the form they are connected. Language can also be
viewed through the distinction of medium and form. Luhmann (2013, 165)
makes two considerations: (1) The medium is always reproduced by means of
creating forms; for example, language has elements such as phonemes, words,
and sentences, but it is reproduced by means of speech, writing, or reading.
Music has sounds, intervals, scales, and chords, but it is reproduced by means
of scores, performances, or recordings. (2) The loose coupling of medium
is more stable than the forms; the tight coupling of form gains temporary
stability—a sound fades away, an object may disappear. The form cannot
capture the possibilities of a medium. Meaning is defined as a difference
between medium and form, a continuous request to create specific forms,
and can also be described in terms of reducing complexity. Complexity is
a multiplicity of disconnected elements; meaning reduces complexity by
selecting elements.
Music depends on the primary medium of acoustics to produce form.
A work of music creates a specific reservoir of selections, a medium of
compositional possibilities that are recognized as form but are not restricted
to this specific composition. As Luhmann affirms: “Any tone can follow any
other or be combined with any other, unless the form of the musical work
decides otherwise” (Luhmann 1990b, 218). A body of rules for connecting
and organizing pitches, such as modality and tonality, can be seen as
medium for building forms. Notation is a medium that emerges through the
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differentiation between composition and performance. Sound reproduction

is a medium that emerges with the technical apparatus. Whatever medium
music uses for communication, it can only be understood if one follows the
difference between medium and form.
From the point of view of Spencer-Brown’s logic, the distinction of form
and meaning comes into being as a difference that leads from an unmarked to
a marked space and creates a boundary. Every crossing of boundary produces
meaning and the work of art “forces both the artist and the observer to advance
from one form to the next in order to return eventually to the form from
which they began, which is now the other side of another form” (Luhmann
2000, 118). Whatever material art uses as a medium for developing forms, it
has to participate in the recursive process of crossing boundaries and dividing
the form in two sides. The evolution of the art system can be described as
an increase of the capacity for dissolution and recombination of media and
forms through which a media becomes a form, that subsequently becomes a
media and so on (Luhmann 1990b, 221).
5. Meaning, Code, Program and Style
The problems of society are related to the structure of meaning. Meaning is

created in the autopoeitic network of the operations of the system. It exists
only as a product of these operations (Luhmann 1998, 44). The difference
system/environment emerges both as a difference produced by the system
and a difference observed in the system. This is what characterizes the
concept of “re-entry” in Spencer-Brown’s terms. This recursive process that
introduces the difference inside the difference makes the system incalculable;
the system reaches a state of indetermination caused by itself. It needs a
“memory function” that makes available the result of previous selections
as actual state. The medium of meaning refers to the selective process that
produces a distinction between actuality and potentiality. Meaning actualizes
selections that refer to further selections. The distinction between actuality
and potentiality re-enters itself on the side of actuality, which is the internal
side of the form. For the system theory, the world is not a gigantic mechanism
but an immeasurable potential for surprise, a virtual information that needs
a system to create information.
Luhmann distinguishes two kinds of structures in functional systems:
the code and the program. The code is the rule of duplication that allows
correlating the observations with the unities in the system. It is based on a
binary scheme that offers only two values, a positive and a negative one. A
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binary code is a drastic reduction of complexity as the infinite number of

possibilities is limited to only two options. Each functional system operates
on the basis of its own code. For example, the code of the economic system is
have/have-not, the scientific system is true/false, and the law system is right/
wrong. In traditional aesthetics, the code values of art are labeled “beautiful”
(positive) and “ugly” (negative). Luhmann recognizes that it has become
increasingly difficult to insist on these labels, due to the evolution of the art
system.
In accordance with the differentiation of modern society, art develops the
capability of auto-description by referring to itself. Since the 19th century,
art has constituted society as a medium and develops forms to appropriate
social data to use for its own purpose. In the second half of the 19th century,
technology became a topic. In the 20th century, art began to attempt to cancel
the difference between real and virtual by making itself indistinguishable
from real objects. The ready-made art objects by Marcel Duchamp and John
Cage’s emblematic piece 4’33” provoke a reflection on the limits of the art
system. However, since the art system does not consist of artworks but of
the communications about their form, art has the capacity to continuously
redefine itself. In modern society, the art system opens the possibility to
media combinations and hybrid forms..
Programs are the operations that direct the choice of a value. A binary code
determines how each operation that creates form is integrated into the system
or not. The code facilitates the connection of operations in the recursive
network of formal distinctions. Code and program separated in the 18th
century, when a new sense of novelty emerged that led to the development of
self-organization. Novelty became a marketing strategy, a condition for causing
surprise. Every work of art had to offer its own programs. Art developed the
capacity of self-programming, which means the capacity for observing itself.
The concept of self-programming, Luhmann argues, “does not mean that
the individual work is an autopoetic, self-generating system”, but that “the
work constitutes the conditions of possibility for its own decisions, that it
observes itself, or, more accurately, that it can be observed only as a self-
observer” (Luhmann 2000, 204). Self-programming is a radical rupture
with the idea that art can have an essence or a goal, the notion that the
art system’s operations are structured according to certain rules permitting
judgments about what should be considered” beautiful” or “ugly”, what can
please or not. In opposition, “the ‘essence’ of art is the self-programming of
the artwork” (Luhmann 2000, 204).
The concept of style distinguishes works of art in terms of a period of time.
Style does not affect the autonomy of the work, as a multiplicity of styles is
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possible. Style is a functional definition that accounts for the diversity of

works of art, and at the same time, for the network through which the art
system can establish itself. Luhmann points out that contemporary society
has developed an impressive diversity of functional systems and media
that facilitate formations. As art becomes part of society, it participates in
the process of differentiation both in relation to other media such as the
technological or visual medium as well as in relation to other systems such as
art and economy, art and education, or art and politics.
6. Self-Reference and Hetero-Reference
Art becomes autonomous in the Renaissance, when it constitutes a subsystem

of society, setting its own standards and following its own criteria. In the
Middle Ages, artwork had the function of emphasizing the meaning
of religious or social practices, ensuring that they could be experienced
repeatedly. In the Renaissance, the artist ceased to work in the service of God.
This evolutionary change affects the uniqueness of the artwork as it begins to
articulate its own self-reference by producing forms that can be observed as
internal distinctions.
The autonomy of the art system reflects the functional process of social
differentiation that occurs in modern society; the work of art elaborates forms
that replicate this differentiation. Modern art is autonomous in the sense
that it presents itself as an operative closure that provides society with the
form of differentiation. The work of art, as Luhmann emphasizes, comes into
being through a recursive network, with verbal and written communication,
with electronic and digital reproduction, and with such entities as museums,
concerts, theaters, and publishers. The work of art is thus a connective object
bridging artists with the public and the experts. Art criticism is integrated into
the system as a medium of reflection that completes the artist’s work. When
the art system becomes autonomous, it produces a surplus of communication
possibilities and therefore requires self-limitation. Romanticism was the first
style to fully embrace autonomy by focusing on subjective reflection and
“searching for a goal displaced to infinity […] This situation seems to have
remained unchanged for the past two hundred years” (Luhmann 2000, 167).
It has only been intensified.
In the 19th century, the debate on musical autonomy centered on the idea
of absolute music, which became the aesthetic paradigm of German music
culture (Dahlhaus 1988, 15). The polemic opposing the music critic Eduard
Hanslick to the composer Richard Wagner demonstrates how German
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Romanticism articulated the paradigm of autonomy. Hanslick advocated the

primacy of absolute music [absolute Tonkunst] represented by instrumental
music, for instance Beethoven’s symphonies, which were considered a
paradigm of the genre; Wagner proclaimed the superiority of music that
creates a synthesis between sounds, words, and theatrical resources. The
concept of Gesamtkunstwerk [the total artwork] that Wagner elaborates in
Der Ring des Nibelungen articulates the vision of an audiovisual work of art,
which, to a certain extent, anticipates cinematographic art and the mass
media of the 20th century.
This opposition between absolute and program music points to the issue
of how music articulates self-reference and hetero-reference. Modern music
tends to experiment with formal means; the complexity a work is capable
of achieving becomes a crucial issue in the composition. Both Beethoven’s
and Wagner’s composition styles develop formal complexity, but their
music displays a different relationship of self-reference and hetero-reference.
Interpreting Beethoven as absolute music suggests the primacy of self-
reference, as the music turns its attention to the techniques and combinatory
structures that generate sound forms. However, as Hatten shows in his
semiotic study of Beethoven’s style (Hatten 1994), the linkage between sound
and meaning produces correlations and interpretations that are stylistically
encoded. Musical meaning is interpretable as asymmetrical opposition
marked within a cultural style and correlated with marked oppositions
(formal, expressive, dramatic, and narratalogical) and further interpretable
according to the context at all levels of complexity, “from the most simplest
oppositions of sound (duration, frequency, amplitude, timbre) to the most
complex interactive network of a late Beethoven quartet” (Hatten 1994, 276).
For example, in the Diabelli Variations Op. 120, Beethoven uses parody as a
means to articulate “a complex existence between two modes of being—literal
[self-referential], and referential [hetero-referential]” (Kinderman 1989, 69;
my brackets).
Wagner’s emphasis on hetero-reference is obviously related to the concept
the Gesamtkunstwerk, based on the leitmotif technique that “served both
as the structural principle that bound together various art forms and as the
unifying force of the music” (Tarasti 2012, 215). In Wagner’s compositional
system, the leitmotivs operate as mini-narratives connecting two poles: at
one end the primary structures (motives and archetypes) and at the other
end, independent melodies (themes and narratives). Tarasti compares the
functionality of leitmotivs with the role of raga in Indian music, which
connects scales to melodies (cf. Tarasti 2012, 227-28).
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From the perspective of self-reference, music resembles mathematics and

the algorithmic logic of computer programs. Such a conception of music
could be interpreted as a model of creativity in the digital era. But is the
apprehension of the internal formal context of music (melody, harmony, sound
shaping, formal structures, etc.) a sufficient condition for understanding the
broader scope of musical experience? Digital technology doesn’t limit itself
to the combinatory game of the programs of the apparatuses; it creates new
external contexts as it integrates music into other artistic forms. In other
words, the music of the digital era develops its own structures to articulate the
distinction between self-reference and hetero-reference and constructs this
distinction internally through its combinations.
The autonomy of art is traditionally expressed through the notion of
freedom:
Creating a work of art—according to one’s capabilities and one’s

imagination—generates the freedom to make decisions on the basis of
which on can continue one’s work. The freedoms and necessities one
encounters are entirely the products of art itself; they are consequences of
decisions made within the work. (Luhmann 2000, 203-4; my emphasis)
The concept of self-programming relates the traditional notion of freedom to

self-generated cognitive models. Self-programming has to distinguish between
self-reference or hetero-reference and between the positive and negative values
of the code. It indicates that the artwork has to exclude the world “as a source
of directives” for elaborating and evaluating itself (Luhmann 2000, 206). The
work of art has to be understood as a frame of observations at many levels.
7. Complexity and Polyphony
A comprehensive reflection on music today must take into account that

while we have a great variety of works and styles produced in different parts
of the world, we also have a continuous process of differentiation through
self-programming that cross the boundaries of music as a social system.
Contemporary music presents itself as a complex of simultaneous, multiple,
contrasting, and even paradoxical forms. Is there a basic medium of today’s
music, some sort of materiality that underlies every form that can be related
to the artistic system of music? Let’s assume that there is such a medium and
that this medium is sound. In that way, all music can be defined as the tight
coupling of forms in the medium of sound.
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From an evolutionary perspective, we can interpret the differentiation

process of music as a process of variation and selection, which increases
freedom and produces memory. In the history of music, we observe how
new forms are created through the transformation of previous forms. The
technology of sound recording and reproduction, invented in the second half
of the 19th century and improved in the 20th century, intensified this process;
the popularization of computers and the distribution of music through digital
networks have accelerated the evolution. For a long time, the tradition of
European classical music was the sole reference of musical studies. Today we
listen not only to the vast repertoire of works created over many centuries,
but also to the music of different cultures and societies, accessed through
the internet. This repertoire is mixed with and transformed by sounds of
the emerging electronic and digital media. Understanding the complexity of
musical forms that emerge in contemporary society represents a challenge:
Shall we seek common ground for examining the different musical forms,
trying to discover the unity in diversity? Or shall we value the quality of
the diversity by considering different musical manifestations as independent
things, which require different ways of looking at them?
We listen to different kinds of music in different situations; we communicate
through music in different ways. The music of contemporary society appears
to us as a complex system of forms and events that occur simultaneously. The
complexity prevents us from observing completely that which is happening in
the world in terms of music. As Luhmann says, “complexity enforces selection”
(Luhmann 1990e, 81). We must simulate complexity in order to understand
it. From this perspective, the concept of meaning emerges as the way to
experience enforced selectivity, as the recursive operation that produces the
difference between the actual and the possible: “meaning is a representation
of complexity, […] a new and powerful form of coping with complexity under
the unavoidable condition of enforced selectivity” (Luhmann 1990e, 84).
Meaning is the last medium that cannot be transcended, since we cannot
leave the meaningful world; even if we negate meaning we are still operating
with meaning.
The phenomenological method offers a way to approach simultaneity by
focusing on the complexity of references that surround sound phenomena. The
existence of music is related to our ability to perceive a complexity of sounds.
Music emerges as enforced selectivity of environmental complexity, through
operations that assign meaning to sounds by actualizing their potential.
Primarily, musical meaning is coupled with the medium of the human body
and the medium of instruments. The human body generates sound through
the voice or by operating instruments. In both cases the body resonates,
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either to amplify the sound produced by the vocal chords or sympathetically

through instruments. Someone singing or playing an instrument makes
selections of how to produce individual sounds (defined in terms of pitch,
duration, amplitude, timbre, etc.) and how to connect those sounds; she has
to constantly modify the sound according to certain criteria—for example,
adjusting the intonation of the voice to match the pitch—that depend on
contextual references of the music. We can see how musical meaning emerges
through the selection of the environmental complexity, as there is a constant
actualization of the potential of producing sounds.
Any meaningful sound, however abstract and disconnected it may be
from a living organism, is always a manifestation of a physical presence.
Even the sounds produced electronically need the vibration of objects—the
membranes of the loudspeakers—to be perceived by the ear. Listening to
and creating sounds are two inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon,
which consists of distinguishing sound vibrations by crossing the boundaries
between potentiality and actuality, thereby selecting meaning. Music is just
the operation of consciousness that differentiates between musical sounds
and the noise produced by the acoustic environment. Listening to music is a
mode of operation of consciousness by which we selectively recognize certain
sounds, to which we attribute musical meaning.
This capability of simultaneous and selective auditory perception—the
ability to recognize multiple and simultaneous events and exclude others—
is directly associated with the construction of polyphony. Polyphony
is a fundamental medium of music and particularly of Western music.
Distinguishing sounds and polyphony as musical organization are similar
cognitive operations that demonstrate our competence to create meaning in
the acoustic media. In the essay “Polyphony and Embodiment: A Critical
Approach to the Theory of Autopoiesis”, (Chagas 2005) I propose both of
the following definitions of polyphony: as “the specific mode of operation
of auditory perception that distinguishes multiple and independent events
and creates a musical difference between sound and environment” and as
“the distinction that creates a boundary between system and environment
by distinguishing simultaneity and making it available for artistic
communication”.
The system of polyphony, invented in Europe in the Middle Ages, was a
major factor in musical evolution. The polyphonic composition, exploring the
principles of multiplicity and individuality, drove the development of vocal
and instrumental music; polyphonic music techniques such as counterpoint
and harmony are still the basics of musical training and education. Modality
and tonality are fundamental for the formal shaping of polyphony. The
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medium of tonality especially, played a key role in increasing the variety of

polyphonic composition as music achieved functional autonomy as a social
system. Classical and Romantic music extended the self-programming
capability of polyphony to the domain of orchestration. From the second half
of 19th century, musical styles such as impressionism, expressionism, atonality,
twelve-tone music and serialism increased the diversity of polyphonic forms.
The recording, reproduction, and synthesis of sound through electronic
media introduced new possibilities and the medium of technology unleashed
a process of differentiation within the medium of sound. The aesthetics of
musique concrète and Elektronische Musik, which emerged in the second half
of 20th century, connects polyphonic composition with analog and digital
electronic media and in this way, produces diversity and differentiation in the
social system of art.
A significant aspect of this evolution is the emergence of artistic forms
in the medium of sound that question the boundary of the social system of
music and its autonomy. Besides the forms traditionally recognized as music,
we see the emergence of more or less autonomous communication systems—
artistic, meta-artistic, and hybrid systems—which uses sound as primary
media, while detaching themselves from the musical system. Examples of
such systems reach from sound art to background music. Musical autonomy
is challenged by the explosion of mass culture, which has transformed
music into a consumption object and connects music with information and
communication technology, establishing new interdisciplinary relations
between sound, image, body, and space. The development of cinema has had
a strong impact on the status of music in society. In the 19th century, the
musical masterworks, such as the symphonies by Beethoven and the operas by
Wagner, constituted the reference for both audio and visual artistic creation.
Today the relation between sound and image has shifted: the film celebrates
the power of visual imagination and pushes music into a subordinated role.
In the contemporary world dominated by images, sound resonates as
an environmental background; the visual impression predominates, for
instance, in the audiovisual spectacles of international pop music, which
have become a kind of live cinema inspired by different kinds of narratives.
Images disengage criticism as they fix attention on the surface of things and
literally expose consciousness to superficiality. The magical fascination “can
be observed all over the place: The way in which they put a magic spell on
life, the way in which we experience, know, evaluate and act as function
of these images” (Flusser 2000, 16). The function of images is to replace
“historical consciousness with a second-order magical consciousness” and to
replace “the ability to think conceptually with a second-order imagination”
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(2000, 17). Flusser critically analyzes the interwoven relationships between

art, technology, science, design, and economics, which cast doubt on the very
concept of music as an art system (cf. Flusser 1985; 2011).
What makes analyzing the differentiation of musical forms especially
difficult is the breakneck speed at which art operates in coupling and
decoupling forms in the digital media—sound, image, space, computer, and
social media. This forces us to constantly reconsider the structures of the
social system of art as a whole and redraw the boundaries of the subsystems
that constitute themselves as temporary or permanent. Absorbed in this
whirlwind, we must question whether the investigation is able to follow
the processes of differentiation or if we are not predestined to disappear
ourselves in the high-speed vectors of post-industrial capitalist society that
tend to eliminate the space of reflection and criticism (cf. Virilio 1988; 1990).
Reflecting on music as a social system of communication asks us reconsider
the boundaries of music itself. How are we to understand the different types
of musical expression, the different experiences associated with music? What
is the difference between a work of classical music and a work of popular
music, or the difference between music performed live and the music of film?
What about between a work of music and a work of sound art?
II
8. Language, Music, and Signification
The fundamental distinction between music and language can be approached

through the voice, which is a common element of both systems. From the
evolutionary point of view, the voice is uniquely human. Although many
animals emit sounds, only humans produce that form of sound organization
that we recognize as language. The first significant sound produced by the
voice is the cry. The analysis of a baby’s cry demonstrates that it shares
characteristics of acoustic stimuli that have the capacity to arouse, to alert, and
to direct the listener and also have certain informative properties that “cause
listeners to recognize a situation of need and alarm” (Ostwald 1963, 48). The
acquisition of language is an unconscious process, through which the child
begins to talk by imitating sounds and continues with the recognition of
linguistic rules that organize sounds into words and sentences. Subsequently,
the process of language learning will be influenced and shaped by social and
individual experiences over the course of a lifetime.
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Tarasti’s theory of existential semiotics is a significant epistemological

shift in semiotic studies, from the classical communication model inspired
by linguistics and information theory towards a philosophical account
influenced by phenomenology and existentialism. It reinterprets Heidegger’s
fundamental concept of Dasein—which refers to the human experience of
being—under the lens of semiotic processes of meaning. From the standpoint
of existential semiotics, voice manifests our desire and will to express
something, “the movement from the immanent towards the manifest”,
(Tarasti 2002, 157). Every vocal act, as Tarasti points out, implies the effort of
the projection of a sign through which “one shifts gradually from the world-
orientation of Dasein towards the inner transcendence of Dasein” (Tarasti
2000, 30; emphasis in the original). The voice emanating from a subject is an
escape from the world of the individual Dasein and an effort to connect with
the social (Tarasti 2002, 157). In other words, a voice draws a distinction
that creates a boundary and a marked space. Moreover, every vocal act of
communication is also a physical effort. This becomes evident when we see
a singer performing before an audience. According to Tarasti, the muscular
tensions and gesticulations of singing emphasize the synthesis between the
physical and intellectual effort, which is implicit in the conception of any
language (cf. Tarasti 2002, 160).
Language that uses voice to produce speech is the main communication
system of society. Language uses a very small number of sounds—phonemes—
that have no value in themselves, but acquire value in relation to each other.
It means that the operational mode of the phoneme is strictly differential and
connective. The phonological oppositions that organize the sound material
are the distinctive elements of speech. The binary code of language provides
the paradigm for articulating the functional codes of communication vis-à-
vis Luhmann. Linguistic binary coding structures all operations of the system
as a choice between a positive and a negative value. The elements form a set
of contrasting options: “On one phonological level we may speak of speech
sounds as units, on another level we may recognize syllables as units and on
yet another, phonological, words or phrases” (Clark and Yallop 1995, 57).
The analogies between music and language are driven by the fact that
they are both symbolic systems of communication that elaborate forms
in the medium of sound. Music semiotics emerges in the traditions of
Saussure’s linguistics and structuralism. Semiotic accounts of music inspired
by linguistics interpret music on the basis of Saussure’s theory, namely,
the distinction between language [langue] and speech [parole]. In Saussure’s
linguistics, language is the system of values organized through the distinctive
oppositions, grammatical rules, and standards, which function as an abstract
84
infrastructure. Speech is the act of using the language, which is linked to

several factors—not necessarily linguistic—such as situation, personality,
social and cultural environment. Language is primarily a concept, a
repertoire of possibilities viewed from the outside. Speech is associated with
the acoustic image as a whole—not just the physical materiality of sound but
also the muscular effort and psychic imprint. Language is the realm of the
virtual where nothing is yet said, and speech represents the embodiment of
the individuation process bringing the personal and collective unconscious
into the realm of the conscious. Using Tarasti’s terminology, the distinction
between language and speech represents the movement from the immanent
to the manifest through which meaning emerges. We can see in this model
a prototype of the fundamental difference between system and environment,
even though focused on the subject and not on the operations of observations
of the system.
The linguistic sign of Saussure represents the synthesis of this fundamental
opposition between the concept (language) and the acoustic image (speech).
In the definition of the sign, the notions of concept and acoustic image
are associated respectively with the terms signifier [signifiant] and signified
[signifié] (Saussure 1972, 99). Saussure thus develops a conception of language
as a system of diff erences articulating two distinct spaces and forming a unit.
The idea that music can also be considered as an articulated system unifying
concepts and acoustic images is the starting point for comparisons between
music and language.
In the essay entitled “Contradictions du langage sériel” [Contradictions
of the Serial Language], Ruwet (1972) criticizes the composers of serial music
(Boulez, Pousseur, Stockhausen, etc.) for creating music that is supposed
to generate complexity through the combining of elements and operations,
which however appears “simplistic” to the listener. He blames Boulez and
others for not having developed sufficient awareness of the possibilities of
music as a language:
Music is language. That is to say, it is, among other things, one of the
systems of communication by which people exchange meanings and
values. In order to exist, to have efficacy, it must therefore obey the
rules that make it possible, in general, for a communication system to
function. (Ruwet 1972, 26)
Ruwet distinguishes between two different categories of human

communication. On the one hand, there are modes of communication
that are not articulated as language, such as a cry, a look, or a touch. These
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constitute infinite possibilities, which can be confusing, undifferentiated,

and ineffable. These are examples of noise, which is an undifferentiated
category of information that has to be brought into a system to become
meaningful. On the other hand, Ruwet identifies systems that are articulated
and differentiated such as myths, rituals, languages, and economic systems,
which have the capability to develop complexity, but need constraints and
rules. Music, of course, falls under this second category. Ruwet poses the
question of what the rules that organize the music system are (cf. Ruwet 1972,
26) and believes that the semiology proposed by Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and
others is the key to developing a general science of communication systems.
He considers that music, in order to constitute meaning, needs a reference
system—such as a langue in Saussure’s sense of the term—constituted by a
limited number of elements and articulated as a system of oppositions, such
as the phonological system. The tonal system accomplishes this function as
a system of oppositions and functional relationships between pitches. Serial
music as well as electroacoustic music, increases the complexity as it eliminates
the reference of the tonal system and extends the material to all kinds of
noise. For Ruwet, the structural possibilities of the serial system—and also
of electroacoustic music—are limited and lack the capability to articulate
meaning. Lévi-Strauss makes the same criticism, questioning whether serial
and electroacoustic music would be able to overcome the traditional gap
between the composer and listener. By removing the ability to unconsciously
refer to a system of reference, serial music forces the listener to play the
individual act of creation himself if he wants to understand the music:
Through the power of an ever new, internal logic, each work will rouse
the listener from his state of passivity and make him share in its impulse,
so that there will no longer be a difference of kind, but only of degree,
between inventing music and listening to it. (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 26)
The criticism by Ruwet and Lévi-Strauss is emblematic of the difficulty in

understanding contemporary music through models inspired by linguistics.
The linguistic and structuralist approaches, which persist in various forms
in musical semiotics, operate through the combination of two fundamental
levels of meaning that ultimately can be reduced to the opposition between
culture and nature. It evolves from the idea that culture is a separation—man
is alienated from nature—and that it is impossible to have direct access to
reality. Culture introduces into the very essence of being an unbridgeable gap:
“the real is always on the edge of experience” (Lacan, qtd. in Ruwet 1972, 68).
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Tarasti proposes a semiotic theory of music that can be considered a work

in progress, moving from the background of French semiotics, especially
Lévi-Strauss and Greimas, to existential interpretations of meaning. Tarasti’s
Theory of Musical Semiotics (1994) introduces a semiotic model of music that
reconstructs the central opposition of language as a distinction between the
manifest and the immanent. Each level articulates an internal opposition:
inside the manifest level there is the opposition between technological and
ideological models; inside the immanent level the distinction between the
structures of signification and the structures of communication (Tarasti
1994, 16-20). The ideological models are, for instance, concepts and aesthetic
theories that shape the symbolic meaning of music in relation to cultural
and social contexts; the technological models are constituted by rules such
as the techniques of harmony, counterpoint, and other musical mechanisms.
In this category we include also the techniques of electroacoustic and digital
composition. A musical style emerges as a synthesis of ideological and
technological models.
The structures of communication and signification that occupy the
immanent level determine the operations of the musical communication, such
as the selections a composer or a performer makes for creating or interpreting
a work of music. The difference between the structures of communication and
signification is that they represent different ways of dealing with individual
freedom. The structures of communication are directly impacted by the
manifest level—the stylistic shaped by the ideological and technological
models, which represent models of decision that are experienced, such
as “possible”, “permitted”, “recommended”, or “necessary”. By contrast,
structures of signification represent the possibility to disconnect from the
stylistic and make individual decisions—selections that are experienced as
“surprise”, “improbability”, “breaking with norms”, or “strangeness”. This is
what makes music progress.
The concept of modalization is an important contribution to the analysis
of music as a dynamic process of signification evolving in time and space and
requiring a performer to actualize the meaning of what has been created by
a composer. Tarasti imports the idea of modalization from the generative-
transformational grammar by Greimas, which whom he studied in Paris.8
Modalization is the process that transforms the abstract, deep structures of
8
Greimas’s contribution to semiotics encompasses a complex body of theories and models
that carefully articulates the interactions between syntactic and semantics structures
regulating our patterns of thought, action and communication. His seminal work is
Sémantique Structurale (1966) translated into English as Structural Semantics (1983).
Other important books are Du Sens (1970) and Du Sens II (1983).
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music into perceptive surface structures. “The basic modalities are “being”
(être): state of rest, stability, consonance; and “doing” (faire): musical action,
event, dynamism, dissonance. In addition one can distinguish “becoming”
(devenir), which refers to the “normal” temporal process of music (Tarasti
1994, 48-9). Other modalities include “will”, “can”, “know”, “must”, and
“believe”. Tarasti proposes a semantic analysis of music by identifying the
presence and intensity of modalities manifesting themselves as actorial,
spatial and temporal articulations (cf. Tarasti 1994, 27, 38-43)
From the concept of modality, Tarasti’s semiotics project evolves into
the model of existential semiotics (Tarasti 2000), which studies signs as
movements crossing over the boundaries between Dasein as subjective and
objective categories of reality. Existential semiotics introduces the subject
as a frame of signification, through which it distinguishes the fundamental
difference between reality and transcendence. The transcendent is simply
defined as anything that is absent but actually presented in the subject’s mind.
In his most recent account of musical semiotics, Tarasti (2012) moves
towards a synthesis of modalities and existential categories, which he
designates as transcendental analysis. Focusing on the concept of being, and
drawing on Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Fontanille, he proposes
a model of “metamodalities” consisting of four dynamic categories that are
combined in a semiotic square.9 The categories are the following: (1) Being-
in-myself represents bodily ego, which appears as kinetic energy, desire,
gestures, intonations, or the immediateness of being; the principal modality
is “will”. (2) Being-for-myself corresponds to the observing subject becoming
aware of himself and of the transcendent; the ego discovers its identity; the
principal modality is “can”. (3) Being-in-itself refers to abstract categories such
as norms, ideas, and values, which are potentialities that can be actualized by
the subject; the principal modality is “must”. (4) Being-for-itself indicates the
realization of the ideas and values by the subject in his Dasein, through which
the abstract categories are realized as distinctions, applied values, selections
and choices; the principal modality is “know” (cf. Tarasti 2012, 25-7, 83).
There are similarities and differences between the theory of social system
and such semiotic models. The similarities result from the operational
distinctions that mark boundaries between marked and unmarked spaces,
in which the distinction between actuality and potentiality creates meaning.
9
The semiotic square is a tool for structural analysis developed by Greimas with the
purpose of displaying structures of meaning, which are related by binary relations with
positive and negative values. The semiotic square has been used to analyze many things,
including music; cf. Tarasti (1994).
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The crucial difference lies in the role attributed to the subject as a frame
of signification (meaning). The semiotic project operates in the tradition
of metaphysics and hermeneutics that emphasizes the subjective approach.
The theory of social system shifts the emphasis in regard to observation
and description from the subject to the self-organizing (autopoietic) system
that observes itself. Another crucial difference is the concept of operational
closure. The system remains operationally closed to information from the
environment; there is no transfer of information between different domains
of operations. Consequently, the system must organize itself and develop self-
reference.
9. Music and Noise
Critical studies have attracted the attention of academic research and teaching
on music, particularly in universities in the United States. Jacques Attali’s
book Bruits: Essay sur l’economie politique de la musique (Attali 2001) became
a reference in this field. The English translation Noise: The Political Economy
of Music (Attali 1985)10 appeared with an afterword by Susan McClary, who
is considered a leading scholar of the so-called “new musicology”.11 McClary
claims that Attali’s reflections literally introduce “noise” into the silent
atmosphere of the music educational institutions, which had so far ignored
controversial issues such gender, identity, race, and social conflicts. The
traditional disciplines of music theory and history, with emphasis on acoustics,
mathematics, and pseudoscientific constructions, have “encouraged theorists
repeatedly to ignore or even deny the social foundations of music” (McClary
1985, 150). The subjective observations of Attali’s book are a refusal to interpret
music as an autonomous game with harmonic and formal structures aiming
to create nothing but “pretty, orderly sound”; rather they are an invitation
to understand music in the context of the “imperfect material, social word
we inhabit” (McClary 1985, 150). McClary’s observations seem, however, to
overestimate Attali’s intentions, who claims that he is not providing a theory
about music, but a theory through music. The issues he raises regarding the
10
The original French edition from 1977 is the one translated into English. The second
French edition (Attali 2000) is a significant update as it includes reflections on the
development of digital music and media that occurred after the first edition.
11
McClary’s book Feminine Endings (McClary 2002), originally published in 1991, has
become a classical work on cultural criticism of music, especially from the point of view
of “gender studies”.
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different social functions of music throughout history are aimed to illuminate

the musical creativity and practices of the digital era.
Attali proposes a fundamental distinction between noise and music. In
terms of theory of systems, noise represents the medium and music the form;
noise is the excess of connective possibilities that are actualized by music.
However, he provides the opposition between noise and music with a political
content that he considers crucial for understanding the social meaning of
music: “With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music
is born power and its opposite: subversion” (Attali 1985, 6; 2000, 15).
When noise is transformed into music it becomes a “source of purpose and
freedom, transcendence and dream, demand and revolt” (Attali 2000, 15).
Music represents the power over noise—and power in general—but also the
possibility to undermine power in order to reshape and expand the space of
freedom. Attali argues that there is no power without a code for analyzing,
marking, restraining, or training the sounds of language or of the body, tools,
objects, of relations to self and others:
All music, any organization of sounds is then a tool for the creation
or consolidation of a community, of a totality. It is what links a power
center to its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power
in all of its forms. Therefore, any theory of power today must include a
theory of the localization of noise and its endowment with form. (Attali
1985, 6)
In this distinction between music and noise we see the conception of music
as “organized sound”, which is supposed to have been invented by Edgard
Varèse and is frequently applied to electroacoustic music. This distinction
would thus be a case of how things are shaped in the medium of noise, music
being the marked space (form) and noise the unmarked space (medium).
The organized sound is ambivalent: on the one hand, it connects people,
strengthens social ties, and reinforces the mechanisms of control; on the
other hand, it breaks rules, crosses borders, and transcends individual and
collective boundaries. The opposition between music and noise reproduces
itself inside the music, so that it operates as a recursive chain. The re-entry of
noise into music determines, according to Attali, the politics of society. Music
organizes noise and insofar controls power and violence, but at the same time
it dissolves this organization again and again by re-introducing noise, which
is controlled and transformed into new music. Every time the boundary
is crossed, the potential of noise is actualized and it creates meaning. For
example, the interval of third, which was considered a “dissonance” in early
90
polyphony, becomes a meaningful tool in the music of the Renaissance;

20th century music explores noise in a variety of ways, including the noise of
percussion instruments and electronic devices.
On the basis of the distinction between noise and music, Attali develops
a model of musical subjectivity with four categories—sacrificing, representing,
repeating and composing—that account for the historical evolution of music.
In this model, music is not primarily understood from the perspective of
communication, but from its representational potential. The origin of
music should not be sought in linguistic communication, but in the context
of ritual and sacrifice: “Noise is a weapon and music, primordially, is the
formation, domestication and ritualization of that weapon as a simulacrum
of ritual murder” (Attali 1985, 24). The domestication of noise through the
simulacrum of the sacrifice, as experienced in primitive society, aims to create
social order and political integration. Attali argues that music has the ability
to anticipate changes in society. Each time a change occurs, music makes
itself present as a way to prevent the emergence of violence. Modern music
rituals, such as electronic dance music and DJ parties, echoes the sacrificial
channelization of violence of earlier rituals.
In this conception of music as sacrifice, we observe the influence of Lévi-
Strauss’ structural anthropology, particularly the relation between music
and myth as formulated in Le Cru et le Cuit [The Raw and the Cooked]
(Lévi-Strauss 1964; 1969). According to Lévi-Strauss, myth and music
are temporal languages that transcend articulated speech. However, their
relation to time is of a special nature: it is as if music and myth need time only
in order to deny it. In Lévi-Strauss’ words, both are considered “machines
for the obliteration of time” (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 16).12 Under the surface of
the sounds, music explores the physiological time of the listener, which is
primarily an irreversible time but which music transforms into a unity of
time, synchronous and closed in itself. So music overcomes the irreversibility
of historical time, creating works that are compact and permanent structures
of temporal experience. Lévi-Strauss affirms that listening to music inspired
him to develop the structural analysis of myths. He mentions especially
listening to operas by Wagner, the opera Pelléas et Melissande by Debussy,
and Stravinsky’s ballet Les Noces, which brought him into a state of time
suspension:
12
The English translation “instruments for the obliteration of time” misses the crucial
meaning of Lévi-Strauss metaphor: “machines à supprimer le temps’ (Lévi-Strauss 1964,
24).
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Because of the internal organization of the musical work, the act of

listening to it immobilizes passing time; it catches and enfolds it as
one catches and enfolds a cloth flapping in the wind. It follows that by
listening to music, and while we are listening to it, we enter into a kind
of immortality. (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 16)
Attali’s appropriation of noise as a musical category is also influenced by Pierre

Schaeffer’s conception of musique concrète, especially the notion of sound
object as an intentional shaping of environmental noise. Considering the three
prototype apparatuses that we propose for analyzing the musique concrète—
the microphone, the tape recorder, and the loudspeaker13 —we can say that
Attali listens to, records, and reproduces the noises of an imaginary world.
He explores a virtual territory of sound and music events that reverberates
mainly in his imagination. He listens to the relations of power and violence in
an imaginary soundscape; the rituals and sacrifices that he brings in relation
to the origin of music are actually shaped by his observations of the present.
From the category of sacrificing—the simulacrum of ritual death—
the music went over to the category of representing—the simulacrum of
exchange and harmony. Representing is based on the logic of the market and
money. Music becomes a form of representation of the economic order, the
“affirmation of a possible harmony in exchange” (Attali 2001, 109). The code
of representation requires a system of measurement for the organization of
harmonious exchanges. The tonal system accomplishes this, articulating
an abstract system of harmonic functions to create and resolve conflicts.
Binary codes based on oppositions such as consonance/dissonance or
tension/relaxation, articulate not only differences in notes and chords, but
narratives that represent conflict in the social reality. Music accomplishes
a double function: on the one hand, it has to create harmony in society
through consonance—for example, to simulate suffering; on the other hand,
music has to excite and seduce and thus to produce dissonant noise. It is
a recursive process: music produces noise in the form of dissonance that is
transformed into consonance, which is in turn converted into dissonance,
and so on. Harmonic combinatorics and exacerbation of individualism led
to the rupture in the process of representation. The extreme dissonances that
were introduced into the tonal systems by Wagner and Schoenberg broke the
foundations of the tonal system and announced the advent of power based
on a technocratic language, a code of cybernetic repetition. Music turned its
attention to the sound matter; a model of creativity based on probabilistic and
13
See “The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. 103-158 herein.
92
combinatorial codes versus the codes of consonance and dissonance. Music

enters the probabilistic universe of atonality, serial music, and electroacoustic
music.
Sound recording is the keyword for the third category—repeating.
Recorded music that reproduces itself as an object of consumption organizes
the individual’s relation to it. Through recording, music becomes a private
simulacrum of individuality: “the gramophone becomes like the altar of
a personalized sacrifice” (Attali 2001, 180). Music reproduction creates
uniformity in a diversity of media, “repetition in a society that talks so much
about change, silence in the midst of so much noise, death in the heart of life”
(Attali 1985, 120).14
In contemporary society, music is accumulated in the form of digital
information organized as commercial databases such as iTunes. The files are
transmitted and decoded as sounds by mobile apparatuses, which reconstruct
the structures for individual listening. Headphones shut out the environment,
which is one form of suppressing ambient noise. On the other hand,
amplified music becomes background noise in spaces such as cars, airplanes,
offices, elevators, and many other public spaces. Background has become an
environment factor in shaping commercial environments. As Sterne notes,
musical listening “designates a whole range of heterogeneous activities
involving the perception of sound” (Sterne 2003, 319). Listening has become
an ambiguous oscillating between active listening—for instance aesthetic
contemplation in a concert hall—and passive listening—such as shopping in
a mall while being exposed to programmed music. Better known by one of its
brand names, ‘Muzak’, is one of the most widely disseminated forms of music
in the world” (Sterne 2003, 317). In his study of the programmed music in the
Mall of America, Stern argues that the focus on the social, cultural, political,
and economic can obscure the understanding of the reflexive character of
mass media; he claims that we should turn our attention to the processes of
actualization of meaning related to the media technology itself. In a society
saturated with mass media, the reification of experience is a pervasive social
phenomenon through which “the outside social world of recorded songs,
mass-mediated images, and programmed spaces and schedules is folded into
that which is most inside and private: the substance of affect and experience”
(Sterne 2003, 341).
14
In his controversial criticism of Stravinsky’s music, Adorno compares the persistence of
rhythmic repetitions to the schema of a catatonic condition: “In certain schizophrenics,
the autonomization of the motoric apparatus, after the collapse of the ego, leads to an
endless repletion of gestures and words” (Adorno 2006, 132).
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From another perspective, repetition has become the foundation of

a musical creativity that explores the reproducibility and connectivity of
sound—in the form of rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and sound objects.
This creativity is reflected in divergent aesthetics such as minimalism (Reich,
Adams, Glass, etc.) and hip-hop. Digital technology improves and expands
the techniques of musical composition grounded on repetition. The technique
of the “loop”, which emerged with the turntables of the earlier days of the
musique concrète15 and became popular with apparatuses such as the drum-
machine and the sequencer, is an example of how the integration of automaticity
and repetition in analog and digital machines impacts musical ideas. Musical
repetition also manifests itself as a symbolic processing of the accumulation
of musical objects, such as a repertoire of songs. Karaoke, for example, is a
new kind of musical practice that calls upon the collective musical memory.
Composing is the fourth category in Attali’s account of musical subjectivity
and the most important, because it expresses his optimistic vision of the
future:
Today a new era begins that could be neither predicted nor imagined
with the old tools of thinking. It will not be a return to ritual, or a
return of the spectacle, both of which have been crushed by the phase of
repetition, but, on the contrary, the emergence of a radically new form of
political economy. (Attali 2001, 225)
Attali suggests that music plays a leading role in unleashing the creativity
of the digital era, which is dominated by composition. We will compose
“for the pleasure of listening to ourselves playing, for the enjoyment of
improvising and sharing the composition outside the market” (Attali 2001,
226). Composition is a form of insurgence against the repletion in society.
Attali mentions free jazz, reggae, and rap as examples of musical movements
that rebel against repetition in society by invoking the right to improvisation.
In today’s capitalistic society, the market value of information depends
on its ability to connect the people who use it. Attali expresses the hope that
music can bring forth new forms of organization devoted to the pleasure of
making music. Music consumers are simultaneously creators, manipulating
databases, transforming sounds, and composing music as virtual DJs, the
exchanges taking place in non-commercial structures. Attali endorses Cage’s
vision that the composer has “to give up the desire to control sound, clear his
mind of music, and set about discovering means to let sounds be themselves
15
See “The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. 103-158 herein.
94
rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expressions of human

sentiments” (Cage 1961, 10). This vision implies that the sound must have
an autonomous existence rather than being a vehicle for theories or feelings.
It also conveys the primacy of improvisation over composition. The opposite
view, championed by Pierre Boulez, conveys the logocentric and absolutist
conviction that composition is an acquired knowledge and inaccessible to
the masses. Attali views this standpoint critically, believing that composition
correlates with the concentration of power and that digital technology will
decentralize power and accelerate the tendencies of improvisation, finally
eliminating the distinction between composition and improvisation. Many
others consider this to be an overly simplistic interpretation of musical
creativity.
Flusser elaborates a similar view of musical creativity in his phenomenological
utopia of the telematic16 society. He describes a communication model
inspired by chamber music, in which the performers develop a sophisticated
subjective dialog based on the exchange of musical information. In post-
industrial society, the composers of the telematic dialog are both human
beings and intelligent devices; they improvise simultaneously in different
times and spaces, according to specific rules, which form a consensus, even
though constantly changing.17 Attali’s utopia of composition, even though
it is based on subjective assumptions that differ substantially from Flusser,
shares a similar existential quality:
Composition announces a social system that goes beyond the realm of

music: the joy of making music and giving it freely to others to listen to
sketches a society in which everyone would fulfill himself in creation
and the exchange of creations. A society in which everyone would learn
to discover himself, to love himself, in order to find pleasure in being
discovered by the other and then in giving without expecting anything
in return. (Attali 2001, 279-80)
16
The concept of telematics characterizes the communicative complexity that emerges from
the convergence of telecommunications and information processing. The telematics society
embodies Flusser’s utopia of freedom, a society in which man and machine acting as
partners generate information through the telematic dialogue. See discussion on telematic
dialogue in “The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. 103-158 herein.
17
Flusser elaborates his model of telematic communication in the book Into the Universe
of Technical Images (Flusser 2001); the last chapter introduces the comparison with
chamber music (Flusser 2001, 159-67). For an account of Flusser’s model of telematic
communication in relation to music see Chagas (2008) and “The Creativity of
Electroacoustic and Digital Music”, pp. - herein.
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10. Signal-to-Noise Ratio: The Twilight of the Gods
A work of music begins with something that we identify as noise and

concludes by returning to noise. We can call this musical pattern emergence
from noise and disappearance into noise. How often works of contemporary
music follow this pattern? How oft have we heard acoustic or electroacoustic
pieces begining with some kind of rumor—rumbling, whispering, buzz,
mumbling, drone, sound clouds, etc.—from which the music builds up,
and after some time, dwindles, shrinks, or fades into some indiscernible or
nebulous noisy state? Or, which is the same in effect, how many works of
music fade in from silence and fade out into silence? Why does this form seem
to be so attractive for today’s composers?
Kittler reflects on the meaning of this musical pattern in his essay “Signal-
Rausch-Abstand” [Signal Noise Ratio] (Kittler 1993). He takes as an example
Der Ring der Nibelungen [The Ring of the Nibelung], Richard Wagner’s opera
tetralogy. The opening of the cycle, the prelude of Das Rheingold [The Rhine
Gold], is a vigorous process of sound emerging from noise. It begins with an
E-flat major chord in the extreme low register, a note that seems to have a
timbre between sound and noise. Then the eight French horns of Wagner’s
orchestra develop a polyphonic sound structure unfolding the first eight
overtones of the fundamental note Eb (the 7th overtone is missing) as melodic
motives, which build up in intensity over a couple of minutes until the action
of the opera begins. In the third act of the Götterdämmerung [Twilight of
the Gods], after Brünnhilde sings the lullaby that marks the acceptance of
Wotan’s patterns of controlling the world (“Ruhe, ruhe, du Gott” [Rest, rest,
you god]), she lights the pyre, sends Wotan’s ravens home, and immolates
herself: “Bright flames flare up in the hall of the gods”.18 The tragic destiny
of Valhalla is thus accomplished; the tetralogy comes to a finale with the
orchestral music resting on a kind of “sublime” D-flat major chord. In this
way, the music collapses back into a different kind of noise.
For Kittler, the beginning of the Ring, the building up of an overtone
structure from the visceral low fundamental, is the musical celebration of the
Fourier analysis, the method developed by the mathematician Jean-Baptiste
Fourier for quantifying physical signals. The Fourier analysis made it possible
to calculate the spectrum of any sound heard by humans, even the non-
18
Last phrases of the libretto in Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner: “Helle Flammen
scheinen in dem Saal der Götter aufzuschlagen. Als die Götter von den Flammen gänzlich
verhüllt sind, fällt der Vorhang.” [Bright flames flare up in the hall of the gods. As the
gods become completely hidden from view by the flames, the curtain falls.]
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periodic sounds that are perceived as not having a clear pitch. It paved the
way for the digital treatment of signals, which is the basis of sound analysis,
sound synthesis, and spectral applications of computer music.19 Kittler
argues that the Fourier method is just as important for our culture as the
invention of the alphabet. On the other hand, Kittler interprets the end of the
Götterdämmerung, the return to a similar pattern as that with which the Ring
began—from the shimmering overtones to pure noise as the metaphor of the
new kind of communication that eliminates human participation. When the
two ravens (messengers) are sent back to Wotan and his unconscious desire
comes true, what is actually destroyed is the “materiality of communication”
together with the subjectivity of art:
That which ends with the fading of a god in Valhalla’s inferno is European
art itself. For the two ravens, dark messengers or angels of media
technology, do not speak and do not sing; with their flight transmission
and emission of the message, and even “message” and “noise”, concur.
Twilight of the Gods means the materiality of communication and the
communication of matter. (Kittler 1993, 175)
Kittler examines the paradigm shift to the networking society, which affects
the way we see the world and how we define ourselves as human beings;
we have moved from interpreting meaning through philosophy, poetry, and
hermeneutics to thinking in terms of cybernetics, information theory, and
stochastic systems. For Kittler, we have removed ourselves from the central
position of human subjectivity to become a sort of machine-object, operating
independently from human agency. Kittler asks: What is the material of
communication? For, he claims, there is no meaning without physical support
and no matter can produce communication itself. The phenomenon of noise is
crucial for understanding this connection in the terms of information theory
and cybernetics. For Claude Shannon, the founder of the Mathematical
Theory of Information (Shannon 1948), “communication in the presence
of noise”, not only because there is no channel of communication that is
not perturbed by noise but also because information is generated through
selection or filtering of noise.
For Norbert Wiener, the impulse for developing cybernetics came from
his effort in developing an anti-aircraft control apparatus in World War II.
The basic idea was to develop a new method for extracting messages from a
disturbing background on the basis of the simultaneous statistics of the noise
19
For a description of Fourier analysis in computer music see Roads (1996, 1073-1112).
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and the message with the goal of predicting the future, i.e., the position of
an enemy aircraft in order to shoot it down. Both the irregular motion of an
airplane in flight and the unpredictable reactions of the pilots and gunners
are considered noise. Therefore, the human links have to be included in
the control chain of the system. “The anti-aircraft control apparatus was in
essence a feedback loop and contained in its construction many subsidiary
feedback loops, we had to find out something of the characteristics of these
loops” (Wiener 1956, 254). The revolutionary idea was thus to connect the
fire-control machine to the human nervous system. The term feedback was
an appropriate way of describing phenomena in the living organism as well as
in the machine. This is the birth of the idea of the new science of cybernetics.
Wiener’s mathematical studies in the 1920s on probability theory and
Brownian motion paved the way to a cybernetic conception of the world, in
which the tendency to chaos and disorganization leads to the reduction of
everything to a state of equilibrium. In reference to Kierkegaard’s philosophy,
Wiener affirms that we live in a chaotic moral universe. There is a sense of
tragedy in the world as we face, on the one hand, the inevitable disappearance
of differentiation and, on the other hand, nature’s overwhelming tendency
to disorder. He considers the effort to build an enclave of organization as
insolence against the gods. The cybernetic project, born as an attempt to predict
the behavior of weapon machinery in order to achieve military advantage,
seems to strongly resonate with the path of tragedy and glory announced by
Wagner’s tetralogy. It conveys the existential belief that renouncing the fruits
of the action is the ethical principle of being in the world:
To me, logic and learning and all mental activity have always been
incomprehensible as a complete and closed picture and have been
understandable only as a process by which man puts himself en rapport
with his environment. It is the battle for learning which is significant,
and not the victory. Every victory that is absolute is followed at node by
the Twilight of the gods, in which the very concept of victory is dissolved
in the moment of its attainment. (Wiener 1956, 324; my emphasis)
We are not fighting for a definitive victory in the indefinite future. It is

the greatest possible victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been. No
defeat can deprive us of the success of having existed for some moment of
time in a universe that seems indifferent to us. (Wiener 1956, 325)
The key issue of communication in the age of technical systems, according

to Kittler, is the systematic interconnection of a signal-source and a noise-
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source. This is what he means with the metaphor of signal-to-noise ratio

