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Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde
Anthropologist Georgina Born presents one of the first ethnographies of a powerful western cultural organization, the renowned Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. As a year-long participant-observer, Born studied the social and cultural economy of an institution for research and production of avant-garde and computer music. She gives a unique portrait of IRCAM's composers, computer scientists, technicians, and secretaries, interrogating the effects of the cultural philosophy of the controversial avant-garde composer, Pierre Boulez, who directed the institute until 1992.
Born depicts a major artistic institution trying to maintain its status and legitimacy in an era increasingly dominated by market forces, and in a volatile political and cultural climate. She illuminates the erosion of the legitimacy of art and science in the face of growing commercial and political pressures. By tracing how IRCAM has tried to accomodate these pressures while preserving its autonomy, Born reveals the contradictory effects of institutionalizing an avant-garde.
Contrary to those who see postmodernism representing an accord between high and popular culture, Born stresses the continuities between modernism and postmodernism and how postmodernism itself embodies an implicit antagonism toward popular culture.
Born depicts a major artistic institution trying to maintain its status and legitimacy in an era increasingly dominated by market forces, and in a volatile political and cultural climate. She illuminates the erosion of the legitimacy of art and science in the face of growing commercial and political pressures. By tracing how IRCAM has tried to accomodate these pressures while preserving its autonomy, Born reveals the contradictory effects of institutionalizing an avant-garde.
Contrary to those who see postmodernism representing an accord between high and popular culture, Born stresses the continuities between modernism and postmodernism and how postmodernism itself embodies an implicit antagonism toward popular culture.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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May 28, 2018
review of
Georgina Born's Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 17-26, 2018
The full review is here: "Born's IR-ACHE": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I got this bk b/c a friend of mine gave it to me. HE got it b/c his brother gave it to him. He skimmed thru it, knew he'd never read it, & asked me if I wanted it. He picqued my interest by telling me that the author had played bass w/ Henry Cow. Henry Cow are by far one of my favorite bands so the thought of one of their crew critiqueing IRCAM, an institution that I have some interest in, was intrigueing.
I didn't recognize her name as a Henry Cow member. I looked at her Wikipedia entry:
"Born studied the cello and piano at the Royal College of Music in London, and performed classical and modern music including stints with the Michael Nyman Band, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the Flying Lizards. She also studied for a year at the Chelsea School of Art.
"In June 1976, she joined the English avant-rock group Henry Cow as bass guitarist and cellist, following the departure of John Greaves. Henry Cow was in a period of intensive touring and Born toured Europe with the group for two years.
"After Henry Cow, Born performed and recorded with a number of groups and musicians, including fellow Henry Cow member Lindsay Cooper, National Health, Bruford, and Mike Westbrook, particularly as a cellist in the Westbrook Orchestra. Her playing is prominent on Westbrook's album, The Cortege. Late in 1977, Born, Cooper, Sally Potter and Maggie Nichols founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She also recorded with The Raincoats, and played improvised music with Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, David Toop and others as a member of the London Musicians' Collective.
"During the 1980s, Born was an occasional member of Derek Bailey's Company, and played cello and bass guitar on numerous soundtracks for television and film for composers Lindsay Cooper and Mike Westbrook, as well as the soundtrack for the Stephen Poliakoff play Caught on a Train (1980). She had a walk-on part in Sally Potter's film The Gold Diggers (1983)."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgin...
