Gabert 1

Gabert 2

There is a new phenomenon in music today, the word composer has given way to “

Sound painter, Electro-Acoustic Designer, Sound Artist, Electro Artist. Examples of their

work can be seen in the book Notations21.

Notations21 is an attempt to continue the work of John Cage in an on going

project that is attempting to continue the work of John Cage in his book Notations. It was

founded by Theresa Sauer. In Notations21, Sauer has cataloged nearly 200 “graphic

composers” from around the world including her most recent work “Parthenogenesis.”

The piece was commissioned at the November 2007 Society of Literature, Science and

the Arts conference in Maine.

“Parthenogenesis” and other graphic scores in Notations21, 1 It is hard to imagine

they are pieces of music performed today. With the obvious bizarre nature of these pieces,

its easy to assume that this is a small and laughable group of composers and musicians.

1 For all “ Parthenogenesis” and other selections from notations 21 refer to the Appendix
 Gabert 3

Yet most of the composers in Notations21 have been given to awards, jobs, honorary

degrees and respect from a large portion of music performers composers and educators.

John Cage was the catalyst for the composers published in Notations21 and other

like composers. Cage introduced the concept of “noise as music.” This can be scene most

evidently in his work 4′33″, composed in 1952. Cage’s score for 4′33″ was made up of

four movements each being a Tacet. The piece could be performed by any number of

players and any number of instruments. The music was created when the audience was

forced to be aware of the sounds happening in the present moment around them. This

completely contested the idea of what constituted a concert and literally stood music

history on end. It was also a cultural response to the repression of the 1950s.

4’33” is beautiful in many ways. Cage created a piece of music, in which, the only

way it can be heard is by being aware of the sounds happening in the present moment.

The piece couldn’t be avoided. ( Even Beethoven at his loudest, most monumental

moments could be easily avoided by quietly reading your concert program during the

performance) Even if one were to put in ear plugs and exclaim “ I cannot hear anything”

Cage would surely reply that the sound of their blood is the music. He succeed to create

an environment where the audience had no choice but to be in “meditation.” 4’33” was

as much idea as it was music. The only thing left after it was performed was nothing

other than its consequences.

 Gabert 4

At the same time John Cage shook the world of music, a scientist Thomas Kuhn

shook the world of science. He published a book called “The Structure of Scientific

Theory” in 1962. In it, Kuhn poised his Theory of Incommensurability. Upon trying to

understand the history of science, specifically, how new scientific theories or paradigms

came forward, and why each new theory was met with so much opposition. The

philosopher Ian Hacking, who specializes in the philosophy of science, explains the

Theory of Incommensurability in his review of Thomas Kuhn.

The individual sciences undergo an incoherent period: but once they are properly formed,
they proceed through a sequence of normal science, crisis, revolution, and more formal
science. Each period of normal science is characterized by a paradigm modeled on an
initial achievement. Revolutions replace one paradigm modeled on an initial
achievement. Revolutions replace one paradigm by another. Knowledge is not strictly
cumulative because successive incompatible paradigms change what kinds of questions
and answers are in order. With a new paradigm, former unrefuted answers may drop from
view or even intelligibility. … Most science is ‘normal’: its puzzle solving… Successive
theories, successive paradigms are incommensurable. 2

The theory can be easily understood when one looks at Copernican and Ptolemaic

theories of the universe. The ability to compare the two is lost in translation. It lost in

translation because the time and worldview are completely different and cannot be truly

recreated. With almost 1500 years between the Claudius Ptolemy and Nicolaus

Copernicus occupied different worlds altogether. They each had different languages,

translations and world views to create and communicate theories. Consequently, their

worlds were incommensurable. 3

2 Hacking 227
3 Waters, 137-138
 Gabert 5

The life of the idea of incommensurability cannot be described better then the

description given by Lindsay Waters of Harvard University.

The birth of the idea [Incommensurability] may have been quiet, its christening may have
been attended only by close family members, but the adolescence of the idea was lived
out in public, and it was very noisy. 4

Kuhn’s Incommensurability and Cage’s “ noise is music” were in a sense siblings. Both

were born at the same time and they lived the life that Waters described and both carried

similar unintended consequences.

Incommensurability and Cage’s “noise is music” gave relativism a new and

broader life. A life that today still reverberates and collides in all fields of the arts and

sciences. Fueled by the 1960s, by the counter culture and the Vietnam War. 5 The

possibilities for the theories did not peak there. As the first decade of the 21st century has

proven itself to be more fuel for Kuhn’s and Cage’s Ideas, as regularities in world are

becoming scarcer.

A consequence for a life with out regularities, is a life in a constant search,

consciously or unconsciously, for identity. Lindsay Waters, in the section entitled “The

Runaway Idea” described this identity crisis writing:

4 Waters 139
5 Waters, 144
 Gabert 6

“Incommensurability came to mean not just that people living within one spatial
horizon could be free from those living in others; it came to mean that people living
in the same time consider themselves to be utterly different and free from their
contemporaries, as long as they could define themselves as occupying different
paradigms. Incommensurability became the justification for a resurget tribalism. Walls
went up between peoples, and ready at hand was a fancy justification for it all.”6

Meaning and value are essentially non existent so long as any claim on any matter can be

dismissed. Leaving it at “suum cuique pulchrum est 7 ” eliminates all sense of value and

structure. Water’s theorized that the identity crisis caused by incommensurability is the

foundation for identity politics.8

But could Waters’s theory not be expanded into identity painting, identity music,

identity science, identity Religion? Now that the concept of the “whole” has been

abolished, we are only left with parts, separate parts, incommensurable with one another.