(SNR). The SNR is a measure to compare the level of a signal to that of
background noise in order to define the bandwidth of the communication
channel or device. The SNR, which is listed in the manual of any consumer
audio device, determines the noise level of a communication system and
ultimately manipulates communication itself. Kittler notes that traditional
poetry is not allowed to have noise. The communication system of poetry,
since its beginnings in Ancient Greece, is based on the coupling of voice with
writing. Poetry excludes any sound that is not meaningful, thus any noise;
there is only the transmission of a signal. In the same manner, the written
score of music represents only acoustic signals, pitched musical tones that
can be decoded by voices and instruments. There is no place in the score
for non-harmonic sounds, for sound mixtures that are not in line with the
Fourier method.20 In contrast, technical media “suspends poetry and music
and promotes the return of the old chaos” (Kittler 1993, 171).
In maybe the most important part of his essay, Kittler interprets
Shannon’s mathematics of signal and Wiener’s mathematics of noise through
Lacan’s tripartite model of structural psychoanalysis. Lacan’s concept of real,
according to Kittler, is anything but white noise; the concept of symbolic is a
probabilistic law for interpreting the noise of the real, in other words a sort
of filter for reducing noise (like the filters of analog synthesizers that generate
“colorful” noise) and so disclosing the third dimension of Lacan’s triptych,
the imaginary. The unconscious noise stimulates the imaginary to function
as a pattern recognition device for processing encrypted information: “The
psychoanalysts have to intercept the virtual probabilities of secret messages
that are encoded as cryptograms of apparent noises” (Kittler 1993, 179).
In Kittler’s interpretation of the unconscious, psychoanalysis turns into a
calculated game for recognizing strategic opportunities of a subject, which
are presented to his unconsciousness as an encrypted message and must be
decoded.
Kittler’s metaphor of signal-to-noise ratio reveals the focus of his
philosophical reflection on the transformation of our communication
from discursive media into networking media, which reintroduces noise
in the communication and creates self-referential systems replacing the
20
This description is not quite accurate, as music notation can represent the rhythm of
percussion instruments or the time structure of electroacoustic music. However, the
traditional score cannot represent timbre; it doesn’t provide information on the spectral
characteristics of any sound, which in case of vocal and instrumental music is not
necessary but becomes an issue with electroacoustic sounds. That is what Kittler actually
means.
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human subject. For him, networking media technology has neutralized the
interpretative power of poetry and hermeneutics as communication tools.
Originally, poetry served to reduce the sonic chaos through articulated
speech and writing, and hermeneutics served to reduce semantic complexity
by attributing an interpretative function to a poetic subject called author.
Kittler argues, in reference to the origin of cybernetics in World War II, that
the technical media emerges no longer from the desire to interpret the world
but from the need to intercept enemy signals. The operations of mathematical,
probabilistic communication technology usurp the responsibility of decision
maker. We no longer act as independent subjects but as pieces of war
machinery. Kittler detects here a new kind of freedom, symbolized by the
existence of noise beyond any possible event, that may sound as an apocalyptic
apology of military technology but in fact conveys rather the acceptance of
life’s impermanence and unpredictability.
For automatic weapons are subjects themselves. A free space is created

in which it would be feasible to interchange reception theory with the
practice of interception, hermeneutics with polemics and cybernetic
hermeneutics—with the steersman’s knowledge of the messages, whether
they originate from gods, machines, or sources of noise. (Kittler 1993,
181)21
11. Conclusion
Unsterbliche [Immortals] (Kittler 2004) is a sort of intellectual autobiography,

in which Kittler evokes the legacy of ten of his mentors, including Leibniz,
Wiener, Turing, Shannon, Luhmann, Lacan, and Foucault. Kittler approaches
each one from a different perspective; he is looking for the specific qualities that
make these thinkers immortal. The text has a personal, almost sentimental tone,
while reflecting on the topics of Kittler’s own focus: cybernetics, cryptology,
and war. The essay on Luhmann, written in 1999 after his death, shows the
21
Original quote: “Denn automatische Waffensysteme sind selber Subjekte. Ein Freiraum
entsteht, in dem es machbar wäre, Rezeptionstheorie mit Interzeptionspraxis, Hermeneutik
mit Polemik und Hermenautik zu vertauschen—mit einer Steuermannskenntnis der
Botschaften, ob sie nun Göttern, Maschinen oder Rauschquellen entstammen.” The word
“Hermenautik”, which I have translated as “cybernetic hermeneutics”, is a neologism
invented by Kittler that brings a sailor metaphor into play. It refers to the origin of
the word “cybernetics”, which means steersman in Greek. Kittler projects the concept
of “Hermeneutik” into a nautical context in order to emphasize that our processes of
understanding are likely to navigate through cybernetic networks.
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great respect Kittler had for him. The narrative brings out memories of their
friendship and encounters that occurred at different places and times such as
at conferences, along with some main qualities of Luhmann’s personality—for
example modesty—that made him cheerful and appreciated as an individual.
The outstanding memory Kittler has of Luhmann is, however, a story he heard
from somebody else:
“Mr. Luhmann, since when do you think in terms of contingency?” a

friend who was fond of contingency asked him. Luhmann, who was
a gentleman, is said to have replied: “Mr. X, our high school class was
drafted in 1945 to serve in the Germany army. I was standing with a
classmate who shared my bench in school next to the bridge Y, two
bazookas in four hands. Then I heard a hiss, I turned around—there was
no friend and no body, there was nothing. Since then, Mr. X, I think in
terms of contingency.” (Kittler 2004, 94)
Kittler’s conclusion is no less interesting: “Only because the hit rate of the
American tank grenades was not 100% could there be the accident named
Luhmann” (Kittler 2004, 94).
This episode brings the awareness that life is contingent and death is
the absolute possibility of Dasein. Life means contingency and death means
necessity. The boundary distinguishing life from death is the only one for which
there is no connectivity. The living system stops operating. The re-entry of life
into death doesn’t occur, unless one leaves the territory of logic and recognizes
the unity of the distinction in spiritual terms. But this is another issue, which
would bring us into the domain of the “mystic” in Wittgenstein’s terms.22
Towards the end of Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Luhmann (1997)
reflects on mass media. He observes an increasing discrepancy between
reality and semantics. In other words, a discrepancy between what happens
in society and how society describes it. Luhmann observes, on the one hand,
the effort of recycling ideas by giving them marketing-like labels such as
“neo” and “post”; on the other hand, he observes how social communication
reacts intensively and quickly to sensitive issues of technology, environment
protection, globalization, risks in making decisions, internationalization of
financial markets, politics, terrorism, and war (cf. Luhmann 1997, 1096).
Luhmann notes that in modern society self-description “is no longer
transmitted orally in form of teachings and wisdoms, and also no longer
22
See “Musical Understating: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics”, pp. 13-41 herein.
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articulates lofty ultimate thoughts in the form of philosophy. It rather follows

the particular rules of the mass media” (Moeller 2012, 32).
Music also shows this discrepancy. This is the paradox of music in the
beginning of the 21st century: on the one hand, music as a social system of art
is believed to embody the highest humanistic standards; on the other hand,
music as mass media shapes the general understanding of music in society.
As a composer trained in the tradition of Western classical music
and committed to the development of new artistic forms in the acoustic,
electroacoustic and digital media, I am confronted with the need to
construct self-descriptions to formalize artistic pretensions connected to the
accomplishments of music history. Self-descriptions are primarily works of
art. However, by pursuing an academic career I engage with self-descriptions
of music as a medium of the education system, which operates with a different
code than the art system. In this case self-descriptions are labeled as research
or scholarly production.
Mass media and art communicate differently, on the basis of different
codes and programs. The overabundance of communicative possibilities,
which we can observe in social media, presents the problem of the distinction
between art and non-art (Luhmann 2000, 314). The art system can resolve
this paradoxical unity (between art and non-art) in the art system itself, as
long as it keeps its autonomy.
Luhmann argues that the growing freedom brings uncertainty concerning
artistic criteria; it will be more difficult to distinguish between success and
failure (Luhmann 2000, 315). However, art demonstrates the capability of
overcoming difficulties, by integrating these difficulties in the work of art. The
work displays the difficulties and the difficulties make the work significant.
The artistic forms shape the boundaries of art by factually excluding
the world and the observer and temporally generating a randomness that
transcends the form. Art is always dealing with “the arbitrary generation of
non-arbitrariness or the emergence of order from chance” (Luhmann 2000,
315).
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Chapter 4
The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music
1. From Electroacoustic to Digital Composition
On a historical level, what we call electroacoustic1 music today emerged

in the early 1950s when composers began to use electric and electronic
instruments for storing, reproducing, transforming, and synthesizing sound.2
The systematic use of electricity and electronic equipment distinguishes
electroacoustic music from acoustic music, whether vocal or instrumental.
However, such a distinction is problematic in light of the growing influence
of technology on all aspects of music including composition, production,
distribution, and listening. The first electroacoustic compositions were created
in studios in Paris, Cologne, and New York. The Paris and Cologne studios,
both affiliated with state-owned radio broadcasters, became important for the
aesthetic tendencies that marked the beginnings of electroacoustic music. The
affiliation with public broadcasting placed the European studios at the center
of intense activity of production and performance. The medium of radio gave
visibility to electroacoustic music and contributed to its enormous impact on
20th century music.
The New York studio, like many other studios founded later in the USA,
was affiliated with universities and linked to research projects on computer
audio technology that emerged in the early 1950s. The foundations of computer
music lie in the research on digital sound synthesis, synthesizer hardware
engineering, software systems for music, and digital signal processing.3
1
Both the forms “electroacoustic” and “electro-acoustic” are used in English; I prefer the
former.
2
For a short overview of the beginnings of electroacoustic music, see Bennet (1970) and
Ungeheuer (2002). For a history of electroacoustic and computer music including the
period before World War II, see Holmes (2012) and Manning (2013).
3
For an overview of different aspects of the beginnings of digital audio and computer
music, see Roads (1985). For a concise introduction to the digital audio concept, see
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While the term “electroacoustic music” has an artistic connotation, evoking

the activities of composition and performance, the term “computer music”
emphasizes the convergence of art, science, and technology. The computer
became a multifunctional tool that replaced analog technology as a medium
of production, composition, and performance. Digital technology improved
and expanded the possibilities of electroacoustic music and opened new
fields of interdisciplinary creativity such as algorithmic composition, human-
machine interactivity, music cognition, psychoacoustics, artificial intelligence,
and robotics.
Besides the concepts of electroacoustic and computer music, the term
digital music is becoming increasingly popular thanks to the mass distribution
of music over the internet in combination with the use of digital mobile
devices for listening. Digital music represents new markets and opportunities;
the commercialization of digital music is taking over the old structures of
the phonograph and recording industry. On the other hand, diverse and
varied connotations of the adjective digital in the contexts of music and
art correlate with new structures of creativity that are emerging in society.
Kerckhove (2001) describes it as a new architecture of connectivity linking
the physical world with virtual networks of information and communication.
The music of the digital age is no longer restricted to the bodies that produce
sound and manipulate instruments, but acquires a fluid character through
the multiplicity of connections and contexts in which it can be inserted and
expressed (Chagas 2003b). The digital connectivity of music accelerates the
differentiation process occurring in art and in society as a whole (cf. Luhmann
1997; 2000).4 Digital networks support the development of new artistic
fields by exploring sound as a meaningful technical and cultural object—for
example with sound design, sound art, and soundscape—and also by shaping
new interdisciplinary connections between music and visual media, body,
and space.
The history of electroacoustic music is helpful in gaining an understanding
of how analog and digital technology transforms perception and consciousness.
The ability to generate sounds and images by manipulating machines has
developed a new kind of creativity, which Flusser calls the power to imagine
[Einbildungskraft] (cf. Flusser 1985, 39-45; 2011, 33-39). The hegemony
of alphanumerical and linear codes of writing, which have constituted the
Roads (1996, 5-47) and Dodge and Jerse (1997, 62-71); for an introduction to digital
sound synthesis, see Roads (1996, 85-116) and Dodge and Jerse (1997, 72-114).
4
See discussion on Luhmann’s theory of social systems in “Communication and Meaning:
Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein.
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basis of historical thinking and scientific knowledge since the Renaissance,

has been replaced by the new codes of the universe of technical images and
sounds, which have become vectors of creativity in the information society.
The concept of telematics characterizes the communicative complexity
that emerges from the convergence of telecommunications and information
processing. Flusser believes that telematics has the potential to radically
transform the way we communicate. He is concerned with the natural tendency
of entropy, a state of randomness in which information is unpredictable and
therefore impossible. However, the universe of technical images and sounds
can reverse this tendency by converting historical and discursive thinking
into dialog. Flusser idealized the telematic dialog as a playful creative game
between man and machine acting as partners, devoting themselves to the
systematic generation of information. The telematic dialog is conceived as
a struggle against entropy, which emancipates man from the controlling
functionality of the machine. Telematic society embodies Flusser’s utopia of
freedom.
The electronic music studio can be seen as a model of such a telematic dialog
that emerged in the analog era. The paradigm of the electronic music studio
is characterized by the systematic exchange of information between different
kinds of partners such as composers, performers, engineers, technicians, and
listeners using apparatuses for creating musical works (Chagas 2002; 2006a).
The musical works produced by the studio crystallize the flow of information,
which, at the same time, re-enters the studio, causing the recursive feedback
loop that forges the telematic dialog. Creativity has evolved in the post-
industrial society from centralizing to networking structures. Networked and
programmable machines such as mobile devices, tablets, and social media
are not only tools for accessing the flux of ideas circulating through digital
networks in the form of texts, images, and sounds, but also play a central role
in shaping artistic creativity.
Music scholarship has been reluctant to penetrate the modalities intrinsic
to digital creativity. Research on electroacoustic and computer music has
focused either on historical content or technological description. In classical
music research, the analysis of complex musical works of individual composers
as aesthetic references predominates. In popular music research, the inquiry
into social and cultural themes such as post-colonialism, globalization,
race, gender, and identity prevails. There is a need to establish links that
may open the door to new accounts of electroacoustic and digital music, to
move from historical and technological accounts to a broader framework of
interactions with a number of scholars that have engaged with digital media,
art, and technology combining philosophy, social science, phenomenology,
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and critical studies. Having witnessed and participated in the transitional

period between the analog and digital eras as Klangregisseur [sound director]
of the Electronic Music Studio in Cologne, it is clear that practical insights
into the collaborative environment of the studio, including the activities of
composition, production, and performance of electroacoustic music will help
open the door for deeper investigations.
On a pedagogical level, the development of critical tools for unleashing
the creative potential of digital music is in opposition to the tendencies of
uncritical automation that drive the digital music business. The concept of
“Digital Composition”, recently implemented at the University of California,
Riverside under my direction, points to this. The focus on digital is a
broad reading of musical creativity in the global context of cultural and
social diversity. From a practical point of view, it emphasizes the creative
manipulation of digital technology and the integration of acoustic and
electroacoustic music into multimedia and interdisciplinary, cultural, and
social contexts. Digital Composition embraces different kinds of musical
traditions, both classical and popular. It also takes into account the new fields
of creativity that are emerging through the convergence of sound, image, and
the development of new architectures of collaboration. Digital Composition
is a mode for creatively addressing the resources, approaches, and strategies
of musical composition in an environment where information is embodied
in complex heterogenic and polyphonic structures of subjectivity. As pointed
out by Guattari (1992; 1993), subjectivity is no longer restricted to human
consciousness, but incorporates the body of technology through what he
defines as “machinic assemblages”. Creativity no longer depends on personal
identity and subjectivity but on the particular assemblage that happens in
connection with technological bodies that extend the framework of cognition
and meaning. The structure of the “machinic assemblages” can be defined as
polyphonic, as it articulates a multiplicity of human and non-human subjects
bringing several simultaneous and independent levels of perception and
meaning.
2. Musique concrète, Elektronische Musik, and Digital Synthesis
The Paris studio from which musique concrète emerged, was founded in the late
1940s by Pierre Schaeffer in the Club d’Essai, a center of musical activities that
in 1951 became the “Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète”, belonging
to Radiodiff usion Télévision Française (RTF). Musique concrète began with
experiments involving recording techniques for capturing natural sounds
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of the acoustic environment. The preliminary investigations, accomplished

with very limited recording equipment, consisted of isolating sounds and
exploring their properties. Schaeffer’s first composition, Cinq études de bruits,
was presented to the public in a broadcast event in 1948. The introduction
of the tape recorder in the early 1950s provided the technical medium for
the development of processing and editing techniques that enhanced the
possibilities of composition with recorded sounds. From the very beginning,
musique concrète engaged the persistent myth of listening to the sound of the
world as a source of music creativity. The sound phenomenon is isolated from
the physical environment, decoupled from its material source and released
from its cultural references in order to become a self-referential medium for
composing new audible forms. The aesthetics of musique concrète develops
notions such as sound object or sound event, which are at the same time analytic
and synthetic categories defined through the interaction of sound material
with the technical apparatuses. Pierre Schaeffer drafts the ambitious project
of musique concrète in his book Traité des Object Musicaux (Schaeffer 1966);
it includes a solfège of sound objects on the basis of a detailed morphology
of their phenomenological qualities. The creative process of musique concrète
appears primarily as an amalgam of found objects or a bricolage of materials,
so that the attempt to develop a comprehensive solfège of sound objects did
not provide the solution for the problems of developing a coherent large scale
musical form (cf. Manning 2013, 19-38).
By contrast, the Cologne studio brought to life at the Nordwestdeutscher
Rundfunk in 1951, resulted from the collaborative effort of individuals with
different musical and technical backgrounds pursuing the pragmatic goal of
developing a specific musical form suitable for the medium of radio. The
aesthetics of elektronische Musik, associated with the musical production of
the Cologne studio, is focused on electronic sounds generated by devices that
are part of the technical equipment of the radio. The first electronic pieces
were made with apparatuses such as the wave generator, noise generator,
pulse generator, filter, and other modules that were not originally designed
for making music. While musique concrète catered to the myth of listening to
the sound of the world, elektronische Musik concerned itself with the creation
of synthetic sounds, whose models are neither found in nature nor possess the
qualities of instrumental and vocal sounds. The perspective adopted by the
composers of elektronische Musik, particularly Karlheinz Stockhausen, was to
invent new sounds constructed from simple elements. The sine wave oscillator
and the noise generator were the main apparatuses. A mathematical construct
that symbolizes the purity of a single harmonic motion, the sine wave’s
smooth oscillation can be thought of as a pendulum continuously swinging
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in air. White noise is also a mathematical construct, but in opposition to

the sine wave, it symbolizes the statistical richness of all possible vibrations
occurring randomly in the audible sound spectrum.
From the very beginning elektronische Musik drew attention to the
processes of controlling sound material as a key to developing coherent
systems of timbres. The analytical principles of Fourier—according to which
any periodic sound can be analyzed through a compound of sinusoidal
constituents defined by the individual frequencies, amplitudes, and phases—
were applied to synthesize new types of timbres made of combinations of
sine tones. The sound elements were generated individually and assembled
in complex structures. Many intermediate stages were necessary to build
up timbres. For example, the first two sound components were recorded
on two separate monophonic tape machines then played back together (the
tape machines were manually synchronized) and the mixing was recorded
on a third tape machine. Then a third sound was added to the mixture
by repeating the same playback and recording operation, and so on until
the desired number of sound components was reached. Stockhausen’s first
electronic pieces Studie I and Studie II (1953-54) illustrated this composition
method, which turned out to be a time-consuming process, as the building
of complex timbres required more and more steps. By creating combinations
of sound waves based on non-harmonic ratios (Stockhausen calls them “tone-
mixtures”), the electronic music composition crosses the boundaries of the
harmonic spectra produced by voices and instruments (cf. Stockhausen 1958).
The first pieces of the Cologne studio proved that electronic apparatuses
constitute a powerful tool for inventing timbres never heard before. The
search for a systematic constructive approach to the sound material, which
was made possible by the application of mathematical principles and audio
mixing techniques to the processes of sound synthesis and composition,
remains a principle of electroacoustic music creativity.
The fundamental distinction underlying the approaches of the studios
of Paris and Cologne was accompanied by disagreements opposing their
composers and advocates. The controversy, which dominated the musical
aesthetics of the 1950s and 60s, can be expressed as follows: On the one hand,
the musique concrète of the Paris studio develops a poetics of detachment from
the music and attachment to the sound; it disengages sound consciousness
from the models of traditional vocal and instrumental music and, at the same
time, moves toward interactions focused on sound identities, cultural and
social references. On the other hand, elektronische Musik develops a poetics
of detachment from the sound and attachment to the music; it disentangles
consciousness from the representative background of sound as a meaningful
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artifact and focuses on the musical relevance of sound phenomenon

by exploring its vibratory nature.5 The methods of timbre composition
concentrated on parametrical and combinatorial thinking link elektronische
Musik to the polyphony of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and to the
experimental music of the beginning of the 20th century, particularly the
aesthetics of atonalism, twelve-tone music, and serialism.
The fundamental divergences opposing the studios of Paris and Cologne
proved to be a barrier to achieving a thorough consolidation of the ideas
underlying their aesthetics. In spite of the different approaches to the
generation of sound material, both studios developed similar methods of
sound manipulation, mainly due to the use of common apparatuses. The
tape recorder was the primary tool for both production and composition.
Indeed, the history of electroacoustic music is closely related to the functions
and programs of the tape recorder. Conceived originally as a medium for
storing and retrieving sound information, the tape recorder was converted
into a tool for experimenting and composing with sound and for producing
and performing a new type of music. Different techniques of recording and
montage were used for material preparation and formal shaping: for example,
cut-and-stick techniques (cutting the tape in fragments and recombining
the fragments in a different order), playback techniques (reverse playback,
variable-speed playback), loop techniques, tape speed manipulations and
play-erase-record-techniques with feedback control.6
The unusual use of the tape recorder was a milestone in the artistic
development of the studio as a composition environment and tool. A new
kind of creativity emerged when the tape recorder was transformed into a
composition apparatus by exploring procedures that displaced its original
mode of operation. This subversive use of the recording apparatus freed the
tape recorder from its purely reproductive function. On a conceptual level,
it questions the legitimacy of the very concept of sound reproduction. We
move from the assumption that recording technology reproduces sound to
the knowledge that any kind of sound reproduction is already a process of
transformation shaped by the functions and programs of the apparatuses.
5
Cf. Karel Goeyvaerts’ article “The Sound Material of Electronic Music” (Goeyvaerts
1958) and Henri Pousseur’s seminal essay “Naissance et développement de la musique
électronique” [Birth and Development of Electronic Music] (Pousseur 1970), which is
still not available in English. Goeyvaerts was the first composer of the Cologne studio
to experiment with sine waves as sound material for electronic music composition even
before Stockhausen, although the latter claims to be at the origin of this innovation; cf.
Stockhausen (1958).
6
For a survey of techniques of tape composition see Holmes (2012, 153-74); for tape
composition in Electronic Music Studio of Cologne see Manning (2013, 39-67).
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The aesthetics of electroacoustic music develops the awareness that sound

reproduction does not reflect the reality of the acoustic phenomenon, but
is primarily a symbolic process of alienation that generates new patterns of
perception and consciousness.
The illusion of a homogenous material as an aesthetic foundation, recorded
sounds for musique concrète and electronic sounds for elektronische Musik, was
very soon dissipated by the inclusion of other kinds of sounds, particularly
recordings of voices and instruments. Although we find recordings of vocal
and instrumental sounds in the first compositions by Pierre Schaeffer,
their use has more or less an illustrative character related to the conception
of sound objects. The significant shift from the aesthetics of sound purity
towards a heterogeneous attitude concerning sound material was achieved by
Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge [Song of the Youths] (1955-56), a piece
that proved to be a turning point not only in the development of the Cologne
studio but also in the history of electroacoustic music (Manning 2014, 65).
By integrating the recording of a boy’s voice into the composition with
electronic sounds, Gesang der Jünglinge develops an aesthetics of hybridism
that integrates different kinds of sound material. Inspired by Meyer-Eppler’s
research on phonetics, Stockhausen explores the living quality of voice to
create electronic imitations of phonemes and other elements of spoken speech
and language such as formants, articulation and intonation. The phonetic
metaphor inspired a new approach to electroacoustic material that shared
the acoustics characteristics of speech; for instance, vowels are associated
with harmonic sounds constructed from sine tones; the fricative and sibilant
consonants are related to filtered noises and the plosive consonants to
impulses; the formants that shape the color of different vowels are associated
with bands of frequency and timbres. Stockhausen applied serial principles
of composition to the generalization of this material as well to other sound
dimensions and to the organization of the formal levels of the composition.7
The relationship between creativity and technology remains an important
research field of electroacoustic music. Does technology impact creativity and
influence the way composers develop their compositional aesthetics, or is it
creative engagement that shapes the technological development? Manning
analyzes this issue in “The Significance of techné in Understanding the Art
and Practice of Electroacoustic Composition” (Manning 2006), focusing on
the relation between sound imaging and the techniques for projecting sound
7
Stockhausen provides his own description of the serial background and concepts of
Gesang der Jünglinge in Stockhausen (1960). For an extensive and detailed analysis of the
compositional techniques of Gesang der Jünglinge, cf. Decroupet and Ungeheur (1998).
110
in the space with loudspeakers. The evolution of sound space composition

is closely related to the technical evolution of playback capabilities, for
example from independent monophonic playback systems to multi-track tape
recorders. With monophonic playback systems, such as the one used by Pierre
Schaeffer in the performance of Symphonie pour un homme seul in 1950, it
was possible to distribute the sound in the space by mapping the individual
outputs of playback sources to different loudspeakers. The multi-track tape
recorder, which had already been invented in the 1950s but became widely
available only in the 60s, was a major turning point in the development
of spatialization techniques. It provided the capability of synchronization
not only for manipulating and mixing electroacoustic materials, but also
for spatial projection by combining fixed-point techniques with the spatial
movement of sounds.
The Cologne studio was a pioneer in the use of multi-track technology.
A four-track recorder was purchased in 1953 and used by Stockhausen in
Gesang der Jünglinge. This work is an emblematic composition not only for
the use of hybrid material as mentioned above, but also for a new approach
to electroacoustic composition integrating composition of timbre and spatial
articulation. Instead of creating fixed spectra by accumulating partial tones
in vertical structures, as in the previous Studie I and Studie II, Stockhausen
shifts towards a plastic conception of timbre that takes into account the
spectral movements—the transitions between different timbres—and the
spatial moments. The piece elaborates temporal processes of transformation,
dynamically evolving from the different kinds of materials and exploring the
“directional tendencies of movement: the change from one state to another,
with or without returning motion, as opposed to a fixed state” (Decroupet
and Ungeheuer 1998, 99). The revolutionary accomplishment of Gesang der
Jünglinge is to provide the first example of the integration of the composition
of timbres with spatial articulation. Spatialization here is not treated as an
ornament of the electroacoustic composition for enhancing the listening
experience, but as a structural principle of the composition that “intervenes
to clarify the composition of timbres” (Decroupet and Ungeheuer 1998, 128).
In this sense, this approach to spatialization can be considered an extension of
polyphonic thinking, as it applies the principles of independence and control
of musical elements to the spatial domain of the composition.
In contrast to the tape recorder, the synthesizer allows electroacoustic
music to evolve in a different way. The idea of the synthesizer is older than
tape music; in 1896 the American inventor Thaddeus Cahill (1867-1934) used
the term synthesizer for a musical instrument capable of generating musical
tones by using electricity. Cahill’s Telharmonium was a massive instrument
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weighing about 200 tons, requiring an enormous space and played using a
keyboard. It became operational in New York in 1906 and inspired the first
subscription service of electronic music distribution (Holmes 2012, 8-12).
In his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (Busoni 1962) Busoni noticed the
relevance of the Telharmonium as an apparatus capable of transforming
electric current into musical tones.8 However, the motivation behind this
Telharmonium, as with virtually all other synthesizers invented later, was to
imitate acoustic instruments and ultimately replicate familiar sounds as an
ersatz for the orchestra. The goal was not to create new music, but to produce
the same kind of music heard before with different sonorities. As Holmes
points out, technology was used as a “shortcut to musicianship” with a clear
business motivation (Homes 2012, 11). Although Cahill’s invention was a
failure as a business concept, it succeeded as an inspiration for subsequent
synthesizer design and commercialization models.
Two tendencies are related to the idea of the synthesizer. One of which
is the need for developing new instruments for performing music, which is
not necessarily related to the impulse of creating new music, although any
new instrument has an impact on musical aesthetics. A recent example is the
Hammond organ, which became very popular as a keyboard instrument of
jazz and pop music in the 1960s and 70s. Secondly, the synthesizer articulates
the desire of building comprehensive machines for music composition,
integrating different kinds of functions and providing systems of sound
generation and control that can be manipulated. The analog synthesizer uses
fundamentally the same principle to build sounds as Cahill’s Telharmonium,
namely, a combination of tone-generating and modulating devices. The use
of voltage control, a technology that became available during the 1960s,
brought the most significant transformation in the conception of the analog
synthesizer and was responsible for its popularization in the 1960s and 70s.
The Moog synthesizer delivered the commercial breakthrough. Voltage
control is based on the principle of applying small amounts of current to
electronic components; the voltage source can be used to generate both
audio and control signals. The audio signal is what is converted into audible
sound and the control signal is the inaudible electric flow that affects and
controls the audible signal. Thus the voltage controlled elements of the analog
synthesizer can be connected and combined in different ways for generating,
modifying, or controlling sounds. The modular principles of voltage control
have been implemented in the algorithms of current digital synthesizers and
8
Busoni was one of the first composers to detect the transforming potential of technology
for the future of music; nevertheless, he never pursued any work on electronic music.
112
software synthesizers. They remain the most widespread method of sound

synthesis and control.9
2.1. Analog Modulation: Pousseur’s Aesthetics of Generalized Periodicity
Henri Pousseur’s essay “Pour une periodicité generalisée” [Toward a

Generalized Periodicity] (Pousseur 1970, 242-90), written in 1964, elaborates
an original reflection on modular thinking focused on voltage control
technique and its aesthetic implications. Belonging to the pioneer generation
of electronic music composers, Pousseur worked in the studios of Cologne
and Milan and also in the “Siemens Studio für Elektronische Musik”
in Munich.10 The Siemens studio, which functioned for a short period of
time (1960-66), became famous for its ambitious analog synthesizer, whose
modular design was inspired by the pioneer RCA synthesizer of the Columbia-
Princeton Electronic Music Center. The Siemens synthesizer featured what
was advanced technology for the time, consisting of voltage control modules
and automation capabilities for controlling and modulating sound in real
time. Pousseur worked in the Munich studio from 1961 to 1963 as part of
a research and educational project exploring the musical potential of sound
modulation. He was concerned with developing a pluralistic and humanistic
interpretation of technology, which, in contrast to the experimental music of
the 60s, aimed to unify “poetics” and “ideology” (Pousseur 1970, 10).
As with many composers of his generation, Pousseur’s musical aesthetics
were rooted in the music of Webern and European post-war serialism. However,
in the beginning of the 1960s, he embarked on a critical disengagement from
the formalistic tendency of serialism; his aesthetics shifted from the post-
Webern heritage toward a pluralistic conception of musical composition and
practice.11 Pousseur’s opera Votre Faust (1961-68; libretto by Michel Butor)
is an emblematic example of this displacement. The piece is conceived as
experimental music theater for singers, actors, instrumental and electroacoustic
9
For a comprehensive account of the principles of analog synthesis and voltage control, see
Holmes (2012, 205-68).
10
Pousseur wrote a large number of books, articles, and essays on music theory, analysis,
aesthetics, and related topics. His early writings on music theory from 1954 to 1967
include a very detailed reflection on the beginnings of electronic music (cf. Pousseur
2004; in French, assembled and presented by Pascal Decroupet). Only a few of these
articles have been translated into English, for example “Formal Elements in a New
Compositional Material” (Pousseur 1958).
11
The article “Music, Form and Practice” (Pousseur 1964; originally written in 1959) is
an early witness to Pousseur’s “attempt to reconcile some contradictions” in serial music
language.
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music; it unfolds a patchwork of musical and literary references to the myth of

Faust which are projected into the contemporary world. The composition moves
across a wide range of genres and styles, deconstructing and remixing pieces
by composers such as Monteverdi, Bach, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven and Weil.
It extends beyond the boundaries of serial language by reintroducing tonal
harmony and functionality into the musical narrative. Votre Faust also makes
an attempt to apply the concept of variable and interactive form to the musical
theater; the audience is requested to decide the course that the opera takes. The
coexistence of genres and their mutual nourishment expressed in Votre Faust
and many other works composed afterwards by Pousseur, particularly in the
pieces composed in collaboration with Michel Butor, remain a constructive
example of musical pluralism in the tradition of European 20th century avant-
garde. It accounts also for Pousseur’s cosmopolitan vision of society, allowing
the existence of autonomous and interdependent groups having distinctive
ethnic origins, cultural identities, and forms.12
In “Pour une periodicité generalisée”, Pousseur develops a phenomenology
of sound and modulation emerging from a comprehensive critique of serialism
and a reflection on the fundamentals of analog electronic music. It focuses on
the overall concept of generalized periodicity as a contrast to the serial principle
of non-periodicity, the origin of which, according to Pousseur, can be found
in Schoenberg’s idea of developing variation and the tendency of eliminating
repetition from the musical discourse.13 Non-periodicity, associated with
asymmetry, concerns primarily the construction of harmony and rhythm. The
atonal and serial organization of pitch material neutralizes tonal functionality
and introduces harmonic discontinuity, as we see already in Schoenberg’s
music and more intensively in Webern’s. The avoidance of rhythmic and formal
symmetries also characterizes the music by composers related to the tradition
of Debussy like Stravinsky, Bartok, and Messiaen. Projected onto the level
of formal organization, the principle of non-periodicity leads to the complex
sound textures of the serial works of the 1950s, which, according to Pousseur,
engage an aesthetics of absolute musical flow, free from repetitions and aiming
12
Pousseur generated a large number of independent works based on whole scenes,
fragments, or material from Votre Faust. I had the opportunity to collaborate with
Pousseur in the composition of one of these satellite pieces: La Passion selon Guignol for
amplified vocal quartet and orchestra, premiered in 1981 by the English vocal quartet
Electric Phoenix and the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Pierre Bartholomée.
I orchestrated some excerpts from Votre Faust and composed a significant amount of new
music that I combined with the material from Votre Faust. See also the essay “Opéra,
recherche, théâtre musical” in Pousseur (1997).
13
Cf. Arnold Schoenberg’s “Composition with Twelve-Tones (1)” (1941) in Schoenberg
(1975, 214-45).
114
to explore the whole range of possible variations. Pousseur criticizes Boulez’s

idea of the non-reversibility of time, which he considers the most radical
musical application of this principle.14 Furthermore, he sees in the aesthetics of
non-periodicity the danger of bringing music into a state of entropy, resulting
from the scattered and almost statistic distribution of elements, incapable of
articulating differentiation and ultimately, causing monotony and boredom in
the listener (Pousser 1970, 241-42).
The theory of generalized periodicity interprets traditional parameters of
musical discourse through the concepts and functions of analog electronic
music. It relates musical to technological thinking; it shows how traditional
musical categories can be related to electronic music. For example, concepts
such as melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm, density, texture and form can then
be translated into relations of frequency, amplitude, and phase generated by
electronic modules such as the wave generator (sinus, square, triangle and
saw-toot), the impulse generator, and the white noise generator. The theory
also relates formal processes in music to modulation processes such as
amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, phase modulation, and their
manifold combinations. In the oscillatory and modulating nature of sound
phenomenon, Pousseur finds evidence that non-periodicity cannot be taken
as a constructive principle of musical organization.
Sound is an oscillatory event, organized as a complex of periodic forms,
which, according to Fourier’s mathematical theory, can be analyzed as a
system of periodic oscillations. Therefore, sound structure can be observed
as the interaction of wave phenomena in a network of relationships, which
constitutes its system of reference. In the system of sound waves, we can
distinguish, on the one hand, the form of the individual components—the
waves observed in terms of relations of frequency, amplitude, phase, spectrum,
etc.—and, on the other hand, the form of the modulations then produce
interferences between the components. These two forms can be reduced
to the same principle, for the individual components of the system can be
analyzed themselves as modulations. Pousseur argues that there is neither a
low nor a high limit for observing sound as a system of modulating waves: any
14
Cf. Boulez’s “Technique Musicale” in Penser la musique d’aujourd’ hui (Boulez 1963,
35-167). The principle of the non-reversibility of time can be observed in many early works
by Pierre Boulez such as Structures I (1952) and Structures II (1961), two related works for
two pianos. Boulez remains one of the most influential and controversial composers of
the 20th century. Boulez’s essay “Stravinsky Demeure” (Boulez 1966, 75-145) celebrates
Stravinsky’s rhythmic invention; the essay “Schönberg est Mort” (Boulez 1966, 265-72) is
a provocative manifest against Schoenberg, whose music Boulez criticizes as conservative
(Boulez later revised his negative opinion of Schoenberg’s music).
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single wave phenomenon, even the most elementary and microscopic one, can
be seen as a modulation of even more reduced waves; and any complex wave
phenomenon, such as a macroscopic system of modulating waves, can be seen
as a more or less organic member of a higher form (Pousseur 1970, 271). Some
oscillations may be too slow or too fast to be perceived as audible sounds;
nevertheless, they play a role in building formal structures. Low frequency
oscillators (LFO), for instance, are frequencies below the audible limit used
for modulating audible signals.
In 1972 Pousseur produced 8 Études Paraboliques [Eight Parabolic
Studies] in the WDR Studio, which represents a systematic and self-asserting
application of the possibilities of the generalized technique of voltage control.
The total length of the eight studies is 3 hours and 47 minutes; the composition
and production have been thoroughly documented.15 This electronic music
work was almost entirely created with four voltage-controlled generators
made by the corporation Philips, which feature a remarkable frequency
range from 0.1 Hz to 100,000 Hz. In addition to the main generator, each
generator includes a secondary one called a “sweep” that can produce very
low frequencies (a single period can have a duration of up to 100 seconds).
Pousseur used one or two main generators as sound sources and the other two
or three main generators and the four “sweeps” as modulation sources. The
generators where connected serial or parallel. The serial connection produced
complex forms of modulations through the variation of frequencies; the
parallel connection produced interferences that could create complex and
unpredictable rhythms. Pousseur explored different combinations of serial
and parallel connections, in which the generators run automatically or were
manually controlled, to compose complex and heterogeneous systems of
modulations and interferences.
15
Cf. “Périodicité généralisée et synthèse sonore analogique” [Generalized Periodicity and
Analogical Sound Synthesis] (Pousseur 1997, 191-211) and “Die Zeit der Parabeln” [The
Time of Parables] (Misch and Blumröder 2002, 70-205). The former text from 1982/83
brings forward some ideas presented in the early work “Pour une periodicité generalisée”
[For a Generalized Periodicity] (Pousseur 1970, 241-90). The latter article is a revision
(from 2000) of the original documentation (from 1972/73) of the production of 8 Études
Paraboliques in the WDR Studio of Electronic Music in the summer of 1972. It presents
the conception of the piece, the background of the commissioning of the work, the
analytical chronicle of the entire production of the eight studies in the WDR studio
right to the final steps. Many diagrams illustrate the technical aspects of the production.
As part of the same project in the WDR studio in 1972, Pousseur produced also the
Paraboles-Mix, a piece of approximately 80 minutes in length consisting of the mixing
and transformation of several fragments of the eight studies. Th is piece has six parts that
can be performed in any order. It was conceived as a radiophonic version of the studies.
116
8 Études Paraboliques represents a very important case in the history of

electronic music. Normally, composers produce a series of sound materials
that are progressively assembled in large structures and sections. The final
work thus results from processes of “montage” at different levels. In contrast,
the entire production of Parabolic Studies was accomplished without any cut,
collage, or conventional montage. The modulation processes generated by the
oscillators were recorded directly on tape without interruption (Misch and
Blumröder 2002, 105). The generator was programmed to run automatically
for long periods of time. Additionally, Pousseur and two assistants varied the
processes by manually adjusting or changing the parameters of the signal
sources. The modulations can be interpreted as self-referential processes
coupling the automatic flow of the machine with human action.
In the essay “Périodicité généralisée et synthèse sonore analogique”
[Generalized Periodicity and Analogical Sound Synthesis] (Pousseur 1997,
191-211), Pousseur argues that he is pursuing a different approach to
electronic music composition based on the idea that sound is a potential
actualized through modulation. The discrete elements that build a work of
music can be seen as particles artificially isolated from the flux of acoustic
material. In acoustic music, these discrete elements are notes, defined by
the relations of pitch, loudness, timbre, and duration; in electroacoustic
music, the notion of note has been translated into the notions of sound
objects and sound events, which can be applied to different structural levels
of the composition. The notions of note and object, according to Pousseur,
are associated with a punctual perception of the sound, which gives birth to
more complex musical figures such as chords, melodic themes, and rhythmic
models. By contrast, and according to the theory of generalized periodicity,
electronic music composition is to be seen as a multi-layered network of
distinctions between potential and modulation. The electronic music is thus
a flux of oscillations and periodicities in which the discrete elements emerge
as localized and instantaneous knots; they can be created and dissolved
anytime. This dynamic form is “the most appropriate to meet the demands
of aesthetic sensibility that regained consciousness of the phenomena of
instability or impermanence, of the fundamental mutabilities of the matter”
(Pousseur 1997, 207; emphasis in the original).
In the concluding remarks of this essay from 1982, Pousseur argues that
the notions of note, timbre, and instrument, which shape our traditional
conception of musical sound, constitute an obstacle for exploring the
promising creativity of electronic music composition. He suggests a new theory
for generalizing the notion of sound and music as a continuous and dynamic
matter. Pousseur’s idea of sound and music as a constant state of flux cultivates
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an awareness that impermanence is the true nature of reality. By integrating

different levels of observation—including different levels of temporality—in a
virtual periodic structure of sounds and modulations, the electronic music of
8 Études Paraboliques embodies the freedom of non-attachment that makes us
aware of the ephemeral mutability of the world. This point of view conforms
to the one expounded in the earlier essay from 1964:
Music is incapable of producing something materially solid, of creating

lasting objects. Its material, sound, is also very fleeting, a sort of shadow
of more resilient realities (e.g., the vibrating bodies in the sound sources),
and unable to survive without their support. It seems therefore logical
that larger ensembles, composed of such ephemeral material, are given
up to transitivity. But if we think about it, everything in the world, be
it in a less extreme measure, is perishable; between the different realities
there is only a difference of degree. Even the most solid and most
enduring things are, as we know, composed of time, movement, and the
transformation of subordinate elements. They are therefore subject to
time and fundamental mutability. Only for an observer who synthesizes
and integrates their totality, or for an observer unable to perceive processes
that are too slow for him, it is thus from different levels of observation
from those where their specific movements occur, that things seem to
keep their unchanging identity. (Pousseur 1964, 285)
2.2 Digital Simulation: The Myths of Post-Industrial Society
The microprocessor revolution and development of digital signal processing

(DSP) was a turning point in technological evolution. In the middle of the 1980s,
digital technology—digital tape recorders, synthesizers, and processing devices—
began to replace analog technology in both commercial recording studios
and electronic music studios. In 1984, the makers of commercial synthesizers
agreed to introduce the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), a digital
communication protocol for linking synthesizers and computers. The MIDI
standard testifies to the increasing convergence of interests of industry and
musicians. It was designed for a musician playing a MIDI keyboard and using
a MIDI sequencer to play sounds stored in different sound synthesis modules.
The MIDI keyboard and MIDI sequencer are emblematic apparatuses for the
popularization of digital music driven by MIDI technology.16
16
For an overview of the technical and aesthetical possibilities of MIDI, see “Le MIDI et la
musique électronique: Quelques remarques esthétiques et techniques” (Chagas 1992).
118
The Yamaha DX-7 introduced in 1983, was the first commercial digital
synthesizer produced on a mass scale. Its sound generation is based on
the frequency modulation (FM) synthesis technology developed by John
Chowning at Stanford University in the beginning of the 1970s, whose patent
was purchased by Yamaha and made available for commercial use (Chowning
1985). As Dodge and Jerse claim,
audio synthesis by means of frequency modulation is perhaps the single

greatest advancement in improving the accessibility of high-quality
computer-synthesized sound. Frequency modulation can be thought
of as the alteration or distortion of the frequency of an oscillator in
accordance with the amplitude of a modulating signal. (Dodge and Jerse
1997, 115)
The vibrato, which is largely practiced in vocal and instrumental music,

is an example of frequency modulation with a low frequency modulator.
Chowning’s frequency modulation algorithm is very cost effective because
it requires less calculation power than traditional techniques such as additive
synthesis or sampling. It is particularly suitable for simulating sounds whose
temporal evolution occurs in a very short period of time during the attack,
for example, brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments such as piano
and bells. The DX-7 became particularly appreciated for these sounds; it was
a commercial success that influenced the sound of the pop music synthesizer
for many years.17
Chowning’s research on frequency modulation is an insightful example
of the evolution and mutation of the ideas of electroacoustic analog music
through digital technology. The desire of producing complex spectra of
natural sounds such as the timbres of musical instruments motivated the
research on computer sound synthesis. The computer simulates natural sounds
based on the analytical description. The analysis of the temporal evolution of
the spectral components over time is translated into a set of instructions for
the computer for the purpose of sound synthesis. Jean-Claude Risset, who
collaborated with Mathews in the Bell Laboratories between 1964 and 1969,
compares the principle of digital synthesis based on computer analysis and
17
The capabilities of frequency modulation technology reach far beyond the commercial
applications. The DX-7 and other FM synthesizers built by Yamaha were also used in
experimental electroacoustic music. My electronic music Ellipse (1986) is an example.
See a description of this piece in “Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition: The
Relationship between Medium and Form”, pp. 203-249 herein.
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synthesis of natural sounds to the traditional work of a composer producing

a score of acoustic music:
The composer asks the computer to calculate the sound wave directly,
somewhat as if it engraves the record groove directly. One can in
principle produce any sound in this way, without a priori restrictions
or limitations. This requires providing the computer with a complete
description of this structure: the user can compose it at will as he would
compose a chord or an instrumental passage—the recipe of synthesis
plays the role of a sound score. (Risset 1990, 108)18
We can see here the ambiguity that dwells at the very core of digital thinking.
Digital systems operate as calculation machines with a much higher precision
and control factor than analog systems; the calculating power introduces a
new kind of creativity based on the possibilities of combination and mutation.
Yet digital systems operate as simulating machines attracting tendencies
of imitation and superficiality. The development of computer and digital
music articulates this ambiguity in the following way: on the one hand, it
provides new constructive principles for generating sound and music, for
instance through the development of sound synthesis technology and musical
programming languages that become more expressive tools for composition
and performance; on the other hand, digital tools promote a culture of
simulation that eliminates experimentalism and promotes reproduction. Two
examples of this tendency are sound synthesis for the purpose of imitating
instruments and program languages that operate on the basis of the traditional
categories of orchestra and a score.19
Besides MIDI equipment—synthesizers, keyboards, controllers—the
digital sampler contributed to the popularization of digital music in the
1980s.20 The processes of generating sound material and composing music
such as sound recording, sound synthesis, sound manipulation, and montage
began to be performed at low cost with the personal computer and peripheral
18
See also “An Introductory Catalogue of Computer Synthesized Sounds” (Risset 1995
[1969]) for a documentation of Risset’s research, including the sound examples. The
catalog of instrumental sounds shows possibilities of digital sound synthesis that have
been used in many compositions, including his own.
19
The first programming language was MUSIC I, created by Max Mathews in 1957. It was
followed by many improved versions. The MUSIC series is the predecessor of csound
(http://www.csounds.com) and many other computer music languages; see Holmes
(2012, 273-95), and Roads (1996, 49-84).
20
The first commercial digital sampler was the Fairlight CMI (1978), a very expensive
machine built in Australia. In the 1980s the Fairlight competed with the Synclavier.
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equipment. The so-called home studio—personal equipment installed in

garages or in living rooms, turned into an affordable production platform for
composers. New channels of distribution of music content became available
in the 1990s with the development of digital networks. The production studio
inspired by the models of the studios of Paris, Cologne, and New York lost
its hegemony as the unique center of creation, production, and distribution
of electroacoustic music.
2.3. The Post-History of Electroacoustic Music
The term “electroacoustic music” has been used here loosely, for designating
aesthetic tendencies related to the principles of musique concrète and
elektronische Musik. In fact, it was only at the end of the 20th century that the
term electroacoustic music came into play. But it happened less because of
the convergence of the two aesthetics apparently opposed to each other that
emerged in the 1950s and more due to the necessity of drawing ideological
boundaries between classical and popular electronic music. The distinction
between classical and popular is even more significant than the quarrel
opposing the composers of the studios of Paris and Cologne because it
concerns the historical understanding of music as a whole. By the end of
the 1960s and the beginning of the 70s, the works of musique concrète by
Pierre Henry (b. 1927) and the works of elektronische Musik by Karlheinz
Stockhausen (1928-2007), associated respectively with the studios of Paris
and Cologne, achieved significant popularity. Both composers enjoyed the
fame of being “techno-gurus” of a musical revolution that captured the
imagination of young audiences. Stockhausen’s face depicted on the cover of
the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) speaks for
his popularity among progressive pop musicians. In the late 70s, experimental
electronic music lost its novelty and the fascination faded away. The very
concept of electronic music moved away from the introverted environment of
serious contemporary music to the effervescent environment of entertaining
popular music.
With the proliferation of digital technology, electronic sound found a fruitful
ground in international pop music. Electronics shaped the creativity of new
genres and subgenres, cultures and subcultures of popular music that emerged
in the 1980s, such as hip-hop, house, ambient, drum and bass, techno, etc.
Henceforth, the term electronic music has typically been applied to different
kinds of popular music that predominantly use electronic apparatuses for
developing different aesthetics that distinguish themselves from popular music
with electric instruments (for instance rock), while the term electroacoustic
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music is marked by the attachment to the tradition of Western classical music.