That led to my pulling out the records that I have by some of the groups mentioned above so that I can listen to them while writing this review. Of the 5 Henry Cow records I have, "Henry Cow" (Red 001), "UNREST", "In Praise of Learning", "Western Culture", & "The Last Nightingale", she appears to be only on 1 track of 7 on "Western Culture": "1/2 the Sky". Alas, I missed her era. She is, however, on the Art Bears's "Hopes and Fears" but not listed as on their "Winter Songs". I think of The Art Bears as the successors to Henry Cow. I love The Art Bears too. She doesn't appear to've been an 'official' member of The Art Bears but more of an added player. She's not on either of the 2 Mike Westbrook records I have: "Marching Song - An Anti-War Jazz Symphony" & "Metropolis". She's also not on the only National Health record I have: "National Health". I don't know of her being on any of the Derek Bailey or Lol Coxhill records that I have either. This leads to my thinking she was more of a guest musician than a band member in many instances. Whatever the case, she must've had pretty impressive chops given that she wd've been in her early 20s when she played w/ Henry Cow. I wd've never been able to meet their level of musicianship at the time. Her discography, according to her Wikipedia entry:
With Art Bears
• Hope and Fears (1978)
With National Health
• Of Queues and Cures (1978)
With Henry Cow
• Western Culture (1979)
• The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set (2009, 9xCD+DVD, Recommended Records, UK)
With Feminist Improvising Group
• Feminist Improvising Group (1979, Cassette, UK)
With Bruford
• Gradually Going Tornado (1980)
With Stormy Six
• Macchina Maccheronica (1980)
With Mike Westbrook
• Bright as Fire (1980)
• The Cortege (1982)
• On Duke's Birthday (HatART, 1985)
With Lindsay Cooper
• Rags (1981)
• The Golddiggers – original soundtrack to the film The Gold Diggers by Sally Potter (1983)
• Music for Other Occasions (1986)
With The Raincoats
• Odyshape (1981)
With Peter Blegvad
• The Naked Shakespeare (1983)
With News from Babel
• Work Resumed on the Tower (1984)
I've just listened to "1/2 the Sky" & now I'm listening to "Hopes and Fears". Her career as a recording/performing musician seems to've spanned 1978 to 1986. What happened? It seems that writing this bk is what happened. She also had a child. The primary period of IRCAM under inspection is 1984 but the scrutiny continues up 'til the early '90s. The bk wasn't copyrighted until 1995 when it was published by the University of California Press. I'm somewhat impressed that it was published at all.
When I started reading Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde I was expecting a heavy dose of class analysis of how cultural elites funnel money & power into their own notion of what constitutes important music — & that was what I was looking forward to. AND I was expecting it to be academically written. THAT I wasn't looking forward to — &, in fact, for me, the 1st 56pp or so were well nigh insufferable. It took extreme devotion on my part to plough thru it. Keep in mind that people are taught to write this way but I really have to wonder about these 'teachers'. I'll explain what I mean as I go along.
In her acknowledgments she states that "My thinking on music and cultural politics remains deeply marked by the following people and groups with whom I have worked: Henry Cow, the Feminist Improvising Group, Lindsay Cooper, Mike Westbrook, and the London Musicians' Collective." (p xiii)
As a personal aside, I performed at the London Musicians' Collective on Wednesday, May 23, 1984 as part of the Popular Chapati Circus wch was part of The 8th International Neoist Apartment Festival. There's vaudeo of that on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/fgQzQZNpgTY?t=14m13s . This was definitely not popular. It was boycotted by Andre Stitt & his friends, who nonetheless hung around outside in a car. As I recall, the toilet facilities were reached by going outside & walking a bit to a different bldg. The LMC people weren't particularly friendly & made a point of just letting us in to the space & then going across the street to a pub for the entirety of our "circus". They showed no interest in what we were doing whatsoever. Perhaps their politics were one of snobbishness. Contrarily, when I screened 16mm films at the London Filmmakers Collective in 1988 as part of an open screening the collective members were receptive & friendly & it was a pleasure to be there. I'm sure the LMC was a great place too so it's too bad I didn't spend more quality time there.
"I am profoundly grateful to these people for their efforts and warmth and for their commitment to a dialogue with someone whose beliefs were, in different degrees and ways, at odds with their own: Tod Machover, who made the study possible and has been a frank and generous friend; Jean Baptiste Barrière, for his friendship, help, thoughtfulness, and loyalty during the entire research; Adrian Freed, George Lewis, Stephen McAdams, Alejandro Viñao, and David Wessel, for many hours of serious talk, insight, and fun; and Gerard Asseyag, Laurent Bayle, Gerald Bennett, Denis Lorrain, Yves Potard, Mark Seiden and Marco Stroppa as well." - p xiv
In the interest of protecting the anonymity of the people written about & quoted, Born uses initials that don't correspond to the actual initials of the people referred to. Hence George Lewis = PL & Jean Baptiste Barrière = WOW. I didn't go to the trouble of figuring out who everyone was although at this point in time w/ the internet as a resource doing so wd be somewhat easy. Since I have recordings of Machover's music I became curious enuf just now to figure out that he's HY. Doing so only took a few seconds.