It is a common notion today that society has become more and more specialized, more

and more separate.

Waters’s theory of the relationship between incommensurability and identity

politics sheds brand new light on the current world of composers, performers and all the

new titles of today including; sound painters, electro-acoustic designers, sound artists,

electro artists.

6 Waters 144
7 - to each his own is beautiful
8 Waters146
 Gabert 7

What better example is there for “Identity Music,” than a group of composers that

made up titles for themselves. Every piece in Notations21 has some overt overly

dramatic concept attached to it, it could not stand as “music” with out it. And every

composer is trying to get more dramatic and metaphysical than Cage and his peers.

Cages’s Notations had everything from graphic scores to pieces of Bernstein’s sketches to

a piece by Philip Corner called “An Anti- Personal Bomb,” in which the conductor was to

throw an Anti- Personal Bomb into the audience, blowing them up. 9

Much of the music today like sound painting, graphic scores raises the question,

“Who is it for?” Art raises the same question. Literal works like Tracy Ewins “Unmade

Bed” or Carl Andre’s “ Neat pile of Bricks” they make your head scratch in the same

fashion and wonder “Who is it for?” These works are nothing but statements combined

with flash and commercial appeal. They are nothing but monuments to their “own”

statements, celebrations of their own egos. It is music for the sake of identity.

Art can be anything in a dying culture as it is impossible for value and relativity to

stand together. Cage was giving the world of music and its listeners a paradoxical

alternative to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and even the contemporary composers of the

time Schoenberg, Webern, and Cowell. But he by no means wished to eradicate them. His

music is also not a representation of anarchy. His music was not about himself or for

himself.10 It was written with the same intention that Bach had when it was composed. It

9 Cage 88
10 Cultural relativism
 Gabert 8

was for something greater than himself. It was not to be packaged and consumed. What

happened was a series of unintended consequences.

Composers, along with any other “handler of ideas”11 hold a great responsibility. It

does not take much to see the strength in which the consequences of ideas can have.

Theodore Adorno refers to a term that applies all music today that is “Commodity

Listening.” 12 When he wrote of this, before Kuhn and Cage made their debut, he was

speaking about the commercialization and elitism of classical music. But today, after

years of incommensurable parts, all music has fallen victim to consumerism.

It is almost safe to assume that very few people listen to “Sound Painting” on their

radio. The same goes for most if not all modern art music. Yet, people will pay to have

the scores in museums and galleries and pay to hear it performed. The packaging is

simply irresistible, laced with flashy media, overt concepts and “verbosities.”

To remedy such circumstances, one must accept responsibility in music today.

Bach dedicated every note to the glory of God. If one ignores the theistic aspect of Bach’s

mission and looks at the thick of the matter, it is that Bach held a responsibility to his

music. It was music in the most abstract sense. As musicians, composers and artists try to

be modern, we must continue to move forward in music without the constraints of

classical theory and instruction. Therein lies a paradox, a paradox which Cage would

have appreciated. If to be modern is to compose music without the constraints and

11 Waters 1
12 Adorno 5, 38
 Gabert 9

foundations of music before it it must strive to be original. But at the root of the word

original is the word origin. History and Theory simply cannot be forgotten and Cage’s

Notations cannot simply just be repackaged. After all everybody knows that Rocky I is

better than Rocky IV.

 Gabert 10

Appendix

Performance directions for Parthenogenesis:

This piece is written for da’uli da’uli and an unspecified number of female
vocalists.

The mother Komodo dragon and her genetic code are the source of all the lines and
other designs within the score. The newborn dragon coming out of its shell,
glowing with new life and power is different from its mother and presents a unique
genetic code. The vertical lines should intuitively guide the strikes of the da’uli
da’uli, which will then, in turn, guide the vocalists in pitch and rhythm. As guided
by these lines, the speed and intensity should both diminish throughout the duration
of the piece. There is no set duration.

“Parthenogenesis”
Composed by Theresa Sauer13

13 Sauer, notations21 composers

 Gabert 11

“First Horizontal” by Stephen Vitiello 14

medium tempo

--piano is percussive, repetitions from ripples

14 Sauer, Notations21 Scores

 Gabert 12

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor W.. The Culture Industry: selected essays on mass culture. London:

Routledge, 2001.

Cage, John. Notations: [Compiled] by John Cage.. West Glover, Vt.: Something Else

Press, 1969.

Chin , Daryl. "Theories of Cultural Relativity ." Performing Arts Journal 16, no. 1 (1994):

87-101. http://www.jostor.org/stable/3245830 (accessed February 13, 2011).

Ian Hacking, review of Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension, History and Theory 18

(1980): 227.

Sauer, Theresa . "notations21 Scores." notations21. http://notations21.net/notations21/

viewscores.html (accessed April 14, 2011).

Sauer, Theresa . "www.notations21.net." notations21 Composers. http://notations21.net/

notations21/viewscores.html (accessed April 15, 2011).

Waters, Lindsay . "The Age of Incommensurability ." boundary 2 28, no. 2 (2001):

133-172.
Gabert 13
Gabert 14
Gabert 15
Gabert 16