Certainly, the distinction between electronic and electroacoustic is arbitrary,
socially constructed, and historically contingent. It is often considered from the
perspective of the relations of power and the practices that contextualize and
decontextualize sound and music. The focus on electroacoustic, which we have
chosen here, can provide the basis for complex and subtle contextualizations,
but we need to be aware that arbitrary aesthetic categories can be equivocal and
become an obstacle to grasping complex relationships.
Recent scholarship on music and technology has attempted to investigate
different kinds of situations that give a broader view of the semiotic processes
involved with the categories of electroacoustic music. Demers, for example,
accounts for three meta-genres that are associated today with electronic sound:
“institutional electroacoustic music, which aspires toward high modernist
autonomy and rigor; electronica, an umbrella for a number of ambient and
dance-related genres; and some electronic forms of sound art, or organized
sound that in some way relates to the space in which it is heard” (Demers
2010, 167; my emphasis).
Another perspective emerges through Tarasti’s concept of situation
introduced in Signs of Music (Tarasti 2002, 63-87). Tarasti defines situation
“as a continuous intermingling of happenings that represent various modes
of being in the real context in which they occur” (Tarasti 2002, 72). He
considers three mutually dependent aspects of situation: the world itself
(Dasein), the organic process, and the consciousness. All these aspects
are already presented in sound waves; any sound is at the “same time an
organic process, consciousness and facticity of being in history, culture and
the objective world” (Tarasti 2002, 72). The concept of situation leads to
a tripartite model of semiotic analysis: (1) situation as communication and
signification, (2) situation as act and event, (3) situation as intertextuality. The
first category includes the codes, channels, context, and their corresponding
function; the second the actions of various individual and collective subjects
that produce acts and events such as works, techniques, and aesthetics; and
the third, the constant recycling of previously used musical materials, and
genres that produce intertextual references.
In “Spiel und Dialog” (Chagas 2002) and “Game and Dialog” (Chagas
2006a) the claim is made that the critical investigation of the machinery,21
including the evolution from analog to digital technology, is crucial for
understanding the musical creativity that emerged with electronic sound. The
acoustic sound of voice and instruments represents an alienation from natural
21
The words “machinery” and “apparatuses” are used as synonyms.
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situations; they signify concrete, complex situations, which are translated into
a musical code of communication. With electronic sound, the concept of
composition moves from a quantitative and qualitative process of arranging
abstract sounds—sound experiences, sound layers, and sound structures—
to the symbolic function of the machinery that produces sound. From the
perspective of semiotics, electronic sounds can be examined as situations
emerging from the use of machinery; it involves the media channels of the
technology, the strategies and identities adopted by the agents, and the totality
of references in the intertextual space.
The machinery disconnects the sound from its natural models and
opens the space for a synthesis of new sounds. Electronic sound is always
created through a dialog between man and machinery acting as partners and
exchanging information in a networking structure. The exchange takes place
in the form of a game in which new models are conceived and practiced
in a playful way. The more the dialog is shaped by the network structure,
the more the figure of the individual creator loses its subjective meaning.
With the development of digital apparatuses, the creative game takes on a
social dimension. Social media such as YouTube and Facebook articulate this
playful attitude. But the central issue here, which arises from the game with
machinery, is how to shape the structure of dialog. Machines are actually
conceived to perform automated processes. They liberate man from certain
repetitive tasks, but, at the same time, their reproductive function creates a
kind of magical fascination that impacts human consciousness. Are we then
driven to reproduce the magical fascination of the apparatuses?
The artist who symbolizes this fascination with the magic of electronic
sound machinery is not the institutional composer (generally decorated
with an academic degree), who produces and performs his works mostly in
universities and music institutions, but the DJ who emerged in the 1980s as
a new kind of performing musician manipulating electronics as expressive
tools for entertaining broad audiences. The symbolic space of the electronic
sound performance is not the concert hall but the club. While in the concert
situation the bodies remain seated and quiet, focused on an invisible music
coming out of the loudspeakers, in the clubs the bodies can dance, talk,
and move in the space, typically immersed in a multisensory choreographic
environment of sounds, lights, gestures, and movements. The DJ, who
activates the magic fascination of electronic sound, accomplishes a mystic,
ritualistic function that evokes the role of the shamans in tribal societies. He
is both singer and storyteller activating the sound narratives of the electronic
global village (cf. McLuhan 1994). However, the modern magic of the DJ
(and other similar artists of the electronic era) is of a different kind than
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the magic of the ancient shamans. As Flusser affirms, “the ancient magic
is prehistoric, it is older than historical consciousness; the new magic is
‘post-historic’, it follows on after historical consciousness” (Flusser 2000,
17). Inquiring about the magical fascination of technical images in our
current society, Flusser developed a critical phenomenology of photography
and the photographic apparatus that can be extended to the electronic
music apparatus. The prehistoric magic, according to Flusser, activates a
ritualization of models in form of myths, which are communicated orally;
in contrast, the current magic activates a ritualization of models in form of
programs. The programs are basically features and functions of technical
apparatuses, such as the ones that allow a camera to take pictures or DJ
equipment to play music. The programmatic magic of technical apparatuses
tends to eliminate critical thinking, replacing historical consciousness with
a second-order magical consciousness that reduces culture to the lowest
denominator. With the apparatus the relations of power move from the level
of objects and material to the symbolic level of programs and their operators.
In Flusser’s words, this is what characterizes the “information society” and
“post-industrial imperialism” (Flusser 2000, 30).
3. Sound Aesthetics and Composition in Electroacoustic Music
3.1. Elektronische Musik: Serial Technique and Timbre Composition
The first compositions of elektronische Musik from the 1950s surprised the
audience with a new universe of sounds. The reactions ran from enthusiasm
to rejection and everything in between. At the time, people disagreed about
how or whether the sound projected by loudspeakers should be considered
music. In “Ästhetische Probleme der elektronischen Musik” [Aesthetic
Problems of Electronic Music] Dahlhaus (1970) states that the arguments
against electronic music were of two kinds: either it should be called “noise
art” because it raises noise to the category of musical sound, or—what seems
more radical—it does not deserve to be called music. The strong disapproval
according to this thinking, shows how emerging electronic music challenged
the predominant understanding of music of the last two centuries. Music was
defined as “tone art”, which implied that it could only consist of specific types
of sounds—pitched sounds—rather than noise.22 Dahlhaus considers this
22
The term “tone art” is related to the German word Tonkunst. The German language
makes a difference between Klang and Ton; Klang indicates any sound in general; Ton
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definition problematic because it grants a hegemonic role to the aesthetics

of harmony and timbre of European classical music. That would mean that
the majority of non-European music such as African or Indonesian, where
harmony and timbre does not play a fundamental role—could not be called
music. He concluded that electronic music undermines the traditional
understanding of music by promoting what had previously been regarded
as noise to the expressive category of music material and consequently
destroying the supremacy of the traditional European concept of musical
tone. Electronic music has shown in a drastic way that music is a historic
phenomenon—maybe even a “post-historical” one in Flusser’s sense of the
term—that defies fixed and permanent definitions.
Although descriptions of music vary depending on the culture and society,
it is clear that musical understanding is only possible in a historical context:
“A definition of the music that ignores history would be either empty or
arbitrarily empty if it includes everything but says nothing; arbitrarily when
it draws solid boundaries where there is flowing transitions” (Dahlhaus 1970,
82).23 What decides whether a sound phenomenon can be considered music
or not is the historical continuity or discontinuity, i.e., the “connection to the
tradition or the lack of relationship to the past” (Dahlhaus 1970, 82). Assuming
this premise, he inquires if electronic music has come into being from inside
or outside music history. In other words, is electronic music an evolution of
the composition techniques of acoustic music or does it emerge from other
contexts that have been incorporated into the music? For Dahlhaus it comes
unmistakably from within, because electronic music continued the trends of
serial music, especially the method of timbre composition of the composers
of the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, and particularly Webern).
Serial music was the fundamental and crucial condition for the development
of electronic music; it is the historical and internal context of serial music
that allows us to describe electronic music as music in the broadest sense of
the word.
Indeed, the serial principle of timbre structuring dominated the aesthetics
of the Cologne studio in the 1950s. The timbres were constructed on the
indicates sounds with a defined pitch typically produced by voice or instrument. Thus
the term Tonkunst [tone art] applies to the “traditional” acoustic music made of pitched
sounds and the term Klangkunst [sound art] to any kind of artistic form that uses sound.
In this essay I use predominantly the term “sound” for any kind of sound used for artistic
purposes, including pitched and non-pitched sounds.
23
Wittgenstein shares a similar point of view when he states that musical understanding is
contextual and related to the forms of life. See “Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein,
Ethics and Aesthetics”, pp. 13-41 herein.
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basis of primary pure elements—the sine waves—that were treated as partials

to generate complex harmonic and non-harmonic tones. The first electronic
music pieces by composers such as Herbert Eimert (1897-1972), Karlheinz
Stockhausen (1928-2007), Karel Goeyvaerts (1923-1993), Paul Gredinger
(1927), Gottfried Michael Koenig (1926), and Henri Pousseur (1929-2009)
applied principles of serial composition to spectral and formal structuring. In
addition to pure sinusoidal tones, two other main electronic sound sources—
noise and impulse—were subjected to the same serial methods of sound
composition. Eimert’s article “What is Electronic Music” (1958), an early
account of the aesthetics of the composers of the Cologne studio, examines
the situation of electronic music from the perspective of sound. Electronic
sound is classified in six categories: tone (the sinus tones), note (built up from
series of harmonic overtones), note mixture (the frequencies not harmonically
ordered), noise, chord (note complex), and impulse (Eimert 1958, 3-4). Eimert
considers electronic music a logical consequence of the serial technique, a
natural evolution of the compositional situation resulting from Webern’s
discovery of the timbral quality of the single note. Webern’s sound structures
generated according to the permutation principles of the series come near to
the processes of electronic music. Electronic music transfers this idea to the
“total organization of the electronic sphere” (Eimert 1958, 2). The composition
with sine tones in breaking the boundaries of instrumental sound, leads to
the understanding of the compositional microstructure of sound: “This
electronic music is not ‘another’ music, but is serial music” (Eimert 1958, 9).
Although the focus on timbre occupies a central place in 20th century
electroacoustic and acoustic music composition, the emphasis on serial
techniques as a fundamental of sound composition brought electronic
music into a hermetic situation. It was quite difficult, even impossible, to
understand serial organization by just listening to the music. Dahlhaus
points out that electronic music requires an immediate understanding, which
is incompatible with rigorous constructivism. In contrast to instrumental
and vocal music, which is score based and therefore can be understood by
reading and analyzing the score, electronic music cannot afford to be obscure;
the composition must be transparent and perceived through listening. The
timbre structure consisting of partials organized according to serial principles
remains impenetrable. That is why the serial technique as the sole foundation
of electronic music had to be abandoned (Dahlhaus 1970, 85).
From another point of view, the hermetic dilemma can be articulated
in terms of visibility and invisibility of sound in composition. In the essay
“Naissance et développement de la musique électronique” [Birth and
Development of Electronic Music] from 1962, Pousseur (1970) observes that
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electronic music articulates a continuous interaction between different levels

of sound organization, so that it becomes difficult “to draw a precise boundary
between internal composition of sound and higher levels of composition”
(Pousseur 1970, 82). The musical sound is not an isolated object but can be
understood only in a compositional context; it is not possible to speak of sound
phenomena even when isolated, without considering their compositional
possibilities. Therefore, electronic music articulates the production of musical
sound in a multilayered meaningful, poetic activity that relates microscopic
and macroscopic levels of sonic composition.
The necessity to make visible the “poetics” of sound composition moved
the serial composers of the post-Webern generation to incorporate external
materials and models in their electronic works; for instance, speech and
singing (Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge, 1955-56); speech (Berio’s
Tema–Omaggio a Joyce, 1958; Eimert’s Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama,
1960-62); acoustic instruments (Stockhausen’s Kontakte, 1960; Mikrophonie
I, 1964); sounds of nature and the industrial environment (Pousseur’s
Trois Visages de Liège, 1961); and sounds of radio and musical quotations
(Stockhausen’s Hymnen, 1966-67). The use of voices and instruments
establishes a “historical continuity” (in the sense of Dahlhaus) between
acoustic and electronic music. In his text from 1962, Pousseur formulates
the awareness that electronic music is not a separate domain of music, a
particular musical aesthetics, but:
it should be rather considered as a set of means (instrumental, in the

broadest sense) just added to the existing means (human voices and
traditional musical instruments) and, while modifying them gradually
in a very profound way, tending to join them in order to make as rich
as possible the current musical practice. (Pousseur 1970, 81; emphasis in
the original)
3.2. Musique concrète: Acousmatic Listening and Composition 24
The question of visibility and invisibility is inherent in the aesthetics of

acousmatic that derives from musique concrète. Schaeffer’s conception of
acousmatic music, extensively elaborated in his Traité des objects musicaux
(1966), aims to create a new consciousness of sound that denies the causal
and visual sources of sound production. The term acousmatic goes back to
the pre-Socratic concept of aurally transmitted knowledge. For five years,
24
The term “acousmatic” is used here both as noun and adjective.
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the disciples of Pythagoras stayed behind a curtain listening in complete

silence to lectures given by the master without seeing him, focusing only
on the sound of his voice. Acousmatic proposes thus to listen to sound as
an invisible phenomenon. Schaeffer’s approach is an attempt to overcome
historical and cultural listening habitudes of vocal and instrumental music
in order to disclose new possibilities of musical creativity. The sound is to be
set apart from its external connotations so that the fantasy can entirely focus
on the sound phenomenon and leave behind cultural, social, and historical
connotations, and above all, stereotypes engraved by classical and romantic
music. We are to listen to sound and music like the disciples of Pythagoras
listened to the master’s lectures; we are to let the sound speak for itself through
its inner voice. For Schaeffer, the new means of telecommunication are rooted
in the human experience of “natural sound communication”; the radio and
electroacoustic sound reproduction carry on the traditional experience of the
“invisible voice” (Schaeffer 1966, 91). The acousmatic aesthetic is tributary
to the technology of sound reproduction; the tape recorder, developed after
World War II, was assigned a very particular role. It virtually functions as
Pythagoras’s curtain: “it creates new phenomena to observe, it creates above
all new conditions of observation” (Schaeffer 1966, 98).
More than an aesthetic vision, acousmatic is both a listening and
a compositional attitude, a plea to develop a different kind of sound
consciousness. The notion of reduced listening (écoute réduite) applies
the technique of eidetic reduction from Husserl’s phenomenology, which
aims to identify the essential elements that distinguish an experience and
discard everything else. The phenomenological method brackets the world
to concentrated on its essences, which are immanent to phenomena. For
instance, time consciousness emerges when we identify objects and events
that appear as temporal experience. Husserl’s eidetic phenomenology is
concerned with the dynamic interplay of different levels of consciousness that
makes possible the apprehension of time as a living-present. His account of
internal time consciousness is particularly interesting from a musical point of
view since he compares internal time consciousness to listening to a melody
(cf. Husserl 1966, 1990).25
From Husserl’s phenomenological method, Schaeffer derives the eidetic
notion of reduced listening through which sound appears independent of
25
For a musical investigation of Husserl’s account of consciousness of time, cf. “Spectral
Semiotics: Sound as Enacted Experience, A Phenomenological Approach to Temporality
in Sound and Music” (Chagas 2010). For an application of spectral semiotics theory, cf.
“Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin”, pp. 43-63 herein.
128
its material source; yet everything else in Schaeffer’s method seems to be a

simplified, even superficial reading of Husserl. Structuralism plays a much
more important role in shaping his thinking. For example, the theory of
modes of listening that accounts for four different ways to perceive sounds:
Schaeffer distinguishes between (1) an indexical primal mode of identifying
sound objects and events (écouter), (2) a peripheral non-intentional mode
(ouïr), (3) a subjective and selective mode of listing (entendre), and (4) a
symbolic mode of listening, implying a cognitive level of assigning meaning
to sounds (comprendre) (Schaeffer 1966, 103-28). Schaeffer relates the notion
of reduced listening to the phenomenological epoché, which is translated as
a “bracketing” of the external physical reality of the sound. He proposes a
listening that “disengages from the world” (Schaeffer 1966, 267), particularly
the world of musical sounds. Acousmatic listening focuses on non-referential,
non-symbolic aspects of sound in order to develop a new consciousness of its
creative potential. Schaeffer proposes a complex program of musical research,
clearly inspired by structuralism and linguistics, consisting of methods of
analysis and synthesis, morphology, and typology of sound and musical
objects (Schaeffer 1966, 360-85).
Indeed, the musique concrète disengages sound from the traditional sphere
of vocal and instrumental music and reconstructs it as an open form. Schaeffer’s
notion of sound object points to the different contexts shaping our experience
with sound. Rather than a linear object, sound is to be seen as a network of
virtual interactions in a communication process. As a criticism, one can argue
that the morphological and topological models proposed by Schaeffer and his
followers, which are supposed to illuminate the compositional possibilities of
the acousmatic project, for the most part contributed only to add confusion
and obscure the understanding of the matter. Moreover, it fails to recognize the
symbolic role of technique in shaping sound consciousness and the enormous
impact of the studio apparatus on the aesthetics of electroacoustic music.26
3.3. Semiotics of the Electroacoustic Studio
The electroacoustic studio such as the studio of musique conrète is a meta-

apparatus of communication consisting of a variety of apparatuses that have
different functions. The studio apparatuses record sound from the real world,
26
See for instance Chion (1983, 1994), Smalley (1986, 1997, 2007), and Wishart (1996).
My criticism refers to the background of these investigations, inspired by structuralism
and post-structuralism, which provides a limited, linear-chain model of the acousmatic
project.
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transform the sound into manipulatable sound objects, and produce musical
works that reintroduce the result of the manipulation into the real world.
There is a double movement, firstly from outside to inside and secondly from
inside to outside. The elements of the outer reality are internalized in the
manipulation process, put in relationship with one another in a musical piece,
and reinserted into the physical, social, and cultural world. The tape recorder
plays a privileged role in this process as the apparatus that embodies the
symbolic transformation of sound objects into musical objects. Before tape
machines were introduced in the studio in 1950, Schaeffer used turntables to
play sounds. He was fascinated by the possibilities of performing with sound
machines like keyboard instruments:
Let there be an organ of which the stops each correspond to a disc player
of which one would furnish the fitted turntable at will; let us suppose that
the keyboard of this organ sets the pickups into action simultaneously or
successively, instantly and for the duration that one wants … one obtains,
theoretically, an enormous instrument capable not only of replacing all
existing instruments, but of every conceivable instrument, musical or
not, of which the notes do or do not correspond to the pitches given in
the range. This instrument is currently a figment of the mind, but it is
achievable to some extent. (Schaeffer 1952, 15-6; Emmerson 2007, 25;
emphasis in the original).27
The use of the turntable as an instrument anticipates the digital sampler.

As Emmerson points out, it remains a “visionary moment” for Schaeffer’s
view of the analog studio as a performance situation: the composer plays with
technical apparatuses; his actions (i.e., the active situations) produce events
(i.e., the passive situations) that may or may not be reflected in the musical
works as situations of actions and events: “The finished work instantiates an
idealized performance—only one which did not happen at one particular
time” (Emmerson 2007, 25). The functions of the apparatuses are constraints
that shape the composer’s individual creativity.
The interaction between the different apparatuses in the physical and
symbolic space of the studio can be also seen as a situation of intertextuality.
The experience in the studio relates to previous experiences with the
apparatuses. The continuous recycling of previous ideas and materials shapes
the meaning of sound objects. A semiotics of musique concrète must take into
account the interaction with the different apparatuses in the physical and
27
Emmerson (2007, 25) for the English translation.
130
symbolic space of the studio, the processes of encoding and decoding that
take with the apparatuses. To illustrate this approach, a semiotic model is
helpful in examining the symbolic functionality of the three main apparatuses
used in the analog studio: microphone, tape recorder, and loudspeaker. These
three apparatuses relate to both Tarasti’s concept of situation28 and Peirce’s
universal categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness:
First is the conception of being or existing independently of anything

else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the conception of
reaction with something else. Third is the conception of mediation,
whereby a first and second are brought into relation. (Peirce 1992, 296)29
The microphone is used to convert sound vibrations into electric signals.

Technically, the conversion should be as true and proportional as possible.
Firstness is the perceiving of simultaneous and unarticulated vibrations
through the microphone; Secondness is the distinguishing between action and
reaction, stimulus and response; Thirdness is fixing what has been perceived
and distinguished. The microphone is the apparatus that mediates between
the word—the acoustic environment—and the body. Using the microphone
as a listening tool is an intentional act. This mediation is both a selective and a
reciprocal process, since listening affects the way we use the microphone and
the microphone affects the listening experience.
The tape recorder is an electroacoustic memory that converts electrical
signals representing sound with as much fidelity as possible onto magnetic
tape, faithfully representing those signals. Firstness is neutrally representing
the recording of sound on magnetic tape; Secondness is observing the
recorded sounds and distinguishing their potential to change; Thirdness is
manipulating the recorded sounds, using the tape recorder as a compositional
tool. The sound captured by the microphone and memorized by the tape
recorder becomes a manipulatable object. The actions taken with the tape
recorder—separation, fragmentation, transposition, repetition/loop, and
montage, create a continuous chain of interpretations of the sound object.
The loudspeaker is used to convert electrical audio signals into acoustic
energy. It accomplishes a similar role as the microphone but in reverse
order: the microphone responds to variations in air pressure, while the
mechanical motion of the loudspeaker causes the pressure waves in the air
28
For an account of musical situation cf. Tarasti (2002, 65-87).
29
See also the description of the categories in the Introduction to Peirce’s Selected Works
(Houser 1992, xxx).
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that we call sound. Firstness here is the projecting of sound as a simultaneous

and unarticulated phenomenon in the continuous flux of sound waves;
Secondness is listening to the sound projected through the loudspeaker;
Thirdness is assigning symbolic and artistic meaning to the sounds produced
by the loudspeaker.30
3.4. Electroacoustic Studio as Non-Trivial Machine
From the point of view of cybernetics, the studio of musique concrète can be
seen as machine for processing sound and music. The combination of the
three apparatuses—microphone, tape recorder, and loudspeaker—configures
a process of cybernetic circularity. The studio converts the physical reality
of the acoustic environment into sound and music objects that are projected
into the real world, as works of music, which become themselves available
as sound and music objects for further transformations. This feedback loop
shapes the creativity of the electroacoustic studio.
It is possible to formulate this insight using the terminology first proposed
by Heinz von Foerster and further elaborated by Luhmann (cf. Foerster
1984; Luhmann 2013, 67-68). Foerster distinguishes between trivial and
non-trivial machines. A trivial machine is characterized by the fact that the
input is transformed into output according to a specific rule. For example, a
mathematical operation such as 2 x 2 will always return the output of 4. The
trivial machine is predictable and history independent. A non-trivial machine
differs in the sense that “a response once observed for a given stimulus
may not be the same for the same stimulus given later” (Foerster 1984, 10;
emphasis in the original). The non-trivial machine can be understood as
having a machine inside a machine, which builds a self-referential loop built
using its own output as input, so that its internal logic changes with every
operation. The behavior of the machine becomes unpredictable even if one
knows the principle of its program. The four characteristics of the non-trivial
machine, according to Foerster, are: synthetically deterministic, as it can be
easily constructed; history dependent, because every operation changes the
logic operator; analytically indeterminable, because of its non-linear mode
of operation; analytically unpredictable, because the uncertainties of its
behavior cannot be eliminated (cf. Foerster 1984, 13).
Cybernetic machines are not limited to mathematical and scientific
models but include all kinds of individual and social constructs. As Luhmann
claims, “conscious systems are non-trivial machines” (Luhmann 2013, 68)
30
For a technical description of these devices, see Rossing et al. (2002).
132
but we live in social systems that tend to be constructed as trivial machines,

assuming that everything has to function according to a set of rules. We
want to remove all uncertainties in our environment. When we buy a car
or a phone, we expect them to function exactly as intended. However, if we
extend this principle to human relations, if we begin to trivialize one another,
we reduce the number of choices and reinforce autistic tendencies that pave
the way to a kind of collective blindness. The ethical imperative, as Foerster
suggests, is de-trivialization (Foerster 1984, 13). In this sense, system theory
proposes a radically different approach assuming that social systems function
as non-trivial machines according to the principle of “operational closure”31
When using this combined lens of semiotics, cybernetics, and system
theory, it is necessary to revise our description of electroacoustic music.
Both elektronische Musik and musique concrète have strongly influenced
contemporary conception of sound by developing aesthetics that have
transformed sound into a meaningful medium. Elektronische Musik describes
itself as a non-trivial machine processing sound in relation to the tradition of
vocal and instrumental music. It distinguishes the opposition between noise
and musical sound as one of its crucial operations. This opposition feeds
the self-referential loop of elektronische Musik that extends and transforms
traditional categories of music composition such as harmony, spectrum,
rhythm, and texture. A critique of elektronische Musik must question whether
its attachment to tradition may have the negative effect of transforming it on
a predictable basis and becoming a trivial machine.
Musique concrète (and the related tradition of acousmatic) defines itself as
a non-trivial machine processing sound as a self-referential phenomenon; it
articulates sound aesthetics based on self-describing approaches that detach
sound composition from the traditional models; it relies instead on morphology
and typology of sound as proposed by Schaeffer and his followers.32 A critique
31
Operational closure is the central issue of self-organizing, autopoeitic social systems,
including the social system of art. For a discussion of operational closure related to the
idea of non-trivial machines, see Luhmann (2013, 63-70). See also “Communication and
Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein.
32
For an example of this approach see the tables in the concluding part of the Traité
des Objects Musicaux, which represent an attempt to provide a consistent description,
classification, and generalization of the theory of musique concrète (Schaeffer 1966,
584-7). Michel Chion’s Guide des Objects Sonores (Chion 1983) is a very useful tool for
accessing Schaeffer’s theory; it provides a dictionary of 100 notions from Schaeffer’s
treatise grouped under research and description categories. Schaeffer’s methodological
approach nourishes the imagination of many composers that continue to develop the
acousmatic project both in terms of composition and academic research. For example:
Smalley (1986; 1997; 2007) and Whishart (1996). Chion’s Audio-Vision (Chion 1998)
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of musique concrete can be formulated in the following terms: “starting from

recorded real sounds, [musique concrète] certainly gave access to a vast sound
vocabulary; but the sonic transformation seems to me rudimentary compared
to the richness and the personality of the starting sound” (Risset 1990, 108).
This criticism was motivated by Risset’s engagement to computer music,
which as he claims, creates the possibility of accessing the microstructure of
sound and composing the sound itself. This argument, as we have seen, is also
problematic when digital synthesis turns its attention to the simulation of
acoustic instruments and voices and when computer music languages develop
compositional grammars that reinforce traditional forms of musical thinking.33
What is essential for the study of musique concrète, elektronische Musik, and
computer music is the integration of technology into the observing process so
that technology itself becomes an observer. The observer “is characterized by
being able to make descriptions” (Foerster 2003, 283). From the perspective
of system theory, the observer is the one that observes operations and, at
the same, the observer is himself an operation (cf. Luhmann 2013, 101-
19).34 This definition seems awkward if we don’t make a distinction between
operation and observation. The observer should not be equated with an
individual; a social communication system is also an observer. Any theory of
electroacoustic music, whatever definition we might assign it, must consider
the apparatus as an observer and integrate the observations made by the
apparatuses into the framework of conceptual distinctions. The investigation
has to consider aesthetic implications of the apparatus, how the manipulation
of apparatuses or the playing with apparatuses shapes the formal decisions.
In other words, the machinery should be recognized as an observer and enter
the feedback loop of the observation system. Against the core proposition of
the acousmatic project, or the notion of “reduced listening”, the conclusion
here is that the assumption of a sound that could be made invisible by
eliminating its references creates a “blind spot”, preventing one from making
visible the function of the apparatus in the creative process. By setting the
apparatus apart from the system of electroacoustic music, we are left with an
unsatisfactory account of its creative possibilities.
presents a reflection on the development of audio-visual inspired by acousmatic and

focused on sound in cinema.
33
I am referring to computer music languages for digital synthesis like the MUSIC series
and Csound, which internally articulate the fundamental distinction between the
control level (score) and the sound generation level (orchestra) (cf. Roads 1996, 49-84).
The recent development of Csound surmounts this distinction.
34
For an account of the concept of observer see “Communication and Meaning: Music as
Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein.
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4. Creativity with Apparatuses
4.1. Technical Reproduction
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin’s

essay originally published in Paris in 1936,35 is a major reference in humanistic
studies on the relationship between art, media and technology. Benjamin reflects
on the impact of technical reproduction on artistic creation, perception and the
function of art in emerging mass society. One of the most quoted passages of
the essay states: “[F]or the first time in world history, technical reproduction
emancipates the work of art from its parasitical existence on ritual” (Benjamin
1977, 144).36 The first artworks, according to Benjamin, originated in the service
of a ritual, first the magical then the religious ritual. The aura of the work of art
is ingrained in its ritualistic function, which declined during the Renaissance
and was replaced by the secular cult of beauty. This prevailed for three centuries
until the advent of photography, which was the first revolutionary medium of
technical reproduction that challenged the notion of the “authentic” work of art.
For Benjamin, the doctrine of l’art pour l’art appeared as a reaction to the loss of
authenticity, installing a sort of theology of art, a cult of pure artwork detached
from any social function. We can interpret the ritualistic function of art from the
perspective of the body. The religious ritual is celebrated in a physical location
in the presence of bodies. When art gets detached from religion, the artwork is
transformed into an autonomous object that can eventually be celebrated as an
ersatz for religion. The aura of the work of art is thus due to this simulacrum
of religious content that became invisible as the art itself became a “profane”
ritual. The technology of reproducibility replaces the physical presence through
a virtual presence, which creates its own rituals. Along with photography,
recorded sound should also be included in the revolution that introduced the
era of technical reproduction. The cinema is the first art form that accomplishes
the convergence of these first virtual bodies, images and sounds.37
35
The original text in French—“L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction méchanisée”—
appeared in the journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung Jahrgang V, edited by Mark
Horkheimer (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1936, pp. 40-68). Available at: http://ia700805.us.archive.
org/2/items/ZeitschriftFrSozialforschung5.Jg/ZeitschriftFrSozialforschung51936.pdf
[accessed August 1, 2013].
36
The passage is translated from the German text. The German word “Reproduzierbarkeit”
means literally “reproducibility”; it has been translated as “mechanical reproduction”; I
prefer instead the term “technical reproduction”, which is more general, yet it doesn’t
convey the exact meaning of the original German word.
37
In How We Became Posthuman, Hayles proposes a semiotic model to analyze the
materiality of signifying processes in the post-industrial society that give rise to new
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Benjamin’s essay, written during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the German
Nazi party, is a political critique of fascism in Europe; it anticipates the
events that culminated in the outbreak of World War II and the tragedy
of the Holocaust. The reflection on the role of technological reproduction
in shaping human experience goes together with his concern about the
increasing proletarization and development of a mass culture in modern
society, a process that Marx and Nietzsche had already observed at the end
of the 19th century. The conclusions are ambivalent. On the one hand,
Benjamin suggests that technology introduces a revolutionary change, which
appears already in photography and especially in film, as it disengages the
artwork from its “aura” of authenticity, allowing the spectator to participate
in the creative experience. The technical apparatus has deeply penetrated into
reality; in film, for instance, the actor performs not directly for the audience
but for the camera. The camera doesn’t present the actor’s performance but
its own performance resulting from the combination of shooting and editing
techniques. The audience can only empathize with the actor’s performance
if it empathizes with the camera’s performance. As Benjamin points out, the
technical apparatus brings a new kind of creativity that liberates art from the
bonds of authenticity and the ritualistic function associated with location
and the original utility. However, creative potential can only be achieved if
the aesthetics of the artwork explores the new possibilities of the apparatus
from a critical perspective, if the apparatus doesn’t become itself an object of
veneration.
On the other hand, Benjamin recognizes the alienating potential of art in
the age of technical reproduction. Film illustrates this resistance to eliminating
the cult function of the artwork; it creates a new kind of illusion that puts the
audience into a state of scattered, fragmented attention. In the epilog of the
essay, Benjamin replaces his optimistic tone with a warning and an apocalyptic
vision of the future dominated by the fear of emerging fascism. The violation
of the masses and of the technical apparatus are two related consequences
of the fascistic orientation of society. The technical apparatus is pressed into
the production of ritual values, serving the fascistic purpose of reintroducing
aesthetics into politic life: “All effort to render politics aesthetic culminate
in one thing: war” (Benjamin 1977, 168). Benjamin quotes Marinetti’s
manifesto about the Ethiopian war, in which he celebrates the beauty of the
war machinery and the aesthetics of war and violence. War is supposed to
provide the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed
kinds of embodiment, through the interplay of presence and absence (cf. Hayles 1999,
247-82).
136
by the machine and technology. Benjamin sees in fascism the culmination of

the ideal of l’art pour l’art. Self-alienation within fascism becomes so extreme
that the destruction of humanity becomes itself an aesthetic experience.38
4.2. The Telematic Dialog
A half century after Benjamin, Flusser’s media philosophy expresses a similar

kind of ambivalence toward the potential of technical apparatuses. Flusser is
recognized as one of the first philosophers to anticipate the emerging digital
society of the internet and web-based culture dominated by technical and
electronic images, a form of life that is now shaping our scientific, political, and
artistic environment.39 His book Into the Universe of Technical Images (Flusser
2011), written in the mid-1980s, one decade before the internet revolution
and two decades before the mobile communication revolution, introduces
“the prospect of a future society that synthesizes electronic images [;…] a
fabulous society, where life is radically different from our own” (Flusser 2011,
3). The book opens with a warning statement about the repressive potential
of global networks, while at the same time, is a manifesto for unraveling their
creative potential through a new kind of connected communication that he
calls “telematic dialogue”:
Taking contemporary technical images as a starting point we find two

divergent trends. One moves toward a centrally programmed, totalitarian
society of image receivers and image administrator, the other toward
a dialogic, telematic society of image producers and image collectors.
From our standpoint, both these social structures are fantastic, even
though the first presents a somewhat negative, the second a positive,
utopia. In any case, we are still free at this point to challenge these values.
(Flusser 2011, 4)
The first option provides the scenario of a techno-fascism that eliminates

human agency and decision, and transforms man into a programmable
38
The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is a major
symbolic event for the fascination exerted by violence and destruction; the images of the
attack repeatedly delivered by the mass media are examples of the potential of terrorism
to shape aesthetic pleasure. In Baudrillard’s words: “By the grace of [sic] terrorism, the
World Trade Center has become the world’s most beautiful building—the eighth wonder
of the world” (Baudrillard 2002, 48).
39
For a concise account of Flusser’s media philosophy, cf. Hartmann (2000, 279-98), and
Kloock and Spahr (1997, 77-98).
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being; the second option encourages us to explore the liberating potential

of digital technology, which empowers us with the ability to achieve a new
kind of freedom by programming our own reality. Flusser’s account of the
telematic society focuses on the transformation from a writing-based culture
to a digital images-based one. He analyzes the evolution of communication
codes through the text/image relationship. The image has a magical and
mythological meaning; prehistoric man communicated through traditional
images that preceded the invention of text. The development of writing,
which began with the Sumerians around 3500 BC, represents the lack of
belief in the magical iconic power of images and the belief in narratives,
theories, and ideologies. Flusser associates writing with the linear mode of
thinking that created historical consciousness. The shift occurred, according
to him, when the scientists of Modernity began to envision knowledge
more in terms of numbers and less in terms of texts; theoretical thinking
has migrated from written to numerical codes—from alphabetical codes and
historical consciousness to binary codes of computer and cybernetic systems.
This transformation culminated in the invention of technical images—photo,
film, television, video, and computer. The calculative and analytical thinking
of science and technology has decomposed the phenomena into abstract and
punctual elements. This process has resulted in the crisis of Modernity that
affects all spheres of life, including the existential, social, cultural, and has
caused the lack of faith in the power of theories and ideologies. Technical
images are the expression of the crisis and at the same time, the possibility
of overcoming it. They have re-codified the world by re-introducing magic
and belief in the power of the image. Yet the current magic of technical
images is of another kind, different from the magic of traditional images. The
pre-historic images encode the concrete world in terms of myths—they are
like mirrors that can be decoded as signs; technical images encode abstract
concepts that can only be decoded in terms of programs.
Flusser reflects on the cybernetic paradigm of dematerialized information.
He argues that the apparatuses that produce technical images have the
possibility of reversing the process of alienation or abstraction, rescuing
and reshaping the concrete universe. As previously mentioned, he calls
this ability of the technical images to create concrete forms from abstract
elements the power to imagine [Einbildungskraft] (Flusser 2011, 33-39).
Our culture is no longer concerned with creating a picture of reality, but
with developing an alternative imagination, by exploring the products of
scientific and technological revolution. The alternative words that have been
emerging in computers and other digital devices represent this processes of
transformation from abstract into concrete elements: they are condensations
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of digital particles or bits, taking the form of images, sounds, and eventually
bodies, robots, and other forms of life endowed with artificial intelligence.
Computers symbolize calculating thought that can synthesize and project
alternative worlds from algorithms.40 As Flusser claims, “We are no longer
subjects of a given objective world, but projects of alternative worlds. From
the submissive subjective position we have raised ourselves to projecting. We
are growing up. We know that we are dreaming” (Flusser 1997a, 213). These
projections can be as concrete as the environment that surrounds us. The
more sophisticated the condensation processes of computers are, the more
real the synthetic worlds become, so that we no longer distinguish between
reality and digital appearance.
In the unfinished essay Vom Subjekt zum Projekt [From Subject to
Project] (Flusser 1998), which can be considered the latest stage of his
digital utopia, Flusser recasts the idea of telematic dialog in terms of the
practice of projection. Numerical, calculating thinking has penetrated deeper
and deeper into things, “but instead of reaching a bottom has dissolved
things into clouds of vapor floating in nothingness” (Flusser 1998, 11).
This relationship has gradually abolished the belief in the subject/object
relationship. As an object, man is dissolved into a network of simultaneous
relations—psychological, psychic, social, and cultural; as a subject, man is
fragmented into calculus itself. Flusser applies the analogy of the computer
bit in order to characterize the transformation from linear thinking or
written codes to the pixel, and then to the null dimensionality of digital
codes and the state of nothingness, which evokes the “death of humanism”.
Yet Flusser rejects nihilistic pessimism; he proposes instead a negative
anthropology—a postmodern and post-humanistic one—in order to deny
nothingness. From this reversal results an affirmative philosophy of the
practice of projection, which is performed by means of digital apparatuses
and transforms numerical thinking into synthetic codes: lines, shapes,
colors, and sounds. Thanks to the power to imagine we have overcome the
lack of belief, the subjectivity that led us to the state of catastrophe. We are
standing up in order to project ourselves, not as a group of individuals, but
as a dialog in a telematic network. The possibility to construct alternative
worlds reconstructs the concept of “freedom”, in that we have to continuously
40
See Flusser’s emblematic essay “Digitaler Schein” [Digital Appearance] in Flusser (1997a,
202-15). Concerning the function of the computer Flusser gives the following definition:
“Computers are devices for realizing inter-human, interpersonal, and extra-human
possibilities thanks to the precise computational thinking” (Flusser 1997a, 213).
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develop a consensus to keep this inter-subjective dialog alive and participate

in the practice of projection (Flusser 1998, 17).
Flusser’s description of the telematic society indicates tendencies of the
present. For example, the playful game of generating information points to the
Platonic utopia of a society whose economy becomes increasingly dedicated to
providing people with entertainment and leisure; the networking architecture
of the dialog points to the merging of political and private spheres in the social
media; the interactions between humans and robots point to the mutation
towards a hybrid (post-human) society:
The scenario, the fable, I propose here is this: people will sit in separate
cells, playing with their fingertips on keyboards, staring at tiny screens,
receiving, changing, and sending images. Behind their backs, robots
will bring them things to maintain and reproduce their derelict bodies.
People will be in contact with one another through their fingertips and
so form a dialogical net, a global superbrain, whose function will be
to calculate and compute improbable situations into pictures, to bring
information, catastrophes about. Artificial intelligences will also be in
dialogue with human beings, connected through cables and similar
nerve strands. In terms of function, then, it will be meaningless to
try to distinguish between natural and artificial intelligence (between
primate brains and secondary brains). The whole thing will function as a
cybernetically controlled system that cannot be divided into constituent
elements: a black box. (Flusser 2011, 161)
4.3. Telematic Chamber Music
In the concluding chapter of Into the Universe of Technical Images, Flusser

suggests chamber music “as a model for dialogic communication in general, and
for telematic communication in particular” (Flusser 2011, 162).41 He draws a
parallel between communication through music and through technical images.
The universe of music is just as calculated and computed as that of technical
images. Both have emancipated themselves from the semantic dimension,
channelizing the possibilities of composition and computations toward self-
referential “pure” art. Traditional chamber music, according to Flusser, is a
41
For an account of telematic chamber music see my article “A Música de Câmara
Telemática: a Metáfora de Flusser e o Universo da Música Eletroacústica” [Telematic
Chamber Music: Flusser’s Metaphor and the Universe of Electroacoustic Music] (Chagas
2008).
140
pre-industrial form of communication that anticipates imaging techniques.