Born's introduction starts off w/ a quote from Boulez putting forth his philosophical vision of IRCAM's basis:
"The creator's intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention. It is thus necessary for him to collaborate with the scientific research worker in order to envision the distant future, to imagine less personal, and thus broader, solutions. . . . The musician must assimilate a certain scientific knowledge, making it an integral part of his creative imagination. . . . At educational meetings scientists and musicians will become familiar with one another's point of view and approach. In this way, we hope to forge a kind of common language that scarely exists at present.
"Technology and the composer: a collaboration between scientists and musicians . . . is, therefore, a necessity. . . . " - p 1
My review note re the above is "whatever". In other words, I find blanket statements like "The creator's intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention." to be essentially w/o value. There are an infinite amt of ways of making things of interest. A recurring pattern w/ Boulez is his tendency to make pronouncements as if he's taking you thru the jungle w/ his flaming sword to hack the only-possible-path. It's all bullshit (or, if you prefer, horse puckey).. but it gets the money when sd w/ the requisite amt of chutzpah.
NOW, cf Boulez's statement to this excerpt from my review of Joan Peyser's biography of Boulez wch came out in November, 1976, shortly before IRCAM opened & the same yr that Boulez made the above publicity statement:
"When I mentioned an American composer whose work he dislikes, Boulez suddenly came to life, launching a virtuoso attack on various facets of U.S. music.
""Electronic music: "The same frenzy for technology began in Europe about 1953. By 1958 it had all died down. The idea of electronics as the big future of music is just an American trick of fashion. Next year they'll discover the viola da gamba. Playing Bach on the computer doesn't interest me at all because it's artistically irrelevant. All this indicates a simplistic way of thinking—an appalling low level of thinking."
""As for "Perspectives of New Music," an avant-garde journal published by the Princeton University Press: "'Perspectives' is similar to 'Die Reihe,' begun in Germany about 1953. Its writers think they are great scientists. They are not.["]" - p 181
"Whew! If those are real quotes, Boulez was suffering from diarrhea-of-the-mouth — or his listener(s) were suffering from having to listen to it. Boulez displays the same type of behaviors over & over: he disses other people's work & then imitates it later as if the way he's doing it is the 'right' way & the other people can be dismissed as imbeciles. He did it w/ chance music, here he's doing it w/ electronics — something he clearly knows next-to-nothing about. Then he cofounds IRCAM wch is supposed to link music w/ science & technology & wch gets millions for this purpose – after dissing Americans for linking music w/ science & technology. The dating of European electronic music as from 1953-1958 is just ludicrous. His apparent purpose is to say that Americans are Johnny-come-latelies when, in fact, the Teleharmonium was invented by an American, Thaddeus Cahill, in the 19th century. To then act like one single acoustic instrument wd faddishly replace an entire resource is ridiculous. That's like saying: "Oh they're all about drinking fluids, those inferiors, the next thing you know they'll be discovering orange juice & forget fluids in general.' THEN he mentions playing "Bach on the computer", wch also doesn't interest me, but is probably a reference to Walter Carlos's "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer" wch is hardly representative of all that was going on in electronic music in America at the time."
- https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Born's 1st paragraph sets the stage:
"This book centers on an ethnographic study of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique). IRCAM is a large computer music research and production institute in Paris, which opened in 1977, and which is handsomely funded by the French state. IRCAM was founded, and until 1992 was directed, by the renowned conductor and avant-garde composer Pierre Boulez." - p 1
Not knowing Born's work at all, even as a bass player, I was feeling my way thru this bk — alternately enticed, as by the promise of the above, & annoyed:
"In recent decades, and with increased vigor since the early 1970s, there has been a split within the world of serious composition between, loosely, the advocates of scientistic postserialism and its critics and dissenters, the latter the proponents of various forms of postmodernist aesthetic and composition.
"To leave it at this, however, would not convey the chronic sense of impasse, the profound doubt and loss of confidence, that have accompanied this split, especially for the many composers who have experienced a disenchantment with the high-modernist project and with the perceived failures of serialism. The sense of a threat to the continued existence of western art music has, despite certain differences, been widespread in both Europe and the United States."
[..]