It requires sophisticated communication between the players, each one
performing for him- or herself and for all the others. From the point of view of
sound production, chamber music requires interaction between bodies, voices,
and musical instruments. It shapes a direct relationship between the bodies and
instruments or voices, since the resonance of the instruments is transmitted to
the bodies (in the case of voice the transmission is internal) and the bodily
activity of the musicians controls the sound events of the musical flow. There is
thus a direct and analog feedback between body and sound. From the point of
view of communication, chamber music is a collective process unlike music for
soloists. At the same time, it stimulates the individuality of musicians, unlike
orchestral music directed by a conductor. Feedback processes affecting the
body and sound also regulate the relationship between the musicians.42
The dialog between bodies and instruments, including the voice, is
therefore the foundation of chamber music both as sound production and
communication. Gesture is one of the most important aspects of this dialog.
In performing a work of chamber music, the musicians refer to a system
of instructions that can either be a pure score (classical music), a schematic
score (jazz, popular music), a diagram with instructions (improvised music),
or any kind of textual or graphical notation (free improvisation is generally
communicated orally). The interpretation of these instructions requires a
multifaceted system of communication consisting of aural, visual, and gestural
elements. It is through gesture that musicians communicate intentions such as
maintaining a rhythm, beginning or completing a musical phrase, increasing
or decreasing loudness, accelerating or decelerating tempo, and other crucial
features of musical performance. Typical gestures of chamber music include
breathing to indicate the intention of synchronizing actions, tapping feet
on the floor; making movements with the head, arms, or other body parts.
Other gestures involve making abrupt movements with the instrument such
as with a woodwind, the bow for stringed instruments, or drumsticks with
percussion instruments. In general, musical performance produces indexical
gestures resulting from the combined action of bodily movements with
specific movements of the instruments.
The function of gesture in music is not restricted, however, to the
corporeal and immediate aspect of performance. As pointed out by
42
Flusser reflects on the embodiment of musical communication in his essay “Die Geste des
Musikhörens” [The Gesture of Music Listening] (Flusser 1997b, 151-59). He claims that,
when listening to music, the body is literarily penetrated by the musical message: “the
body becomes music and the music becomes body” (Flusser 1997b, 155).
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Wittgenstein, gesture plays an important role as an external sign of musical

understanding.43 Recent studies on musical semiotics indicate that gesture
not only articulates nuances of perception, cognition, and affection, but also
negotiates the understanding of more abstract musical structures through
the internal synthesis and integration of elements. Barthes, in his essay on
Schumann’s piano music, identified several “figures whose body textures
constitute the musical meaning” (Barthes 1985, 307). Lidov (1987) outlined
a semiotic theory of gesture in music, showing through the interpretation of
Chopin’s music for piano how gesture can contribute to creating different
musical meanings. Hatten (2004) developed a comprehensive theory of
emergence and generalization of musical gesture. Defining gesture as
“significant energetic shaping of sound through time” (Hatten 2004, 95;
emphasis in the original), he demonstrates the evolution of stylistic gestures
in the works of classical and romantic composers such as Beethoven and
Schubert. Hatten’s analysis focuses on the interpretation process through
which physical gesture is transformed into musical gesture. This process
creates stylistic and stereotyped gestures, which synthesize or integrate
various musical elements that are relevant to understanding different levels
of structure and musical form.
A semiotic investigation of musical gestures provides insight into musical
evolution from the point of view of the relationship between stylistic elements
and concrete contexts. This can be observed for example, in the evolution of
the string quartet, a form of chamber music that has achieved an outstanding
level of sophistication. In watching a performance of a string quartet, we can
observe how physical and musical gestures vary according to specific styles
and aesthetics. Since the mid-18th century, composers such as Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Schoenberg, and Webern have written works
that have expanded the instrumental and aesthetic possibilities of music for
string quartet. This process has also extended the repertoire of musical gestures,
as we see for example, in the music for string quartet composed in the second
half of the 20th century: micro-polyphonic textures (Ligeti), complex scores
that transcend the logical limits of notation (Ferneyhough), stochastic and
algorithmic models of composition (Xenakis), and experimental aesthetics
that re-elaborates concepts of time and space in music (Stockhausen).
In Stockhausen’s Helikopter–Streichquartett [Helicopter String Quartet]
(1992-93) each musician of the string quartet plays inside a flying helicopter
and the audience sits in a concert hall. The sound of the instruments is
captured by microphones, mixed with noise produced by the aircraft and
43
See “Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics and Aesthetics”, pp. 13-41 herein.
142
projected to the audience in the concert hall together with images of the
musicians captured by cameras. This work can be considered a prototype of
telematic chamber music for many different reasons: (1) The piece disconnects
the performance from the physical presence in the concert hall and connects
it to a telematic choreography that creates a displacement of both space and
time. (2) The piece subverts the function of the helicopters as they fly for
the sole purpose of performing a work of art. (3) The musicians perform
for the audience via the electroacoustic audiovisual medium (microphone,
amplifiers, and video projection) so that the presence of the electroacoustic
medium replaces the physical body.
Flusser’s model of telematic dialog is an attempt to make a synthesis of two
different types of communication: (1) The communication of chamber music,
which occurs in the physical medium with bodies producing gestures that are
translated into sounds. (2) The communication of electronic music, which
occurs in the virtual medium with apparatuses producing programs that are
translated into sounds or images. He describes the telematic performance as
a dialog between “musicians” and “intelligent memories”, which are, at the
same time, transmitters and receivers of information. The goal of the dialog
is to synthesize new information. Unlike traditional chamber music, which is
structured as a succession of linear events such as themes and variations, the
telematic dialog “occurs in simultaneous time and space, and all players in
all places make decisions relating to themes and their variations all at once”
(Flusser 2011, 163). In this view, the basis of telematic communication is not
an original score but a program, a set of rules that will soon be replaced by
reprogrammed memories with which the musicians will improvise. He doesn’t
distinguish between composition and performance; his model of telematic
communication suggests that he is seeking to reconstruct an “experience of
presence” that emerges from the performative character of improvisation and
at the same time, ignores the crucial role of composition in the development of
the string quartet. What are the implications of such a conception of creativity?
Flusser speculates on the convergence of acoustic and visual media. As
mentioned above, he considers the universe of technical images as “calculated”
and “pure” in the same sense that music alone was. A new level of audiovisual
consciousness is reached with the rise of technical images, one that realizes
the visionary power of music. Should we consider convergence between image
and sound as restricted to the universe of audiovisual technology or as a more
general subject of artistic creation? Flusser notes that
all pretechnical images and all pretechnical music could be understood

as aspiring to technical sounding images, making the technical image
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the first instance of music becoming an image and an image becoming

music […] It will become pointless to try to distinguish between music
and so-called visual arts because everyone will be a composer, will make
images. The universe of technical images can be seen as a universe of
musical vision. (Flusser 2011, 165)
The music by Morton Feldman (1926-87) is a compelling example of how

sound and image can be interlaced as a basis for musical creativity. Feldman
was very closely aligned with painters belonging to the movement of abstract
expressionism; many of his compositions found inspiration in paintings and
patterns of traditional Middle Eastern rugs.44 Reflecting on how painting
can be described, by its subject or its surface, Feldman asks how these two
categories can be interpreted in music. He calls construction “the controlling
metaphor of the composition” (Feldman 2000, 83). The difference between
musical construction and surface lies for him in the conception of time. A
music that doesn’t have a surface submits to time and becomes a rhythmic
progression. The music that develops a surface creates a sense of “Undisturbed
Time”.45 Feldman acknowledges that music surface became an obsession for
him. He considers his works as moving between the categories of time and
space, between painting and music, between construction and surface. His
music, although it operates only with the medium of instrumental and vocal
sound (he didn’t compose electroacoustic music), uncovers a unique power
to imagine emerging from the methodological search of principles mutually
relating music and visual composition.
4.4 The Electronic Implosion of the Radio: The Feedback of the Masses
Exploring the common cultural, political, and economic roots of technical

sound in the 20th century can provide an understanding of the historical
development of electroacoustic music. We see how musical models of creativity
arise from situations shaped by previous political, economic, and cultural
praxis, which created the material conditions and social consciousness for
future artistic imagination and agency. In the specific case of electroacoustic
44
For a description of the influence of rug patterns see Feldman’s article “Crippled
Symmetry” in Feldman (2000, 134-49).
45
Feldman’s distinction between construction and surface can be analyzed according to
the semiotic theory of “modalities”. Construction is related to the temporal modality of
“doing” and surface to the temporal modality of “being”. Tarasti developed the theory of
musical modalities inspired by the structural semiotics of Greimas; cf. Tarasti (1994, 27,
38-43).
144
music, the medium of radio played a key role, particularly in the political
context of the German Third Reich. Radio broadcasting was directly linked to
the National Socialist Party as a main instrument of propaganda, education,
and mobilization of the masses. Radio politics determined what people were
allowed to listen to and how they should listen. The development of radio
occurred parallel to the development of the loudspeaker, which radically
transformed the experience of listening. The significance of the loudspeaker
in controlling the acoustic landscape is similar to the role of modern means
of transportation in controlling territory: “Without cars, without airplanes
and without loudspeakers we wouldn’t have conquered Germany,” admitted
Adolf Hitler (Weinbrenner 1938, 3).
Hitler addressed the masses through the radio and always in public
spaces. The propaganda machine of the Third Reich explored the use of
electroacoustic apparatuses for making Hitler’s voice appealing. The voice
was captured by microphone, amplified and projected through loudspeakers
into monumental spaces, re-captured by microphones, mixed with the sound
of the roaring masses, and finally broadcast on radio. This process can be
seen as an aesthetic manipulation of the feedback of the enthusiastic masses
in order to add a living, vibrating quality to Hitler’s speeches. The amplified
voice enhanced with this feedback significantly contributed to aesthetically
constructing the cult of the Führer. As an instrument of propaganda, the
radio in the Third Reich developed an aesthetics of sound that deliberately
orchestrated both acoustics and the artistic use of sound technology. Along
with the improvement of the quality of the electroacoustic apparatuses, the
radio explored the broadcast studio as a tool for intensifying the acoustic
experience. As stated by Dr. Braunmuehl, chief engineer of the Reichrundfunk:
Indeed, the acoustic conditions of the room, such as the characteristics

of microphones, amplifiers, and speakers, cannot be understood from
a purely technical point of view. While the electroacoustic elements of
transmission are to be developed only according to the requirement of
transmission fidelity, the acoustic quality of a room is inseparable from
the resulting sound image, as it also impacts the speakers, musicians, and
the audience. (Braunmuehl 1938, 70)
McLuhan (1964) associates radio with the political, social, and cultural
forms of European societies, which he considers “earthy” and less visual than
American societies and therefore more receptive to the magic of radio, which
he associates with tribal ritual. It is the tribal magic of radio that resonates
with fascism, claims McLuhan: “Had TV come first there would have been
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no Hitler at all” (McLuhan 1964, 299). The radio offers a world of unspoken
communication between the speaker in front of the microphone and the
listener in front of the loudspeaker. It simulates the experience of private
intimacy mediated by electroacoustic apparatuses. As McLuhan notes, “The
subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal
horns and antique drums” (McLuhan 1964, 299). The radio has a dimension
of resonance that transforms society into a single echo chamber. The sounds
of radio reach people in several ways; they enable objective and subjective
processes of communication via electromagnetic waves that transform the
mass society into a global village. The radio thus was one of the most effective
tools for introducing the globalization process of capitalism. It triggered
the electronic transformation that preceded the universe of telematic
comunication: “Radio provided the first massive experience of electronic
implosion, that reversal of the entire direction and meaning of literate Western
civilization” (McLuhan 1964, 300).
In his analysis of 1930s Germany, McLuhan detects a feeling of
claustrophobia engendered by the electronic implosion of radio and
compression of the physical space. This is expressed by the German obsession
with the idea of Lebensraum [space to live], which became a motivation for
justifying the imperialistic and military ambitions of the Nazi regime. The
tribal past is deeply rooted in German history and has never disappeared
from the German subconscious mind, according to McLuhan. Even while
criticizing the historical anachronism of this kind of analysis, I fully agree
with this observation. It confirms the subjective impression I accquired living
in Germany for 25 years.46 On the other hand, the tribal character that can
be associated with the collective imaginary of German society encourages
the development of oral (myths) and auditory (radio) communication. As
McLuhan claims, the visceral quality of the sound of radio gave them easy
access to the new non-visual world of subatomic physics. McLuhan sees radio
as a hot medium that conveys a preliterate vitality: “The message of radio
is one of violent, unified implosion and resonance” (McLuhan 1964, 301).
Listening to the radio we experience the invisibility of the sound; we have to
fill the acoustic impression with all the senses.
After World War II, the German broadcasting system was reorganized as a
network of local stations distributed across the country. The new broadcasting
was indeed oriented to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), but
46
In January 1980, I moved from Brazil to Europe. First I lived in Liège, Belgium, and
visited Germany regularly. In September 1982, I moved to Cologne and lived there until
November 2004, when I moved to Riverside, California.
146
in contrast to the British model it had a decentralized configuration. Like

many other structures of post-war German society, the radio broke with
the legacy of the Nazi regime. As a consequence of this historical rupture,
a new kind of experimental creativity emerged both in artistic and technical
fields. International figures such as the German visual artist Joseph Beuys
(1921-1986) and the American composer John Cage (1912-1992)—who had
a significant impact on the German musical avant-garde—symbolized a new
attitude that questioned established artistic categories and the very concept of
art. The break with the past transformed the implosion of Nazi radio into the
creative explosion of postwar radio. The radio took over an important role in
the organization of musical life in Germany; it supported the movement of
Neue Musik that carried on the experimental tradition of serial music, which
the Nazi regime had condemned as degenerated art and tried to eliminate. It
is in the fertile ground of experimentation nourished by radio that electronic
music has sprouted and grown.
4.5. The Experimental Creativity of the Radio: Stories from the Electronic
Music Studio of Cologne
The history of the Cologne Studio for Electronic Music still has to be
written.47 The official version documented in archives of the WDR has to be
confronted by the unofficial stories, narratives, and reports by the people who
worked in the studio or were in one or another way linked to its activities.
Unofficially, the Studio für Elektronische Musik des Nordwestdeutschen
Rundfunks (NWDR) began in 1951 when a group of people started to put
into practice the idea of creating music with electronic apparatuses especially
for the medium of radio. It took a while, however, before the final studio
was set up in the Cologne Funkhaus [Broadcasting Center] (cf. Morawska-
Büngeler 1988, 7-18). The phonetician and communication scientist Werner
Meyer-Eppler (1913-1960) played a key role in the foundation of the studio
(cf. Ungeheuer 1992). He was responsible for its interdisciplinary, artistic, and
scientific orientation that was reflected in the works of the first generation of
composers that worked there, such as Eimert and Stockhausen. The influence
of phonetics on electronic music composition—at the level of both sound
47
For the early history of the Cologne studio from the foundation in the 1950s until the mid-
1980s see Schwingende Elektronen: Eine Dokumentation über das Studio für Elektronische
Musik des WDR 1951-1986 (Moraska-Büngeler 1988). For the period between 1990 and
1999, see “The Temple of Electronic Music: The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne
in the 1990s”, pp. 159-202 herein. Some topics of this section intersect with the essay
though from a different perspective.
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material and formal structuring—is illustrated by seminal works such as

Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56) and Eimert’s Epitaph für Aikichi
Kuboyama (1960-62) (see above).
The studio was officially launched in 1953 with the first concerts of
electronic music in the Cologne Funkhaus. This concert hall, strategically
located in downtown Cologne near the Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station)
and Dom (Cathedral), served as a recording and broadcasting studio as well.
After the division of NWDR in 1956, the Electronic Studio was integrated
into the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). In January 2001, 50 years after
its unofficial foundation, the WDR Studio of Electronic Music ceased its
activities of musical production. All its equipment was moved from the facility
located in the Annostraße in the south of Cologne—where the studio had
been functioning since the late 1980s—to a storage facility in Ossendorf in
the Cologne suburbs. The facility in the Annostraße was closed and sold.
Sound engineer Volker Müller made the decision to rebuild on a new location,
despite the lack of interest of the WDR administration. Müller was assigned
the task of digitizing the electronic music works produced in the studio, which
he continued to perform after officially retiring in 2007. In discontinuing its
production activity, the WDR studio has ceased to be a reference for electronic
music. The historical background and events that led the WDR administration
to take this radical decision must still be investigated.
The Electronic Music Studio of Cologne left a historical legacy of
experimental musical creativity that makes it an early example of the structure
of telematic dialog (cf. Flusser 2011; Chagas 2008). Certain works produced
by the studio became important references for 20th century music and reflect
the interdisciplinary approach of the studio that generated a creative feedback
between composers, technicians, and machinery. The composer most associated
with the Cologne studio is undoubtedly Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose artistic
career is closely intertwined with the history of the studio itself. He began
there as musical assistant (1952-62), then became studio director (1963-89),
and later composer-in-residence (1990-98). Stockhausen not only used the
studio as a compositional tool but he also understood the potential of radio
as “resonance chamber” for promoting and spreading electronic music in the
globalized world. The concerts that took place in 1970 for several months in the
spherical auditorium of the World Fair in Osaka, Japan represent a memorable
moment in the history of electronic music: an emerging form of music was
performed in a dedicated space providing a large international audience with
a new kind of artistic, listening experience. This event contributed to the
international reputation of both Stockhausen and the Electronic Studio of
Cologne. Stockhausen successfully explored both the specific creativity of the
148
studio—the contribution of the engineers, technicians, and musical assistants

that helped him to realize his musical ideas—and the media structure of the
WDR Radio to perform, record, and disseminate his works. On the other
hand, the radio profoundly influenced Stockhausen’s musical choices. The
mythical reality of the radio is reflected, for instance, in electronic music
works such as Hymnen (1966/67), Sirius (1975-77), Oktophonie (1990-92), and
his monumental opera cycle Licht (1977-2003), which was partially produced
in the studio. Also, the ritualistic dimension of radio shaped his concerns
with the spiritual development of mankind and the planetary and cosmic
aspirations that he assigns to his own music.48
What still remains unnoticed in the official history of the WDR electronic
studio, is the influence of sound technicians that acted “in the shadow of the
renowned composers and studio directors” (Werner 2005, 105). For example,
Heinz Schütz (1921-2005) was a true icon of the founding period of the
studio. His virtuoso manipulation of analog apparatuses has no comparison
in the performance of current DJs. Once when he came to visit the studio in
the Annostraße, I had the opportunity to witness an amazing demonstration
of his sound creativity in the “Museum”49: Using both hands and feet, Schütz
produced very innovative and unique sounds by manipulating simultaneously
and alternatively tape recorders, oscillators, mixers, fi lters, and other analog
devices of the 1950s and 60s. It is likely that his peculiar and distinctive
creativity questioned the hierarchical relationship between composer and
technicians that prevailed in the personnel structure of the WDR studio. In
1958 Schütz left the electronic studio and founded the WDR Tontrickstudio
(Sound-trick Studio), which later became the WDR Studio für Klangdesign
(Sound-design Studio). As Werner notes:
The self-taught Heinz Schütz with his creative thinking and living style
has had a strong impact on the beginnings of the studio and therewith,
like a catalyst, also on the worldwide development, indeed on the
contemporary presence of electronic sounds in all media and in sound
art. (Werner 2005, 105)
48
Stockhausen was convinced that he would be perpetuated as a myth. In 1973 he said:
“As a name I am a myth. […] When this body no longer exists, this name will be totally
transformed into a myth”; cf “Stockhausen as Myth” in Stockhausen (1989, 1-2).
49
The so-called “Museum” was a room on the second floor of the Annostraße, where the
studio technology and equipment of the WDR studios were kept fully functioning.
Conceived by the sound engineer Volker Müller, the “Museum” provided the composers
of the 1990s with the same space design and equipment of the former studios of the 1950s
and 60s. Müller hoped that the composers would use the “old” analog technology for
producing new pieces. Unfortunately, it didn’t come to that.
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4.6. Klangregisseur and Criticism
Between 1990 and 1999, while working as Klangregisseur [Sound Director]

in the WDR Electronic Music Studio, I had the privilege of being part of
its history. The position of sound director entailed assisting composers who
were commissioned to produce pieces in the studio. The composers that held
this job were also considered composers-in-residence and were afforded the
opportunity to produce their own pieces in the studio. Some of them became
established composers at the studio, for instance Stockhausen (1952-62; the
first one), Gottfried Michael Koenig (1954-64), Mesias Maiguashca (1968-
72), and Péter Eötvös (1971-73). In the essay “Spiel und Dialog” (Chagas
2002),50 I reflect on theoretical and aesthetic issues related to my professional
experience as Klangregisseur and analyze production structures of the WDR
studio in the 1990s through the investigation of the creative substrate of
electronic studio as a model of telematic dialog engaging artists, technicians,
and apparatuses.
The term Klangregisseur goes back to Wolfgang Becker, former director
of the WDR department of Neue Musik [New Music], which supervised the
Electronic Studio. Becker anticipated the radical impact of digital technology
on production methods and the personnel structure of the electronic studio. In
the analog era, the technical-artistic assistant was assigned cumbersome and
tedious tasks such as cutting and sorting thousands of bits of tape containing
sound material, which were assembled in the electronic music composition.
In the beginning of the 1990s, it was clear that a more comprehensive
approach to the relationship between technique and art was required to assist
composers in the realization of their artistic visions. The great majority of
composers that worked in the studio had very little or no experience at all
with digital apparatuses, including computer hardware and software, digital
signal processing, digital synthesizer, or MIDI. They had to be introduced to
the world of these black boxes to get a sense of their possibilities. Only then
could they begin to understand the combinatory game of the apparatuses
and learn to think in terms of numerical symbols. The sound director had to
instruct composers on how to operate the apparatuses besides decoding their
ideas in terms of the programs and functions of the apparatuses.
In addition to assisting composers to move deeper inside the universe
of apparatuses, the sound director was involved in the strategic activities of
planning, investment, and the organization of the studio, as well as in the
production of concerts. The specific work of sound director consisted precisely
50
For an English version of this essay—“Game and Dialog”—cf. Chagas (2006a).
150
in this intermediation between technical, artistic, and administrative fields,

shaping the cybernetic dialog of the digital era. On the other hand, the sound
director was also a functionary in the same manner as engineers, technicians,
composers, producers, and other individuals working in the complex scientific,
technical, and artistic apparatus represented by the radio. (The electronic
music studio can be analyzed as part of the meta-apparatus radio, which, in
turn, is a part of the meta-apparatus media, and so on.) The term functionary
in the sense proposed by Flusser, means the individual or institutional body
that “plays with apparatus and acts as function of apparatus [sic]” (Flusser
2000, 83). As apparatuses function automatically and do not conform to any
human decision, the functionary performs actions to keep the machinery in
operation or to maintain the “absurd game with the apparatuses” (Flusser
2013, 26). However, as previously pointed out, the practice of electronic
music production can raise consciousness of the function of the apparatus to
a level that provides a model of freedom in post-industrial society. Together
with engineers, technicians, and composers, the sound director shapes the
nodes of creativity, the condensing knots from which emerge the musical
works produced in the studio.
In the mid-1990s, the WDR administration began to make plans for the
future of the Electronic Music Studio. Although the studio was considered
a prestige object, its importance shrank in the new German broadcasting
landscape after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country
divided since World War II. The era of pluralistic experimentation that
had begun after the war was over. The radio took a more pragmatic and
single-minded course, which aims to strengthen the radio’s core mission and
differentiate itself from the emerging digital networks of information and
communication with their instantaneous flux of multimodal information.
Some attempts were made to relocate the studio to an educational institution
(the Academy of Music in Essen) or a museum (the Museum of Applied Arts
in Cologne), but they all failed. Overall the whole process was quite obscure;
neither the functionaries of the studio nor the German contemporary music
community were involved in the decision-making. In late 2000, the journal
MusikTexte launched a survey on the future of the studio: “Should the
Westdeutsche Rundfunk [WDR] in Cologne give up or maintain its electronic
studio, and in which form?”51 Composers, performers, musicologists,
producers, and other people directly or indirectly involved with the studio
responded with statements, comments, and criticisms that were published
51
Original title: “Sollte der WDR sein Elektronisches Studio aufgeben oder erhalten und
in welcher Form?” (MusikTexte 2001, 16).
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in February 2001. However, this initiative ultimately did not impact the
decision to practically shut down the WDR studio.
My contribution to this survey was the article Zur Zukunft des Elektronischen
Studios: Die künstlerische Herausforderung [On the Future of the Electronic
Studio: The Artistic Challenge] (Chagas 2001)52 in which the argument is
put forth that the WDR studio failed to advance an artistic vision that would
justify its continuance. I pointed to the differentiation process of electronic
music and the new trends of the early 21st century:
Gone is the time when one could speak of ‘electronic music’ as an

independent phenomenon in the music world and accordingly channel
the studio’s work in a particular direction. The era of pure discovery,
when electronic sound and the medium radio were explored as objects
of musical creativity, has passed. Today, the term ‘electronic music’
has manifold and contradictory meanings, encompassing virtually
any musical and acoustic form that can be reproduced electronically.
Furthermore, one must consider the development of technology and
media, which opens up new communication structures and perceptual
spaces for music while closely connecting the acoustic phenomenon with
complex fields of relationships. (Chagas 2001, 17-18)
Additionally, I claimed that the direction of the studio was not attentive
to the transformation of electronic music in the 1990s. The composer York
Höller, artistic director of the studio between 1990 and 1999, felt personally
attacked by my criticism and overreacted with an open letter with harsh and
obtuse personal accusations. The problem was not so much a consequence of
whatever decisions were made by individuals; rather, it was the inability of
radio and its “functionaries” (in the sense formulated by Flusser; see above)
to respond to the transformation of electronic music in society. Fundamental
changes had taken place within the medium of radio; in the new German
radio landscape, there was no place for experimental art requiring such
intensive and time-consuming human and technical resources as the works
produced by the Cologne Electronic Music Studio.
Electronic music is nowadays a lively, vibrant field constantly diff using

through all domains of society—both in a positive and in a negative
sense. The convergence of industrial, scientific, and artistic categories
leads to the diversity of musical forms. The future of electronic music no
52
The publisher omitted the title of my article.
152
longer depends on the existence of the Electronic Music Studio. (Chagas

2001, 19)
In short, the Studio in Cologne disappeared because it became obsolete. In

the 1990s, the role of the studio was limited to the universe of German and
European Neue Musik, in which electronic music occupied a limited space.
The composers that worked in the studio produced mainly mixed works, in
which electronic sounds shared their Dasein with sounds of instruments and/
or voices, although works of pure electronic music were also produced in the
1990s.53
4.7. Creative Circularity and Feedback
Aside from Stockhausen as composer, sound engineer Volker Müller was the
key figure in the recent history of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne.
Officially he worked there from 1970 until 2007. Müller planned and
supervised the relocation of the studio from the Funkhaus to the facility in
the Annostraße, a process that lasted several years until its completion in
1987. He provided the studio with a modular and flexible design in terms of
both architecture and technique that strongly impacted the work of the 90s;
the studio facilities were allocated in many rooms so that different activities
could be pursued parallel to each other. Secondly, the mixer and the speakers
could be set up in different locations according to the kind of listening
required (e.g. stereo or multi-channel). Müller’s concept aimed to provide a
flexible and differentiating environment for production of electronic music:
“Working procedures and methods must be adaptable to the wishes/ideas of
the composers/directors/creators…”54
A central feature of the Annostraße facility was the comprehensive
infrastructure for exploring sound spatialization and sound space composition,
which had been a focus of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne since the
1950s. The new facility ensured continuity of this tradition by expanding the
capability of multi-channel sound recording, mixing, and projection. The
major apparatuses for that were the Programmable Audio Console (PTR), an
analog mixer with digital control (specially designed for the Electronic Studio
by the German audio company Lawo), and two Sony 24-track digital audio
53
For example, Stockhausen’s Oktophonie (1990-92); Stroppa’s Zwielicht (1994-99), and
my works Migration – 12-channel electronic music (1995-97), Projektion – 12-channel
electronic music (1999-2001), and Projektion – 12-channel installation (2001).
54
Notes by Volker Müller (Allgemeine Ziele / Allgemeine Anforderungen) from the beginning
of the planning phase of the relocation of the studio (approximately 1982; manuscript).
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tape machines (PCM-3324 A). With the introduction of the first Pro Tools
system in 1995, digital technology replaced tape recorders as a platform for
multi-channel music production. It also impacted working methods, as the
digital apparatuses demanded news skills from the engineers and technicians,
opening a process of specialization that at the same time, led to a loss of the
technical autonomy of those involved in the production process.
The possibility of designing different set-ups of loudspeakers gave
flexibility to the concept of sound spatialization. The main production room
was built with a metal frame on the ceiling to which a ring with a diameter
of approximately 8.2m was attached. This ring provided a track for hanging
speakers with sliding systems attached, allowing them to be easily moved
and adjusted. Generally, 12 speakers were installed on the ring and 4 others
in the corners of the room. The maximum configuration of 16 loudspeakers
enabled two different geometries of sound projection: a circular one with 12
movable speakers and a square one with 4 fixed speakers. In addition, it was
possible to put speakers anywhere in the space of the studio. Stockhausen, for
instance, developed in Oktophonie (1990-92) a sound space in the form of a
cube using 8 speakers equally spaced—4 placed on the floor and 4 suspended
perpendicularly above the others. In my electronic music compositions
Migration (1995-97) and Projektion (1999-2001) I explored the concept of
circular sound space, taking advantage of the 12 speakers evenly distributed
along the ring.55
Unlike most recording studios including those of the WDR, the Electronic
Music Studio had large windows, natural lighting, and ventilation. Volker
Müller put emphasis on creating a pleasant working atmosphere. Usually, the
composers worked between three and six months in the studio many hours a
day, sometimes even in the evening. The composer counted on the assistance
of the sound engineer, the technician, and the Klangregisseur, but could also
work alone. Stockhausen used to bring his large personal staff (family members
and collaborators) to assist him with production. Volker Müller’s enormous
creativity, commitment, and dedication contributed significantly to the
atmosphere of cooperation and exchange in the studio, which reached out to
writers, technicians, musicologists, and other individuals who were in some
way involved in studio activities. The knowledge and information generated
through this structure of telematic dialog configured a cybernetic architecture
55
For a description of this concept of sound spatialization see my essay “Composition in
Circular Sound Space: Migration –12-channel Electronic Music (1995-97)” (Chagas
2008b)
154
of circularity that is arguably a model of creativity for electroacoustic music

composition (cf. Chagas 2002, 2006a).
The deactivation of the Electronic Music Studio represents the end of a
particular type of creativity that emerged in regard to radio as a consequence
of historical, social, and cultural contingencies. The creativity of the Electronic
Music Studio of Cologne lay in the production of works that were performed,
broadcasted, and submitted to the observation of society. The works function
as condensed forms of communication for the feedback loop of creativity.
Without the works, the feedback loop of creativity ceased to flow.56
5. Looking Forward
Studying the creativity of electroacoustic and digital music requires a

multifaceted and pluralistic view combining historical, theoretical, cultural
and practical approaches. A comprehensive approach seeks to investigate
both particular cases and the context of its cultural references Electroacoustic
and digital technology has radically transformed sound consciousness and
propelled the process of artistic differentiation. The creativity that emerges
through the use of apparatuses becomes more and more integrated in all
spheres of musical activity. How then, shall we look into the future?
Sounds are vibrations transmitted through the air and perceived by the
ear and other parts of the body and thus have the ability to put the body
into vibration. Musical sounds are forms built as differences in the acoustic
medium, which are used for the purpose of artistic communication. Acoustic
music results from the action of the body; either the body generates its own
sounds (voice, handclapping) or it manipulates an instrument to produce
sounds. Electronic sounds generated by apparatuses play an increasingly
important role in music. Apparatuses are products of scientific and technical
knowledge that prevail in all spheres of life. The category of music apparatus
embraces both those that generate electronic sounds such as computers and
56
The creativity of the radio was not limited to electronic music. The WDR itself promotes
other forms of sound and music creativity such as the Hörspiel, the experimental radio
drama produced by the “Studio Akustischer Kunst” [Studio of Acoustic Art]; the series
“Musik der Zeit” [Music of the Time], which commissions new works and promotes
concerts of contemporary music; the series of radio shows “Studio Elektronische Musik”
[Studio Electronic Music], which broadcasts a diversity of electroacoustic music, etc. For
a comprehensive documentation of the WDR activities in regard to contemporary music
between 1951 and 2001, see Hilbert and Vogt (2002).
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synthesizers, as well as meta-apparatuses that organize music in society, such

as mass media or networking media.
A fundamental characteristic of modern art is self-programming.57
Electroacoustics expands music’s capabilities of self-programming by creating
new channels of collaboration between art, science, media, economy. It
stimulates the creative and critical use of apparatuses, increasing the connective
possibilities between sound and other media such as image, body, and space.
Being that electroacoustic music emerged from the experience of World
War II, the medium of radio awakened the consciousness of the aesthetic
manipulation of electroacoustic sound and of the listening experience
through the loudspeaker. In the 1950s, the studios of the European state-
owned broadcasting corporations started to produce electroacoustic music on
a regular basis and integrate it into the communication system of art.
The studios of Paris and Cologne are emblematic for the aesthetics of
musique concrète and elektronische Musik and their different self-descriptions
of the source material of electroacoustic music composition: the former
favors processing of sounds captured from the acoustic environment and the
latter, the synthesis of sounds generated by electronic apparatuses. These two
approaches show how electroacoustic music can develop different kinds of
aesthetics through self-programming.
Cybernetics, another byproduct of war, has provided the philosophical
and scientific basis for the development of computer science. Computer
music that emerged from the research on sound synthesis merges analog
electroacoustic music with the digital medium. The development of digital
technology propelled the popularization of electroacoustic music. The
concept of digital music points to the self-description of music in the digital
society, including use of digital technology for composition, performance,
distribution, and listening.
The emergence of the apparatus as a reflexive medium reconstructed the
concept of self-programming as a function of the apparatus, which creates
an automated reality that becomes emancipated from man—and thus self-
referential. The ambivalent feelings concerning the relation between art and
technology have been the object of critical studies at least since Benjamin.
However, such critical approaches still have a limited impact on fields of
music studies such as musicology, music theory, and analysis.
57
The concept of self-programming means that the artwork has to develop its own program,
which is different for each artwork; it means that “the work constitutes the conditions
of possibility for its own decision, that it observes itself, or, more accurately, that it can
be observed only as a self-observer” (Luhmann 2000, 204). See “Communication and
Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein.
156
The notion of composition is traditionally coupled with the medium

of a written score, which functions as a programmatic memory for the
performance. Electroacoustic music extends the notion of composition to the
medium of technical reproduction. The analog apparatus (tape) emerged as
a device for sound reproduction but turned into a tool of composition and
performance. The computer intensifies the multifunctional characteristic of
the technical apparatus as it transforms sound into numerical data that can
be manipulated in manifold ways, re-coded, recombined, and reconstructed.
Digital technology challenges the idea of the work of art as a closed and
complete unit, for example, through the practice of “remixing” material from
existing artworks. Increased openness in digital music suggests a tendency
to emphasize the contingency of the artistic process rather than the necessity
of a form as a unity. In other words, improvisation instead of composition.
We observe this tendency in many spheres, not only in the world of DJs, but
also in academic institutions, for example with improvisation ensembles and
laptop orchestras.
Jazz improvisation is clearly a prototype of such an improvisation model.
Jazz musicians improvise on the basis of a “program” and make decisions at
the moment of the performance, communicating with each other and with
the audience. Continuous feedback is incorporated in the formal process,
which is a central aspect of jazz creativity.
Although Flusser’s model of telematic communication is centered on
chamber music, it is also rather oriented around jazz improvisation. This
becomes clear from a number of observations such as the musicians use
of “recordings of recordings of recordings”, and “the improvisation with
continually reprogrammed memories will replace the score” (Flusser 2011,
182). Flusser’s model doesn’t solve the problem of the temporal processing of
meaning concerning both composition and improvisation. Composition is a
calculating and computer time that requires time, but improvisation requires
the reference to a style that is also a temporal form.
A possible approach to the distinction between improvisation and
composition is through the distinction between incorporation and inscription
proposed by Hayles (1999, 192-221). Incorporation practices are context
specific, always “performative and instantiated”, so that they necessarily contain
improvisational elements. In contrast, inscribing practice can be transferred
from context to context once it has been performed. Incorporation emerges
from the collaboration between the body and embodiment and cannot be
separated from the embodied medium. In contrast, inscription is normalized
and abstract, in the sense that it constitutes a system of signs operating at a
symbolic level and independently of any particular manifestation.
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I suspect that the emphasis on improvisation that we currently observe

in the practice of electroacoustic and digital music is an attempt to restore
the so-called “authenticity of human experience” in the creative process.
This effort of reconstructing subjectivity can be also observed in the current
scholarship, for instance with the persistence of notions such as presence,
materiality, and embodiment, together with the emphasis on the “experience
of presence”.58
Electroacoustic and digital creativity can been analyzed from different
perspectives; for instance through the relationship between man and machine
and their interpretations disclosing both positive and negative tendencies.
Flusser’s utopian vision of the telematics dialogue points to the need to
creatively shape the partnership between man and machine. The joyful game
is the strategy for generating information, exercising reflexive criticism, and
promoting freedom.
Diversity is the most significant aspect of electroacoustic and digital music.
Music becomes heterogeneous in manifold ways. The differentiation of music
and other artistic forms increases environmental complexity, constantly
redrawing the boundaries between different domains of observation.
Therefore, there is a need to adopt a global perspective on multiplicity and
heterogeneousness.
Investigating the diversity of electroacoustic and digital music creativity
uncovers the differences between medium and form. By adopting the
perspective of system theory, it becomes possible to selectively reduce
complexity by making connections. It is crucial to reflect on the constitute
role of technology in the constitution of meaning and to analyze the
processes of evolution while reflecting on the socio-cultural background
and recognizing the forces that progress the creativity of electroacoustic and
digital music.
58
For an account of improvisation from the point of view of system theory, see
“Improvisation: Form and Event: A Spencer-Brownian Calculation” (Landgraf 2011).
158
Chapter 5
The Temple of Electronic Music: The Electronic

Music Studio of Cologne in the 1990s1
In the history of the WDR Studio for Electronic Music, there are myriad
elements that have influenced the development of electronic music over
the past 50 years. What is meant by electronic here is music generated by
apparatuses, which include a variety of categories such as electroacoustic
music, computer music, and even more specific designations.2
The essence of this genre from a contemporary perspective is not the name
given to it, but the close relationship to media and the cultural-technological
space. All contemporary or historical music that is medially produced
exhibits a certain deformation through the electronics. It is electronic music
that is able to provide access to the understanding of music apparatuses. It is
generated with apparatuses, but it does not limit itself to the programs of the
music apparatuses. Unlike music that is electronically reproduced, electronic
music is only justified in that it creates new information and concepts, which
help society to understand the programs of the apparatuses.
Since its founding in 1951, the Studio for Electronic Music has been
closely tied to the radio broadcasting structure of the WDR. The link with
1
The original text in German—“Der pluralistische Raum: Die Produktion des Studios
für Elektronische Musik des WDR in den 90er Jahren. Eine Einführung und
Dokumentation”—was written in 1999 and published in three parts in the journal
Mitteilungen of the DEGEM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik
[German Society of Electronic Music]) (cf. Chagas 2000a; 2000b; 2000c). The three
articles are also published in Chagas and Werner (2012, 46-100). I revised the text and
updated the information, especially when it was necessary to clarify the changes that
occurred in the WDR Electronic Studio afterwards. However, I tried to preserve the
historical authenticity by keeping as much as possible the original tone and ideas. For
DEGEM cf. http://www.degem.de (accessed August 1, 2013).
2
The terms “electronic music” and “electroacoustic music” are generally used as synonyms
in this article.
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this media makes the studio distinctive: It determines how the studio works
from an artistic, technical, and practical point of view and is reflected in
the musical works produced there. At the end of the 1990s, with the rapid
development of new technology, the question of media and of communication
altogether, became particularly relevant. New models of creativity were
required to allow a critical look into the inner structure of the apparatuses
and called for reflexive dialog to confront the repeticious automatisms in the
growing networking structures. Otherwise we are left with nothing but to
sink into the entropy of banality.
Trends in art, technology, science, and communication converge in the
apparatus electronic studio; they crystallize in the production of the studio
and flow from there into society. A look at the production of the WDR
Electronic Studio from 1990 to 1999 tracks its evolution, makes the know-
how of the studio understandable, and introduces it as an object of discussion.
Space for Living Experience
In the 1980s, the production of the Electronic Studio was restricted by the
move out of the WDR broadcasting studio in the center of Cologne, where
the studio had occupied different rooms for production since its founding.
Morawska-Büngeler (1988) provides a critical documentation from the
1950s up to this period. This outstanding book provides information on the
compositions, composers, and technical equipment, though an update is in
order to correct a couple of errors.
The Electronic Studio relocated in 1987 into the building of the former
WDR television studio “L” in the Annostraße (south Cologne); the move
and the renovation of the rooms stretched over two years. As of 1987, some
commissioned works were partially produced in the new rooms of the
Electronic Studio, but it took several years before the infrastructure enabled
full production activity.
The sound engineer Volker Müller developed the spatial and technical
concept of the studio that would be normative for the work in the 1990s. This
concept is based on “methods of production that have a historical tradition
in the Studio”, while creating space for the expansion, improvement, and
rationalization of these methods and opening possibilities for the gradual
introduction of new technology.3
3
Allgemeine Ziele/Allgemeine Anforderungen [General Objectives/General Requirements],
notes by the engineer Volker Müller written in the beginning of the planning phase for the
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The Temple of Electronic Music: Cologne in the 1990s
One of the most important objectives of the new phase of the studio
was formulated on the idea that, “Working procedures and methods must
be adaptable to the wishes/ideas of the composers/directors/creators…”.4
This flexibility demanded a modular and mobile spatial concept with
interconnected areas for production, preparation, routine work, and parallel
activities. The configuration of the rooms had two work areas with the same
technology, acoustically separated by two other rooms but linked through
glass windows and networks for audio and later, data transmission. Two other
floors contained a “museum” where the historical apparatus of the old studio
was kept in working order, as well as a small social area with a lounge and
kitchenette.
The most important production studio was Room 304, located in the
former rehearsal room of the WDR television ballet, which was rebuilt for the
studio. This room measuring more than 103m2 symbolizes the philosophy of
the studio with regard to production methods and the necessity of acoustic
and spatial experience in the realization of electronic music.
Room 304 was not a typical studio control room, but an acoustically
live room. It featured a suspended circular metal frame of 8.2m in diameter
above the central area of the room. It was customary for the composer and
or producer to sit in the center of the circle. The basic configuration was 12
loudspeakers on the circular rail and 4 others in the corners of the room, for
a maximum of 16 loudspeakers. Variations of this configuration exerted great
influence on works produced in the studio, particularly the ones exploring
the spatial dimension of electronic music composition.
Flexibility demands uniform technology in all areas of the studio. The
audio network had two structures: a central structure linking all rooms and
additional connections between neighboring rooms. All devices operated
to a uniform standard with regard to connectors and impedance level. The
studio’s main patch panel (with a total of 1152 jack connectors) was located
in Room 304. Each input of this panel could in principle be connected with
any number of outputs.
These mixing and monitoring capabilities met the flexibility requirement
with regard to the production of multi-channel electronic music. The main
mixing console, named PTR (Programmable Audio Console), was specially
designed by the German audio company Lawo for the WDR Electronic
renovation of the studio (approximately 1982; manuscript). These remarks were written
in the period when Volker Müller was taking care of the electronic studio practically
alone. Parallel to the planning, renovation, and relocation of the studio, he was occupied
with concert activities and routine work.
4
Allgemeine Ziele / Allgemeine Anforderungen …
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Music Studio. It was an analog mixer with digitally programmable controls,

48 channels (double-assigned with monitors and inline inputs with additional
outputs for each channel), 36 groups, 42 motorized faders, and 28 internal
memories for snapshots (no real-time automation). A special feature of this
mixer was that the channels could be assigned to different functions (input,
auxiliary, output or volume), which made it possible to simulate multi-
channel mixings with multiple parallel sources. For example, different sound
sources (multi-channel tape machines, synthesizers or microphones) could be
distributed and heard simultaneously over 12 loudspeakers without having to
be mixed together.
“More Production than Experimentation!”5
The relocation from the WDR central building in downtown Cologne to the
building in distant Annostraße disconnected the Electronic Music Studio
from other broadcasting production units. Problems were created with regard
to the compatibility of production methods and the sharing of technical
know-how. Volker Müller recognized the difficulties that would arise when he
set technical priorities: “Introduce new technology gradually. Priority should
be given in the beginning to fully developed technologies. The product of
the work should not be primarily a research product. The universality of
composition methods is restricted by this”.6
Indeed, the compatibility with other technical systems of the WDR was
taken into consideration in the design of the new technical facilities of the
Electronic Studio. However, the development of digital technology forced the
studio to make some adjustments that led to intermediate solutions, which
were first introduced into the studio and only some time later found a place
in other areas of the WDR. The new, unreliable, and mostly “unprofessional”
devices of the consumer industry were gradually integrated into the proven,
secure infrastructure of radio broadcasting technology. The Fairlight III was
the first digital sampling synthesizer introduced into the Electronic Studio in
the second half of the 1980s. Such an expensive purchase was still in line with
the desire for an open music system that covered as many areas as possible
with consistent and accessible operating principles meeting professional
technical standards.
5
6
162
This soon proved to be unrealizable. At the beginning of the 1990s, the