"The character of the split between the extremes of the pro-serialist, modernist and anti-serialist, post-modernist camps can be grasped by comparing two notorious articles by American composers who have been seen as prime representatives of the two sides: Milton Babbitt and George Rochberg." - p 3
My note about this is: "She's almost as bad as Boulez!" There are several things that people jockeying for power typically do: 1. Express themselves as if they're telling the absolute truth, as if they're 'objective'; 2. Express themselves using the royal "We" as if it's not them writing but some greater power beyond them; 3. Reduce everything to dualities; 4. Avoid qualifiers that might show the situation to be more complicated than the position expressed. Born does all these things almost constantly. No doubt this helped her maneuver herself into a well-pd 'educator's' position but it doesn't do much to enhance the value of her opinion, wch she doesn't present as such, for me.
A serious problem w/ academics then becomes the tendency to use critical language that oversimplifies dramatically. Born is all about avant-garde vs pop, modernist vs post-modernist, serialist vs anti-serialist — but is everything so clearly divided? I think not. The "world of serious composition" is far more complex than the "split" she describes. It seems to me that what happens is that writers like Born describe things in reduced terms & then take that description for 'reality'. It's convenient for a critic to divide work of the 2nd half of the 20th century into "modernist" & "post-modernist" but how many people other than academics take such terms seriously?!
Academics have to show that they're 'w/ it', they don't want to be trundled off to the no-longer-intellectually-valid dept at their university where their opinions won't matter anymore. As such, they try to ride the trends that will enhance their careers. I remember Tony Conrad coming to Pittsburgh to show films & deciding to only show a few minutes of one of his works b/c it wasn't "post-modernist" enuf — as if the latest critical lingo invalidated the work.
Born's statement reminds me of the typical: 'Communism's dead so now there's just Capitalism' statement that I've run across so many times. In other words, the pseudo-intellectual process involves: 1st, divide everything into only 2 possible camps; 2nd, proclaim one of the camps dead in order to justify any & all excesses of the 'remaining' camp. I hope it's obvious that there aren't just 2 possibilities in either politics or music. Life & Death? Ok, I'll accept that as a duality — but I'm open to other opinions. But Serialism & Anti-Serialism? To pull a quasi-reductio ad absurdum here, that's like saying there are only 2 notes: C (for Communism) & C# (for Capitalism) & then dividing the world into camps that fight over wch note to play.
I've been d composing work w/ audio since approximately 1974. That wd make me relevant to the period under discussion. Is it Modernist? Or is it Post-Modernist? Is it Serialist or is it Anti-Serialist? To me, it's none-of-the-above. Then, of course, there's the chance that it's not "western art music" &, therefore, it's not 'relevant' to the discussion. I agree that it's not "western art music" but add that it is extremely relevant to the discussion precisely b/c it doesn't fit into the neat little boxes that these academic critics try to shove entirely too much into.
Are the "TESTES-3 Broadcast Tapes" Modernist or Post-Modernist? Check out "Quasi-Documentation of Testes-3's End of Library K & M Series" {version 3} (YouTube version) - 10:09 - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/0toRU7wYDvQ & I think you'll immediately understand what I mean about how outside the box TESTES-3 was — &, yet, for me, it definitely related to the lineage of both music & politics that I was so passionately immersed in at the time. That was 1979.
In the description of my "Low Classical Usic" playlist on YouTube I state:
"Some people call it "music" but that's not very interesting is it? I prefer (M)Usic, the root word is "use". Low Classical Usic is (M)Usic for people who don't really fit into the conservatory, into the academy. It's class playfair, it's sound art w/o the art, it's high brow low classicism. It's not for everyone b/c everyone's against it but it's egalitarian nonetheless."
There are 104 movies on the playlist as of today, May 17th, 2018. There's even an "Ordinary Piano Solo" on there: https://youtu.be/Wj6QiaDNXxk . But how "ordinary" is it really? What boxes does it fit into? The visuals are almost entirely black. When I appear playing the solo I'm naked & playing a MIDI-Guitar that's triggering a sampler to play an electric piano sound. Musically, it doesn't sound that exceptional. It probably wdn't rub a tonalist the wrong way. But a moment's thought wd make a person realize that the technique used to trigger the sounds on a guitar neck are far more limited in terms of harmony than they are on a keyboard. Furthermore, this MIDI-Guitar doesn't have strings over the frets: it has thin rectangular buttons. That cuts out various string-player techniques like glissandi. The point is that the 'ordinariness' isn't so 'ordinary' after all.
Or what about "cellfeed 01", https://youtu.be/sQLig-7ZfRw , in wch the tool for documenting the Uncert becomes an instrument for producing the Uncert? The boundaries that both Boulez & Born depend upon to make their positions rigid are just impediments to creativity.
The full review is here: "Born's IR-ACHE": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Georgina Born's Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 17-26, 2018
The full review is here: "Born's IR-ACHE": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I got this bk b/c a friend of mine gave it to me. HE got it b/c his brother gave it to him. He skimmed thru it, knew he'd never read it, & asked me if I wanted it. He picqued my interest by telling me that the author had played bass w/ Henry Cow. Henry Cow are by far one of my favorite bands so the thought of one of their crew critiqueing IRCAM, an institution that I have some interest in, was intrigueing.
I didn't recognize her name as a Henry Cow member. I looked at her Wikipedia entry:
"Born studied the cello and piano at the Royal College of Music in London, and performed classical and modern music including stints with the Michael Nyman Band, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the Flying Lizards. She also studied for a year at the Chelsea School of Art.
"In June 1976, she joined the English avant-rock group Henry Cow as bass guitarist and cellist, following the departure of John Greaves. Henry Cow was in a period of intensive touring and Born toured Europe with the group for two years.
"After Henry Cow, Born performed and recorded with a number of groups and musicians, including fellow Henry Cow member Lindsay Cooper, National Health, Bruford, and Mike Westbrook, particularly as a cellist in the Westbrook Orchestra. Her playing is prominent on Westbrook's album, The Cortege. Late in 1977, Born, Cooper, Sally Potter and Maggie Nichols founded the Feminist Improvising Group. She also recorded with The Raincoats, and played improvised music with Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, David Toop and others as a member of the London Musicians' Collective.
"During the 1980s, Born was an occasional member of Derek Bailey's Company, and played cello and bass guitar on numerous soundtracks for television and film for composers Lindsay Cooper and Mike Westbrook, as well as the soundtrack for the Stephen Poliakoff play Caught on a Train (1980). She had a walk-on part in Sally Potter's film The Gold Diggers (1983)."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgin...
That led to my pulling out the records that I have by some of the groups mentioned above so that I can listen to them while writing this review. Of the 5 Henry Cow records I have, "Henry Cow" (Red 001), "UNREST", "In Praise of Learning", "Western Culture", & "The Last Nightingale", she appears to be only on 1 track of 7 on "Western Culture": "1/2 the Sky". Alas, I missed her era. She is, however, on the Art Bears's "Hopes and Fears" but not listed as on their "Winter Songs". I think of The Art Bears as the successors to Henry Cow. I love The Art Bears too. She doesn't appear to've been an 'official' member of The Art Bears but more of an added player. She's not on either of the 2 Mike Westbrook records I have: "Marching Song - An Anti-War Jazz Symphony" & "Metropolis". She's also not on the only National Health record I have: "National Health". I don't know of her being on any of the Derek Bailey or Lol Coxhill records that I have either. This leads to my thinking she was more of a guest musician than a band member in many instances. Whatever the case, she must've had pretty impressive chops given that she wd've been in her early 20s when she played w/ Henry Cow. I wd've never been able to meet their level of musicianship at the time. Her discography, according to her Wikipedia entry:
With Art Bears
• Hope and Fears (1978)
With National Health
• Of Queues and Cures (1978)
With Henry Cow
• Western Culture (1979)
• The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set (2009, 9xCD+DVD, Recommended Records, UK)
With Feminist Improvising Group
• Feminist Improvising Group (1979, Cassette, UK)
With Bruford
• Gradually Going Tornado (1980)
With Stormy Six
• Macchina Maccheronica (1980)
With Mike Westbrook
• Bright as Fire (1980)
• The Cortege (1982)
• On Duke's Birthday (HatART, 1985)
With Lindsay Cooper
• Rags (1981)
• The Golddiggers – original soundtrack to the film The Gold Diggers by Sally Potter (1983)
• Music for Other Occasions (1986)
With The Raincoats
• Odyshape (1981)
With Peter Blegvad
• The Naked Shakespeare (1983)
With News from Babel
• Work Resumed on the Tower (1984)
I've just listened to "1/2 the Sky" & now I'm listening to "Hopes and Fears". Her career as a recording/performing musician seems to've spanned 1978 to 1986. What happened? It seems that writing this bk is what happened. She also had a child. The primary period of IRCAM under inspection is 1984 but the scrutiny continues up 'til the early '90s. The bk wasn't copyrighted until 1995 when it was published by the University of California Press. I'm somewhat impressed that it was published at all.