Electronic Studio purchased MIDI samplers and synthesizers, as well as
Macintosh computers with the MIDI software of the time, such as MIDI
sequencers and editors. In the mid-1990s, the studio bought two Pro Tools
III hard disk recording systems, which over time became the major devices
for multi-channel audio production. Before Pro Tools, production on a multi-
channel basis was accomplished with two 24-track Sony PCM 3324-A digital
tape machines, which could be used synchronized as 48-track. The Sony
tape also served as storage of both materials and finished works. Initially,
Pro Tools synched tape machines through SMPTE time code, so that the
number of available tracks for recording was first expanded to 96 channels.
But soon it became clear that Pro Tools represented not only a quantitative,
but a qualitative leap as well, as the integration of sound recording and
processing in the multichannel digital environment facilitated and improved
the realization of some technical processes of the analog era (e.g., feedback).
The studio had limited capabilities with regard to sound synthesis and
processing. The Yamaha FM-synthesizer system purchased in the late
1980s, software from IRCAM (e.g., AudioSculpt), effected devices such as
Lexicon PCM70 and the Eventide Ultra-Harmonizer 3500. The large analog
synthesizer EMS Synth-100 and the EMS Vocoder played an important role
by serving different purposes: aside from being used for sound synthesis
and processing, they were used for example, as a voltage control source
combined with MIDI devices for the purpose of sound spatialization (e.g., in
Migration; see below). The Electronic Studio of the WDR was not just a field
of experimentation for specific applications of computer music, as there were
never typical computer sounds or algorithmic compositions in the strictest
sense of the word.
Dialog in Real Time?
The shift to digital technology has had a disruptive effect that has lead to
the fragmentation and specialization of tasks and to the loss of technical
autonomy. Whereas it used to be that an astonishing creative potential was
drawn from limited resources such as tape machines, measuring instruments,
and manageable analog modules, now the demands of the time can only be
met by a novel, networked structure of ideas, people, and apparatuses.
The adjustment process concerns not only the technology, but the people
and the collective working methods. Here it must be clearly stressed that it
was not the technical equipment, but the close collaboration with and the
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intensive support of the composers by the studio staff —sound engineer,

sound technician, and sound director7—that played a decisive role in the
quality of the finished product. This close collaboration was also what made
it possible for composers without any experience in electronic music to be
invited to the studio and realize their compositions. The collaboration was not
by any means one-sided, but a continuous learning and application process
motivated by the impetuses and visions of the composers and studio staff.
This is perhaps the most important knowledge gained from the history
of the Electronic Studio, which by the end of the 1990s, presented itself as
an existential question for society as a whole: Would we be able to make the
emerging qualitative leap? Would we use dialogizing media channels for new
forms of art and communication? Would we make dialog the principle for the
production and dissemination of information?
The issue of dialog in technologized music is very often only related
to its exterior. Thus, attention is diverted from the core of the matter. The
live electronics dream of the 1990s and its aura of real time, symbolize the
hope as well as the illusion. But its meaning is undisputed. The following
section addresses the consequences of the technological development in the
production of electronic music of the 1990s and introduces the works realized
in the WDR studio which include the compositions of: Jean-Claude Eloy,
Denys Bouliane, Luc Ferrari, Michel Waisvisz, Jörg Birkenkötter, Younghi
Pagh-Paan, York Höller, Johathan Harvey, John McGuire, Marco Stroppa,
Mauricio Sotello, Karlheinz Stockhausen and myself.
II
The production of a new work in the Electronic Studio of the WDR normally
took place in two phases. The first phase traditionally lasted about one month
and was dedicated to experimentation, while the second phase entailed
realizing the piece, which usually took about two months. The first phase
was devoted to becoming familiar with the studio, the preparation of sound
materials, and the planning of the work. Out of this experimental phase, the
composers’ ideas were allowed to mature, but it was also customary that the
experimentation continued into the realization phase. It was not unusual that
an additional work period of one to three months would be added in order to
complete the production.
7
The sound director has, among other functions, the role of a technical-artistic assistant
for the composers. He/she collaborates with both the composers and the technicians in
bridging their differences.
164
Although compositional decisions are within the purview of the composer,

the expertise of electronic studio staff had a major influence in the realization
of the work. The aesthetic categories that are formative for the work can
be traced through the analysis of the use of the apparatuses. Which goals
do the composers pursue when they decide to express themselves through
electronics? How do they work with the studio equipment? How strong is the
influence of the apparatuses on their works?
Programmed Freedom
Traditional sounds such as voice or instrumental sounds are perceived as

phenomenon, similarly to natural sounds. Instruments are tools used to
produce sounds. Electronic sounds, by contrast, are decoded as concepts
produced by apparatuses. The apparatuses function with programs that have
a symbolic function as simulations of thought processes, procedures, logical
connections, and forms of communication. The apparatuses’ programs are
basically models that perform automatic tasks and replicate themselves in
society. The ritualization of programs shapes communication in society.
Such ritual models can be recognized, for example, in television broadcasts
as well as concerts of contemporary new music [Neue Musik]. The meaning
shifts from things to the concrete world to the simulation processes. The
electronic apparatus determines the behavior of the whole of society while
playing an ambivalent role; it is positively a means for liberating the human
being for work, or negatively, the vehicle for new forms of human oppression.
The apparatuses of the analog era that originated from the radio studio
and broadcasting technology play a mediating role between quasi-tools and
apparatuses. On the one hand, they are concrete devices. The musicians can
still understand them as they physically access their functions by pressing
buttons, turning knobs, and moving faders; their manipulation is in some
way analogous to music making with simple instruments. On the other hand,
the analog apparatuses represent a certain degree of alienation. They cause a
shift in thinking for the musician:
Thus for example in the 50s and 60s measuring and testing devices became
important “instruments” of electronic music. The analog synthesizers of
the 70s, which were designed specifically for electronic music, brought
nothing new in terms of sound generation. They basically facilitated the
work and thereby made possible new compositional processes. But in the
composition practice, the building blocks of these devices (oscillators,
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filters, etc.) were often used for other purposes than those actually
intended. (Chagas 1990, 1)
At the beginning of the 1990s however, a completely new situation arose. The
development of digital technology bridged the gap between the pioneering
experiments of the early analog years and the tradition of vocal and
instrumental music. MIDI synthesizers and samplers and music hardware
and software connected both worlds and showed the ambivalence of music
technology quite clearly.
The modern digital music apparatuses have a user-friendly surface,
equipped with buttons and sensors, and link traditional instrument making
with the computer and electronics. The apparatuses began to get more and
more efficient, opening access to a complexity of sounds and structures. Yet
humans are ever less capable of understanding or mastering the apparatuses.
For example, a survey in the 1990s showed that over 90% of Yamaha
DX7 synthesizer users were satisfied with just using sound presets. They did
not explore the complex and creative possibilities of FM synthesis at all. The
sound stereotypes and automatic processes of the music apparatuses literally
program the expectations of the user and society in their own interest with
the aim of maintaining and improving the apparatuses. The virtual world of
the computer is no different; the user’s choice is limited by the categories of
apparatuses. Man can only do what the apparatus makes possible for him;
his intentions are subject to the apparatus program. Freedom is programmed
by it.
The Electronic Studio of the WDR (and electronic music as such)
abandoned its apparent technological autonomy at the end of the 1980s in the
sense that it could engage its own equipment and technical resources. Since
then it has become fully dependent on the products of the music industry.
Today human beings operate black boxes, on which they are less and less
competent: “Anyone who is involved with apparatuses is involved with black
boxes where one is unable to see what they are up to” (Flusser 2000, 73).
How does one construct a creative space for human intention in a world
dominated by the apparatuses of post-industrial society? How can we best
guard against automatic programming that lead to the banality of concepts?
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The Transcending Critique
In the early 1990s, one expected new musical impulses from the connections
between electronics and traditional instruments. In other words: live
electronics. Works from the analog era such as Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie
I and Mixtur demonstrated exciting possibilities and it was hoped could be
further developed with still more variety, precision, and liveness through the
use of computers and efficient digital memories—digital samplers and sound
processing devices.
The utopia of a musical creativity emerging as the actual shaping of the
steady flow of information between old and new technology acting as equal
and active partners motivated composers. “Let us thus create new connections
between the traditional instruments/the human voice and electronics/the
computer, between expression and sound, spontaneity and construction!”
wrote the composer York Höller (1990, 6). At the invitation of then chief
producer for contemporary music [Neue Musik] at the WDR, Wolfgang
Becker-Carsten, Höller was nominated as artistic director of the Electronic
Studio (1990-99). Along with Becker-Carsten, the two were responsible for
the selection of composers invited to work in the studio.
Live electronics and the aura of real time symbolize the dream of cybernetic
dialog of electronic music in the age of digital technology. Certainly, the
question of dialog is not new to music. For instance, polyphony articulates
a network of musical layers synchronized through a dialog of melodic,
harmonic, and rhythmic cues; the practice of chamber music requires that
musicians develop a dialog of musical gestures for interpreting the score
without a conductor. In electronic music however, a new and extended type
of dialog takes place; simultaneously in space and time.
The spatial dimension refers to the game in the broadest sense of the term:
not only the performance that generates the sound vibrations, but primarily
the thinking-game [Denk-Spiel] from which the music emerges. With
electronics, music evolves from a “pure game” between humans using bodies
and instruments to a game of human players and electronic apparatuses
that simulate thinking. The game is the strategy to produce information in
opposition to the automatic programming of the apparatuses; it shapes the
entire musical process from conception to production to public performance.
In the temporal dimension, programmable artificial memories play an ever
more important role in both electronic music and music that is electronically
reproduced. Artificial memories are for example, magnetic tape machines,
which record and reproduce a fixed sequence of sound information, but also
digital storage systems such as hard disks, chips, and RAM, which can store
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temporal streams of sound events as numbers and make them available for
artistic manipulation and analog audio conversion.
Real time or no real time, live electronics or audio tape, game or
automation—these oppositions bring us back to the heart of the universe of
apparatuses and their programs. We are called upon to criticize these concepts
and to reveal apparently unintentional functions that will then provide
answers to the question of human freedom. Such a critique should attempt
“to create a space for human intention in a world dominated by apparatuses”
(Flusser 2000, 75).
In more in-depth examination of the works, engagement methods and
techniques that account for the dialoging process with apparatuses in the
electronic music will be uncovered. Depending on which aspects of the
process are emphasized in the work, there are three categories to distinguish:
Development, Communication, and Interface.
The category of development refers to the realization of the piece. How
was the studio as meta-apparatus involved? Which strategies were pursued
to generate information? How did key concepts emerge? The category of
communication focuses on the performance of the work and how the work
shapes the playful relationship between human being and apparatus. How
does the composer handle the issue of synchronization between acoustic and
electronic sounds during the performance? Finally, the category of interface
refers to the critical engagement with the work, which includes artistic,
cultural, and scientific concepts; it emphasizes the idea of information as an
improbable situation.8 The question of freedom has to be objectified in the
context of the apparatuses and their programs. The task of criticism is to
identify the way human beings attempt to get a hold over the apparatuses
and the way these aim to absorb the human intentions within themselves..9
Of course these categories are constructs and not mutually exclusive; a single
work can illuminate several categories at once.
MIDI Experiences and Strategies
Jean-Claude Eloy and Denys Bouliane engaged for the first time with digital
technology when they began in 1990 with the production of their pieces in
8
“‘Probable’ and ‘improbable’ are concepts from informatics, in which information can
be described as an improbable situation: the more improbable, the more informative”
(Flusser 2011, 17).
9
“Freedom is conceivable only as an absurd game with apparatus, as a game with programs”
(Flusser 2013, 26).
168
the WDR Studio for Electronic Music. They worked with MIDI sampler and
sequencer software, but pursued different strategies with these apparatuses.
Eloy used the new technology for the realization of an electroacoustic music
recorded on tape, which is the basic layer for the live performance of a soloist.
Bouliane explored the new possibilities of samplers and MIDI controllers and
created a work of live electronics with musicians and no tape.
For the realization of Erkos (1990-91) for a soloist (voice and instruments)
and electroacoustic music, Jean-Claude Eloy worked mainly with the Fairlight
III (14 MB RAM; 8 voices), the ATARI computer with C-LAB Notator
software, and a 16-track analog tape machine, which was synchronized
with the computer through SMPTE. The working process can be divided
into three parts: the collection of material, the sound processing, and the
production of sound structures.
Eloy made many recordings of voice, percussion, and other instruments
(mostly Asian ones such as the Satsuma-Biwa), then transformed and combined
the sounds in several intermediate stages. The final product consisted of a
certain number of stereo takes recorded on DAT, which were mixed live
with the voice and the instruments of the soloist. In Eloy’s conception, the
electroacoustic music unfolds sound masses around the soloist object.
Eloy composed many works of electronic music using analog technology;
Erkos was his first experience with the new world of MIDI apparatuses. He
explains how he felt the difference:
I think that the electronics that I have used in this piece [...] is already
something different from that which I produced previously. It is an
electronics that rather tries to refine the elements, to merge them into
each other. Analog electronics was more an electronics of large blocks, a
bit rigid and cumbersome to handle. I would say that the digital tool in
this case works like a small chisel in relation to the large chisels that in
a way mold large masses of sculpture. That is more or less the difference
that I feel between the analog and the digital tool. (Chagas and Lies
1992, 23-24)10
The electronics of Denys Bouliane’s meta-cabaret Une Soirée Vian (1990-91;

text by Boris Vian) is based on the use of sampler programs that are played
by five of the eight musicians using MIDI devices: two singers (soprano and
baritone) play samples stored on four AKAI S-1000 samplers (16 MB RAM
10
Eloy’s statements are excerpts from an interview I recorded with him after the experimental
phase. It was a casual conversation in French.
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each) using a pitch-to-MIDI converter (Roland VP-70); two instrumentalists

play MIDI wind controllers (Yamaha WX-7/EWI), and the pianist plays
a MIDI master keyboard. Both voices are additionally processed live with
harmonizer and vocoder effects (Roland VP-70).
The samples used in the piece were taken from ambient noises as well as
vocal and instrumental sounds. The noises contributed to translating Boris
Vian’s surreal world into music. For example, the sound of a machine becomes
an element of the composition. The samples of voice and instruments were
used in combination with acoustic sounds produced by the performers as
a kind of doubling, so that they often cannot be distinguished from each
other. This intentional effect of sonic illusion is a crucial aspect of Bouliane’s
aesthetics (Chagas and Lies 1992, 30-38).
The possibilities of MIDI control are systematically and very effectively
used in live electronic performance. The musicians shape the sound of samples
by sending MIDI commands such as velocity, pitch bend, and after touch,
and additionally trigger pre-programmed MIDI sequences that are integrated
into the composition. A Macintosh IIcx computer with the MIDI sequencer
Opcode Vision was used at the premiere of the piece on March 10, 1991.
Bouliane recorded the sampling material with musicians at the WDR
studio during his experimental phase; afterwards, he worked at home editing
the samples and programming the live electronics. That was atypical for
the work in the Electronic Studio; customarily, composers would take great
advantage of the assistance of the staff. Furthermore, nearly all composers
were known to spend a lot of time working alone in the studio, making plans
and preparations for the production.
What is most clear is the way in which composers must engage themselves
in-depth with the apparatuses. They have to understand how they function
in order to generate new information. Jean-Claude Eloy underlined this issue
very clearly:
So I am sure that there are many possibilities of the MIDI system that I
have not yet explored. I think you have to own a couple of these devices
yourself in order to really learn how to use them and to explore all their
possibilities. You cannot learn that one hundred percent in a few months
in a studio. These few months in the studio give you an overview, but
you must be able to continue these experiences at home, have unlimited
access to the things, and so on, [...] enrich your knowledge of what these
devices can and cannot do. (Chagas and Lies 1992, 24)
170
The experiences with the production in the Electronic Studio were known to
greatly influence the future work of the composer and often set them onto
new paths. Eloy once again:
Under the impression of this work I have decided to invest something

in my own equipment and have begun to set up for myself a small,
somewhat more modern studio in order to continue and improve my
work. (Chagas and Lies 1992, 24)
Furthermore, Eloys made the point about how the new technology
significantly changed the function of the Electronic Studio. This comment
from 1990 sounds like a warning for the future:
I believe that in the future the relationship between the composer and
the studios will be healthier, in the sense that a composer no longer
comes into the studio with completely empty hands, in order to make
a production in four months and having first to literally get to know
the studio; rather, he will come into the studio with his pockets full of
sounds, having already done the groundwork, so that the large studio is
only there for the production itself. Because in the beginning I had first
to get to know the devices, the work was cumbersome and was slowed
down. (Chagas and Lies 1992, 24)
The Electronic Studio as Cultural Interface
Although the Studio for Electronic Music belonged to the WDR radio station,
the works of the 1990s were produced exclusively for the concert situation.
Even though all the pieces were broadcast, the studio direction showed no
interest in developing electronic music for radio or multimedia productions.
The Electronic Studio served the needs of the concert business, particularly
the public of the German Neue Musik. No attempt was ever made to address
a different audience.
The Electronic Studio however, promoted musical pluralism through the
integration of different aesthetics and technologies. The composers invited
to the studio came from different countries and musical backgrounds.
Moreover, the studio turned itself into an aesthetic object as the works of some
composers reflected on its history and media aura. The following two pieces
are examples of the pluralistic orientation and musical diversity of the studio:
the work by French composer Luc Ferrari elaborates references to the musique
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concrète and experimental radio drama, while the work of Dutch composer
Michel Waisvisz, who acquired a reputation as a performer and inventor of
experimental musical instruments, emerged from the confrontation with the
studio’s symbolic atmosphere.
For the work Porte Ouverte sur Ville (1992-93), Luc Ferrari produced
an electroacoustic music on tape based on an entirely abstract structure
of time slots that represented a multi-layered arrangement of sequences of
simultaneous events interfering with each other. It was not a score in the
traditional sense, rather a diagram of time events. The time slots were filled
with fragments of radio broadcasts, which were selected and recorded using
a very unconventional method: The sound technician randomly chose radio
stations by manipulating the knob of an analog radio receiver; the sound
engineer moved faders on the mixer up and down according to the temporal
diagram, and recorded what was being broadcast on the radio.
Ferrari compares the turning on and off of the electroacoustic tape to
the opening and closing of a window through which the city can be seen
(Ferrari 1994, 36). The reality of the city emerges abruptly and symbolizes
the presence of the observer. In addition to the radio fragments, Ferrari fi lled
the time slots with concrete sounds recorded in Cologne—steps on stairs, a
car ride, the ambience of an arcade—and also abstract electronic tones. The
musicians (oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, and viola) performed live
as a counterpoint to the tape, sometimes in dialog with the electroacoustic
sounds, sometimes independently. Ferrari considered the work to have a
confusing and pessimistic character (Ferrari 1994, 36).
Michel Waisvisz only worked for a month in what he called the “temple
of electronic music” (Waisvicz 1994, 13). He was fascinated and surprised by
the atmosphere of the Electronic Studio, especially the apparently chaotic but
extremely lively and ubiquitous state of the tape archive (located in the main
production studio, room 304), which overturned prejudices and replaced
them with a positive view: “In a country like Germany I would have expected
that such tapes would have been exhibited in a museum for serious art or
philosophy or be found in an electronically guarded bunker,—but instead
they were just lying around” (Waisvicz 1994, 13).
As a composer and performer of improvised live electronic music,
Waisvisz expected that working in the WDR Electronic Studio would be
a confrontation with the cultural tradition of “serious” electronic music.
Instead, he was surprised that the confrontation turned into something
“extremely stimulating”. In the short experimental phase, Waisvisz recorded
sound material from a synthesizer that he brought to the studio and also from
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the large WDR analog synthesizer EMS Synth 100. Due to time constraints,
he forewent the production phase.
The dialog between the contrasting traditions of electronic music
characterizes the aesthetics of his work Faustos Schrei (1994) for “The Hands”,
dance, and voice. The MIDI controller “The Hands” is a digital instrument
developed in the STEIM Amsterdam and operated by the composer himself
in the performance. Different sounds and programmed sequences can thus be
controlled live. Waisvisz describes his work as follows:
Faustos Schrei harks back to the night hours during which I listened to
rituals in this tradition-laden studio. Yet Faustos Schrei did not originate
either in a studio or at the desk of the composer, but in the reality of
several concert halls where I have used the sounds created in Cologne.
(Waisvicz 1994, 13)
Electronic-Instrumental Sound World
The electronic music of the 1990s fostered a close relationship with

instrumental music. It was the starting point for approaching electronics and
developing an aesthetic that aimed to create electronic sounds to interact with
traditional instruments.
This development was undoubtedly facilitated by digital technology, which
made the non-linear representation of sound as a reproducible phenomenon
a matter of course. The tape machine stands as a prototype for the possibility
to reproduce sound electronically. One can manipulate the course of the
recorded sound, even radically process it, but as a matter of fact the operating
mode of electromagnetic tape systems symbolizes linear thinking.
Digital systems on the other hand, break down the sound into an atomic
dot-like structure. The sound disintegrates into a mosaic of numbers and
the bond with temporal sound tissue dissolves. The fragmented granular
structure of the sound, which can be manipulated by computers and artificial
intelligences, replaces linear thinking and promotes the consciousness of the
microstructure of the sound. Digital systems such as samplers and hard disks
stand as prototypes for the possibility of projecting sound artificially, i.e.,
reinventing it.
Sound information is generated with apparatuses through analysis and
synthesis of prior information. In this process, instrumental and electronic
sounds interact mutually and continually. Vocal and instrumental sounds
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can serve as a model for creating new electronic sounds; synthetic sounds may
offer ideas for composing vocal and instrumental music.
The works Spiel/Abbruch (1991-94) for ensemble and tape by Jörg
Birkenkötter and Tsi-Shin-Kut (1993-94) for percussion quartet and tape
by Younghi Pagh-Paan develop an interplay of sound events that led to the
blending of the perception of instruments and electronics. The electronic
sounds of both pieces were created on the basis of samples of instrumental
sounds: percussion, piano, and accordion in Birkenkötter’s piece; percussion
and contrabass flute in Pagh-Paan’s piece.
The mutual influence between acoustic and electronic sounds can occur
at many stages. For example, some samples of instruments, played with
enhanced or unusual techniques, function already as compact models for
electronic composition. On the other side, the electronic composition
generates unpredictable ideas that flow into the composition for instruments,
such as instrumental mimesis of electronic sounds.
The electronic processing of instrumental sound contributes to shaping
“this apparent contradiction between the invented and the available” that
characterizes Birkenkötter’s music, according to Jahn (1997). In the case
of Pagh-Paan’s music, a similar dialectics between new invention and old
reference underlies the composition for percussion inspired by ritual music
of rural Korea.
For both Birkenkötter and Pagh-Paan, the pieces realized in the WDR
studio were their first compositions with electronic sounds. Their approach to
electronics shows the fascination with the possibilities of the apparatuses, but
also their criticism of the programmatic reality of the apparatuses:
Through my work I wish to encourage the critical rethinking of our

“throw-away society”. I oppose the trend of throwing everything away
after a superficial use, in order to buy even more perfect and comfortable
devices; important to me is the equal treatment of simple, ancient
percussion instruments along with the sound products of exactly those
electronic devices that no longer belong to the newest models. (Pagh-
Pann 1994, 6)
In Birkenkötter’s music, extremely soft almost unnoticeable sounds reflect the

critical intention to push experience towards the limits of sound perception,
in order to illuminate the alienation process. Extreme dynamics are meant to
critically reveal the seductive glamour of the surface of apparatuses:
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If the mentioned dynamics of the electronic material itself sometimes

threatens to come dangerously close to clichéd “sound indulgence”, as
antithesis—clearly perceptible on the auditory surface at least at one
point in the piece—the technical aspect of the tape as a reproduction
device is thematized. (Birkenkötter 1994, 27)
III
The WDR Studio for Electronic Music provided a media platform for the
realization of electronic and vocal and/or instrumental compositions. The
aesthetic approaches and categories that accompanied the entire musical
development of the second half of the 20th century can be recognized in the
studio’s productions. The works demonstrate the broad, pluralistic spectrum
of contemporary music [Neue Musik] with all its trends, objectives and
utopias; both successful and failed attempts.
In the 1990s, the old analog and new digital apparatuses cohabited and
complemented each other and the experience of the analog era being further
worked out, continued to prove pivotal in the production. In its original
concept the Electronic Studio is to be understood as a complex apparatus, or
meta-apparatus, consisting of people and technical facilities. The production
of works took place within a process of information exchange between the
composer and the studio’s technical and artistic staff. The dialog reflected in
the works flowed back as recursive feedback into the studio apparatus.
The process of change in the media accelerated in the second half of
the 1990s and imposed the restructuring of the WDR, which affected the
Studio for Electronic Music dramatically. The WDR direction questioned
the continuance of the studio, although not officially, and took initiative
to relocate it. This development can be interpreted as a cultural crisis that
expressed the loss of faith in the value of the old structures. The evolution of
the crisis in the context of electronic music illuminates the problems art faces
in the digital society.11
Live Electronics I: Sound Shaping and Performance Shaping
The pieces Pensées (1994) by York Höller and One Evening... (1993-94) by
Jonathan Harvey demonstrate different approaches to live electronics in the
1990s. Both composers had previously composed several electronic pieces
11
See “The Paradoxes of Electronic Music” below.
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on tape also in combination with acoustic, vocal, and instrumental music.

Both attached great importance to the flexibility of the electronics in the
performance, particularly with voices and or instruments, and in this regard
set relatively high expectations in the new media. Höller’s and Harvey’s own
experiences with digital technology, which can be ascribed to their work at
the IRCAM Paris, likewise played a large role in the choice of means.
The live electronics of Höller’s Pensées—Requiem for piano, orchestra and
live electronics is based on the use of a MIDI piano (Yamaha Disklavier Grand
Piano), which controls synthetic sounds (Yamaha FM synthesizer SY77 and
later SY99). The MIDI piano takes over the function of expanding “the sound
spectrum of the orchestral apparatus, long since more or less standardized, in
a characteristic manner” (Höller 1993, 15).
In the realization of the piece, Höller deliberately took limited sound
material as a starting point. He produced a repertoire of 25 synthetic sounds
“whose characteristics have a certain affinity to piano sound” (Höller 1993,
16). These finely nuanced sounds are played after each other in the course
of the piece and mixed with the amplified sound of the piano; both sounds
were projected through loudspeakers into the sound space. The electronic
sounds formed a unity with the piano, not only through a similar spectral
structure, but through their specific dependence on the dynamic. The MIDI
velocity controls both the volume and the sound-specific parameters of the
FM synthesis such as filters, envelopes, and FM operators.
The climax of the piece in terms of live electronics is the long cadence.
Here the pianist plays with a computer triggering and interactively reacting to
pre-programmed events—single sounds and sound sequences. This is a typical
score-follower application programmed with Max software. As Höller claims:
“The pianist reacts to impulses coming from the computer. In summary: it
creates a kind of dialog between man and machine” (Höller 1993, 17).
The cadence renounces “any external virtuosity” and instead put the
construction of a subtle sound world in the foreground. It links the pianistic
tradition and its many complex nuances, with sonic expansion through
electronics so that sound shaping and performance shaping merge into a
unified aesthetic principle.
After the cadence in the last part of Pensées, Höller uses together with
orchestra and piano, a pre-produced 4-channel tape on which new sound
material appears, including the transformation of the recording of sounds
played inside the piano. This poses the question of why the concept of live
electronics was not pursued. An explanation can be found in Höller’s then
utopias and thoughts on the limits of the electronics of the 1990s:
176
My ideal would be that, instead of a 4-channel tape running relentlessly,

we would have the entire sound material of each track in the form of
individual sounds on four samplers or four computers, and that the
sounds could be brought directly into the performance by the keyboard
with great flexibility; but we are quite a long way from that. (Höller
1993, 84)
Live electronics is also a crucial issue in Jonathan Harvey’s piece One

Evening... (1994), for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and chamber ensemble
(flute/bass, flute/piccolo, oboe/English horn, French horn, percussion, harp,
violoncello, two MIDI keyboarders). Harvey’s concept of live electronics
combines three parallel strategies of the playback of pre-produced material,
sample instruments controlled by MIDI keyboard, and the live processing of
instruments.
Harvey developed his concept in close collaboration with the studio staff,
drawing on past experiences of the analog era of the studio. One basic idea is the
transformation of duration into timbre through the acceleration of rhythmic
cells, which created a continuous transition between musical parameters.
Harvey drew inspiration from Stockhausen’s notion of composition in the
time continuum as introduced in the seminal text “…How Time Passes…” (cf.
Stockhausen 1959; 1963b).12 The technical realization of this principle with
analog technology (impulse generators and tape machines) was complex and
time consuming. Many intermediate stages were required to accomplish the
transformation of materials between different time scales. Harvey envisioned
a digital version that would perhaps facilitate the process.
Sound engineer Volker Müller found a way to realize this idea by exploring
a unique feature of the Fairlight III, namely, the extreme variation in the
sampling rate (between 5 and 100 kHz), which made it possible to transpose
samples over several octaves. By applying this feature to samples of rhythms,
it was possible to progressively accelerate the rhythm until it was perceived as
a continuous sound with a particular timbre that corresponds to the rhythm,
or slow down the timbre until the rhythm emerged. Another feature of the
Fairlight III explored in this context was its capability to draw waveforms by
hand, making it possible to draw impulses and sequences of impulses that
could be submitted to the same process of time scaling.13
12
Harvey received significant influence from Stockhausen. As a young man he wrote a book
on Stockhausen: Jonathan Harvey, The Music of Stockhausen (London: Faber & Faber,
1975).
13
Harvey’s model of “unified time structuring” was of course the electronic music
of Stockhausen’s Kontakte; One Evening... has a sound structure very similar to the
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Another basis of One Evening… was the transformation of instrumental

samples by artificially extending the resonance through spectral and harmonic
additions. For example, the resonance of the plucked strings of a harp were
subtly modulated and recorded as a pre-produced event. Additionally, the
sound of some of the instruments was processed live with two harmonizers
(Eventide 3500), generating harmonic fields that were fully integrated into
the acoustic sound world of the ensemble.
Harvey conceived the music as the representation of different types
of consciousness inspired by Buddhism and Eastern philosophy. The
acceleration of rhythmic cells that drove the transformation from rhythm to
timbre is thought of as a musical symbol of continuity between physical and
spiritual existence. Slowing down from the shimmery timbre to the rhythmic
domain represented the incarnation of the spirit as body. Electronic, vocal,
and instrumental sounds expand and complement each other in the piece
to symbolically achieve the state of oneness. One Evening… is an example
of how acoustic chamber music and live electronics can create a unifying
synthesis.
Sound Sequences: Serialism and Minimalism
The American composer John McGuire characterizes his music as an attempt

to develop a synthesis between American minimalism and European serialism.
His constructivist approach is based on musical fundamentals, especially
on functional tonality and temporal periodicity. McGuire’s electronic
music distances itself from instrumental models and is based on personal
algorithmic concepts that cannot be realized using acoustic instruments.
McGuire produced three electronic music works in the WDR studio. Along
with the continuity of the compositional approach, these pieces reveal how
his ideas evolved by exploring new technological possibilities with ever more
precision.
Pulse Music III (1978) was realized with the analog synthesizer EMS
Synth 100 and intensively used its built-in sequencer; Vanishing Points (1988)
utilized the synthesizer Yamaha TX816 as sound generators and the hardware
seminal passage at minute 17 in Kontakte. First we hear a continuous timbre consisting

of accelerated rhythms, which impressively slow down until we hear the original.
Stockhausen describes this passage of Kontakte in his lecture “Four criteria of electronic
music” (Stockhausen 1978a, 1989a).
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MIDI sequencer Yamaha QX1; A Cappella (1992-97) utilized the software

MIDI sequencer Cubase (Atari 1040ST) playing samples on Fairlight III.
The sequencer became the most important tool for the realization of
McGuire’s electronic music. Some elements of his aesthetics such as the
periodic motive, the microscopic quantization of the rhythm, and the varying
repetition, pointed to a “sequential way of thinking”. Nevertheless, McGuire
denies a significant influence of the sequencer in his composition:
By the time I began the sketching and production of ‘A Capella’, my

compositional ideas were influencing the way I used the sequencer, rather
than the other way around. Put more simply, the sequencer had almost
no influence on my compositional ideas at the time.14
In regard to the material, A Cappella for female singer and tape is the most
restrained piece produced in the 1990s in the WDR studio. McGuire used
samples from only three sung vowels (e, a, and u in English pronunciation).15
for artificially extending the vocal register while keeping the timbre of the
voice unaltered.
With this restricted material, McGuire created a complex polyphony of
musical layers of two types: color sequences and pitch sequences. The color
sequences constructed on the basis of the three vowel sounds produced faster
rhythmic variations on the phonemes. The pitch sequences were constructed
on the basis of paired notes in intervals of fifths (e.g., C/G) and their
symmetrical variations (e.g., B, D, F, A). The central pair of notes moved
around the cycle of fifths until all notes of the cycle occurred by the end
of the piece. The electronic music forms two virtual choirs, which in the
performance were mixed with the live voice of the female singer.
Sound Space I: 12-Channel Electronic Composition
Few works in the 1990s dealt with spatial composition and made use of the
unique possibilities of the Electronic Studio for multichannel production.
These include the pieces Oktophonie by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zwielicht by
Marco Stroppa, and my pieces Migration and Projektion.
14
Personal letter from John McGuire to Paulo C. Chagas from April 21, 2000.
15
The soprano Beth Griffith recorded the sound material of A Cappella and premiered the
piece, which is dedicated to her. The samples of her voice melt completely with the live
performance so that it creates an impressive effect of aural illusion.
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Migration (1995-96) was the first 12-channel electronic music produced

in the WDR studio as well as the first based on Pro Tools and hard disk
recording. It was realized for the most part by myself and also with my own
equipment. The Pro Tools III Nubus system was limited to 32 tracks and
had to be coupled with two Sony 24-track digital tape machines in order to
expand the number of available tracks necessary for such a large multichannel
production. Pro Tools and Sony were synchronized through SMPTE time
code and their outputs were connected to the analog Lawo mixing console.
The 12-channel layers were produced on Pro Tools and the tape machine was
used for storing intermediate mixes (up to 48 tracks mixed down to 12 tracks)
and for the final mix.
Spectral and temporal transformation of the sound material (samples from
speech and piano for the most part) formed the basis of this composition.
The speech material comes from the short story “The Library of Babel”
by the Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges, which was recorded in four
languages (German, English, Spanish, and French), each one with a male
and a female speaker (eight versions total). The story describes the universe in
the form of an infinite library containing all possible books with all possible
combinations letters. The library metaphor approaches several philosophical
concepts that influenced the composition such as the opposition between
creative chaos and totalitarian order and the combinatory and circular nature
of reality. Furthermore, the composition reflects on the idea of migration as
a process of individual agency, emerging from my own status as immigrant,
and reconstruction of physical, social, and cultural environment. Migration
stands as symbol for the diversity and mutation of the world.
The electronic music of Migration embodies a multi-layered structure of
sound migrations at the level of both individual sound objects and sound
structures. Speech and piano sounds are processed through different kinds
of spectral techniques based on FFT methods of analysis and synthesis
such as temporal compression/expansion, filtering, and cross-synthesis. The
processes of spectral transformation generate sound families, hybrid sounds,
sound mutations, and metamorphoses, which can become radically different
from their primary sources. Working mainly with the IRCAM software
AudioSculpt, I was able to take advantage of its script function for changing
the parameters of algorithms over the time. I created script files with the
software “Patchwork”, using mathematical functions for generating large-
scale temporal processes such as band-pass filters moving across 12-channel
sound files.
Migration is to be performed for an audience surrounded by a circle of
12 loudspeakers, arranged like the numerals of a virtual analog clock. This
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choice was influenced by the architecture of the main production studio

with its suspended ring construction of 12 loudspeakers. The concept of
circular sound space develops a 12-channel polyphony by correlating spectral
transformation to sound spatialization on the basis of two general principles:16
1. Decomposition in static sound spaces: The sound spectrum is separated
into a number of components and distributed in the space; the spectral
elements can be dispersed as source point locations (single speakers), form
fields, patterns, or geometric figures in various sizes and dimensions (e.g.
with 3, 4, 6 and 12 channels).
2. Movement in dynamic sound spaces: The sound moves between speakers
mostly as rotations through 6 or 12 speakers, but also with other kinds
of patterns; the displacements create gestural fluxes and shape geometric
figures such as twelve-sided polygons, hexagons, squares, or triangles.
Special attention was given to sound rotations in Migration, a method of

sound space composition rooted in the history of the WDR Electronic Studio.
Stockhausen was the first composer to systematically explore rotations as a
feature of electronic music in Kontakte (1959-60). The studio built a special
device called the Rotationstisch, which was a rotating table, for generating
quadraphonic rotations: a speaker was mounted on the center of a round
table that was able to rotate and four microphones were placed around the
table; a mono signal was sent to the speakers and recorded in four channels as
the table rotated. The speed of the Rotationstisch could be manually changed
(and was later driven by an electrical motor) so that it was possible to produce
sound rotations that accelerated or slowed down.17
In this system, whether the speed of the rotation is regular, increases, or
decreases, the characteristic of the rotation is arbitrarily determined by the
mechanism that drives it. By contrast, Migration develops rotations that are
not arbitrary, but derived from the characteristics of the sound material itself.
The primary sound material for shaping the rotations is speech. The audio
signal of a speech (phrase or long passage) was sent to the analog synthesizer
(EMS Synth 100); the synthesizer tracked the dynamic envelope of speech
and converted it into voltage control; the voltage control signal is converted
into a MIDI signal and processed with Max software; it becomes the control
signal for driving the sound rotation system.
16
For a discussion of the concept of circular sound space composition and further details on
Migration see my article “Composition in Circular Sound Space: Migration 12-channel
Electronic Music” (Chagas 2008b).
17
Cf. Chagas 2008b.
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The Max patch simulates the attenuation curve of the stereo channels of
the pan-pot of an analog mixer, like the ones used in the 1960s in the WDR
radio studios. The Max patch generates MIDI data for controlling the level of
the stereo outputs of six effect devices (Lexicon PCM70). For example, louder
speech causes faster rotations, soft speech slower rotations; as human speech is
not a monotone sound but features a constant variation in loudness, the speed
of the rotation constantly varies. The attenuation curve in Max can be freely
defined, even graphically drawn by hand, so that it is possible not only to
control the speed of the rotations but the characteristics of the sound. In this
way it is also possible to radically transform the rotating sound. For example,
instead of continuous curves, one can draw just a couple of disconnected dots
to create a pointillist sound texture similar to granular synthesis. With this in
mind, the following are two important issues in electronic music:
1. The principle of organic shaping as a fundamental of electronic sound
composition. The organic relation between sound and movement is
obtained by coupling the structural characteristics of speech to the speed
of the rotations; the control techniques (voltage control and MIDI control)
are employed to accomplish this organic correlation.
2. The principle of the subversive use of apparatuses. The spatialization
system combines analog and digital apparatuses (EMS Synth 100, Lexicon
PCM70, Max software) in unusual and unpredictable ways and the
apparatuses are used as toys in a game that reverses its automated functions.
Sound Space II: Psychoacoustic Stereo Simulation
Besides the original 12-channel electronic music, Migration was mixed in the
versions of 8-channel, 5.1-surround, and stereo. The stereo mix simulates a
12-channel virtual sound space with two speakers. It was produced with the
Pro Tools plug-in “Proton”.18 The psychoacoustic algorithm of the plug-in takes
as reference a virtual listener placed in the center of the circle and calculates
the aural perception for each of the 12 speakers. The spectral characteristics of
the music change according to the parameters of each speaker, e.g., position,
distance, and height. Consequently, the psychoacoustic translation accurately
simulates the spatial location and movement. The stereo mix of Migration
18
The Crystal River Engineering “Proton” plug-in for Pro Tools takes a mono signal and
calculates the psychoacoustic effect in relation to a virtual listener that can be placed
anywhere in a 3D room. The plug-in was applied to the 12 tracks, each one set to a
listener placed in a different position in the circular sound space. Proton runs with Pro
Tools up to version 3.2; its production has been discontinued.
182
creates the impression of being in the middle of a virtual circle for the listener;
one can listen to sounds coming from the front, rear, and sides, and perceive
the rotations with great accuracy.
Migration represents an exception with regard to the reduction of
multichannel electronic music to stereo mix, which is the standard sound
format in radio and internet. Normally, the spatial distribution is done
with pan-pots, whereby different channels are assigned to specific positions
in the stereo panorama. For example, for the stereo mix of a quadraphonic
piece one places two channels (the front or the rear) on the extremities
of the stereo panorama and the other two in intermediate positions. This
method has an enormous disadvantage as it practically eliminates the spatial
depth of quadraphony. For certain pieces, this can be a real disaster. The
WDR Electronic Studio focused on the performance of electronic music in
the physical space and thus did not develop any know-how for converting
multichannel electronic music into media specific formats. This limitation
ultimately prevented the reception of the pieces by a broader audience.
Live Electronics II: MIDI Piano and Techno
The 12-channel electronic music of Migration was subsequently integrated

into Migration for MIDI piano, ensemble (15 players) and live electronics (1995-
97). The soloist plays a Yamaha Disklavier Grand Piano that interacts with a
computer using Max software and sending and receiving MIDI data. A series
of Max patches were programmed that successively activate in the course of
the performance. The patch algorithms calculate chords and sequences of
notes according to a system of intervals inspired by Pousseur’s “harmonic
networks”.19 The computer generates notes that aggregate sonic material
to MIDI piano and thus expands its harmonic and melodic possibilities.
The piano sound is amplified and also slightly transformed with an effects
processor (Eventide 3500 Ultra-Harmonizer).
After the introductory electronic music, the MIDI piano activates the first
Max patch: the pianist plays a single note and the computer adds successive
intervals of minor ninths above and below this note to build chords spreading
over the entire register of the piano—from the very low bottom to the
highest note. This same type of algorithm is used later to build very dense
chords consisting of a great number of intervals of fifths and thirds. Other
19
Henry Pousseur proposed the theory of “harmonic networks” in the 1960s. I have applied
it in several of my compositions (cf. Pousseur 1968).
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algorithms include pre-programmed sequences with rhythmic structures and

stochastic processes generating rapid sequences of notes sweeping all over the
piano register. Through the interaction with the computer, the MIDI piano
is transformed into a sort of mechanical-digital sound machine. A special
moment of the piece is the cadence, in which the pianist has the freedom to
improvise his/her own version by interacting with the different Max patches
and additionally using a MIDI controller (JL Cooper Fadermaster Pro) for
switching between patches and changing its parameters (e.g., the speed of
MIDI sequences).
The composition develops great virtuosity both for the piano soloist
and for the instrumental ensemble, and a dense complexity resulting from
the multiple relations between electronic music, instrumental ensemble,
and MIDI piano in live interaction with the computer. Conceptually, the
MIDI piano represents the virtual center of an infinite universe, inspired by
Borges’ story “The Library of Babel”, which unfolds a cyclical metamorphosis
between chaos and order.
My techno opera RAW (1999), commissioned by the Opera in Bonn,
was originally an independent work that became associated with the WDR
Electronic Studio through the initiative of the WDR jazz producer Ulrich
Kurt. The studio provided technical support for the performance and the
WDR produced a live recording of the opera for radio broadcast.20
RAW is conceived for five soloists (two sopranos, mezzo soprano, tenor
and bass), a dancer, and an ensemble of six musicians (three keyboardists
and three percussionists). Each keyboardist plays a MIDI master keyboard
that controls three different synthesizers and a sampler. Each percussionist
plays, besides acoustic percussion instruments, a MIDI drum pad controlling
a synthesizer. The electronic music is generated entirely live without any
recorded or pre-produced material and produces a differentiated sound
texture of evolving timbres with a clearly orchestral character. Rhythm is a
driving force of the composition, which elaborates elements of Afro-Brazilian
ritual and techno music.
RAW thematically explores the immense fascination with war and violence
while critically reflecting on the illusion and disappointment caused by it.
The musical aesthetics, combining opera bel canto with electronic music,
embodies these ambiguous feelings. The electronic music ritualizes the insane,
ambivalent attraction of war, which evokes at the same time fascination and
rejection. In this way, RAW embodies the ambivalence of war while revealing
20
RAW was performed in the theater of Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of
Germany (Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland).
184
the paradox of techno music: on the one hand, techno demonstrates musical
inventiveness in the way it creatively uses electronic music apparatuses; on the
other hand, it programs human consciousness for repetition and automatic
behavior through recurrent sound patterns, reinforcing the idea of automation
of the apparatuses.
Sound Space III: Projektion21
The concept of circular sound space is further developed in my work

Projektion (1999-2000), which exists in two versions: Projektion 12-channel
electronic music and Projektion 12-channel sound installation. Projektion
intentionally relates to some ideas and visions of the analog era of the studio
in the 1950s and 60s, which I tried to implement more exactly and precisely
with digital technology. It includes the notion of parametric music inspired
by serial thinking, composition in the time/space continuum (Stockhausen),
and the construction of multichannel sound space. The electronic music
explores processes of feedback for transforming a single sound sample that
rhythmically rotates in a circular sound space.
The work was born by accident in 1995 during the experimental phase
of the production of Migration. Volker Müller and I were working on the
development of the analog-digital 12-channel spatialization system when
the computer crashed while loading a sample of a female speech. It kept
repeating a fragment of the sample as an endless loop. The length of the loop
is approximately 100 milliseconds, repeated ten times per second. Instead
of restarting the computer, I sent the audio output playing the loop to the
12-channel spatialization system and then something surprising happened:
the difference between the length of the loop and the envelope that controls
the spatialization produced disturbances, which are perceived as rhythmic
variations. I immediately recorded the result as a 12-channel Pro Tools session.
Indeed, the 12 VCA (voltage controlled amplifiers) of the spatialization
system function as time windows that open and close according to the
envelope curve, letting the sound pass. The time frame of the window is
approximately 72 milliseconds. As the duration of the rotating loop is 100
milliseconds, a desynchronization occurs between the loop and the window
21
Projektion was the last production of the Electronic Studio; it was completed shortly
before the studio was dismantled and relocated into the storage facility in Ossendorf in
2001. The work was not commissioned by the WDR and came into being thanks to the
personal engagement of Volker Müller.
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envelope (at the ratio 10 to 7) so that each window reveals a different part
of the loop. The effect impacts sound perception both in terms of time and
space. On the one hand, the length of the time window of the spatialization
system—perceived as a steady, rotating rhythm—produces temporal and
spatial stability. On the other hand, the difference between the time window
and the sound loop—perceived as accents and displacements—produces
temporal and spatial instability. The combination of stability and instability
creates a temporal and spatial polyphony shaped by the rotations.
Figure 1 shows a diagram of the 12-channel spatialization system. It displays
on the top the loop generated by the computer crash, just below that the time
windows (envelopes) in the 12 channels, to the right the connection of the 12
outputs to the amplifiers and the speakers, and on the bottom the circle with
the 12 loudspeakers.
Figure 1: 12-channel spatialization system of Projektion
In 1999, I returned to the Pro Tools session with the raw material and decided
to make a piece out of it. The 12-track original structure generated by the
spatialization system was taken as basic material of the work. It was subjected
to systematic transformation processes that led to five other additional 12-track
structures. Each transformation applies a different processing method such as
filter, delay, or feedback, while using many different algorithms. For example,
for the filter transformation, I processed the raw material with band pass
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filters, whose center frequencies constantly move, modulated by both periodic

sine waves and non-periodic chaotic algorithms.
The original structure and its five transformations were combined to
generate six different mixings of piece. Projektion 12-channel electronic music is
the mixing of the six structures consisting of 72 tracks in Pro Tools. Projektion
12-channel sound installation is the sequential arrangement of the six mixings
building an infinite loop. The piece premiered at the Contemporary Music
Festival in Witten [Wittener Tage für Neue Musik] in May 2001. The stereo
version of Projektion 12-channel electronic music was made by applying the
Pro Tools plug-in “Proton” in the same manner as for Migration.
Intermediate Spaces
The electronic material from Marco Stroppa’s Zwielicht (1994-99) for

contrabass, two percussionists, and 13-channel electronic music developed
from instrumental sounds that partly came from the composer’s collection
and were partly recorded in the studio. The microscopic characteristics of
the sound material influence the composition of the electronic music and
are reflected in the macroscopic structure of the piece. The varied, colorful
integration of instrumental and electronic sounds that characterizes the work
is like a musical reinforcement of that source raw material that the composer
has called “twilight sounds”:
These are very unusual phenomenon, which can rarely be heard in concert,
because they are too quiet or unpredictable to be able to reproduce them.
For example, a special sound emerges that depends on the nature and
the speed of the gesture, if one gently rubs several times with a knitting
needle along the edge of a crotale. If a phrase of the contrabass is played
with an extremely light, quick bow, an ardent, very lovely, pan flute-like,
fleeting sound comes out of it. (Stroppa 1999)
In his experimental phase, Stroppa made a large number of recordings

of percussion instruments with special microphones placed close to the
instruments or contact microphones, placed directly on their resonance
bodies. These recordings act as musical gestures of his compositional
intention, namely, to bring into the foreground and illuminate the transitions
of complex acoustic processes. The two methods that can be discerned are
(1) the dynamic amplification of the transitional form and (2) the temporal
expansion of the transition time.
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For the sound transformation and form shaping, Stroppa used IRCAM
software (especially “AudioSculpt”), his own software, as well as the program
“Zeitplan” by Marcel Schmidt (Musikhochschule in Cologne).22 Zwielicht
was produced with Pro Tools III and Pro Tools was also used for playback
of the electronic music at the premiere (April 10, 1999, WDR concert hall).
Pro Tools was used here not as a replacement for the tape machine, but as an
independent medium. Stroppa changed the music even during the rehearsals,
adjusted it to the instruments and acoustics, and opted for a version that he
considered as merely one possibility of the piece.
The interplay of the sound in different areas of the concert hall determines
the 13-channel spatial concept of the piece: Five speakers on stage, two on the
border between the stage and the audience, and another five in the audience.
The historical experience of the studio and its technical possibilities regarding
multichannel spatial composition fascinated him and provided the impetus
for his expanded sound space concept. He stressed the “unique achievement
of the studio” for spatial composition and viewed Zwielicht as a tribute to the
famous history of the studio in this domain:
Actually, space is not treated as an independent parameter, separated

from the sounds that originate in it. On the contrary, each sound family
was recorded with a certain “spatial aura”, which uniquely links a
collection of spatial characteristics with it. Not only are sounds projected
into the space, but the “space” itself enriches each sound. (Stroppa 1999)
Listening and Modeling
The result of the work of Mauricio Sotelo in the Electronic Studio between
1997 and 1999 was the electronic music of his chamber music work Angel de
la Tierra as well as his chamber opera De Amore—Una Maschera die Cenere
and the production of the solo pieces De Amore for violoncello and Argo for
saxophone. Sotelo eventually used the same material for composing these
different pieces. In addition, he processed recordings of different instrumental
works of his own (as well as from Luigi Nono and Gustav Mahler) for the
realization of his electronic works.
22
Marcel Schmidt is still today (2013) the main technician of the Electronic Music Studio
of the Cologne Academy of Music (Musikhochschule). He programmed the software
“Zeitplan” for the Atari 1040ST computer; I used it extensively in Migration.
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Sotelo’s own instrumental music and the engagement with its medial
reproduction are central to his approach. That is above all, thanks to the digital
medium of hard disk recording with graphic software support. Pro Tools
simplifies the access to the deep structure of the material, since it offers an
operational surface with tools for manipulating sound and musical concepts,
which are accessible enough for a composer to learn and make use of. Sotelo
used Pro Tools as a tool for sculpting raw materials. He produced sound
masses from mixtures of existing recordings, forms and deforms the material
through intuitive and targeted intervention using a montage of elements,
manipulations of loudness, and transformation of the timbre through effects
(Pro Tools plug-ins). The individual changes may be very subtle. Nevertheless,
he was less concerned with detail than with the perception of the whole.
Sotelo describes these methods as a mediation between observing and
listening whose roots can be traced back to the Renaissance, through the
interweaving of artistic, scientific and philosophical models. The oral
tradition of the “Canto Jondo”, an expression of the flamenco vocal style,
became the center of his research. Recordings of female flamenco singers were
processed as sound material and act additionally as a source for transformation
processes. In Sotelos’ approach, we recognize how information is synthesized
through analysis of prior information. For example, the spectrum of flamenco
songs were analyzed through the FFT method to extract information (pitch,
amplitude, etc.) for creating filter programs in the form of scripts (with
Patchwork and AudioSculpt), which were applied to process other sound
materials (e.g., sound masses).
The new experiences with electronic tools gave him deeper insight into
the composition of pure instrumental music. During his production time in
the Electronic Studio, Sotelo worked on two solo pieces for violoncello and
saxophone. Both scores require a tremendous degree of virtuosity from the
interpreter, including special extended techniques, which did not come out
in the recording. Sotelo processed the recordings in Pro Tools, correcting
“mistakes” with meticulous precision and taking advantage of Pro Tools’
editing capabilities, until the result corresponded with what he had envisioned.
This is an example of how the digital tools open up new possibilities for
creative interactions between composers and performers. Today composers
have other possibilities of making their own ideas accessible to performers
and also of training performers through a new type of imitative learning.
This also shows how instrumental and electronic sounds are inextricably
interwoven so that it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish
between electronic music produced with samples of instruments (or with
synthetic sounds that simulate instruments) and instrumental music that is
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recorded and electronically processed. Does it make sense at all today to draw
boundaries between these different types of electronics?
Oktophonie and Intuitive Vibrations
Karlheinz Stockhausen worked in the Electronic Studio from 1990 to 1998