When I started reading Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde I was expecting a heavy dose of class analysis of how cultural elites funnel money & power into their own notion of what constitutes important music — & that was what I was looking forward to. AND I was expecting it to be academically written. THAT I wasn't looking forward to — &, in fact, for me, the 1st 56pp or so were well nigh insufferable. It took extreme devotion on my part to plough thru it. Keep in mind that people are taught to write this way but I really have to wonder about these 'teachers'. I'll explain what I mean as I go along.
In her acknowledgments she states that "My thinking on music and cultural politics remains deeply marked by the following people and groups with whom I have worked: Henry Cow, the Feminist Improvising Group, Lindsay Cooper, Mike Westbrook, and the London Musicians' Collective." (p xiii)
As a personal aside, I performed at the London Musicians' Collective on Wednesday, May 23, 1984 as part of the Popular Chapati Circus wch was part of The 8th International Neoist Apartment Festival. There's vaudeo of that on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/fgQzQZNpgTY?t=14m13s . This was definitely not popular. It was boycotted by Andre Stitt & his friends, who nonetheless hung around outside in a car. As I recall, the toilet facilities were reached by going outside & walking a bit to a different bldg. The LMC people weren't particularly friendly & made a point of just letting us in to the space & then going across the street to a pub for the entirety of our "circus". They showed no interest in what we were doing whatsoever. Perhaps their politics were one of snobbishness. Contrarily, when I screened 16mm films at the London Filmmakers Collective in 1988 as part of an open screening the collective members were receptive & friendly & it was a pleasure to be there. I'm sure the LMC was a great place too so it's too bad I didn't spend more quality time there.
"I am profoundly grateful to these people for their efforts and warmth and for their commitment to a dialogue with someone whose beliefs were, in different degrees and ways, at odds with their own: Tod Machover, who made the study possible and has been a frank and generous friend; Jean Baptiste Barrière, for his friendship, help, thoughtfulness, and loyalty during the entire research; Adrian Freed, George Lewis, Stephen McAdams, Alejandro Viñao, and David Wessel, for many hours of serious talk, insight, and fun; and Gerard Asseyag, Laurent Bayle, Gerald Bennett, Denis Lorrain, Yves Potard, Mark Seiden and Marco Stroppa as well." - p xiv
In the interest of protecting the anonymity of the people written about & quoted, Born uses initials that don't correspond to the actual initials of the people referred to. Hence George Lewis = PL & Jean Baptiste Barrière = WOW. I didn't go to the trouble of figuring out who everyone was although at this point in time w/ the internet as a resource doing so wd be somewhat easy. Since I have recordings of Machover's music I became curious enuf just now to figure out that he's HY. Doing so only took a few seconds.
Born's introduction starts off w/ a quote from Boulez putting forth his philosophical vision of IRCAM's basis:
"The creator's intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention. It is thus necessary for him to collaborate with the scientific research worker in order to envision the distant future, to imagine less personal, and thus broader, solutions. . . . The musician must assimilate a certain scientific knowledge, making it an integral part of his creative imagination. . . . At educational meetings scientists and musicians will become familiar with one another's point of view and approach. In this way, we hope to forge a kind of common language that scarely exists at present.
"Technology and the composer: a collaboration between scientists and musicians . . . is, therefore, a necessity. . . . " - p 1
My review note re the above is "whatever". In other words, I find blanket statements like "The creator's intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention." to be essentially w/o value. There are an infinite amt of ways of making things of interest. A recurring pattern w/ Boulez is his tendency to make pronouncements as if he's taking you thru the jungle w/ his flaming sword to hack the only-possible-path. It's all bullshit (or, if you prefer, horse puckey).. but it gets the money when sd w/ the requisite amt of chutzpah.