in regular intervals of two years. This special status can be explained by his
artistic and historic contribution to the WDR studio, and the biannual rhythm
was proposed by the artistic director of the studio, York Höller. The electronic
works produced by Stockhausen for multichannel tape mostly fulfill a double
function: They are electronic music for independent performances and at the
same time playback tape for staged or quasi concertante performances of his
opera cycle Licht.
Stockhausen was one of the first composers that treated space as a parameter
of electronic music composition. By the 1950s he had set new standards for
multichannel spatial composition with major works that contributed to the
relevance of the WDR studio in the field of sound space composition. He
also contributed to the awareness that the composition of electronic music
doesn’t emerge from abstract models, but evolves as a practical experience
during the production process. The electronic studio was for him a model
of a performance situation; the listening experience has to be constantly
actualized in order to adapt the compositional ideas to the production
conditions in studio including technique and space. As each piece develops a
different spatial concept, the studio configuration should be adaptable to the
needs of individual composers. When the Electronic Studio was relocated
in the 1980s, the design of the production facility put an emphasis on the
ability to make the space flexible for different kinds of production, including
multichannel mixing and listening, and free configuration of speakers.
In the electronic work Oktophonie (1990-92), Stockhausen expands the
quadraphonic geometry to the three-dimensional space. The concept of
octophonic sound space simulates a virtual sound cube by placing a total of
eight equidistant speakers, four on the floor and four suspended. The piece
featured different kinds of rotations and several types of sonic movements
between the four vertices and the six faces of the cube, such as spiral and
diagonal displacements. The spatialization system of Oktophonie (designed
by Volker Müller and myself) was implemented with the combination of a
MIDI sequencer (C-Lab, Atari), a MIDI controlled digital mixer (Yamaha
DMP7), and a MIDI-fader (JL Cooper). The MIDI tools translated the
main concepts of the Rotationstisch for the digital world. Feeding four input
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channels of the digital mixer with a monophonic signal and attenuating it

successively through the four outputs generated the quadraphonic rotation.
The MIDI sequencer was used to store the MIDI controller data assigned
to the faders that controlled the attenuation of the four output signals. By
manipulating the MIDI fader manually, the tempo of the sequencer could be
changed and therefore the speed of the rotation. Two four-track spatialization
systems, each one requiring a specific MIDI sequencer, a digital mixer, and a
MIDI fader, could be used simultaneously.23
The four-track rotations generated by this digital system constituted
the raw material of Oktophonie. The three-dimensional spatialization
concept required that the rotations move between the six faces of the cube.
Technically, this involves multichannel mixing procedures. For example,
to make a rotation move between two faces, it was necessary to create two
groups of four channels fed with the same four-track signals. A single fader
controlled the amplitude of each group. By opening or closing these faders,
one could determine where the rotation would sound. Fading in one source
while fading out another created the impression that the axis rotation moved
from one face to another. Certain complex displacement of the rotations
required several mixing steps.
Stockhausen insisted on manipulating the faders of the main Lawo mixing
board himself. This gestural approach to electronic music production was
an essential aspect of his aesthetics; the composer plays with the machinery
of the studio in dialogue with the technicians and assistants (Chagas 2002;
2006b). Nevertheless, his understanding of the new digital tools was bound
by his experience with the apparatuses of the earlier analog electronics: tape
recorders, sound generators, filters, mixers, etc. He wanted all the rotations
to be manually controlled and expected the faders to behave like in an analog
mixer. He used to meticulously notate the position of the faders on the
mixer strip and was surprised if the amplitude didn’t always match the same
position. In fact, he struggled with the fact that digital faders in opposition
to the analog ones, were not fixed, but could be assigned to different ranges
and channels. This kind of misunderstanding became a source of frustration
during his productions in the 90s.24
23
For a description of the sound spatialization system of Oktophonie Chagas (2008b).
24
In 1998, Stockhausen abandoned the production of his electronic music piece
Michaelion and left the studio. This incident is documented in his report WDR – Studio
für Elektronische Musik ‘ kaputt’ (Stockhausen 1998) and in my response to Stockhausen’s
report Ein Regler ist nicht ein Regler ist nicht ein Regler. Oder wie man aus der Oper Licht
eine virtuelle Operette schaff t [A Fader is not a Fader is not a Fader. Or how the Opera Licht
becomes a Virtual Operetta] (Chagas 1998). Both articles are unpublished manuscripts.
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Oktophonie develops new approaches on mediating the perception of the

verticality of sound space. By exploring the three-dimensionality of the cube,
the piece unfolds a multi-layered spectral and spatial structure of circular
movements, shapes, and volumes. The concept of octophonic sound space
also reaffirmed the gestural, playful approach to machinery. The composer
“does not play with the machinery, but rather plays against it; he tries to create
information, by realizing new, unlikely possibilities with the machinery”
(Chagas 2006b, 164). The new digital tools and the enormous multi-track
mixing capabilities of the WDR studio expanded the boundaries of sound
space composition and introduced a higher level of control and precision. The
flexible and modular concept, which integrated analog and digital design,
stimulated a new kind of hybrid creativity. Rather than being anchored in a
specific technology or aesthetic, it instigated the creative dialog between art,
technique, and handicraft. This created fertile ground for generating new
ideas.
Stockhausen’s production in the Electronic Studio was a remarkable,
lively experience, comparable to the rehearsal of chamber music work with
conductor. He actively used a team of assistants (alias performers) including
the studio staff and his own staff. He took the role of sound director,
instructing and directing the flow of communication between humans and
apparatuses that shaped the creative work. He counted on the assistance of
his son Simon Stockhausen and later Antonio Perez-Abellan for producing
the sound material. They brought to the studio a great variety of synthesizer
models and samplers that they operated themselves. The sound events were
played manually, but Simon Stockhausen also used a MIDI sequencer that
was synchronized with the multi-track tape machines (analog and later
digital) through SMPTE.
Stockhausen continued experimenting and integrating new ideas into
the composition during the different stages of the production: material
production (single sounds and sound structures), spatialization, montage,
intermediate mixing, and final mixing. He envisioned the production of
an electronic music work in studio as the result of a live performance with
musicians and technicians playing with musical apparatuses. He emphasized
the importance of taking into account the musical gestures that shaped this
kind of artistic-technical communication. For him, music produces not only
sound vibrations [Schwingungen], but also intuitive vibrations related to the
aura of the musicians that emerged from the action of performing music.
Stockhausen elaborated this notion of intuitive vibrations in a lecture from
1972 on the future of electroacoustic apparatuses (Stockhausen 1978c). Based
on his own experience with analog technology, he suggested developing
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new apparatuses for live sound processing (Klangwandler) and live sound
spatialization (Rotationstische). He claimed that the transmission of music
could be improved by:
1. Exploring those musical waves that are not yet considered in order to
achieve complete transmission of all the vibrations emanating from the
musicians while performing music.
2. Reducing to a minimum any delay in music playback. The consciousness
of listening to a direct transmission changes listening completely in
comparison with the consciousness of listening to a tape playback. So live
transmission as much as possible. (Stockhausen 1978c, 433-34)
Stockhausen activated visions that influenced succeeding generations of

musicians. He challenged not only through new sounds and ideas but—
and above all— by his capacity to instigate and motivate musicians and
audiences. He provoked, juggling with people’s expectations. He did not
become repetitive or stale as many composers of his generation, but kept
experimenting and integrating new issues into his compositions. Those who
had the privilege to work closely with him, including myself, became aware
of his charisma and his fine sense of humor. They also discovered his power
to seduce people and engage them passionately. Yet, his talent to excite and
surprise caused both fascination and disappointment.25
Crisis and Intention
The changes in production conditions in the Electronic Studio were to a

great extent the consequences of the development of the digital society, which
challenged the status of electronic music in society, and by extension the
role of the WDR Electronic Studio. The retirement of Dr. Wolfgang Beker-
Carsten, producer of the department of Neue Musik, and the structural reform
of the WDR left the studio without a clear artistic orientation; it was thrown
into a void with no way out.
In the collapse of the Electronic Studio one can trace the transformation
of the creative structures of post-industrial society. Since its foundation in the
25
An example of that was his remarks in the aftermath of the events of 9/11 2001.
Stockhausen’s comment that the terrorist attacks to the World Trader Center in New
York was “the greatest work of art imaginable for whole cosmos” caused repugnance
worldwide and overshadowed his reputation.
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1950s, the studio philosophy was to offer a production environment where

composers could count on technical and artistic assistance for concretizing
their ideas. The composers were not required to have any previous knowledge
of the production of electronic music. They were given almost unlimited
freedom to develop works according to their own artistic visions and the
WDR offered full support to perform the work, stinting no efforts to realize
the composer’s ideas. In the 1990s, the concerts of electronic music had
become increasingly costly due to the differentiation of electronic music and
the technical complexity required to perform the works, as well as the fact
that the Electronic Studio did not have its own infrastructure and was forced
to outsource concert activity.
Whatever circumstances may have impacted the studio mission, the main
issue for understanding the collapse is that the studio was programmed for
a linear, historical consciousness that became inadequate; the studio failed
to keep up with the codes and structures of the non-linear, networked
mode of the emerging digital society. The increasing tendency of the
apparatuses to automate the world and program people for certain behaviors
is also demonstrated in the practice of electronic music. The apparatuses are
becoming ever more complex and impenetrable and humans are ever less
competent to operate them. The experiences of the past did not prove to
be enough to cope with the technological development of the present. The
composer lost his autonomy and was dependent on the collaboration with
experts in order to realize his ideas, as York Höller, for example, clearly
observed after the production of Pensées: “[...] I realized something crucial:
today I would absolutely not be able to do anything alone. The Synth 100 I
could still reasonably understand and could do a lot of things alone—that is
today impossible” (Hellermann 1999, 80).
Höller’s observation points to the programmatic reality of digital
apparatuses, which is perceived as the loss of autonomy and competence. As
Flusser claims,
apparatuses are black boxes that simulate thinking in the sense of a

combinatory game using number-like symbols; at the same time, they
mechanize this thinking in such a way that, in future, human beings will
become less and less competent to deal with it and have to rely more and
more on apparatuses. (Flusser 2000, 32)
Concerning the difference between analog and digital technology, Höller

compares the tape machine to the computer. While it was not difficult to
operate a tape machine, one only had to press the record button to connect
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the devices manually by patching their inputs and outputs, this was no longer
possible with the computer: “You must master a program perfectly—if you
only master it 90%, it simply doesn’t work” (Hellermann 1999, 81).
The question that arises then is how should the networked dialogical
creation as it existed until recently in the Studio for Electronic Music of the
WDR be organized in the future?
How can we best shape the critical exchange between composers, musicians,
engineers, technicians and producers vis-a-vis the cultural interface that the
Electronic Music Studio of Cologne provided? How can we overcome the
crisis of electronic music and music altogether?
Design and Projection
The term electronic music as it was defined by the WDR Electronic Studio,
originated in the context of Neue Musik, which stands in the tradition of
serial thinking and orchestral polyphony. It explores the auditory experience
mediated by the loudspeaker, which could be extended to the perception
of vocal and instrumental music. Today, electronic music indicates trends
and tendencies that are based on different approaches. The decay of the
aesthetic significance, which made electronic music in the 1950s appear as
a revolutionary, visionary development, accelerated with digital technology
and has led to the dissolution of sound, things, and of thinking itself.
We can see this change in the privileged position that the concept of
design occupies in contemporary discourse. Design interfaces between art
and science. It represents, originally, the coming together of great ideas from
the material and symbolic worlds. On the one hand, design manages the
increasing merging of scientific, economic, and artistic thinking. On the
other hand, it disdains ideas, material, and work and directs the consciousness
to the surface of the electronic media. Design accelerates the process of the
devaluation of cultural values. As Flusser claims: “By the fact that the word
design makes us aware that all culture is trickery, that we are tricksters tricked,
and that any involvement with culture is the same thing as self-deception”
(Flusser 1999, 20; emphasis in the original).
It would therefore be wrong to view pessimistically the current recoding
of the world, of thinking, and of humans. True, we experience the vacuum,
the zero-dimensionality of an alienated world full of pixels, disintegrating
structures, and abstractions. But we are beginning to develop a new practice
of concretizing and projecting: from punctual elements to sounds, images,
models, and bodies. In the process of which we, the designers, are not to be
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understood as individuals or groups of individuals, but as an essential part of

this networked dialog.
In the interrelation of a dialogic network with objective and subjective
relational fields, and not only restricted to sound and music itself, the broad
field of elecatroacoustic music continues to offer itself as a pluralistic space for
experience, knowledge, criticism, polemics, controversy, and debate.
The Paradox of Electronic Music: Do We Need the Electronic

Studio?26
The demise of the Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR points to the
paradoxical position in which electronic music finds itself today: Electronic
music is being produced more and more often, but its meaning is perceived less
and less. Have electronics been integrated into music in such a manner that it
no longer makes sense to speak of electronic music as a difference that makes
a difference? Or are we experiencing a banalization of its informative, artistic
potential in favor of electronics as the byproduct of music reproduction?
These considerations take into account the question of to what extent the
collective consciousness is occupied with the role of electronic media as
creator or destroyer of culture.
Conflicting statements regarding the composers’ concerns about the
demise of the Electronic Studio revealed the confusion veiling a possible
solution as well as the necessity for a broad and open dialog in order to
comprehend the complexity of the issue. In this context, it is necessary to
distinguish between the meaning electronic music has had for society and the
function that Electronic Studio of the WDR served.27
26
The original text in German—“Paradoxien der Elektronischen Musik oder wozu braucht
man das Elektronische Studio”—was written in 2000 and published in the journal
Mitteilungen from the DEGEM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik
[German Society of Electronic Music]) as a contribution to the discussion on the future
of the WDR Eletronic Studio (cf. Chagas 2000d). I preserved the original ideas and
background but altered some sentences for the purpose of clarification.
27
I proposed to launch a discussion forum in DEGEM journal, but there was no response
to my efforts.
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“Composers no longer need an electronic studio, nowadays they can

do everything at home.”28
The founding of the Electronic Studio of the WDR at the beginning of the
1950s was more than just symbolic: Electronics, which until then were only
used as a means for music storage and reproduction, began to serve as the
basis for the music production itself. Historically the most important message
of electronic music, which emerged as a genre and experienced its first peak in
popularity in the 1950s and 60s, had to do with turning the attention from
the reproductive to the informative potential of electronics. In the network of
electronic music, information flows through channels that spread in different
directions and intersect in various ways. Individual and collective movements
generate fields of aesthetic subjectivity in whose nodes concepts emerge, such
as with electroacoustic music, computer music, acoustic art, sound design,
sound installation, and sound poetry. These concepts point to the pluralistic
and polyphonic modeling of subjectivity through the coupling of musical and
medial forms.
The Electronic Studio of the WDR opened new channels for the production
and distribution of new electronic music, but not by producing it for the
medium of radio. On the contrary, an alien product and a genre incompatible
with radio was produced there. Although the listening experience of the radio
influences the electronic music, it calls for much more than the production
of new sounds that can be transmitted by radio. A great mistake has been
the tendency to reduce electronic music to its sound dimension, as it is not
only about inventing new sounds or broadening the palette of instrumental
music through synthetic timbres. Electronic music finds its justification in
the creation of subjective spaces of experience, in which different experiences
in sound, speech, space, and communication are redefined. If one reduces
electronic music to its medial translation or if one ties it to a certain apparatus
(in the case of computer music), then it could be said that every skilled
composer today is capable of producing electronic music with a computer
himself/herself at home. He/she would operate the computer and software as
one formerly played piano. If that were the case, then one would have to agree
with those who have suggested that the availability of the computer renders
the Electronic Studio anachronistic.
28
This phrase is not attributed to anyone particularly, but conveys the kind of statement
that the WDR administrations repeatedly made as justification for deactivating the
Electronic Music Studio.
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The unique possibilities of the Electronic Studio, which have been

acknowledged by all the composers who have worked there, are not based
on a nostalgic, historically backward-looking inclination or on a preference
for computer and music apparatuses, but on the sober awareness that it was
a place where artists were able to participate in a collective process through
which new concepts came into being. The Studio for Electronic Music of the
WDR had at its disposal, unique spaces and technical conditions for the
production of multichannel electronic music not found in the usual radio or
recording studios, for example, the flexible patching and mixing concept and
the variable setup of speakers. Where else have octophonic, 12 and 13-channel
works been produced in recent years?
Although the facility was truly unique in many ways, the quality of the
work produced there was less attributable to the rooms and apparatuses
and much more to the concepts developed. As a meta-apparatus, the studio
functioned like a network for composers, technicians, scientists, and others
involved in the medial process of music production and distribution.
The artists had the opportunity to confront their own ideas within the
infrastructure of the studio. Musical products were created in a collective
process that is best described as a dialogic creation and presented themselves
as the convergence of different tendencies. Through this type of cybernetic
information exchange, the WDR Electronic Studio developed into an auto-
productive model for the information society: The dialog took place both
between people and between people and machines and was reflected in the
musical works produced and flowed back as feedback into the studio, into the
WDR, and into society. In this way, the studio functioned as a network that
stored, processed, and generated information and thus fulfilled a critical role.
“Programming is post-ideological manipulation” 29
One then must wonder why this model that seems so suitable for the
contemporary information society ever found itself in crisis? Why did the
structures of this living concept machine disintegrate? The polarization of
the recently disclosed debate gives the distorted impression that the sole
responsibility for this decision rests with a single person. But this standpoint
is based on an incorrect assessment of the media apparatuses, for their
characteristics cannot be analyzed with non-apparatic, ideological criteria. It
29
Flusser (2000, 38)
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is even less a question of power, since the development is by no means subject

to human intention.
In reality, the crisis of the Electronic Studio was as old as its founding
(1951 or 1953?),30 insofar as it made the programs of the media the object
of its critical work. The existence of the Electronic Studio has been called
into question again and again at least since the 1970s, and there have been
repeated deliberations on how the WDR might have been able to continue in
collaboration with other partners. During the renovation and the move into
the building on the Annostraße in the 1980s, the production of the studio
was discontinued or substantially reduced. In the 1990s, there was again
intensive production: 24 new works, partial digitalization of tape collections,
and several ancillary productions. In spite of this considerable output, the
signs of crisis multiplied over the years and were coupled with technical and
especially staffing shortages.
The limitations were most obvious in the concert activities of the studio.
The performances of the multichannel tape productions and/or live electronic
works required the deployment of a technical infrastructure and corresponding
know-how. The WDR did not have either at its disposal and had to rent it
expensively from third party providers. The fact that neither dedicated concert
halls nor technical equipment were available for the performance of electronic
music limited the rehearsal time and compromised the implementation of the
ideas that were developed in production. Some works of live electronics that
required musicians, sound directors, and technicians to gain new hands-on
experience with the technique, could not be adequately performed.
What has long since been accepted as a matter of course in pop music,
namely, that electronics is integrated into the performance as an essential
component of the music, remains here an exceptional situation. The electronic
music that developed from the aesthetics of Neue Musik still represents a
foreign object in the concert business. The newly built concert halls (e.g.,
the Cologne Philharmonic Hall) offer optimal conditions, but only for
the music of the past. The training of musicians in institutions of higher
education follows classical and romantic models, which also determine the
understanding of music in society. Most established and emerging composers
do not want to create electronic music pieces, afraid that they will rarely be
performed. Electronic music faces the resistance or the lack of understanding
of concert organizers, who do not want to waste money on the equipment and
30
The date of the founding of the Electronic Studio is the subject of debate. The studio was
launched as a project in 1951 but the first official concert took place in 1953. Which year
should be considered depends on the historical point of view taken.
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time-consuming rehearsals, or of the artists, who cannot acquire a reputation

with it. “One shouldn’t waste time on technical things!” is often said. For
example, during the dress rehearsal for the premiere of a work for MIDI
piano and orchestra with the WDR Orchestra and the Electronic Studio,
the computer that controlled the live electronics crashed for the first time.
The conductor was horrified, did not want to wait a second for the computer
to reboot, but start the rehearsal right away without the electronics, which
didn’t make any sense.31
Music today has largely become a reproductive activity and this
understanding plays a decisive role in the programming of the media
apparatuses. Electronics is the basis of the music reproduction from a technical
and especially from an aesthetic point of view. The electronic apparatus
(including studios, equipment, sound media, and the human beings involved)
programs the surface of the sound and the musical expectation of society. But
it would be a mistake to try to draw ideological boundaries for distinguishing
between the mass culture, which is supposed to be manipulated, and an elite
culture, which is considered free of manipulation (e.g., Neue Musik). Or to
believe that only music that is produced specifically for the mass culture is
affected by this reproductive, automatized characteristic. For programming
is the post-ideological manipulating of all instances of music life including
but not limited to schools, conservatories, concerts, radio, recorded music,
television, composition, performance, and music criticism.
As paradoxical as it seems, electronic music is the one instance for
which there is no functioning program in society. Electronic works cannot
be performed without additional equipment in existing venues and cannot
be broadcast on radio or reproduced without “translation”. Performing
with electronic apparatuses is still not part of the training of musicians
and composers, apart from a few exceptional cases. As far as the media is
concerned, there is no radio program at present devoted to electronic music.
This paradox can be explained from the point of view of the musical content as
follows: Electronic music is concerned with the essence of machines and their
dulling effect; it is committed to criticizing the music apparatuses and their
programs. It can only inform if it sets itself the task of finding unpredictable
solutions that overcome the automatizing tendency of apparatuses.
31
This piece was Pensées by York Höller and the conductor was Hans Zender.
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Museum, University or Therapy?
By observing electronic music in all its manifestations, one realizes that its
resonances spread and make the entire society vibrate. It seems that the lack
of interest for electronic music in the established cultural spheres stands in
contrast to the enthusiasm that it inspires in the young generation. Although
a large amount of electronic music, which has developed as a genre within pop
and techno culture, is made for immediate consumption, one would have to be
deaf not to recognize its lively creative potential pulsating and growing. What
is more important is that a new consciousness emerges for the subjective space
of experience of electronic music in the form of sounds, communication, and
the playful experimentation with old and new apparatuses. In this process,
one recognizes the striving for freedom in the intention of expanding existing
aesthetic categories and generating new ones. On the other hand, there is
the danger that the aesthetic spheres that develop a crucial engagement with
electronic apparatuses will not be able to disentangle themselves from the
programs of mass communication and the effort will lead to nothing.
This ambivalence is obvious and shows the necessity of leaving behind
individual and collective passivity and of taking part in a critical dialog. We
have been accustomed to privileged structures so long that they have become
a matter of course. We have perhaps thought that the apparatus would keep
itself autonomous. Only when it suddenly becomes clear that such privileges
are decaying is the alarm sounded and everyone quickly tries to defend
their own interests and save what still can be saved. Or is the breakdown
irreversible?
What exactly do we need the Electronic Studio for? If one tried to justify
the survival of the studio based on its historical meaning, then there is no
satisfactory answer. The references of the past should not over-code the present.
The Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR produced a heterogeneous,
significant body of works (its archive is considered an historical treasure),
in which we recognize musical trends and models of the 20th century and
beyond. But if exploring the legacy were henceforth the studio’s only mission,
then it would be better to convert it into a museum of electronic music
apparatuses. It would at least be an elegant solution that would bracket the
essential advantage of such a meta-apparatus, namely, its networking function
and ability to establish relationships between the elements, independent
of the elements themselves. This would have only happened if the studio
continued to carry out a medial function, not as a place to display electronic
music works and equipment, but as unity of production, distribution, and
processing of electronic music information. It would also have been disastrous
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to bind the studio to a music academy or university, as the educational system

is not oriented towards artistic practice-based communication. Without this
practical aspect, there is no confrontation with society and no feedback for
further development. The cybernetic circularity of the artistic process will
cease.
The convergence of information technology, telematics, and the
audiovisual allows us perhaps to dare take a decisive step in the direction of
interactive artistic communication, by which we would enter a post-medial
era. The dialog between humans, machines, and apparatuses (live electronics,
networking, and multimedia) would set up new categories on the condition
that a new social, political, and aesthetic practice will free us from traditional
media and meaningless language. The automatizing programs of the media
impose with symbolic violence (cf. Bourdieu) the state of “emptiness”
that maintains dominance. The production of new aesthetic paradigms
represents a dialogizing process of producing a different kind of subjectivity
in medial context. This thoroughly therapeutic approach must also retain its
autonomy in order to behave auto-productively. Even if structures change,
the creative link between the elements should be guaranteed. The best hope
for studios producing electronic music is that they may continue to generate
heterogeneity and complexity and at the same time allow a criticism of the
apparatus contexts. Only then will the electronic studio have the possibility
of remaining a reference in the future.
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Chapter 6
Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition:

The Relationship between Medium and Form
1. The Distinction between Medium and Form
On the basis of the distinction between medium and form, Luhmann proposes
a theory of art as a social system (Luhmann 2000), which is the starting point
for my reflections on audiovisual and multimedia composition.1 Medium
and form are not understood as structures, but as concepts accounting for
operational distinctions made by an observer. Medium is defined as a loose
coupling of elements and form as a tight coupling of elements (cf. Luhmann
2000, 104). The medium consists of elements or events in the time dimension,
but these elements are only loosely connected. Form, by contrast, arises
from the “concentration of relations of dependence between elements, i.e.,
thorough selection from the possibilities offered by a medium” (Luhmann
1990b, 216). The medium is defined by the nature of the loose elements of
which it consists, but is only perceived through the form that coordinates its
elements. As Luhmann explains: “We do not see the cause of light, the sun,
we see things in the light. We do not read letters but with the help of the
alphabet words” (Luhmann 1990b, 216).
The distinction between medium and form can also be understood as
a distinction between chaos (entropy) and order (negentropy), as used in
information theory (Shannon) and cybernetics (Wiener). In The Human Use
1
The medium/form distinction reproduces the system/environment distinction that serves
as the basis for Luhmann’s theory of social systems (cf. Luhmann 1984). Luhmann
revised and reformulated his theory again and again. A further discussion of the medium/
form distinction can be found in Luhmann’s later book, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft
(1997, 190-202). The many essays that Luhmann dedicated to art and literature over
the space of more than 20 years reflect also the continual development of his theory (cf.
Luhmann 2008). For English translations cf. Luhmann 1995 (translation of Luhmann
1984); 1990a (a collection of essays); and 2013 (a series of lectures). For an account of
Luhmann’s theory of social system see “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social
System”, pp. 65-102 herein.
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of Human Beings, Wiener expounds the vision of cybernetics as a science that

contends against the natural tendency of the universe to deteriorate and lose
its distinctiveness, to move “from a state of organization and differentiation in
which distinction and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness” (Wiener
1954, 12). Cybernetics uses probabilistic and statistical methods to calculate
and predict how information comes into being from an indeterminate, chaotic
state. When information emerges from chaos, it becomes a fundamental
attribute of communication. From mathematics and statistics, cybernetics
moves towards a theory of knowledge extending the probabilistic view of
the world to the social sphere. In the age of information, the cybernetic
study of communication requires an understanding of the mechanisms of
control underlying the exchange of information between man and machine
and between machines. Although the universe tends to run down, Wiener
believes that “there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that
of the universe at large in which there is a limited and temporary tendency
for organization to increase” (Wiener 1954, 12); and organizing life in these
enclaves is the task of the new science of cybernetics.
The idea of a chaotic universe underlying life is also expressed by the
distinction between randomness (noise) and pattern. Wiener suggests the
metaphor of the organism as being a message through which the organism
emerges from a background of randomness to constitute itself as a pattern of
organization:
Organism is opposed to chaos, to disintegration, to death, as message is

to noise. To describe an organism, we do not try to specify each molecule
in it, and catalogue it bit by bit, but rather to answer certain questions
about it which reveal its pattern; a pattern which is more significant
and less probable as the organism becomes, so to speak, more fully an
organism. (Wiener 1954, 95)
By focusing on the body, recent humanistic studies have reversed the tendency
of cybernetic and computational thinking to treat information as an abstract
concept, disconnected from a physical structure. Today, body metaphors
frame the discourse on information. In How We Became Posthuman, Katherine
Hayles reconstructs the distinction between randomness and pattern in the
context of the critical theory of the posthuman society.2 In opposition to
the computational account of information as a non-material entity, Hayles’
2
The post-human is a very controversial concept on the crossroad of science fiction
literature, artificial intelligence and humanistic criticism.
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vision of the posthuman emphasizes the role of embodiment and materiality

in the processes of constituting meaning: information is not only an abstract
code but is perceived and carried by embodied entities. Hayles proposes a
representation of meaning in the form of a semiotic square with two axes: the
main axis is the distinction between presence and absence; the secondary axis is
the distinction between randomness and pattern. Two diagonals that connect
these two axes trigger a dynamics of signification. The diagonal connecting
presence and pattern conveys replication; the diagonal connecting absence and
randomness signals disruption. The interplay between presence and absence
shapes materiality; the interplay between randomness and pattern gives rise
to information (cf. Hayles 1999, 247-51). Hayles envisions the posthuman as
a more sophisticated way to approach the world of new technologies in which
the human is seen not as an autonomous self but as part of a chaotic and
unpredictable world. Instead of assuming an attitude of panic, as cybernetics
does by assigning to itself the task of reversing the natural process of entropy,
Hayles suggests that we accept the “posthuman”; that we should abdicate
from taking control of the world and try to “maximize human potential in a
world that is in essence chaotic and unpredictable” (Hayles 1999, 291).
What is the use of the distinction between medium and form for analyzing
artistic forms? As Luhmann points out, art depends on primary media
such as acoustics and optics. Sound objects and events are shaped in the
acoustic medium; visual objects and events are shaped in the optical medium
(Luhmann 1990b, 218). Furthermore, art also needs a higher medium in
order to communicate. The most general medium of art is the so-called
medium of meaning [Sinn].3 Meaning is processed through the distinction
between actuality and potentiality. The form thus selectively reduces the
combinatory possibilities of the medium. The actualization results from
selective processing that restrains and limits the connecting possibilities. For
example, any sound can be combined with any other in a temporal flow,
but in a piece of music there must be some constraints in selecting which
sound follows the previous one. Each new sound actualizes the potential of
the musical work. The result is that the distinction that creates meaning is
itself a form that allows subsequent distinctions in time; “meaning is a form
that creates forms in order to assume forms” (Luhmann 2000, 108). In short,
3
“Meaning is the medium that allows the selective production of all social and psychic
forms. [...] In relation to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, meaning is for Luhmann
the premise of every processing of experience: meaning points in the surplus of references
to further possibilities of experience in each individual experience” (cf. Baraldi, Corsi,
and Esposito 1997, 170).
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the form updates and renews the medium by coupling and uncoupling it. The
form processes a selection of distinctions that actualizes its potential.
This recursive character of the distinction between medium and form is
what allows the reproduction of meaning. Every distinction between medium
and form creates “a form with two sides, one of which, the side of the form
contains itself” (Luhmann 2000, 104). In other words: “meaning is also a
form that on both sides contains a copy of itself in itself” (Luhmann 1998,
50). Each new operation that creates meaning is a re-entry of the distinction
medium and form in one of its sides.4 The successive operations through
which a medium is transformed into a form, then into a medium, then into a
form, and so on generate a recursive network of distinctions, a feedback-loop
mechanism that ultimately drives and controls the system itself. Th is leads to
an evolutionary conception of meaning, which applies also to art.
The distinction between medium and form is based on the view that
society is a self-referential and closed system, an “autopoeitic” system that
produces and reproduces communication. Art is a sub-system of society
sharing the same characteristics of the society in terms of autonomy and
operational closure. Art communicates through works of art, which can be
considered as “compact communication or as a program from innumerable
communications about the work of art” (Luhmann 1990c, 194). Art can only
function as communication for those who can distinguish the difference
between medium and form and communicate about it. Art articulates the
difference between medium and form by making available new possibilities
of form building. For example, medieval music created the medium of
modality for distinguishing melodic forms and the medium of polyphony
for harmonic forms. Furthermore, music created the mediums of tonality,
atonality, electroacoustics, and so on.
Luhmann argues that artistic evolution can be described “as the increase
in the capacity for dissolution and recombination, as the development of ever
new media-for-forms” (Luhmann 1990b, 221). Modern art has appropriated
media such as the human body, society, technology, and even art itself—for
example, the works of art that are staged as paradox (Duchamp and Cage). An
artwork comes into being through an operation that transforms an unmarked
space into a marked space and creates a boundary by crossing that boundary.
The determination of one side makes the other side accessible. The work of art
cannot reject the world; it invites us to discover further distinctions that can
4
George Spencer Brown introduced this idea of form as distinction in his book Laws of
Form, which is a constant reference in Luhmann’s theory. For the concept of “re-entry”,
see Spencer Brown (1969, 56).
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be made by observing the work of art and what is left outside. The work of art
thus stimulates the crossing of its own boundaries. This double function of art
is what permits us to continue performing and listening to the music of the
past. Any new interpretation of the music by Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven for
example, allows us to gain new insights into both the marked and unmarked
space of these works. The aesthetic experience accomplishes the paradox of
making visible what is invisible. The music of the past becomes itself medium
for new distinctions of forms.
The focus on medium and the related concepts of mediality, medialization,
and medial thinking, dominates studies on digital art and music in German
speaking countries. There is a tendency to interpret sound as a “media object”
and to categorize aesthetic issues according to the media structures and
channels. This is evident when emerging genres such as sound art, radio art,
and soundscape are elucidated as media-specific forms; or when one claims
that the far-reaching “medialization of sound” impacts the “compositional
forms, structures and aesthetics concepts until it finally questions our
traditional understanding of music” (Harenberg 2012, 7-8)5 Media studies
and communication studies offer very different theories on the history and
structures of media. But overall they deliver a vision of media shaped by
the reality of mass media and media technologies. The difficulty of such a
consideration appears when one asks whether there is a special medium for
that which we today call audiovisual art. The main reference is film, in which
the image is in the forefront while music plays a secondary role. The relation
image/sound in film is thus an asymmetric one.6 Cinema is the symbol
for the dominance of technical images in our society, while we see other
audiovisual forms emerging with a more differentiated relationship between
sound and image from experimental film to video, musical composition to
sound installation, concert to multimedia performance, and of course the
video game, which has evolved into a powerful media using new technologies
and unfolding an unpredictable, ambiguous potential of creativity.7 Media
studies focused on information tend to assign a privileged role to digital
technology in the constitution of the audiovisual and multimedia. Digital
technology is considered a new form that brings about the convergence of
5
For an account of media from a German perspective see: Kittler (1999), Hartmann
(2000), and Kloock and Spahr (1997).
6
Michel Chion’s book Audio-Vision (Chion 1994) offers a comprehensive account focused
on cinema of the relations between sound and image.
7
Manovich proposes a theory of new media based on the differences between new and old
media. He claims that the cinema was the first media to make use of the principles that
shape new digital media (cf. Manovich 2000, 49-51).
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channels and the integration of formats through multimodal coding. From

this point of view, multimedia is defined as “a multimodal aggregation of
digital media” (Hartmann 2008, 8). Friedrich Kittler, who remains maybe
the most influential German media theorist, shapes the discourse on digital
technology with a radical pessimistic tone:
Before the end, something is coming to an end. The general digitization of

channels and information erases the differences among individual media.
Sound and image, voice and text are reduced to surface effects, known
to consumers as interface. Sense and the senses turn into eyewash. Their
media-produced glamour will survive for an interim as a by-product of
strategic programs. Inside the computers themselves everything becomes
a number: quantity without image, sound, or voice. And once optical
fiber networks turn formerly distinct data flows into a standardized
series of digitized numbers, any medium can be translated into any
other. With numbers, everything goes. Modulation, transformation,
synchronization; delay, storage, transposition; scrambling, scanning,
mapping a total media link on a digital base will erase the very concept of
medium. Instead of wiring people and technologies, absolute knowledge
will run as an endless loop. (Kittler 1999, 1)
From the perspective of critical and phenomenological studies of digital

media, sound and vision are crucial references. Reproduction technology
introduced in the 19th century created new possibilities for the arrangement
of medium/form relationships associated with the primary media of acoustics
and optics. They reconstructed our experiences of hearing and seeing. Digital
technology represents a further step in that transformation. Recent accounts
of digital technology focus on models of embodied and extended cognition
in the construction of meaning also affecting our understanding of sound
and vision. In The Auditory Past, Sterne argues that the “boundary between
sound and not-sound is based on the understood possibilities of the faculty
of hearing” which is grounded in our bodily practices (Sterne 2003, 12). The
practices of sound reproduction he claims, have to be understood in relation
to other bodily practices. In Philosophy for New Media, Hansen analyzes how
digital visual media engages the body in the process of creating meaning.
With digital media, the body has the function of filtering information and
providing an affective supplement. Hansen sees a “fundamental shift in
aesthetic experience from a model dominated by the perception of a self-
sufficient object to one focused on the intensities of embodied affectivity”
(Hansen 2004, 12-13).
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These preliminary considerations should have made clear that the

audiovisual and multimedia represent a complex field of investigation. From
the perspective of historical musicology and semiotic studies, the relation
between sound and image has been approached mainly in the context of
conventional forms such as opera and film. For instance, Walt Disney’s
mythical visualization of Stravinsky’s music in Fantasia, with its pre-historical
landscapes of volcanoes and dinosaurs and the multiple references to the
American way of life, has attracted a good deal of attention.8 On the other
hand, the contemporary studies on theory, aesthetics, and history of digital
media focus predominantly on image and visual languages. Music is bypassed.
Investigating the audiovisual and multimedia demands a methodology for
distinguishing between elements and relations in this increasingly complex
field. However, “complexity enforces selection” (Luhmann 1990d, 81; emphasis
in the original). My purpose here is neither to develop a comprehensive
account of current approaches, nor to review critically the discourses on new
(digital) media. By bringing up those connections between music and other
media that are demonstrated in my own work, I intend to point to the broad
spectrum of possibilities of audiovisual and multimedia composition, in terms
of both convergence and differentiation of media and forms. My approach is
based on the phenomenological method of describing the reality as it appears
and looking into the surrounding, meaningful references.
2. Polyphony, Intermedia, and Polyphonic Subjectivity
How should multimedia be understood in the context of art and music? Is

there such a thing as a multimedial music? These kinds of questions are often
times answered from the perspective of the production and dissemination
of information in the digital society, which bring forth the integration of
different media. However, the investigation of multimedia shall focus
instead on the issue of meaning, with the construction of meaning placed
in the foreground. The concept of multimedia is typically associated with
simultaneity of states and events. But this is nothing new; it has been present in
music since approximately the 9th century as the fundamental of polyphonic
composition. Polyphony is a central issue of music defined as the “specific
mode of operation of auditory perception which distinguishes multiple and
8
See for example “Disney’s Dream: The Rite of Spring Sequence from ‘Fantasia’” (Cook
1998, 174-214), and “Walt Disney and Americanness: An Existential-Semiotical
Exercice” (Tarasti 2000, 172-90).
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independent events and creates a musical difference between sound and

environment” (Chagas 2005). Sound is the differentiation of a polyphonic
form in the acoustic medium. According to this view, polyphony should not
be defined from the usual standpoint of the musical multiplicity of voices
or structural layers but as a structural coupling of experiences in different
domains. Polyphony articulates different levels of musical events that can be
synchronized temporally. In this regard, the medium of polyphony is closely
related to the manner in which we perceive time. According to Husserl’s
phenomenology, time consciousness is the constitutive basis of consciousness
and subjectivity. Time consciousness is based on time objects that are
perceived not as isolated points in time, but as streams. Husserl reflects
on consciousness of tone and melody as a paradigm of time consciousness
(cf. Husserl 1966). By listening to a melody we establish links between the
present, the immediate past, and the immediate future in the constitution
of time consciousness. The same can be said of the perception of any sound.
The unity of time consciousness emerges from the articulation of temporal
processes occurring simultaneously at different levels. This point of view is
also in line with the view of modern neurophenomenological research, which
describes consciousness as an embodiment of mental processes. According
to Varela, “any mental act is characterized by the concurrent participation of
several functionally distinct and topographically distributed regions of the
brain and their sensomotor embodiment” (Varela 1999, 272). The nervous
system operates with neuronal oscillators that vibrate at different frequencies
and are synchronized by the consciousness.
The forms that take shape in the medium of polyphony must demonstrate
at the same time variety and individuality. Plurality and identity are the two
core ideas of European polyphony as constituted in the Middle Ages. In
traditional polyphonic composition, pitch has a structural function. Pitch is
differentiation in frequency that organizes the musical time-space according
to two principles: the horizontal principle—the temporal flow of the notes—
and the vertical principle—the simultaneity of the notes. Horizontality
and verticality are associated respectively with the concepts of melody and
harmony. Melody and harmony are media for polyphonic form building, in
that they organize the notes in relation to time and space. The possibilities
of form building in the medium of polyphony have expanded considerably
in the course of music history. In the 20th century, new forms of polyphonic
composition developed as a result of serial and structural thinking. Today
one sees polyphony not only as a composition with melodic voices, which are
subordinated to a harmonic structure, but as the arrangement of events that
share certain sound properties. Thus one speaks, for example, of a polyphony
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of timbres and sound textures. In addition, each polyphonic form can itself
serve as a medium of form building. Pierre Boulez, for example, drafts the
vision of a future music constructed as a “polyphony of polyphonies” (Boulez
1963, 133).
The concept of intermedia arises from the extension of polyphony to other
domains of perception and experience. Intermedia composition explores
artistic connections between different media such as sound, image, speech,
movement, gesture, and space while interacting with technical and media
apparatuses. In the history of music, there are plenty of examples of how
music creates multiple connections with other media. For instance, the
coupling of possibilities of the media sound, text, and speech generates hybrid
forms such as the medieval ballad, the Romantic Lied, and the commercial
pop song. These connections present a world of meaning that is shaped
based on selections of possibilities processed in interdisciplinary domains. In
contrast to traditional forms in which music is combined with other media,
the shaping of intermedia is coupled with the use of technical apparatuses
that allow it come into being by accomplishing the crossing of boundaries
of the individual media that facilitates their interpenetration. The traces of
the apparatus become visible in the formation process and can no longer
be separated from the work of art. An example of this is the importance of
computers in contemporary art vis-a-vis digital music, digital video, electronic
art, and network art.
Two tendencies appear in intermedia composition: the diff erentiation
process whereby new interdisciplinary domains of art come into being and
interactivity with the apparatus. The functional differentiation of society leads
to the proliferation of viewpoints for observing and defining art. The concept
of sound art is an example of the impossibility of a unifying perspective for
observing sound and music in today’s society. The use of apparatuses opens up
a new kind of ambiguity, which Flusser expresses in the following terms: on
the one hand, new possibilities arise out of the experimental engagement with
the apparatus; on the other hand, the programmatic reality of the apparatus
determines the boundaries of freedom and forces the user to adopt automatic
behaviors that eliminate criticism (cf. Flusser 1983). The contradictory role
of the apparatus and its programs can be observed in different forms of both
popular and so-called serious contemporary music.
Technical apparatuses and machinery of information and communication
work directly with human subjectivity. They interact with different kinds of
cognitive and emotional domains such as memory, intelligence, sensitivity,
and the subconscious in order to produce meaning. Guattari (1992) speaks
of desiring machines that replace human subjectivity. They generate a
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polyphonic and heterogeneous understanding of subjectivity characterized

by the pluralistic subjectivity of technology. By desiring machines, Guattari
is referring not only the technical but also abstract machines of society such
as social institutions, academic discourse, cultural forms, and collective
desires and behavior. Polyphonic subjectivity is to be understood as a basic
feature of desiring machines that produce the pluralistic, heterogenic forms
of today’s posthuman society. New forms of life emerge through the close
cooperation between humans and apparatuses. The social media that come
into existence on the internet point to the hybrid reality of the posthuman
world—for instance, the crossing of boundaries between private and public
spheres of life. It is not Being, but rather the functions and components of the
technological desiring machine that now determine existence.
3. Musical Theater, Opera, War, and Violence
My original works discussed here highlight several aspects and different

approaches to audiovisual and multimedia composition.9 My interest in
intermedial forms emerged from my engagement with electronic music.
I created my first intermedia compositions during my graduate studies
in electronic music composition at the Electronic Music Studio of the
Musikhochschule in Cologne (1982-89). I produced different works there,
most of which premiered in the music school itself, including: Eshu (1984):
musical theater; Peep Show (1985-87): musical theater; Ellipse (1986):
electronic music for mime; Vom Kriege III (1989): chamber opera; Vom Kriege
I (1990): chamber opera; Oddort (1989): chamber opera; Shango: Kultmusik
(1989): dance theater and performance.
Eshu (1984) is a work in which electronic music is based on a scenic and
dramatic composition and was composed with sound material originating
from the music of the Afro-Brazilian religion “candomblé”. I was especially
interested in the ritualistic, transcendental function of Afro-Brazilian
cult music and set out to compose electronic music that would reflect
these characteristics. The uninterrupted electronic music on tape provides
the temporal structure for the live musical and dramatic performance: a
baritone saxophone in the main role, four female speakers/actors, and four
percussionists accompanied by a projection of slides. It was produced in
cooperation with the photographer Heinz Wedewardt, Professor of Visual
9
For audio and video recordings of my works see my personal website: http://www.
paulocchagas.com (accessed July 1 2013).
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Design and Audio-Vision at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. For

the visual composition, he used three computer-controlled slide projectors
synchronized with the electronic music.10 The integration of electronic and
acoustic music and dramatic performance characterizes the development of
my multimedia aesthetics that began with Eshu.
The musical theater Peep Show (1985-87) likewise combines electronic and
acoustic music, dramatic performance, and image projection. In this case,
however, the image projection becomes the core element of the multimedia
composition. The convergence of music and image has a structural, formative
function in Peep Show. This composition deals with the industry of sex and
pornography, particularly the growing role of technology as a mediator of
eroticism and sexual pleasure and as ersatz for human sexuality. The musical
theater deconstructs the world of sex shops that marked the landscape of the
downtown pedestrian zones of German cities in the 1980s. Beate Uhse’s sex
shop chain was the quintessential example of a successful business that was
said to profit greatly from the new possibilities of multimedia pornography.11
Peep Show combines electronic music on tape with live music played by
a pop band. The composition works out the aesthetics of pop music and
its relation to electronic music and multimedia technology. The musical
theater tells the story of a futuristic Peep Show in which people experience
eroticism and sexual fantasies with computers, robots, and other intelligent
machines. An actress/singer plays the main role of a woman working as an
erotic object in the peep show; a computer scans her body to make synthetic
images of women that appear as real to peep show customers. In the course of
the story, the computer experiences a breakdown, which provokes a chaotic
situation that causes the deconstruction of the peep show and frees the
woman from being a sexual object. The visual composition using projected
slides synchronized with the electronic music was likewise developed in
cooperation with Heinz Wedewardt. An essential aspect of this multimedia
work is the interplay between the real-life actors on the stage and the virtual
actors on the image projection. The aesthetics of Peep Show thus anticipates
tendencies of interactive art that only became more readily accessible with
digital video and audio technology in the mid-1990s. Peep Show premiered
10
The software for the slide projectors ran on the legendary Apple II computer. The sequence
of slides was programmed according to the electronic music, but the computer was not
technically synchronized with the tape machine; they were started manually and run
independently.
11
Beate Uhse became famous as a female pilot in the German Luftwaffe during World War
II. After the war she founded the first sex shop in the world, which became a world empire
of sex and pornography.
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in 1986 as a work in progress at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, and the