NOW, cf Boulez's statement to this excerpt from my review of Joan Peyser's biography of Boulez wch came out in November, 1976, shortly before IRCAM opened & the same yr that Boulez made the above publicity statement:
"When I mentioned an American composer whose work he dislikes, Boulez suddenly came to life, launching a virtuoso attack on various facets of U.S. music.
""Electronic music: "The same frenzy for technology began in Europe about 1953. By 1958 it had all died down. The idea of electronics as the big future of music is just an American trick of fashion. Next year they'll discover the viola da gamba. Playing Bach on the computer doesn't interest me at all because it's artistically irrelevant. All this indicates a simplistic way of thinking—an appalling low level of thinking."
""As for "Perspectives of New Music," an avant-garde journal published by the Princeton University Press: "'Perspectives' is similar to 'Die Reihe,' begun in Germany about 1953. Its writers think they are great scientists. They are not.["]" - p 181
"Whew! If those are real quotes, Boulez was suffering from diarrhea-of-the-mouth — or his listener(s) were suffering from having to listen to it. Boulez displays the same type of behaviors over & over: he disses other people's work & then imitates it later as if the way he's doing it is the 'right' way & the other people can be dismissed as imbeciles. He did it w/ chance music, here he's doing it w/ electronics — something he clearly knows next-to-nothing about. Then he cofounds IRCAM wch is supposed to link music w/ science & technology & wch gets millions for this purpose – after dissing Americans for linking music w/ science & technology. The dating of European electronic music as from 1953-1958 is just ludicrous. His apparent purpose is to say that Americans are Johnny-come-latelies when, in fact, the Teleharmonium was invented by an American, Thaddeus Cahill, in the 19th century. To then act like one single acoustic instrument wd faddishly replace an entire resource is ridiculous. That's like saying: "Oh they're all about drinking fluids, those inferiors, the next thing you know they'll be discovering orange juice & forget fluids in general.' THEN he mentions playing "Bach on the computer", wch also doesn't interest me, but is probably a reference to Walter Carlos's "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer" wch is hardly representative of all that was going on in electronic music in America at the time."
- https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Born's 1st paragraph sets the stage:
"This book centers on an ethnographic study of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique). IRCAM is a large computer music research and production institute in Paris, which opened in 1977, and which is handsomely funded by the French state. IRCAM was founded, and until 1992 was directed, by the renowned conductor and avant-garde composer Pierre Boulez." - p 1
Not knowing Born's work at all, even as a bass player, I was feeling my way thru this bk — alternately enticed, as by the promise of the above, & annoyed:
"In recent decades, and with increased vigor since the early 1970s, there has been a split within the world of serious composition between, loosely, the advocates of scientistic postserialism and its critics and dissenters, the latter the proponents of various forms of postmodernist aesthetic and composition.
"To leave it at this, however, would not convey the chronic sense of impasse, the profound doubt and loss of confidence, that have accompanied this split, especially for the many composers who have experienced a disenchantment with the high-modernist project and with the perceived failures of serialism. The sense of a threat to the continued existence of western art music has, despite certain differences, been widespread in both Europe and the United States."
[..]
"The character of the split between the extremes of the pro-serialist, modernist and anti-serialist, post-modernist camps can be grasped by comparing two notorious articles by American composers who have been seen as prime representatives of the two sides: Milton Babbitt and George Rochberg." - p 3
My note about this is: "She's almost as bad as Boulez!" There are several things that people jockeying for power typically do: 1. Express themselves as if they're telling the absolute truth, as if they're 'objective'; 2. Express themselves using the royal "We" as if it's not them writing but some greater power beyond them; 3. Reduce everything to dualities; 4. Avoid qualifiers that might show the situation to be more complicated than the position expressed. Born does all these things almost constantly. No doubt this helped her maneuver herself into a well-pd 'educator's' position but it doesn't do much to enhance the value of her opinion, wch she doesn't present as such, for me.
A serious problem w/ academics then becomes the tendency to use critical language that oversimplifies dramatically. Born is all about avant-garde vs pop, modernist vs post-modernist, serialist vs anti-serialist — but is everything so clearly divided? I think not. The "world of serious composition" is far more complex than the "split" she describes. It seems to me that what happens is that writers like Born describe things in reduced terms & then take that description for 'reality'. It's convenient for a critic to divide work of the 2nd half of the 20th century into "modernist" & "post-modernist" but how many people other than academics take such terms seriously?!