composition was further developed in the course of two other performances.
The actress Stefanie Mühle (1960-2011) played the main role and significantly
contributed to the development of the story. I consider Peep Show one of my
most important pieces because of the original musical language and visionary
multimedia concept. I would gladly perform the piece again in order to take
full advantage of the new possibilities of interactive digital technology.
Ellipse (1986) was commissioned by the mime Isidoro Fernandez and
composed in close cooperation with him. The mime describes the lifespan
of a person from childhood to old age. The composition translates the body
language of the mime, narrating the coming into being and passing away of
the human being in the cycle of life. The electronic music, as Seeber describes
it, is generated “from two acoustic basic elements: the one—made of two
descending notes—is created synthetically; the other is a natural noise—a
recording of human breathing. Chagas develops these two, simple elements
parallel to the growth of the organism in increasingly complex sound shapes”
(Seeber 2004).12 Exploring body metaphors provided these new ideas for
sound and music formation. The intermedial relations between sound and
body are reflected in different levels of the composition—not only on the
micro-temporal level of sound synthesis, but also on the macro-temporal level
of the musical form. With Ellipse I was conscious of how new possibilities for
intermedia composition unfold through the relationship to the body and as a
structural and precise synchrony of music and movement.
The opera trilogy Vom Kriege (Of War) came into being over the years
1984-99. It is a reflection of my long-time engagement with the themes of
war, violence, and fascism in relation to my own political history and my
experience in Germany.13 When I arrived in Germany in 1982, the effects
of the Second World War were still very visible. German society continued
to be haunted by the effects of the immeasurable crimes of the Nazi regime,
which reflected the metaphysical worldviews of totalitarian claims to “be able
to absolutely grasp the ‘true’ essence of history and nature” (Safranski 1993,
150). My chamber opera Oddort, based on Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s book
Rigodon and premiering in 1989 at the Festival d’Avignon in France, also
deals with fascism and the worldview of totalitarianism. The electronic music
for Oddort was likewise produced at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. The
triptych Vom Krieg consists of the short chamber operas Vom Kriege I (1990,
12
Radio broadcast; cited from the manuscript.
13
In 1971, as a 17-year-old, I was arrested and tortured in prison in Brazil for collaboration
with opposition groups (cf. Chagas 2006c for a short description of this experience).
214
25 minutes), Vom Kriege III (1989, 35 minutes), and the full-length techno-
opera RAW (1999, 75 minutes), which was initially called Vom Kriege II but
was renamed for the premier at the Opera in Bonn in 1999. All three works
were set to music texts by Ernst Jünger, as well as other texts such as poems
by F. T. Marinetti in Vom Kriege III, philosophical essays on the nature of war
by the Prussian General C. von Clausewitz, and traditional Yoruba myths
and poetry in RAW.14 These three chamber operas developed the concept of
intermedia composition with electronic, vocal, and instrumental music in
connection with drama and or dance. The electronic music for Vom Kriege I
and Vom Kriege III was produced in the studio of the Musikhochschule. The
4-channel tape had an additional click track for the synchronization of the
electronic music with the live music during the performance. In RAW however,
the electronic music is performed live in real-time by three keyboardists and
three percussionists completely without tape or pre-recorded sound. Herein
lies an important development of intermedia composition, namely, from the
rigidity of electronic music produced on a fixed medium of tape or hard disk
and played back in the performance to the flexibility of electronic music played
live with electronic instruments and/or live processing of acoustic sources
such as voice or instruments. This dualism points to a current complex issue
concerning the aesthetics of electroacoustic music, since the live electronic
music is not to be seen as a substitute for or opposed to the pre-produced
taped music, but as an extension of its possibilities, with the corresponding
advantages and disadvantages.
The artistic engagement with war and violence also takes place in Shango:
Kultmusik. The dance theater piece premiered in 1989 in Saint Peter’s
14
Vom Kriege, RAW, and Vom Kriege III make use of texts from three autobiographic books
by Ernst Jünger (1895-1998): Im Stahlgewitter (The Storm of Steel) (1920), Der Kampf als
inneres Erlebnis [Battle as Inner Experience] (1922) and Feuer und Blut [Fire and Blood]
(1925). They describe the author’s experiences as a soldier during the First World War.
Jünger allows us to experience with him the horrors of war, but at the same time his lavish
description full of symbols and sensual images (visual, onomatopoeic, etc.) is a testimony
to the fascination and the seduction of war. The book Im Stahlgewitter, which made
Jünger famous, has been criticized for glorifying war. Jünger has also been criticized for
being sympathetic to the Nazi regime, but this is a very controversial issue as he kept a
distance from the National Socialist movement but never publicly criticized it. The texts
from the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, which are set to music in RAW, are
taken from the beginning of his well-known main work Vom Kriege (On War) (1832) (in
which is to be found the famous sentence: “War is merely the continuation of policy by
other means”). The texts that in RAW have reference to the Yoruba war deity “Ogun” are
translations of poems and myths from Nigeria, Benin, and Brazil. In Vom Kriege III, I
set to music the poem Zang Tumb Tumb (1914) by the Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti.
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Church in Cologne and was performed several times in the following years
in different places in Germany, including in unusual contexts such as a circus
tent in Bremen. Shango is the most popular “orisha” (deity) in many African-
American religions that originate in the culture of the Yoruba in West Africa
and is worshipped as the god of thunder. His symbol is the double-edged ax,
with which he exercises his power and upholds justice in the world. Shango:
Kultmusik develops an intermedia composition with dance, electronic and
acoustic music, with two percussionists. The electronic music combines pre-
produced sounds on a 4-channel tape and a live synthesizer. The percussionists
play drums and other African-American instruments, improvising according
to African cult music traditions. 15 The aesthetics of Shango: Kultmusik
draws on musical and dramatic elements of the Afro-Brazilian “candomblé”
cult. The electronic music on tape creates the sound space and time span
for the live interaction of the dancers with the musicians, who mutually
influence and inspire each other, just as in a “candomblé” ceremony. On
the other hand, Shango: Kultmusik also engages with the idea of speed and
the disappearance of freedom inspired by Virilio’s theory of interconnection
between speed, technology, and war. For Virilio, the acceleration of events,
technological development, and fascination with speed bring about a
movement of disintegration of matter and disappearance of space. We confine
ourselves to letting go of all living things in favor of emptiness and speed
(cf. Virilio 1984)16 In the composition of Shango: Kultmusik, the aesthetics
of speed and disappearance is created as the manipulation of time through
the acceleration and deceleration of musical structures. The composition
develops impulse sequences that accelerate and decelerate exponentially,
whereby a unity of rhythm, pitch, and timbre is created. The electronic music
captures the emblematic aesthetics of composition in time-space by Karlheinz
Stockhausen (cf. Stockhausen 1963, 99-139).
15
The percussionists were Samson Gassama and Daniel Moreno and I played the synthesizer.
16
Virilio’s apocalyptic and somewhat excessively pessimistic account of modern technology
and speed is based on a phenomenological vision of freedom as an experience that
includes and embodies the materiality of space (cf. James 2007). Virilio analyzes the
transformation of the perception of space and time and its effects on political and social
structures: “The field of freedom shrinks with speed. And freedom needs a field. When
there is no more field, our lives will be like a terminal, a machine with doors that open
and close. A labyrinth for laboratory animals” (Virilio and Lotringer 1983, 69).
216
4. The Creative Dialog: Dance, Speech, and the Body
Collaborating with choreographers and directors was an important step

in the expansion of my musical language in the first half of the 1990s. By
extending the compositional experience to the interdisciplinary connections
with dance, speech, and the body, I aimed to develop an aesthetics that links
electronic sounds closely and organically with vocal and instrumental sounds.
Creating choreography is a completely different process than composing
music. The choreographer works with dancers in a physical space and must
adjust his ideas to the physical attributes and conditions of the dancers. The
body has its own dynamic, limitations, and a specific, unique intuition,
which is not necessarily subject to the mind and cognitive understanding.
The composer, on the other hand, works with representations of sounds and
forms, which seem at first like mental abstractions and only in performance
are realized as concrete objects. In traditional vocal and instrumental music,
the gestures and visual elements of the performance can still be traced in
the process of sound shaping. One hears the sound and can imagine how
it is produced or played, even if one does not experience the performance
directly. But electronic sound realizes a completely new musical situation,
as it disrupts the link to the source of sound production. The authenticity of
the sound in relation to its bodily or instrumental origin is no longer visible
in the electronic music performance. Even if one is physically present at a
performance and experiences directly how the musicians operate apparatuses
such as the computer and synthesizer, one can hardly (if at all) perceive a
“meaningful” connection between their bodily actions and movements and
the resulting sound.
Since its beginnings in the 1950s, electronic music has been incorporating
acoustic sounds along with the performance practices of vocal and instrumental
music. This tendency increased in the 1990s, as digital technology simplified
and expanded the possibilities of sound analysis, synthesis, and processing.
Digital tools offer an opportunity to look directly into the inner world of
sound phenomenon; the vibratory reality of the sound transformed into binary
code becomes the material substrate of compositional approaches. Sound
metaphors resulting from the analytical practices mediated by technology
are instantiated in the musical composition. An example of such metaphoric
formalization is the so-called aesthetics of “spectral music” that emerged in
France in the early 1970s with composers such as Gerard Grisey and Tristan
Murail. The spectral approach uses computer-based analysis of sound spectra
to identify elements that inform the composition. Today, the terms spectral
music and spectralism are associated with a variety of aesthetics and styles that
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treat timbre as a main compositional feature. It has contributed significantly

to establishing an aesthetics of instrumental music—solo instruments,
chamber ensembles, and orchestra—that achieves a fine control of timbre
structuring by combining intuitive approaches with the systematic use of
digital technology.17 The spectral orientation forges a more qualitative organic
approach to sound impacted by the interactions between vocal, instrumental,
and electronic sounds and points to the embodiment of a hybrid world shared
by humans and machines.
Indeed, the systematic search for methods for organically shaping the
interplay between electronic and acoustic sounds characterizes the aesthetics
of many composers in the 1990s. For me personally, it was the collaboration
with choreographers and dancers that gave me the decisive impetus for
exploring a chamber music in which acoustic and electronic sounds form
an organic unity. During the composition process, I have often observed
the creative interaction of choreographers and dancers and developed the
composition until they were satisfied with the musical result. Dancers have
a very special way of talking about music since they relate to it through
movements and literally “embody” it. Their musical understanding cannot
be separated from the embodied medium. When dancers talk about music,
one has to first translate their body language into the abstract language of
music in order to understand their ideas. As a composer, one must learn and
master this kind of interdisciplinary translation in order to profit from the
collaboration. The ability to work as part of a team and dialog creatively is an
essential and decisive aspect of intermedia composition.
The work Sodoma was created in collaboration with the Brazilian
choreographer Cláudio Bernardo, who lived in Belgium at the time, and
premiered in 1991 at the Atelier Saint Anne Theater in Brussels. I composed
the music for Sodoma for a large ensemble consisting of vocal quintet
(SSATB), string orchestra, three percussionists, and electronic sounds. The
music was recorded in the studio and played during the performance.18 The
electronic music was conceived for 7 channels of sound projection, to be able
to function additionally like a sound space installation. The choreography
in Sodoma was inspired by the gold mine of Serra Pelada, which emerged
in the middle of nowhere in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the 1980s.
17
See for instance Gérard Grisey’s article “Structuration des trimbres dans la musique
instrumentale” (in Barrière 1991, 352-85), in which he describes the approaches to timbre
composition in his cycle of pieces Les Espaces Acustiques (1974-85).
18
The CD recording of Sodoma with the Tippett Ensemble, the Helix Ensemble, Philippe
Herr, Gérard Bernard, and Géry Cambier (percussion) under the direction of Celso
Antunes was released in 1993: CD Subrosa SUBCD 026-48.
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Up to 40,000 “garimpeiros” (gold prospectors) worked and lived there in

miserable, almost inhuman conditions. They were mostly very poor men
from different regions, who streamed into the Amazon Eldorado in search of
a better life.19 Cláudio Bernardo’s choreography associates Serra Pelada with
Sodom, the biblical city on the shore of the Dead Sea. It links the life of the
“garimpeiros” with representations of Sodom from the Old Testament: the
fall of the city, the sinful behavior of its inhabitants, the homosexuality, and
the social deterioration. A mythical ritual develops from this with allusions
to existential themes of the present such as exploitation, misery, loneliness,
alienation, and oppression. The composition consists of symbolic musical
representations of the imaginary universes of Sodom and Serra Pelada. The
virtual music of Sodom is represented by the vocal melody and the timbre of
Hebrew song; the music of Serra Pelada is meant to embody the pluralism
of Brazilian society and to reflect the influence of European, African, and
Indigenous elements. I imagined the music of the Middle Ages as a mediator
between these two poles. Medieval polyphony becomes the symbol of the
combination of different elements that mutually influence each other and
form a unity. The music of Sodoma shares with the “garimpeiros” of Serra
Pelada the idea of a multicultural world shaped by the movements of migrants
and the crossing of cultures and traditions that create a new synthesis: a world
inhabited by different sounds, noises, and musical languages.
My collaboration with Cláudio Bernardo continued with the composition
of Raptus in 1992. He was quite fascinated by the music of Shango: Kultmusik
and created new choreography, which he danced himself. However, he
developed an aesthetics that followed the contemporary European dance
theater—especially Pina Bausch—and distanced itself radically from the
“African-American” universe of Shango: Kultmusik. Raptus was performed
with the same electronic music and the same musicians as Shango: Kultmusik,
but Cláudio Bernardo’s dance theater gives the composition a completely
different character. In Shango: Kultmusik the construction of meaning occurs
in the medium of “candomblé”. Both the composition and the choreography
embody the universe of the African-American religion and articulate new
19
The pictures of the gold mine of Serra Pelada from the Brazilian photographer Sebastião
Salgado are the most famous ones: “Black-and-white photographs of a vast pit, its sides cut
into a giant’s stairway and scaled by crude ladders, its surface covered with figures, most
bearing large sacks; scanning the space between foreground and distant background, the
effect is dizzying” (cf. Julian Stallabras, Sebastião Salgado and Fine Art Photojournalism,
http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/people/stallabrass_julian/essays/SALGADO.pdf [accessed
July 1, 2013]). Also the films Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi by the American director
Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass show impressive footages of Serra Pelada.
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meanings by relating to this tradition. Music and dance act in synchrony

to the medium “candomblé”. For example, the electronic music refers to the
rhythms of the African-American drums, while the choreography refers to
the symbols of the deity (orisha) Shango. In contrast to Shango: Kultmusik,
the choreography of Raptus unfolds a dialectic of ambiguity in relation to the
medium of “candomblé” and remains in apparent opposition to the music that
carries on this tradition. Music and dance build a relation of asynchrony—or
asymmetry—that becomes the core of form building in Raptus. In Luhmann’s
terms, the choreography actualizes the meaningful potential of “candomblé”
by creating an aesthetics that in the first instance seems to reject the world
of “candomblé” but later reveals itself as an affirmation of it, as it creates a
new context for projecting its meanings. In this sense Raptus demonstrates
how intermedia composition is a meaning-processing system that transcends
the meaning of the individual media. Meaning, according to Luhmann,
results from the reduction of complexity. Intermedia composition reduces
the complexity of the media with its potential to couple and uncouple loose
elements through a dialectical synthesis of oppositions that relates the media
to each other.20
The choreographic theater Francis Bacon by Ismael Ivo and Johann Kresnik,
which premiered in 1993 in the Stuttgart Theater, drew a lot of attention and
was featured several times worldwide. The original composition is written for
three singers (soprano, countertenor, and baritone), string quartet, percussion,
and electronic sounds and was composed and recorded in the studio in a very
short span of time.21 The life and work of the great Irish painter Francis Bacon
(1909-92) inspired both Kresnik’s choreography and my composition. The
dance production depicts the complex, tormented world of Bacon with force,
violence, and a great deal of nakedness. According to Kresnik, “choreographic
theater is a pictorial medium; with the work and the biography of an artist as
the basis of a play, the director faces the task of creating a synthesis between
the painter’s and his own imagination”.22 Kresnik emphasizes that the music
was an important factor in the creation of the piece, as the composition
20
For an account of multimedia based on the distinctive combination of similarity and
difference see Cook’s Analysing Musical Multimedia (1998), particularly chapter 3:
“Models of Multimedia”, pp. 98-129.
21
The music was recorded twice with different musicians. The first recording is the one used
for the dance performance. The second recording of Francis Bacon with Anne Cambier
(soprano), Michel Puissant (countertenor), Bernd Valentin (baritone), the Quadro
Quartet (Igor Semenoff, Gudrun Vercampt, Jeroen Robbrecht, Jean-Paul Dessy), and
Michael Weilacher (percussion) under the direction of Celso Antunes was released as CD
in 1994: CD KlangStudioC C9401.
22
Francis Bacon, CD booklet, KlangStudioC, C9401.
220
sketches sound spaces and constructs the atmosphere for the development of
the pictures.23 In my view, the music builds a double relation of conformance
and contradiction to the choreographic concept. On the one hand, the music
expresses the same existential mood of despair as the choreography, which
is associated with Bacon’s life and pictures; on the other hand, it unfolds
a poetics of fragility that remains in opposition to the choreography. The
music aligns with the choreographic theater and at the same time introduces
elements of collision and confrontation that constitute an additional level of
experience.
Francis Bacon is a full-length 80 minute composition consisting of 23
short pieces that alternate different combinations of vocal, instrumental,
and electronic sounds. The basic material of the electronic music consists of
vocal sounds produced by the dancers (breathing, moaning, screaming, and
whispering), which I recorded, processed, and combined with other sounds.
Although Francis Bacon was composed for this specific choreographic theater,
it is meant to be a self-contained music to be performed without choreography.
This double function, which I have pursued in other pieces, reinforces my
concept of musical autonomy in the realm of intermedia composition: the
music is not a servant art subordinated to another media (as for instance
the music for film) but has the right to assert its own Dasein; at the same
time, the music has to demonstrate the capability to interact with the other
medium and contribute to accomplishing the synthesis of media that creates
new meanings.24
The experience with Francis Bacon as a multimedia composition for
chamber music ensemble and electronic music was immediately followed up
with the scenic oratorio Der Fluss [The River] 1994. Here it is the medium
of speech that triggered the intermedia project. Der Fluss was conceived by
Simone Rist, who wrote the libretto and directed the piece. The libretto is
an adaptation of two poems from the Tríptico do Capibaribe [Triptych of the
Capibaribe River] by the Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-99),
in the German translation by Curt Meyer-Clason.25 João Cabral de Melo
23
The comments by Johann Kresnik are from the booklet of the CD Francis Bacon (1994).
24
The music of Francis Bacon was employed later in the digital oratorio Corpo, Carne e
Espírito (2008) (see below). The use of the piece in another context strengthens my claim
to the autonomy of the composition.
25
Cf. Melo Neto 1993. The Capibaribe triptych consists of three poems: O Cão Sem Plumas
[The Dog Without Feathers] (1949-50), O Rio [The River] (1953) and Morte e Vida
Severina [Death and Life of a Severino] (1954-55) (c.f. Melo Neto 1994). Curt Meyer-
Clason (1910-2012) was a major translator of Latin American and Brazilian 20th century
literature into German. He translated, among others, works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and important Brazilian authors such as Jorge Amado,
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Neto elaborates a poetics of the construction of language that is turned to

concrete things and often reflects on the conditions of human existence. The
Triptych of the Capibaribe River, written in the 1950s, narrates the poetic trip
of the Capibaribe River through his homeland of Pernambuco in northeastern
Brazil, with the river as narrator. It describes the nature and people of this poor
region of Brazil marked by the droughty, rough landscape and the misery and
hopelessness of an exploited, exhausted, and inert population. As a native of
the state of Bahia, close to Pernambuco, I too, experience northeastern Brazil
as a space where time stopped in the Middle Ages. The medieval atmosphere
of this region, in my imagination, is significantly impacted by the heritage
of the Portuguese colonization. That is why my composition for the scenic
oratorio Der Fluss elaborated an aesthetics shaped by medieval plainchant and
modality. The music for actors, three speakers, three singers (mezzo soprano,
baritone, and bass), string quartet, percussion, and electronic sounds seeks the
unity of poetry and speech. As noted by a music critic after the performance
at the “Alte Oper” in Frankfurt:
The music organizes the events. It never plays in the foreground. Paulo
Chagas keeps the word-tone relationship always in balance. […] The
transitions from speech to song are imperceptible. Any Brazilian flavor
is lacking. The music has more of a liturgical character. The word is not
musically suggested, but fluently declaimed. Der Fluss is a piece that does
not impose itself, but captivates.26
5. Media-Music-Theater: Collaboration with the BEC
From 1992 to 1997 I collaborated as an artist-in-residence with the “Bonner

Entwicklungswerkstatt für Computermedien e.V.” (BEC). Founded in 1987,
the BEC’s goal was to produce media theater. This concept was put into
practice in the 1990s, when the BEC was located in an abandoned wallpaper
factory on the outskirts of the city of Bonn. Bodo Lensch, the director of the
BEC, invited artists, technicians, and scientists to develop new experimental
projects for which he had secured public funding. The BEC conducted art-
based research on media art including electronic music, sound space, film,
Carlos Drumond de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, Ferreira Gular, Clarice Lispector, and
João Guimarães Rosa. The translation of Der Fluss is an outstanding rendering of the
original poem. Curt Meyer-Clason died in 2012 at the age of 101 years.
26
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 9 October 1994, p. 26.
222
video, holography, animation, and interactivity. My contribution to the BEC

consisted predominantly of composing commissioned works of electronic
music that were part of media theater productions. The following works were
the result: Rasender Stillstand (1992), Book of the Air (1993), Global Village—
Hidden Pathways (1993), Observation Suite (1996), Observation Environment
(1996), and Märchen aus dem Metakino: Das Choreoskop (1997). At the end
of the 1990s, the BEC was granted its own room in a movie theater complex
in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, where it has run the multimedia theater “Animax”
since about the year 2000. A focal point of this concept is cultural education
projects for children and youth with interactive and multimedia art.27
Composing for media theater is an interactive process involving
collaboration with other artists, technicians, and scientists and requires one
to adapt to a collective production environment. For this, the BEC provided
a virtual setup for the projects in line with its overall artistic conception.
Moreover, in some cases aesthetic strategies with regard to content, form,
material, and desired effect were specified for the composition. That is to
say, one composes in dialog with partners—humans and apparatuses. The
production of the works required mastery of the tools of electronic music and
the readiness to integrate other artistic ideas and media in the composition:
dance/choreography, visual media art, interactive motion graphics, and
video.
With the BEC, Bodo Lensch pursued the concept of an interactive
environment in which the space is integrated into the performance and
becomes a medium of embodied interaction with the environment. A key to
making this feasible is the use of sensors in the room for capturing data that
is used in artistic processes that generate sound, image, movement, graphics,
and dance. Initially, the BEC room was equipped with motion detectors on
the basis of light sensors, later replaced by infrared. In addition to the sensor
system, the BEC provided the room with an 8-channel sound space system.
Eight speakers were distributed evenly on the perimeter of the rectangular
room: two placed on each of the four sides. Later, the sound space system was
expanded to 24 channels with three groups of eight speakers arranged on three
levels around the perimeter of the room: one on the floor, one at ca. 2 m high,
and the other one at ca. 4 m high. This setup allows for the spatialization of the
sound in three dimensions. In 1996, the BED installed a computer-controlled
spherical sound space system with 24 speakers surrounding the listener.
Special dedicated hardware and software was developed that significantly
improved the possibilities of 3D sound spatialization. It was possible to
27
Cf. http://www.animax.eu [accessed July 1, 2013].
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define the location of sound sources and control discrete or continuous 3D

movements. One could design sound events that moved organically through
the space.
Rasender Stillstand (1992) is an interactive media performance for
electronic music, dance (Ursina Minck), and light (Lu Mettelsieffen). The
electronic music consists of sound samples that are activated by the motion
of dance and projected into the 8-channel sound space. The motion of dance
is what controls the light. Book of the Air (1993) is an interactive installation
with holography and video by Doris Vila, American artist-in-residence at the
BEC. The installation consists of five holograms hung in the room, whose
lighting is controlled by the movements of the viewers so that the view of
the holography changes according to their position. Interactive videos were
also projected onto the holograms. The movement of the viewers likewise
triggered the interactive electronic music that I composed for Book of the
Air. The music is closely linked to the holographic installation, but at the
same time creates an independent sonic layer flowing through the 8-channel
sound space. The material of the music consists of samples of speech and
breathing sounds provided by Doris Vila that were transformed and mixed
in different ways with sounds from the Yamaha FM synthesizer and other
synthetic sounds generated with computer software. My collaboration with
Doris Vila continued in the same year with the work Global Village—
Hidden Pathways (1993), an interactive multimedia performance based on
an original idea from Bodo Lensch. Doris Vila designed an installation with
holography and video for the interactive performance stage; I composed
the music for a singer (Daniela Gierock) and electronic sounds. The singer
used the interactive stage as an instrument, activating the sensors with
choreographic movements that control the holograms, the light, and the
electronic music. Global Village—Hidden Pathways sounds like a speaking
room. The interactive musical events projected into the multi-channel sound
space give the impression of pathways in a labyrinth made of speech, light,
sound, and noise.
The last three works resulting from my collaboration with the BEC
presented me with complex technical and artistic challenges. Observation
Suite—Szenarien für Tänzer und virtuelle Akteuren (1996) represents the
vision of a multimedia theater as an interdisciplinary form between art,
science, and technology. A dancer plays on a stage and interacts with a world
inhabited by virtual organisms in the form of eyes. The American dancer
James Saunders created for this the character of an old, highly decorated
general, who disintegrates into the world of eyes. The piece premiered in the
Bonner Biennale in 1996 shortly thereafter James Saunders’ life was tragically
224
cut short.28 The Brazilian Lina do Carmo took the dancer part in the second
staging of Observation Suite, while I took over the direction. The interactive
sound space installation Observation Environment (1996) was produced
immediately afterwards with sound material and computer graphics from
Observation Suite. The following year I finished my collaboration with the
Bonner Entwicklungswerkstatt (BEC) with the composition of the electronic
music for the installation Märchen aus dem Metakino: Das Choreoskop (Tales
from a Meta-Cinema: The Choreoscope) 1997, with interactive motion
graphics and sound space. The composition created an interactive game
with excerpts of popular music from different parts of the world assigned
to different regions of a virtual map projected on the floor and activated
by people walking through the installation. The music was conceived as a
prototype for a children’s opera, an idea that BEC pursued in the following
years with the Animax concept.
Observation Suite represented a more elaborate stage of the media-music-
theater project that the BEC had pursued since the beginning of the 1990s.
The music created a sound collage on the basis of a large number of samples,
electronic sounds, and noises that were activated and transformed interactively
by the dancer and projected into the 3D sound space.
Notes on Observation Suite: Electronic Music for Dance in a Multimedia

and Interactive Environment 29
The mechanical and electronic reproducibility of music opens the door to

its dissemination. Digital technology goes a step further: It renders sound
mundane. Anything we hear can become music now: every sound, speech
or noise ever caused by humans or nature... even all music itself. It is this
possibility that the music industry has long since recognized. Any piece
of music taken from a CD can be sampled and easily mutated. It can be
transformed using digital technology and or remixed with other pieces.
In this way, music often seems very arbitrary like many other industrially
manufactured products.
28
James Saunders fell 30 ft. to his death while performing a character inspired by the
mythical figure of Icarus on the stairs of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. More than
500 people were watching the solo performance and saw him falling down, silent and
graceful. Assuming that his fall was part of the dance performance, some people were
upset when the show stopped and requested the reimbursement of their tickets.
29
The following notes were written in 1996 for premiere of Observation Suite. They provide
insight on compositional ideas of that time, including the technological background and
the aesthetic choices in regard to the media-music-theater. The provocative tone of the
original text has been kept.
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Wherein lies musical originality today? Is it all more or less a compilation

of existing material or is it possible to create something new? In my opinion
something new can be created—but only through a deep and honest
engagement with the material. The sound should not only be impressive,
but also fragile; the music should express not only fascination, but doubt,
critique, and passion in the broadest sense.
The composition of Observation Suite can be seen as evidence of this. It
consists of myriad sound sources such as rain and thunder, human noises,
machine noises, animal sounds such as pig, lion, tiger and bird, vocal music from
indigenous people in Brazil, piano and orchestra music by Johann Sebastian
Bach, as well as original soundtracks from television broadcasts, recordings from
my earlier works Sodoma and Leçon des Voyelles, and much more. Sometimes the
original sounds are easily recognized, sometimes only with difficulty. Very often
the sounds are transformed through time stretching, so that their microscopic
structure can be traced. It is like slow motion in the auditory domain, as subtle
nuances of the sound spectrum and the transformation of their components
become clearer and more musical. Another procedure is cross-synthesis, in
which two sounds mutually influence each other and their characteristics are
changed by every possible crossover and modulation. When the sounds of a
factory building are filtered through the harmonic structure of a Bach prelude,
one is given the impression that machines can sing, too. Real sound mutations
can be generated through cross-synthesis.
The structure of Observation Suite was developed on two levels. The first is
a 4-channel tape, where the musical elements provide the temporal and spatial
framework for the dance performance. The music creates a series of sound
spaces with different acoustic and psychological qualities. The sounds evoke
associations and memories; the listener has the opportunity to pave his own
way through several simultaneous layers of sound events. The second level is
the interactive music, which consists of nearly one hundred samples of filtered
animal sounds that are transformed and in the course of the piece are selected
and played by the dancer. The dancer’s movements and gestures captured by
a camera and digitally processed are integrated into the programmatic score;
the sound material is made available for the interactive game according to the
compositional context. In this sense, the dancer becomes a kind of interpreter.
His activity and movements shape the flow of the music. Just as a violinist
masters the art of using the bow and the fingering of his violin, the dancer
must master the techniques of the media stage. In contrast to traditional
ballet where the dancer reacts to the music, in this case he participates in
producing it. He is a musician and like a musician, must learn to play their
instrument.
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The possibilities of media-music-theater present the composer with many

challenges. The spatiality of the sound becomes a musical parameter; the
music conception has to strongly engage—much more than before—the
sound space. Through the close structural connections between acoustic and
optic events, new categories of perception can be created: music becomes
visual; sight becomes an extension of hearing. Moreover, the concept of the
instrument must be re-examined as the interface between the human and the
machine shifts to the center of attention. Everything that an individual can
bring into motion through his body and mind is an expression of life and a
language that still needs to be invented, also musically.
6. Audiovisual Media: Sound, Image and Space
The popularization of digital technology has accelerated the convergence of

sound and image in artistic creation. Audio and video recording, editing, and
processing can be accomplished with the computer using similar techniques,
sometimes integrated in the same virtual environment. Both the digital audio
workstation (DAW) and the digital video workstation support this integrative
approach by providing the artist with a set of hardware and software devices,
tools, and plug-ins. Moreover, the technology available to individuals can
practically match the quality standards of today’s professional audio and
video production.
Music video emerged as a filmed version of a song performance and became
a mass consumption product in the 1980s thanks to MTV. From the media
of film and television, music video has migrated to the internet, whereby its
aesthetics has evolved from being a provider of visual illustration of a song
into a medium for shaping and sharing individual and collective behaviors,
attitudes, identities, and political views. Launched in 2005, YouTube has
taken the mystique out of the production of music video, converting it into a
global art object. Anyone can make a music video, upload it to the internet,
and eventually be discovered or acknowledged as an artist. YouTube is the
medium that accomplishes the worldwide banalization of music video; it
redraws the boundaries between the system of art and the system of mass
communication while unfolding a new kind of creativity, which conveys
the ambivalence of information and communication technologies. Global
networking creates new forms of freedom but also sets new boundaries for
it, opening new possibilities for individual and collective exchange while at
the same time developing new strategies for monitoring and controlling these
exchanges, such as the mechanisms that are embedded in certain websites
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such as Google. Music video is the emblematic archetype of a form that

emerges from the convergence of film and music and transforms itself into
a medium for shaping new audiovisual forms in the current digital society.
The music video that arose out of the tradition of serious electronic music is
an intermedia form coupling electronic sounds with image projection, which
enjoys growing interest and is developing into a sub-genre of electroacoustic
music. The audiovisual merge seems to have the potential to make the music
more accessible to a broader audience. But here one has to raise the following
question: Does the multimedia intensify the sensorial experience and make
the music more attractive, or does it simply provide a distraction that reinforces
the patterns of entertainment and diversion of everyday life? Whatever the
answer may be, embedding the music into an audiovisual form provides
the listener with an immersive experience that is functionally linked to the
situation of the movie theater: the music is projected into the room through
loudspeakers, the sound surrounds the bodies, while the image projected
onto a screen and focuses the audience’s attention on an illuminated surface.
The electroacoustic music video relating sound, image, and space is primarily
an immersive experience that can be also integrated with other forms, such
as with live music performance (vocal, instrumental, and or electroacoustic
music), dance, acting, or installation and so on. Traditionally, the audiovisual
art is structurally coupled with the space both as physical and social medium.
The immersive experience relates physical presence to social presence. By
contrast, watching an electroacoustic music video on a computer, internet,
or mobile device is mainly an individual experience, in which the embodied
experience is dispersed along a spectrum of possibilities emerging from the
interaction with the technological medium.
Translating a work of art into another medium is an operation that
changes its meaning according to the characteristics of that particular
medium. Let’s examine how the meaning of space changes in the translation
of electroacoustic music from the physical to the virtual environment. Space
is a structural element of electroacoustic music. The acoustic properties of
the performance hall play an important role in determining how the listener
perceives the music. Reverberation for example, can significantly impact
both the performance and the listening experiences. It affects the clarity
and liveness of the sound and the localization of the sound source. In the
case of electroacoustic music, the listening experience also depends on the
quality of the sound system: the audio equipment, the characteristics of the
speakers, and their distribution throughout the performance space. Sound
spatialization, a crucial aspect of electroacoustic music performance, is in fact
a virtual construction of sound space; the virtual space can be generated by
228
the composition itself as with multi-channel electroacoustic music, or added

as a new layer of aural experience in the performance as with acousmatic
music performed with loudspeaker orchestra.
Historically, an electroacoustic music composition was conceived to
be performed in a concert hall with the goal of achieving the best possible
listening experience while taking advantage of state-of-the-art audio and
sound technology. However, the popularization of media such as computer
and mobile devices has introduced new channels of music distribution and
listening situations. Digital audio technology is rapidly evolving; audio data
compression is being widely used for improving data storage and transmission
on the internet. The well-established MP3 standard for instance, analyzes
the audio signal according to a psychoacoustic model, taking advantage of
certain limitations of human hearing such as the masking effect, to reduce
the amount of encoded audio information. Audio data compression, in
comparison to the compact disk format (44,100 16-bit samples per second),
results in a loss of audio quality. But encoding is only one aspect impacting the
perception. There is also the listening environment, the quality of the audio
equipment, and many other factors. Listening to music with headphones or
earphones, which is now taken for granted, imposes the need to reconstruct
spatial hearing. In fact, digital audio applications are based on notions first
explored in the field of computer music, including sound spatialization,
which becomes increasingly important in many contexts of technologically
mediated sound as a simulation of a virtual acoustic space.
We are currently in a stage where digital technology is basically used for
the purpose of simulation and emulation of analog processes. This is evident
in the field of sound synthesis with digital synthesizers developing analog
algorithms and in the field of sound spatialization through the way the
medium space shapes the construction of virtual sound spaces. However, we
also see differences appearing as we distinguish new forms that aim to reduce
the complexity of the digital medium. Data compression is an example. The
convergence of sound and image through digital technology can also be
seen as a process of selection that actualizes the potential of the audiovisual
medium and creates meaningful distinctions. Reducing complexity requires
an understanding of the self-reproducing process that is historically given.
It follows that the technical complexity of the audiovisual and intermedia
composition can be unraveled most successfully in an interdisciplinary
structure. One can argue vis-a-vis Flusser, that it is not very fruitful—and
practically impossible—to access a comprehensive competency in new
technology as an individual. The required creativity should not come from
a single author, but from a dialog involving the interaction between humans
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and apparatuses and shaping both the internal and external references of
the work. The challenge consists of setting up the dialog creatively through
collaboration rather than with individuals. According to Flusser, the digital
medium “will lift the production process out of the competence of the
individual creator into the competence of the interpersonal dialogue” (Flusser
2011, 102).
7. Music Video, Audiovisual Installation, Music Laser Installation
My collaboration with visual artists Inge Kamps and Rainer Plum resulted
in audiovisual works including music videos and installations with music,
video, and laser that seek a synthesis of the domains of perception. They were
designed for the concert situation, but the necessity of disseminating and
documenting the works constitutes the need for medial translation. I became
acquainted with Inge Kamps in 1995 when we both participated in the
“Babel” group, a project by artists from Cologne for developing collaborative
work. Hans-Ulrich Humpert, composer and director of the electronic studio
at the Musikhochschule in Cologne (my teacher), had invited me there, and
he likewise collaborated with Inge Kamps at a later date. The music video The
Journey was created in 1995 as the first result of my collaboration with Inge
Kamps and premiered in the event “Best of Babel” at the Musikhochschule in
Cologne. Two other music videos followed—Einblick (1995) and Zeit-Wände
II (1997)—as well as the music video installation Zeit-Wände VII (2003).
For The Journey (1995; 9:16”) I used part of the electronic music composed
for the multimedia work Global Village—Hidden Pathways, performed in
1993 at the BEC. On the basis of the electronic music, Inge Kamps created
a new videography in 1995 with abstract images derived from real source
material in four motifs—water, earth, oscillograph, and mind-machine.
The visual composition develops processes of alienation by building abstract
textures and patterns in synchrony with the music. The aesthetics of The
Journey emphasizes the correlation of auditory and visual perception. Two
layers of experience are meant to stand over against each other as equals and
at the same time create a close structural connection, by which an intermedial
unity results. With the synchronism of auditory and visual perception, the
electronic music video pursues the concept of a time-space synesthesia. From
my point of view, The Journey is a successful example of the exploration of
synesthetic perception in audiovisual art. The composition received an award
from the Internationaler Videokunstpreis SWF/ZKM in 1997.
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The electronic music video Einblick (1995; 1:14”) developed a similar

principle of time-space synesthesia focused on rhythm. Einblick is a short piece
that addresses the multilayered, dynamic networking of elements that shape the
experience of now. I composed Einblick parallel to the production of Migration
(1995-97) in the studio for electronic music of the WDR. The sound material
consists of samples from speech of different lengths, from fragments of a few
milliseconds long to isolated phonemes, syllables, and words. The composition
assembles this material in a 12-track collage that builds a dense structure of
polyrhythms with a pulsing, vibrating character. The videography by Inge
Kamps depicts an urban landscape with short sequences and fragments of
images oscillating synchronously with the electronic music.
The electronic music video Zeit-Wände II (1997; 8:50”) belongs to a cycle
of works by Kamps focusing on the perception of time. The images were shot
in an abandoned battery factory in Cologne-Kalk that was converted into
a residential building where Inge also resided. The videography was based
on time-lapse photography that documented the transformation of the post-
industrial environment. The music creates acceleration processes with rhythmic
sound sequences. The concept of time-space synesthesia, which was already
applied in the composition of The Journey, is related to the idea of a transverse
time axis connecting and unifying different levels of time perception.
The music video installation Zeit-Wände VII premiered in 2003 in the box
girder of the Deutz bridge in Cologne in the context of the exposition “Drittes
Ufer” [The Third Bank of the River].30 Alienation of the mass media reality
and the perception of temporal patterns are the subjects of the audiovisual
composition that uses material extracted from TV and movies in combination
with electronic music. The black and white video clips, mostly footage of
people including celebrities and politicians, are projected with five video
projectors placed next to each other, producing a single continuous elongated
video image with five segments totaling about 15 m in length and about 2.2
m in height. The video clips are set up as short sequences that are played
as loops. The visual composition explores the visual patterns resulting from
the temporal and spatial arrangement of the video sequences on the different
segments of the video image. The selection of video clips, cutting techniques,
type of repetitions, and arrangement of video sequences in the five-segmented
video image creates rhythmic structures that are linked to the electronic
music. The basic technique of the visual composition consists of projecting
the same video clip sequentially on different screens separated by a short time
30
The title of the exhibition is taken from the short story “The Third Bank of the River” by
the Brazilian author João Guimarães Rosa.
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interval of a couple of frames. This creates a visual pattern with a rhythm—the

time interval between the same clip projected on different screens—and a
movement—the arrangement of the clips on the different screens. Examples
of such rhythmic movements include directional patterns with the same clip
moving successively from left to right or from right to the left along the five
screens, symmetric patterns with the clip moving in opposite directions, and
alternating patterns with the clips arranged in a specific manner.
The musical composition also develops rhythmic patterns that emphasize
the dialectic between the perception of continuous time and discrete time-
events. The musical segments fade in out of nothing, draw the consciousness
into synchronizing the images with the sounds or vice-versa, and fade out
into the silence. This process is repeated several times. The electronic sounds
have a granular quality, which together with the rhythmic character of the
music, contributes to correlate acoustic and visual perception. The electronic
composition was conceived to integrate into the acoustic environment of the
bridge—the traffic overhead, which reverberates in the box girder—and thus
plays with the idea of the ambivalence of aural perception; the consciousness
oscillates between the familiar and the strange, between the real acoustics
of the environment and the virtual acoustics of the music. The audiovisual
installation creates visual and auditory windows to access microscopic
intervals in the time-space continuum. It invites the observer to experience a
sort of time dilation in response to the audiovisual stimuli.
The work of Rainer Plum, a visual artist who also lived in Cologne,
explored the flow, form, and movement of laser light in space. We start
working together in 1999 in the Electronic Music Studio of the WDR
on experiments with converting laser signal into acoustic signal. We were
interested in synchronizing laser and sound and tried to use the laser beam as
an analog oscillator for generating sounds that would be controlled by the laser
light, so that an organic, synchronous connection would be created between
them. Actually, the system worked but the sonic result was not satisfactory.
Instead, we took another direction and started to design integrative patterns
that allow synchronization between laser and music at the perceptual level.
The first result of this research was the laser projection that Rainer Plum
created for the 8-channel electronic music Projektion (1999), which I was
producing at that time in the WDR studio. This collaboration was presented
in the Museum for Modern Art in Liège, Belgium, in November 1999.31
31
The piece that was presented in Liège was the first version of Projektion in 8-channel.
The final version of Projektion in 12-channel was created in 2000 and premiered in the
Institute of Musicology at the University of Cologne in February 2001.
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The following work, Streaming (2001), which we developed together

from scratch, is the more significant result of our collaboration. Streaming
is an electronic music and laser installation that explores the idea of
constructing a monumental immersive space made of light and sound. The
work was commissioned by the German IT company RAG-Informatik and
was presented at a business event in the soccer stadium Schalke Arena in
Gelsenkirchen in November 2001. The installation took place on the soccer
pitch itself; four sources of laser light were projected onto the fog that filled
the whole space of the arena; the music was played from loudspeakers located
both on the ground and on the stands. The audience moved around on the
soccer pitch and marveled at the interplay of laser images and electronic
sounds, which had transformed the huge space of the arena into a virtual
cathedral. The three-dimensional flow of the laser installation in combination
with the spacious electronic sounds seemed to create an organic world of
synthetic forms and movements. The audience was so impressed that we
had to repeat the show the same night. A journalist described the overall
experience as follows:
In the swirling fog, which served as a projection surface, blazing green

laser beams roamed through the arena as lines and as wide-ranging
surfaces, piled up into pyramids of light, suddenly tipped over, and spun
with thrilling vortexes the dimensions into confusion. The guests were
fascinated. And people asked Plum: How real is that, what our eyes are
seeing?32
Streaming plays with the aesthetics of illusion, embracing the idea of

constructing reality using synthetic and artificial means through processes
of both mimesis and simulation. According to Kamper, “mimesis is physical;
simulation works with machines. Simulation replaces a reality with deceptively
similar images. Mimesis creates a reality through physical gestures that
give expression to wishes” (Kamper 1991, 17). The laser performance has a
mimetic character in that quasi-physical objects such as lines, surfaces, and
spaces are generated, and set in motion in synchrony with the music. The
music sets the pace, provides the rhythm for the temporal form. It fills the
space with vibrations and creates the ground from which the laser arises. The
laser performance was designed according to the properties of sound and
the time structure of music. The electronic music produces a continual flow
32
Bernd Aulich, “Arena glüht im Licht der Laser. Kunst-Spektakel: Besucher begeistert”,
Recklinghäuser Zeitung, November 10, 2001.
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of sound objects and events, which arise from within and are continually in
motion. The music simulates acoustic spaces, decelerations, and accelerations.
The organic flow of the music compensates the quasi-automatic stream of the
laser performance. The audience experiences Streaming as an immersive ritual
of synesthesia. The interplay of laser light and electronic sound provides an
embodied interaction with the environment that integrates the self into the
audiovisual experience.
8. Interdisciplinary Composition and Interactivity
I argue that the term polyphony denotes the structuring of multiple,

simultaneous and independent sound events producing a temporal process of
meaning.33 This concept of polyphony assumes that multiplicity, simultaneity,
and independence are intrinsic qualities of the acoustic environment and thus
polyphony creates a difference by articulating these qualities through a musical
system of meaning that distinguishes itself from the environment. Polyphony
is therefore the embodied interaction with the acoustic environment that
relates the polyphonic reality of sound phenomenon to the contextual
interconnections that define musical experience. Polyphonic thinking
broadens the horizon for connecting the materiality of sound perceived as
subjective qualities to the domain of artistic and social interactions. This
notion of polyphony, as earlier discussed, is also linked with the concepts
of plurality and heterogeneity. Guattari proposes a polyphonic analysis of
subjectivity on the basis of the “ethic-aesthetic paradigm”, which emphasizes
the relations of alterity between individual and collective units and offers
an alternative to scientific and philosophical models. Guattari’s polyphonic
subjectivity embraces the idea that subjectivity is not restricted to human
consciousness but is at the crossroads of “heterogeneous machinic universes”
framing the interaction between human beings and technology. In Guattari’s
terms, subjectivity shifts from the human consciousness to the “machinic
assemblages” of contemporary society.34
Polyphonic subjectivity underlies the concept of interdisciplinary
composition, which embodies the heterogeneity of the machinic assemblages
as aesthetic principle. Interdisciplinary composition deals with the complexity
33
For an extensive account of this view of polyphony see my article “Polyphony and
Embodiment: A Critical Approach to the Theory of Autopoiesis” (Chagas 2005).
34
For an account of “machinic heterogenesis” and “machinic assemblage” see Guattari
(1992; 1993); see also my article “Polyphony and Technology in Interdisciplinary
Composition” (Chagas 2007).
234
of contemporary artistic creation and the notions of multimedia and

intermedia. We face the challenge of dissolving boundaries and integrate the
different media—sound, image, speech, music, film, video, body, and space.
Yet we also aim to reinforce the ethical principles of autonomy and alterity.
Interdisciplinary composition must reflect our commitment to differentiation
in a double sense: at the structural level of the composition itself through
the differentiations resulting from recursive coupling and uncoupling of
media and forms at the ethical-aesthetical level of the work and through
the reiteration of human integrity and individual and collective autonomy.
Interdisciplinary composition reinforces the belief that human existence
embraces multiple and heterogeneous forms of autonomy. The following
are three audiovisual and multimedia works that engage with the concept
of interdisciplinary composition in different ways: Circular Roots (2004),
Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder [Songs of the Eye] 2005, and Corpo, Carne e
Espírito [Body, Flesh and Spirit] 2008.35
Circular Roots (2004) is an interdisciplinary composition for violin,
electroacoustic sounds, video, and real-time image processing. It was
created in collaboration with the Brazilian forestry engineer and occasional
video artist Luiz Carlos Joels, the violinist Izumi Okobo, and the Centre
de Recherches et Formation Musicales de Wallonie (CRFMW) in Liège,
Belgium. Circular Roots explores gestural control by the violin in that gestures
are captured by means of two sensors attached to the bow and the body
of the performer and used to process digital images projected on a screen.
Patrik Delges, a computer scientist working at the CRFMW, designed the
Max/Jitter patch for interactive image processing. Interactivity occurs only
at the level of image shaping; there is no live electronics or live processing
of the violin sound. The fixed electroacoustic music is produced in surround
5.1. The violinist synchronizes the live performance with the electroacoustic
sounds by means of a click track. At the premiere of Circular Roots at the
Festival Ars Musica in Brussels in March 2004, Izumi Okobo stood next to
the screen so that the violin performance and the interactive image projection
would constitute a unity. Additionally, a DVD version of Circular Roots was
35
For the relationship between polyphony and technology in Circular Roots and Canções
dos Olhos/Augenlieder see “Polyphony and Technology in Interdisciplinary Composition”
(Chagas 2007); for the concept and the creative process of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder
see “The Blindness Paradigm: The Invisibility and Visibility of the Body” (Chagas 2006);
for a short description of Corpo, Carne e Espírito see “Corpo, Carne e Espírito: A Digital
Oratorio” (Chagas 2008) and “The Relation of Visuals to Music” (Birringer 2008); for a
detailed account of the visual composition and performance see “Corpo, Carne e Espírito:
Musical Visuality of the Body” (Birringer 2009a) and “After Bacon: The Music of Digital
Flesh and the Pornography of Sensation” (Birringer 2009b).
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made with the recording of the live music and the video processing using the
output of the computer (no footage of the performance on the stage.) This
is an independent work that incorporates the performance as an embodied
experience and projects it onto the context of the film.36
The music and video narrative of Circular Roots is a loose adaptation of the
short story “The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges. A man comes to the
ruins of a temple, which has been devoured by ancient fires and with the help
of the God of Fire, creates a son entirely through dreaming who looks like
a real person; later the man discovers that he is an appearance himself, that
someone else has dreamed him. Like all Borges’ stories, “The Circular Ruins”
has a multiplicity of meanings. Two themes have particularly interested me,
both symbolized by the dream inside a dream: creation as a circular process
and self-referential recursive thinking. The piece reflects on these themes at
many levels. The video shows the transformation of the natural environment
of the Brazilian Amazon, documenting the destruction of the rainforest and
some aspects of the life of its inhabitants. We see, for instance, a cleansing
ritual held by a modern Brazilian Indian, the traditional manufacture of
manioc flour in the countryside, and the colorful boats anchored in the
harbor of Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas.
The musical composition generates interdisciplinary polyphony by
exploring the relation between instrumental gestures produced by the violinist
and captured by sensors, and the technological gestures generated by the
digital interfacing of physical gestures and the mapping strategies for image
processing. The accelerometer sensor attached to the bottom of the violin
bow tracks the changes in the speed of the bow in both the horizontal and
vertical axes. The flexometer sensor attached to the violinist’s right elbow joint
tracks the expansion and contraction of the right arm, which holds the bow.
In the composition of the violin part, I developed musical patterns designed
to activate the sensors: for instance, musical passages requiring movements
of speeding up or slowing down the bow for triggering the accelerometer
and musical passages across different strings causing the frequent bending of
the right arm triggering the flexometer. The score defines a certain number
of temporal windows for image processing. The information acquired from
the sensors is mapped onto typical video effects—such as feedback, zoom,
color, and opacity, which occurs only inside the boundaries of the temporal
windows specified by the score. The sensor data is interpreted as dynamic
gestures expressing the changing of some quality over time. The systematic
36
Circular Roots received an award for “Best Sound Experiment” at the film festival “Flor”
in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2005.
236
use of feedback and recursivity for sound and image shaping emphasizes
circularity as the main idea of the composition.
As pointed out by Wittgenstein, gesture can be an instance of musical
understanding and help to explain what someone thinks about music. Gesture
makes visible the interiority of musical understanding; “sometimes the
simplest explanation is a gesture”, says Wittgenstein (CV, 69). The aesthetics of
Circular Roots treats gesture as the unifying principle of the interdisciplinary
composition. The interplay between different kinds of gestures mediated by
technology seeks to make visible the potential of “structural coupling” of the
human with a complex and heterogeneous environment. The question here is
how to shape a creative approach to musical gesture that takes into account
complexity both at the level of traditional music practice (for example, the
complexity of playing the violin) and at the level of new digital instruments
and interfaces. There is a necessity to overcome the limitation of a thinking that
treats information as separated from the body and to develop comprehensive
approaches for exploring gesture as a process involving “multiple levels of
interconnected, sensorimotor activity” (Varela, Thompson and Rosh 1991,
206) that accounts for the coupling of the human and the technical in a
complex and heterogeneous environment.
Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder [Songs of the Eyes], is an interdisciplinary
composition for soprano, electronic music in surround 5.1, dance, and digital
video in collaboration with the choreographer and media artist Johannes
Birringer and the dancer Veronica Endo. As with Circular Roots, a live
performance version was first developed for soprano, electronic sounds,
dancer, and video projection and followed up with a DVD. The performance
took place in July 2005 in the context of the “Interaktionslabor”,37 the third
time that I participated in this international workshop. In 2003, I created
Visionsraum, a sound space installation with interactive text projection and
in 2004, Blind City, a prototype for an interactive opera installation also in
collaboration with Johannes Birringer and other artists (cf. Birringer 2006).38
Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder engages thematically with the novel Ensaio
sobre a Cegueira (Blindness) by the Portuguese author and Nobel Prize winner
José Saramago. In this story, Saramago imagines a contemporary city where
37
The “Interaktionslabor” is a “laboratory for interactive media, design, and performance,
on the site of the former coal mine Göttelborn (Saarland)” founded in 2003 and directed
by Johannes Birringer (cf. http://interaktionslabor.de [accessed July 1, 2013]).
38
For a detailed description of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder see “The Blindness Paradigm:
The Invisibility and Visibility of the Body” (Chagas 2006), and “Polyphony and
Technology in Interdisciplinary Composition” (Chagas 2007). I limit myself here to
discussing some aspects that are relevant for interdisciplinary composition.
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everyone loses their sight. Blindness spreads rapidly like an epidemic and
provokes social collapse. Life is reduced to the basic instinct of survival.
Saramago’s metaphor of blindness points to the vulnerability of a society on
the edge of chaos and hopelessness. My approach to Saramago’s narrative
was inspired by Schubert’s seminal song cycle Winterreise. I imagined a cycle
of intermedia songs that explore the relations between sound, image, and
dance in the unique environment of the abandoned coalmine, where the
Interaktionslabor was located. The intermedia song cycle focused on the main
character of Saramago’s novel, the doctor’s wife, the only person who can see
in the world where everyone has gone blind. The dancer performed the role
of this main character. I composed the electronic music of Canções dos Olhos/
Augenlieder with the software Max on the basis of two kinds of samples: the
recording of a soprano voice singing four arias that I composed with texts
from Blindness39 and the recording of my own voice reading five of my own
poems inspired by Saramago’s novel.40 The technique of granular synthesis
plays a significant role in the composition both for processing the sample
material and for shaping the overall texture of the electronic music.41
Johannes Birringer’s choreographic and visual composition with dance
and video explores the sensory deprivation and recovery of a woman who
finds herself suddenly in an imaginary city where the people have become
blind and disappeared. Birringer emphasized the ambivalent reactions of the
woman: we do not know what she sees or cannot see and can only follow
her physical and emotional experience of the unseen. We are drawn into a
musical world and a gloomy industrial landscape, which links the movements
of the body with the blindness of the inter-activity in such a world. The DVD
version of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder is a hybrid form between dance and
music video, in which images of the dancer influence perception while the
music develops its own story.
The aesthetics of Canções dos Olhos/Augenlieder reflects on interactivity
and collaboration as distinguishing features of the interdisciplinary work of
art. In contrast to the prevalent discourse of interactivity focused on physical
aspects of technology such as the digital interfaces and the human-machine
39
The soprano Hannah Morrison sang the arias in the live performance of Canções dos
Olhos/Augenlieder in Göttelborn in July 2005; the soprano April Crane recorded the arias
for the DVD version.
40
I wrote these poems for my chamber music work Canções dos Olhos [Songs of the Eyes]
(2005-09) for soprano, piano, and cello. Apart from sharing the same title and using the
same text, the works are completely different.
41
I used the set of external objects and abstractions developed by Nathan Wolek for Max –
granular toolkit. http://www.lowkeydigitalstudio.com/2007/03/granular-toolkit-v1-49/
(accessed July 1, 2013).
238
relationship, I define interactivity as the embodiment of the collaborative

experience that materializes the creation process in the form of the work itself.42
This concept embraces both the arrangements of heterogeneous media that
can be assembled by the work of art as well as the dynamic of personal
relationships occurring in the creation process. In the beginning of the 21st
century, interactivity emerges thus as a model of dialog communication
in a broad sense, reflecting on the ethical and political dimension or the
relationship between human beings and machines.
9. Digital Oratorio: Corpo, Carne e Espírito
The digital oratorio Corpo, Carne e Espírito (Body, Flesh and Spirit) 2008, is a
further collaboration with Johannes Birringer. The work explores intermedia
relationships between music and digital performance with dance and film. I
suggested to Birringer the idea of developing a new work for the stage inspired
by the paintings and life of Francis Bacon (1909-92) on the basis of the music
that I composed for the choreographic theater Francis Bacon by Kresnik/Ivo
in 1993. In contrast to this earlier work, the aim of the new endeavor was not
to translate Bacon’s universe into a dance performance, but rather to produce
a new interpretation of Bacon’s universe, integrating the live performance
of the music into a concept of audiovisual composition that explores digital
technology and multimedia. Thematically, the piece was to reflect on issues
of the body in contemporary society.
The first steps were to select pieces from Francis Bacon to put together
a specific sequence and develop a concept of audiovisual performance.
The music of Francis Bacon for an ensemble of three singers (soprano,
countertenor, baritone), five musicians (string quartet and percussion),
and electronic sounds—consisted of more than 20 single pieces featuring
different configurations of electronic music, solo voices and solo instruments,
vocal trio and string trio, string quartet with and without percussion, etc. I
extensively revised the score of Francis Bacon, which until then only existed
as manuscript, converted it to computer notation, and supplemented it with
detailed performance instructions.43
42
For an extensive discussion of interactivity see “The Blindness Paradigma: The Invisibility
and Visibility of the Body” (Chagas 2006c), and “Polyphony and Technology in
Interdisciplinary Composition” (Chagas 2007).
43
Through the revision I became more conscious of some of the particulars of the original
composition of Francis Bacon, which had been accomplished in a very short period of time.
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As title for the new piece I suggested Corpo, Carne e Espírito [Body, Flesh
and Spirit], which came to mind while reading Deleuze’s book Francis Bacon:
Logic of Sensation (Deleuze 2004).44 Deleuze argues that Francis Bacon’s
painting constitutes “a zone of indiscernibility or undecidability between
man and animal”, which he associates with the entire body, “but the body
insofar as it is flesh or meat” (Deleuze 2004, 20). The flesh is the condition
of the body that links the human with the animal and with the spirit: “Man
becomes animal, but not without the animal becoming spirit at the same time”
(Deleuze 2004). The vision of the piece is also one of intermedia translation.
The audiovisual digital performance takes over the role of indiscernibility
that with Bacon is symbolized by the flesh. In Francis Bacon’s paintings, the
flesh is also that which connects with the bone: “the bone as the material
structure of the body, the flesh as the bodily material of the Figure” (Deleuze
2004) as with the connection of the mouth with the teeth in paintings such
as Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) and the famous
Study after Velázque’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953). In Corpo, Carne e
Espírito the flesh is a metaphor of the intention to create diverse audiovisual
connections. The indiscernibility unfolds in the intermedial association of
music, digital images, and live performance.
Corpo, Carne e Espirito was developed jointly over a period of several
months. Birringer envisioned the digital oratorio concept of “choreographic
scenarios”: sequences of digital images projected onto three screens hung
beside each other on the back of the stage above and behind the performers.
The screens form a concave triptych, a visual representation found again and
again with Bacon. The digital images were pre-edited and their projection
was improvised live with interactive software patches (Isadora) during
the performance. The premier took place at the FIT Theater Festival in
Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in June 2008. I conducted the ensemble of three
singers (soprano, countertenor, baritone), five musicians (string quartet
and percussion), and electronic sounds. Birringer’s concept integrated the
musicians into the digital performance environment with the projected images.
During the performance, Birringer sat like a video director on the edge of the
stage and operated the computer himself in order to manipulate the digital
images in real time. Corpo, Carne e Espírito links the form of the musical
oratorio with the visual form of cinema. One hears a staged performance of
the composition with singers, instrumentalists, and electronic music, while
44
Especially the fourth chapter: “Body, Meat, and Spirit: Becoming-Animal”, pp. 19-24.
The book was first published in 1981 but I hadn’t read it when I composed Francis Bacon
in 1993.
240
watching an interactive digital film with live music. In order to highlight the
quality of this novel, intermedia connection between music, performance,
and digital images as a genre, we called the work a digital oratorio.
The main motive of the visual composition according to Birringer, is
“soundless” bodies that interact with the music, not as visualization of the
music, but as independent objects and events. The question for him was how
best to translate painting into digital film. He created a visual counterpoint
to the music with images of naked bodies that he had photographed or filmed
and associated with different meanings: eroticism, pornography, danger, or
violence, for example. Although his translation was inspired by the music, the
bodies remain silent and do not respond to the music: “My images are in facto
soundless, while the performance of the oratorio creates a full musical world
separate from the visual action on the screen” (Birringer 2009a, 244). Birringer
explores the spatiality of the image projection in the triptych configuration.
The images appear in different combinations on the three projection surfaces
and Birringer plays with the possibilities of the three-part, spatial projection.
For example, single projection surfaces are selectively activated while the
other two remain obscured, the three projection surfaces are occupied by
the same image, the three projection surfaces are assigned three different
images, or the images moved between the three projection surfaces. Birringer
claims to have designed “a kind of orchestral spatialization of the images”
(Birringer 2009a, 245). He treats the digital triptych as a cinematographic
video sculpture controlled in real time with the music. However, Birringer’s
story is all but diegesis, and thus his approach differs from the aesthetics of
film music; in other words, he rejects a film-like representation in synchrony
with the music. The images are designed as asynchronous objects to be used
interactively with the music. They are incomplete without the interaction. In
addition, the “unnatural’ movement of the projected bodies also disrupts the
rules of representation of diegetic logic” (Birringer 2009a, 245).
Corpo Carne e Espírito has eighteen scenes structured in five parts, with
the first two parts comprising three pieces each and the last three parts four
pieces each. The musical structure develops directional movements such as
from electronic to acoustic music, from solo pieces to chamber music pieces
with few instruments and finally to pieces with the entire ensemble plus
electronic music. Birringer designed the five parts as thematic arenas so that
within each one, the music and digital images are played continuously and the
pieces seamlessly merge into each other. The five parts are interlinked by four
silent entr’actes. At first I envisioned writing new music for them, but then
we decided instead to introduce silence as a counterpoint to the continuous
music. Birringer created for these silent moments a scenic interlude with the
241
Unsayable Music
singers and the digital images. The singers stepped forward to the front of
the stage and began to sing silently into a microphone: the mimic and the
gestures are seen, but no sound is heard. The image of the mouth and face
is captured by a camera and projected onto the triptych screens, sometimes
also modified interactively. The microphone only intensified the silence, but
the expressions of the mouth, teeth, skin, jaws, and cavities of the throat
suggested that the voice could break through at any moment. The entr’actes
of Corpo, Carne e Espírito are short dense moments of expectation unfolding
a dialectic of proximity and distance. The silence resonates as a space of
intimacy in opposition to the audiovisual flow; the representation of mouth
and head related to the motifs of Francis Bacon’s paintings and particularly to
the theme of the flesh as mediator between body and spirit.
10. The Aesthetics of Distortion
In Bacon’s Study after Velázque’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) we see

a distorted version of the original painting by Diego Velázquez from 1630.
The distortion is reinforced by the fact that the figure of the sitting pope
is screaming. As Deleuze points out, “the entire body escapes through the
screaming mouth” (Deleuze 2004, 25). He suggests that behind Bacon’s
scream there is a smile.45 Another example of a “screaming pope” is the
untitled painting known as Pope (1954);46 Bacon suggested that here the
smile is “hysterical”. According to Deleuze, hysterics is the sign of presence
or insistence of a presence: “The insistence of a smile beyond the face and
beneath the face. The insistence of a scream that survives the mouth, the
insistence of a body that survives the organism, the insistence of transitory
organs that survive qualified organs” (Deleuze 2004, 44). Deleuze argues
that there is a special relation between painting and hysteria, as painting
directly attempts to release the present beneath and beyond representation.
By contrast, music does not have to deal with the problem of hysteria because
it is already pure presence:
45
Bacon said that when he made the pope screaming he was obsessed by Monet. He was
attracted by the movements of the mouth and the shape of the mouth and the teeth: “I
like, you may say, the glitter and the color that comes from the mouth, and I’ve always
hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset […] And I’ve
always wanted to and never succeeded in painting a smile” (Sylvester 1975, 50).
46
The painting belongs to a private collection in Switzerland. It is to be offered for sale by
auction in November 2013 and is expected to fetch $18m-$25m. According to Deleuze’s
book, this painting dates from 1955.
242
music traverses our bodies in profound ways, putting an ear in the

stomach, in the lungs, and so on. […] It strips bodies for their inertia
of the materiality of their presence: it disembodies body. […] In a sense,
music begins where painting ends, and this is what is meant when one
speaks of the superiority of music. […] When music sets up its sonorous
system and its polyvalent organ, the ear, it addresses itself to something
very different from the material reality of bodies. It gives a disembodied
and dematerialized body to the most spiritual of entities […] This is why
music does not have hysteria as its clinical essence, but is confronted
more and more with an galloping schizophrenia. (Deleuze 2004, 47;
emphasis in the original)
My composition for string quartet and various combinations of violin, viola,

and cello makes use of extended techniques such as strongly pressing the bow
against the string in order to produce scratching sounds. The main result of
these techniques is to create distortion; the pressing of the bow breaks with the
symmetry of the normal string sound in that it destroys the periodic structure
of the overtones that provides the sensation of a harmonic and pleasing
sound traditionally associated with the ideal of beauty. Distortion introduces
noise, irregularity, asymmetry, and dissonance. In addition to the extended
techniques for strings, the music develops other kinds of asymmetric and
irregular sound spectra. For instance, the composition for voices generates
phonetic distortion by exploring the characteristics of vowels and consonants
with contrasts, oppositions, and transitions. Vowels are associated with
symmetric, consonant spectra; consonants with asymmetric, dissonant
spectra. Distortion is a musical gesture that I used frequently and in different
ways in the composition of Francis Bacon. The effect of distortion correlates
with the “zone of indiscernibility” that Deleuze detects in Francis Bacon’s
paintings and creates an overall sensation of nervousness that profoundly
traverses our bodies: the latent schizophrenia.
For a better understanding of the aesthetics of distortion, let us take a
brief glance at the beginning of the piece Pope, for soprano, countertenor,
baritone, string quartet, and percussion (Figure 1).
• In measure 1, the cello plays the pedal of the perfect fifth D3/A3, a double
stop with the empty strings I and II (measures 1-9). The baritone starts
shortly thereafter at measure 2 by singing a melodic figure in the style
of the music of the late Middle Ages or the early Renaissance; the Greek
243
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word “kyrie” triggers the short and pregnant melisma on the vowel [i];47
the melody reaches the fifth degree of the Dorian mode (A3) at measure 3,
fourth beat. This is followed by events that completely distort and deform
the medieval character of the beginning of the piece:
• In measure 4, first beat, the viola plays the note G#4 sul ponticello, a
dissonant tone to both the D and A tones. The violin I and II start later,
playing respectively the natural overtone D6 and C#7. The baritone
articulates the consonant [f] as a sonorous inhalation, which is comparable
to the gesture of applying pressure with the bow performed by the viola at
the fourth beat. Both the sonorous inhalation and the scratching produce
noise and dissonance.
• In measure 5, the baritone begins by articulating the plosive consonant
[k] as a hard attack, continues by sustaining the noisy consonant [x], and
finishes by repeating the sonorous inhalation on the consonant [f] in the
fourth beat, last 16th note. The viola plays rhythmic microtonal variations
of the note G#4 followed by scratching sounds combined with the semitone
glissandi. The violins I and II distort the natural harmonics by means of
glissandi and tremoli that introduce noise and dissonance.
• Measure 6 repeats the figure of measure 5 but with the consonant [g]
for the initial attack, the consonant [r] for the sustain segment, and the
sonorous inhalation with the consonant [f] at the end. The scratching
sounds of violin I, violin II, and viola are linked to dynamic gestures of
pressure (crescendo and sfz).
• In measure 7, the baritone sings a rhythmic figure, similar to that of the
viola in measure 5; the attack with the plosive consonant [k] triggers a
rhythmic structure with two pairs of phonemes—[iç] and [uç]—, which
are combinations of the vowels [i] and [u] with the fricative consonant [ç]:
first four 16th notes alternating between [iç] and [uç], then two quarter
notes with transitions between these two sounds, and finally a long [iç]
with decrescendo (five quarter notes). The rhythmic alternation between
the phonemes achieves an effect of subtractive synthesis, similar to an
analog VCF (voltage-controlled filter) modulating a white noise.
• In measure 8, the cello plays the pedal of fifth (D3/A3), placing the bow as
close as possible to the bridge, so that it produces a noisy sound. The viola
plays the G#4 on the bridge as well and the violin I and II play overtones
D6 and C# sul ponticello. The combination of the grounded fifth (D3/A3)
with the dissonant G#4 overtones creates a texture of harmonic ambiguity
reinforced by the harsh timbre resulting from playing sul ponticello or
47
The vowels and consonants are indicated in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
244
Figure 1: Pope, mm. 1-13.
245
Unsayable Music
close to the bridge. The last chord fades out into quasi-silence (ppp) while
the non-harmoniousness of the cymbals played with violin bow fades
in. This kind of cross-fading creates a directional movement so that the
non-harmonious spectrum of the cymbals, which has a certain similarity
to the distorted sounds of the strings, seems to emerge from within the
ambiguous and deformed body represented by the sound of the strings.
The aesthetics of distortion illustrated here with Pope constitutes a zone of

indiscernibility or undecidability corresponding to Bacon’s paintings (Deleuze
2004; see above). The distortion provides many ambiguous approaches to
capturing forces that are beyond the sonorous. In the case of Pope, we see
how the music operates with elementary forces such as attraction, gravitation,
pressure, weight, inertia, and germination that are activated by recognizable
figures belonging to the medieval musical past such as the perfect fifth, the
medieval melody, and the melisma. These figures are not transformed in the
sense of motivic development or thematic construction and deconstruction,
but are submitted to processes of deformation. As Deleuze points out,
“deformation is always bodily, and it is static, it happens at one place; it
subordinates movement to force, but it also subordinates the abstract to
the Figure” (Deleuze 2004, 50). The aesthetics of distorted ambivalence
articulates a dialogizing structure of antagonisms, discrepancy, distances,
and divergences. The music operates with figures and their deformations that
give birth to abstract forms that turn into complex zones of indiscernibility
common to several forms. For example, the movement that introduces noise
or dissonant sound in the strings is subordinated to dynamic forces such as
the pressure of the bow applied to the string, the position of the bow, the
speed of the bow, the scratching on the surfaces of the tam-tam or the cymbal,
and so on. The interactions between the different instruments and the voice
establish the relationships that make visible the forces that sustain the sound.
The deformations contract and extend the figures, activate rhythms, gestures,
resonances, create contrasts as well as contrasts within contrasts. Overall,
the composition operates through recursive and fractural structures made
of movements pulsing symmetrically and regularly or asymmetrically and
irregularly.
Birringer’s visual composition also reflects the forces of isolation,
deformation, and dissipation in Bacon’s paintings. Colors and bodily forms
are projected on the surface of the triptych, creating rhythms and movements
that are independent of the music. They intend to shape “quietly fragmenting
spaces of something quiveringly present, breathing, unstable, contracting and
expanding” (Birringer 2009a, 248). Birringer calls this kind of fragmenting
246
technique granular digitality analogous to the technique of granular synthesis

in electronic music, through which the sound is shaped by streams of grains
submitted to modulation processes. The videographic objects are presented
as photos, videos, graphics, animations, fragments, contours, patterns, and
textures. The representation of the human emerges on the luminescent and
ghostly video surfaces created through the projection of male and female
bodies, heads, and parts of the body. The images are treated as vibrating
grains constituting couplings of sensations. Granular digitality translates
both the invisible forces underlying the bodily figures of Bacon’s paintings
as well as the visual resonance of the physical gestures of the live performed
music.
Music and visual projection are two separated yet integrated levels
of audiovisual composition. They constitute an emblematic example of
intermedia polyphony, which stresses the relationship of heterogeneity and
alterity as a compositional principle in the sense of Guattari (1992; 1993; see
above). Birringer engaged intensively with the music of Francis Bacon, creating
a visual language that resonates with musical aesthetics while articulating a
range of different sensations. Birringer summarized this intimate relationship
between music and projected images:
Just as Chagas’s music attempts to capture the poetic of Bacon’s universe

and invisible forces behind the surface of bodies, not necessarily related
to anything realistic, concrete and objective, the video and the digital
software transpose “obscene” images into virtual abstractions. None of
them speaks “to” the music or expresses anything that one might think
one is hearing. Contrary to Chion’s notion of the audiovisual scene, the
music does not anchor the images. The graphics, then, cannot function
as visual track or diegesis, and the music does not constitute a film
sound track or underscore driving the action image or setting/propelling
atmospheres. Independent from one another yet intertwined, the quasi-
cinema of a visual dance of objects and the music imprint different
sense experiences on the listener, sensations wresting with sensations.
(Birringer 2009a, 52)
11. Aesthetics of Multimedia
There are many different approaches to audiovisual and multimedia

composition. From the starting point of Luhmann’s medium/form
distinction, I have explored the relationship of music to other media such as
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images, stage, space, theater, opera, speech, poetry, dance, video, laser, film,
installation, and digital performance. The impulse to develop an aesthetics of
multimedia was triggered by my engagement with electronic music and it is
to be understood as an organic extension of its possibilities.
The possibilities of intermedia composition as an extension of polyphony
thinking integrate plurality and heterogeneity following the “ethic-aesthetic
paradigm”. Guattari’s concept of polyphonic subjectivity makes prominent
the connection of human subjectivity with the subjectivity of machines in
contemporary society. It provides a comprehensive approach to the question
of technology in the aesthetic experience. Aesthetics should make technology
transparent and engage with it critically. If one makes use of interactive
systems using for example sensors and digital interfaces in the composition,
then the work of art must deal with the question of the technology underlying
interactivity. As pointed out by Heidegger, “the essence of technology is by
no means anything technological” (1977, 4). We should not view technology
in the sense of machinery and instrumentality or of focusing on the use of
particular technologies. We should seek to understand the “ways of thinking
that lie behind technology” (Heidegger 1977, 3). Technology is a way of
revealing, but modern technology does not reveal by bringing something forth.
The mode of revealing modern technology is by challenging us (Heidegger
1977, 14). Art offers itself as a privileged realm to reflect upon technology and
is akin to the essence of technology, while at the same time fundamentally
different from it. Yet as Heidegger claims, “the more questioningly we ponder
the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes”
(Heidegger 1977, 35).
The cybernetic vision of the dialog involving humans, machines, and
recursive feedback loops shapes the reflection on the relationship between art
and technology in contemporary society. Both Flusser’s concept of telematic
dialog (Flusser 1983) and Guattari’s concept of machinic heterogenesis
(Guattari 1993) point in this direction. Two models of dialog are the “Centre
de Recherches et Formation Musicale de Wallonie” (CRFMW) in Liège,
Belgium, and the “Interaktionslabor” directed by Johannes Birringer in
Göttelborn, Saarland. I have collaborated with both in the production of
intermedia works, which I designate as interdisciplinary compositions. The
pieces resulting from this collaboration reflect on the body and its relation to
digital technology as a focal aspect of audiovisual composition. In Circular
Roots, the gestural activity of the violinist is captured with sensors and
translated into interactive processing of the projected video. In Canções dos
Olhos/Augenlieder, the body is placed in the condition of blindness, which
is treated as a metaphor of the post-industrial society. The digital oratorio
248
Corpo, Carne e Espírito develops an aesthetics of distortion inspired by Francis

Bacon’s paintings in an audiovisual performance environment integrating
live music and live video projection.
These considerations are not a comprehensive account; they indicate
merely some possibilities of composition with audiovisual media and
multimedia. Two important tendencies that contribute to the diversification
of the art system are the diff erentiation of artistic domains and the interactivity
with the apparatuses. Intermedia composition explores artistic connections
between different media that are brought out through the use of apparatuses.
It triggers a process of recursive, temporal operations that can be interpreted
as medium/form distinctions in the sense of Luhmann (1996; 2000). New
forms are being continually created, which in turn serve as media for further
formations. The primary medium of music is sound. Music creates meaning
in the medium of sound but also connects with other media in order to create
other kinds of meaning. Technology has made it possible for the sound to be
freed from its musical Dasein. New artistic forms emerge from the medium
of sound that distinguish themselves from music, while opening connections
to other media that multiply the potential of unfolding new kinds of musical
meanings. The medium/form distinction lends itself as an operational concept
for further observations of audiovisual and multimedia composition. Digital
technology can be used to intensify the artistic experience and increase the
possibilities of developing new aesthetics of audiovisual and multimedia
composition.48
48
An important aspect of audiovisual composition, which I am not taking into consideration
here, is the relation of music and fi lm. My work Temporal Properties of the World (2010)
in collaboration with Lynn Lukas develops an aesthetics of music and film distinct from
the traditional film scoring; it relates to the beginning of cinema art, when music was
recognized as essential and silent films were mostly shown with live music.
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APPENDIX I

Works produced from 1987 to 2000
Following information is provided:

1 Composer (year of birth)
2 Title and designation of the work (year of production)
3 Original sound storage medium with number of channels and/or type of
live electronics used.
If pure electronic music the length is also provided
4 WDR type of recording (live-recording or production)
5 Length
1 Obst, Michael (1955)

2 Chansons (1987) for mezzo-soprano, bass and contrabass clarinet,
synthesizer, 2 percussion and tape
3 4-channel tape, live electronics, live processing of instruments
4 Production
5 44:20”
1 McGuire, John (1942)

2 Vanishing Points (1988)
3 Electronic music
4 4-channel tape und mono tape
5 25:45”
1 Reich, Steve (1936)

2 Diff erent Trains (1988) for string quartet and tape
3 Stereo tape
4 Live recording (ensemble version)
5 26:43”
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1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928)

2 MONTAG from LICHT (1988) electronic music for scenic or quasi
concert performance
2a Montags-Gruß for multiple basset horns und electronic keyboards (can

be performed with live basset horn and tape, or only with tape)
3a 8-channel tape
5a 34:25”
2b Geburts-Fest choral music with sound scenes for a capella choir and tape
3b 4-channel tape
5b 68:30”
2c Montags-Abschied for piccolo flute, multiple soprano voices and

electronic keyboards (or tape)
3c 8-channel tape
5c 28:00”
1 Bouliane, Denys (1955)

2 Une Soiré Vian (1990-91) meta-cabaret for 2 singers, 6 instrumentalists
and live-electronics
3 Live electronics: sampler, computer with sequencer software und live
processing
4 Live recording
5 81:00”
1 Eloy, Jean-Claude (1938)

2 Erkos (1990-91) for a soloist playing Satsuma-Biwa, a vocalist (techniques
from “Shômyo”) and electroacoustic music
3 Stereo tapes (10-channel sound projection)
4 Live recording
5 75:00”
1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007)

2 Oktophonie (1990-1992) electronic music from DIENSTAG from LICHT
(1990-1992) for independent performance
3 8-channel tape
5 68:40”
252
WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000

2 Invasion/Explosion/Abschied (1990-1992) electronic music from
DIENSTAG from LICHT (1990-1992) for scenic or quasi concert
performance
3 8-channel tape
4 CD production
5 72:53”
1 Luc Ferrari (1929)

2 Porte ouverte sur ville (1992-93) for oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet,
percussion, viola and tape
3 Stereo tape
4 Live recording
5 Dauer: 31:34
1 York Höller (1944)

2 Pensées (1992-93) for piano, orchestra and live electronics
3 4-channel tape
live electronics: MIDI-piano, computer with Max software, MIDI-
controller, Yamaha FM-synthesizer
4 Live recording
5 29:20”
1 Waisvisz, Michel (1945)

2 Faustos Schrei (1994) for “The Hands” *, voice and dance
3 Live-electronics: “The Hands” (STEIM), sampler, synthesizer
4 Live recording
5 34:00”
1 Younghi Pagh-Paan (1945)

2 Tsi-Shi-Kut (1991-94) for 4 percussion and electronic sounds
3 4-channel tape
4 Live recording
5 18:50”
1 Jörg Birkenkötter (1963)

2 Spiel/Abbruch (1993-94) for ensemble and tape
3 4-channel tape and stereo tape
4 Live recording
5 23:26”
253
Unsayable Music
1 Jonathan Harvey (1939)

2 One Evening (1994) for soprano, mezzo soprano, ensemble and live
electronics
3 Live-electronics: CD payer, sampler, live processing of voices and
instruments
4 Live recording
5 30:05”

2 Electronic music from FREITAG from LICHT (1994) for independent
performance
3 Two 8-channel tapes
5 146:00”

2 Electronic music und sound scenes from FREITAG from LICHT (1994) for
scenic or quasi concert performance
In the context of an integral performance of FREITAG from LICHT
the electronic music is played 8-track in two parts as FREITAG-GRUSS
and FREITAGS-ABSCHIED before and after the two acts in the foyer,
FREITAG-GRUSS also in the concert hall.
3 Two 20-channel tapes
5 146:00”

2 Mittwochs-Abschied (1996) electronic and concrete music from
MITTWOCH from LICHT for independent performance
3 8-channel tape
5 43:15”

2 Orchester-Finalisten (1996) electronic and concrete music from
MITTWOCH from LICHT for scenic or quasi concert performance
3 8-channel tape
4 CD production
5 46:00”
1 Paulo C. Chagas (1953)

2 Migration (1995-96) 12-channel electronic music
254
WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Works produced from 1987 to 2000
3 12-channel tape
5 24:30”

2 Migration (1995-97) for MIDI-piano, ensemble and live electronics
3 12-channel tape
Live electronics: MIDI-piano, computer with Max software, MIDI-
controller, live processing of piano
4 Production
5 28:06”
1 John McGuire (1942)

2 A Cappella (1992-97) for singer and tape
3 8-channel tape (4-channel sound projection)
4 Production
5 23:25”
1 Marco Stroppa (1959)

2 Zwielicht (1994-99) for contrabass, 2 percussion and electronic sounds
3 13-channel Pro Tools session
4 Live recording
5 36:20”
1 Mauricio Sotelo (1961)

2 Angel de la Tierra (1997-99) for 4 voices, ensemble and tape
3 Stereo tape
4 Live recording
5 35:35”

2 De Amore. Una Maschera die Cenere (1996-99) chamber opera
3 Stereo tape
4 Live recording (Bayerischer Rundfunk radio)
5 89:50”

2 De amore (1999) for violoncello **
3 Stereo tape
5 11:30”
255
Unsayable Music

2 Argo (1999) for saxophone **
3 Stereo tape
5 24:50”

2 RAW (1999) techno opera
3 Live-electronics: 3 MIDI-master keyboards, 3 MIDI-drum pads, 12
synthesizer, sampler
4 Live recording
5 73:00”

2 Projektion (1999-2000) 12-channel electronic music
3 12-channel tape
5 17:28”
NOTES:
* “The Hands” is an experimental interface developed by STEIM that
converts sensor data into MIDI data.
** Instrumental piece; techniques of electronic music were applied in the
production.
256
APPENDIX II

Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000
List prepared by Paulo C. Chagas and Volker Müller
1. Mixing consoles
1 x Lawo PTR (Programmable Audio Console)

– Special design for the WDR Electronic Music Studio
– Analog mixer with digital programmable control
– 48 inline monitoring channels with additional outputs for each channel
– Uniform channels features for inputs, auxiliaries, outputs, volume, etc
– Possible to create 36 different groups
– 42 motorized faders
– 28 internal memories for snapshots (no real-time automation)
1 x Semrau, analog 24 x 4
1 x Sennheiser M8 Professional, analog 12 x 2
2 x intermediate frames (mixer and control units between the analog tape
machines):
5 x stereo line in, stereo out, mono out, cross connections, audio
monitoring, patch panel with 60 jacks
2 x Yamaha DMP7 Digital Mixing Processor (also used as MIDI-controllable
multi-VCA)
2 x Abe-Mixer, Analog 16 x 2
2. Amplifiers
16 x Klein&Hummel AK-120
2 x Urei 6260 (2-channel)
1 x Spendor RB50 (2-channel)
257
Unsayable Music
3. Loudspeaker
16 x Urei 811C
16 x Altec O 81
4 x Spendor M50 ARD
4 x JBL 4425
2 x Spendor SA3 WDR
2 x Spendor SA1
4 x JBL Control 1
2 x JBL 4345 (used as subwoofer)
4. Patch Panels
1 x Patch panel in room 304: 1152 jack connectors

1 x Patch panel in room 304: 20 XLR connectors
5. Tape machines
5.1 Multichannel Digital
2 x Sony PCM 3324-A, 24-track

(can be synchronized as a 48-track machine)
2 x RM3310 (remote control)
5.2 Multichannel Analog
1 x Telefunken M15-A, 2 inch, 24-track with Telcom (noise reduction)

1 x Telefunken M15-A, 1 inch 8-track with Telcom (noise reduction)
1 x Revox C278, 1/2 inch, 8-track
1 x Revox C274, 1/4 inch, 4-track
258
WDR Studio of Electronic Music: Studio equipment used from 1990 to 2000
5.3 Stereo/2-track Analog
2 x Telefunken M15-A, 1/4 inch, stereo, 76/38 cm/s

4 x Telefunken M15-A, 1/4 inch, stereo, 38/19 cm/s
2 x Telefunken, M2, 1/4 inch, 2-tracks, 38/19 cm/s
5.4 DAT Recorder
2 x Sony PCM 7030

2 X RTW DAT control (remote control for PCM 7030)
1 x Sony PCM 2700
5.5 Cassette Recorder
2 x Studer A710
6. Other Studio Equipment
6.1 Loudness Monitors
2 x NTP 377-100 (36-channel)

2 x Barco CM51
2 x Filbig Stereo monitors SSG-5
2 x Sony DMU 3024 digital meter unity (coupled with SONY-3324-A)
6.2 Effects Processors
1 x Lexicon 480L Digital-Effects System with LARC remote control

6 x Lexicon PCM70 Digital Effects Processor (also used as MIDI-controller
for VCA)
2 x Eventide 3500 Ultra-Harmonizer
2 x Yamaha SPX 990 Multi-Effect Processor
6.3 SMPTE
1 x Alpermann+Velte TC30 Time Code Generator

1 x Alpermann+Velte TC30 Time Code Reader
1 x Alpermann+Velte TC30 Time Code Reader/Inserter
259
Unsayable Music
6.4 Miscelaneous
1 x Studer A727 CD Player

1 x Studer B261 FM Tuner
7. Sound Devices
7.1 Analog Synthesizer/Processing
1 x EMS Synthi 100

1 x EMS Vocoder 2000
1 x EMS AKS
1 x EMS 4 Ring Modulator
1 x EMS QUEG Quadraphonic Effect Generator
7.2 Workstation/Sampler
1 x Emulator II, 8-voices

1 x Fairlight III, 8-voices
1 x Fairlight III, 2-voices
1 x Akai S1000, 32 MB RAM, 16-voices
2 x SampleCell, 32 MB RAM, 16-voices
7.3 Digital Synthesizer
1 x Yamaha TX 816
2 x Yamaha TG 802
1 x Yamaha DX7 II
1 x Yamaha SY 99
8. MIDI Devices
8.1 Keyboard/Controller
1 x Kurzweil Midiboard (MIDI master keyboard)

1 x JL Cooper Fadermaster Pro (Midi controller)
1 x Roland Octapad II Pad 80 (Drum controller)
260
1 x Fairligh Voicetracker (Voice to MIDI)

6 x Yamaha MFC 1 (Midi foot controller)
8.2 Interfaces
1 x Opcode Studio 5 (Macintosh MIDI-RS442)

1 x Motu Midi Timepiece (Macintosh MIDI-RS442)
1 x Motu Midi Timepiece II (Macintosh MIDI-RS442)
1 x C-Lab Unitor (ATARI 1040 ST)
1 X C-Lab Combiner (ATARI 1040 ST)
8.3 Processor/ Matrix
1 x Yamaha MEP 4 (Midi event processor)

1 x JL Cooper MSP (Midi matrix)
2 x Miditemp PMM 88 (Midi merge matrix)
1 x EMS 3 MIDI-to-CV Interface
8.4 Hardware MIDI Sequencer
1 x Yamaha QX1
9. Computer
9.1. Hardware
9.1.1. CPU
2 x Atari 1040 ST
1 x Macintosh IIfx, 32MB RAM, 1GB intern hard disk
1 x Macintosh PowerPC 7100, 138MB RAM, 1GB intern hard disk
1 x Macintosh PowerPC 8100, 270MB RAM, 2GB intern hard disk
9.1.2. Monitor
3 x Miro C2085E - 20 in
1 x Apple Multiple Scan - 20 in
1 x MAG Technology MXE17 S - 17 in
1 x Apple 13 in
261
Unsayable Music
9.1.2.1. RGB und ADB Amplifier

2 x Gefen Extender (35m between computer and terminal)
9.1.3. Printer
1 x Hewlett Packard 4MV (large format laser printer)
1 x Hewlett Packard DeskWriter 540
1 x Epson LQ 850+
9.1.4. Data Storage

1 x 4GB External Hard Disk
1 x 2GB External Hard Disk
2 x MOD (Magneto Optical Drive) 650MB
2 x Streamer Drive (8 mm cartridge)
1 x SyQuest Drive 40MB
9.2. Hard Disk Recording
1x Digidesign Sound Accelerator (used from 1990 to 1995 in the Macintosh

IIfx)
1 x Pro Tools III NuBus System (used in the Macintosh PowerPC 8100)
2 x 888 I/O Audio Interface
1 x SSD (SMPTE Slave Driver)
1 x Expansion Chassis
2 x I/O Card
4 x DSP Farm
2 x SampleCell (32 MBRAM each)
1 x Lexicon NuVerb
4 x 9.1GB Hard Disk (Rack system)
1 x Pro Tools III NuBus System (used in the Macintosh PowerPC 7100)
1 x 888 I/O Audio Interface
1 x SSD (SMPTE Slave Driver)
1 x I/O Card
1 x DSP Farm
2 x 9.1GB 9.1GB Hard Disk (Rack system)
9.3. Software (only the most important programs are listed)
9.3.1 Atari
C-LAB Notator (MIDI Sequencer)
Steinberg Cubase (MIDI Sequencer)
262
C-LAB X-alyser (MIDI Editor)

Steinberg Synthworks SY-77 (MIDI Editor)
Dr.T’s Lexicon PCM-70 (MIDI Editor)
Zeitplan (developed by Marcel Schmidt from the Cologne Musikhochschule)
9.3.2. Macintosh
9.3.2.1 System, Utilities, Network, Backup

Apple System Software 7.6.1
FWB HDT Tools 2.0.6
Norton Utilities 3.2.1
Farallon Timbuktu Pro 2.0.3
Netscape Navigator 3.0.1
Grey Matter Response Mezzo 3.0
Dantz Retrospect 3.0
9.3.2.2 Text, Graphics, Programming languages

Microsoft Office 4.2.1
Microsoft Word 5.1
Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0
Claris Draw 1.03
Apple/Digitool Common Lisp 4.2
ResEdit 2.1.3
9.3.2.3 Music
9.3.2.3.1 MIDI/Notation
Motu Performer (until ca. 1995)
Opcode Vision (until ca.1995)
Opcode Galaxy Editor 2.1
OMS 2.3.2
FreeMIDI 1.4
Opcode/IRCAM Max 3.5.8
Coda Finale 98
9.3.2.3.2 Audio
Passport Alchemy (until ca. 1995)
Digidesing Softsynth (until ca. 1995)
Digidesing Turbosynth 2.2
Digidesign Sound Designer II 2.82
263
Unsayable Music
Digidesign Pro Tools 4.11

Digidesign DAE 3.23
Motu DigitalPerformer 2.11
APB ∑1 1.01
ABP Tools EM I (Ethernal Machine) 1.11
Antares Infinity 3.1.4
Gallery SampleSearch 2.1
Lexicon NuVerb 1.03 (editor)
Steinberg TimeBandit 1.05
9.3.2.3.2.1 TDM Plug-ins

Digidesign Pro Tools 4.11 standard plug-ins
Digidesign DINR 2.2
Digidesign D-Verb 1.2
INA GRM Tools I and II 2.3
Wave TDM Bundle 2.3.1 (C1, L1, Q1/Q10, etc.)
Crystal River Engineering Protron 1.0 (until Pro Tools 3.2)
9.3.2.3.3 IRCAM (Forum Software)

Patchwork 2.6.5
Audiosculpt 1.7.3
Diphone 2.5.2
Modalys 1.7
264
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Unsayable Music

Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics,

LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

ISBN 978 90 5867 994 9

English language revision: Stacia A. Raymond

I was put in the “fridge,” a small room, refrigerated and acoustically

Walter Aaron Clark

1. Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Aesthetics 13

2. Spectral Semiotics: Sound, Temporality, and Affect in Chopin 43

3. Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System 65

4. The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music 103

5. The Temple of Electronic Music:

6. Audiovisual and Multimedia Composition:

This book presents critical reflections on key topics of contemporary music

Brown), the theory of autopoiesis, and the distinction between medium

Musical Understanding: Wittgenstein,

It is impossible for me to say in my book one word

1. Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and Music

I was first introduced to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

project them into a contemporary analysis of music? I undertake no attempt

When he started to formulate his view on some specific philosophical

very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to

Wittgenstein had a profound interest in music. He grew up in a family of

2. Saying and Showing

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who

and the contradiction:5 “A tautology has no truth-conditions, since it is

The aesthetic attitude, as well as ethical experience, belongs to the sphere of

The key to understanding the “mysticism” of this philosophy lies in the

evoke a mystical experience. It helps us to be happy, to live in harmony with

3. Logic and Representation: Sound and Melody as States of Affairs

Early in the Tractatus, an example from sound is introduced to illustrate

are complex phenomena, formed by the sum of vibrating constituents called

A gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, sound-waves,

4. Philosophy as Therapy: Understanding the Melody

The second philosophy presented in Philosophical Investigations is a collection of

“What it is like to know the tempo in which a piece of music should

There are two interesting things to observe here in Wittgenstein’s rhetoric:

form of verbal expression that is thought of as equivalent to the theme. The

What we call “understanding a sentence” has, in many cases, a much

Wittgenstein’s writing style is complex and distinctive. He shapes the

A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command

allows music to develop audible meanings. When we listen to a musical

5. Language Games: Musical Understanding

Wittgenstein’s theory of language games became one of the most powerful

Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme

This notion of musical autonomy can be easily mistaken for self-sufficiency,

What does it consist in: following a musical phrase with understanding?

What emerges here is the issue of internal experience, which is recurrent in

Understanding and explaining a musical phrase. – The simplest

Understanding of music is expressed in a certain way, both in the

Gestures and gesticulations appear as primitive language games with aesthetic

6. Rules and Forms of Life

If music expresses nothing but itself, how do we make aesthetic judgments?

It is remarkable that in real life, when aesthetic judgments are made,

This seems exaggerated, since it is common sense to use such adjectives to

When we talk of a Symphony of Beethoven we don’t talk of correctness.

The paradigm of “correctness” here would be explicit if a second idea

Understanding music is a manifestation of human life. How could it

Music is part of our very particular form of life and we recognize in it

“Schubert is irreligious and melancholy.” (CV 47; 53)

Melody is the primary focus of Wittgenstein’s reflections on music. There

Within all great art there is a WILD animal: tamed.

In contrast, Wittgenstein admires the “strength of the musical thinking in