Academics have to show that they're 'w/ it', they don't want to be trundled off to the no-longer-intellectually-valid dept at their university where their opinions won't matter anymore. As such, they try to ride the trends that will enhance their careers. I remember Tony Conrad coming to Pittsburgh to show films & deciding to only show a few minutes of one of his works b/c it wasn't "post-modernist" enuf — as if the latest critical lingo invalidated the work.
Born's statement reminds me of the typical: 'Communism's dead so now there's just Capitalism' statement that I've run across so many times. In other words, the pseudo-intellectual process involves: 1st, divide everything into only 2 possible camps; 2nd, proclaim one of the camps dead in order to justify any & all excesses of the 'remaining' camp. I hope it's obvious that there aren't just 2 possibilities in either politics or music. Life & Death? Ok, I'll accept that as a duality — but I'm open to other opinions. But Serialism & Anti-Serialism? To pull a quasi-reductio ad absurdum here, that's like saying there are only 2 notes: C (for Communism) & C# (for Capitalism) & then dividing the world into camps that fight over wch note to play.
I've been d composing work w/ audio since approximately 1974. That wd make me relevant to the period under discussion. Is it Modernist? Or is it Post-Modernist? Is it Serialist or is it Anti-Serialist? To me, it's none-of-the-above. Then, of course, there's the chance that it's not "western art music" &, therefore, it's not 'relevant' to the discussion. I agree that it's not "western art music" but add that it is extremely relevant to the discussion precisely b/c it doesn't fit into the neat little boxes that these academic critics try to shove entirely too much into.
Are the "TESTES-3 Broadcast Tapes" Modernist or Post-Modernist? Check out "Quasi-Documentation of Testes-3's End of Library K & M Series" {version 3} (YouTube version) - 10:09 - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/0toRU7wYDvQ & I think you'll immediately understand what I mean about how outside the box TESTES-3 was — &, yet, for me, it definitely related to the lineage of both music & politics that I was so passionately immersed in at the time. That was 1979.
In the description of my "Low Classical Usic" playlist on YouTube I state:
"Some people call it "music" but that's not very interesting is it? I prefer (M)Usic, the root word is "use". Low Classical Usic is (M)Usic for people who don't really fit into the conservatory, into the academy. It's class playfair, it's sound art w/o the art, it's high brow low classicism. It's not for everyone b/c everyone's against it but it's egalitarian nonetheless."
There are 104 movies on the playlist as of today, May 17th, 2018. There's even an "Ordinary Piano Solo" on there: https://youtu.be/Wj6QiaDNXxk . But how "ordinary" is it really? What boxes does it fit into? The visuals are almost entirely black. When I appear playing the solo I'm naked & playing a MIDI-Guitar that's triggering a sampler to play an electric piano sound. Musically, it doesn't sound that exceptional. It probably wdn't rub a tonalist the wrong way. But a moment's thought wd make a person realize that the technique used to trigger the sounds on a guitar neck are far more limited in terms of harmony than they are on a keyboard. Furthermore, this MIDI-Guitar doesn't have strings over the frets: it has thin rectangular buttons. That cuts out various string-player techniques like glissandi. The point is that the 'ordinariness' isn't so 'ordinary' after all.
Or what about "cellfeed 01", https://youtu.be/sQLig-7ZfRw , in wch the tool for documenting the Uncert becomes an instrument for producing the Uncert? The boundaries that both Boulez & Born depend upon to make their positions rigid are just impediments to creativity.
The full review is here: "Born's IR-ACHE": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
December 25, 2024
I picked this up assuming it would be some sort of history of the early days of computer music, but no, this is a full blown ethnography - Born goes undercover in the underground halls of this shadowy Parisian institute presided over by a charismatic patriarch and proceeds to irk 'em, challenging their notions of cultural superiority, scoping out their unspoken hierarchies and even going so far as to leak their admin password! It's a novel and frankly kinda delightful approach to this subject matter, but while the rhetorical bent is often productive - the dichotomy between "avant-garde" music (institutionally supported and validated, actively progressive) and "experimental" music (independent, exploratory, forward-looking on a much smaller scale) is a useful one - it's also occasionally muddled; I agree there's a difference between modernist music (ideologically motivated, academic, mainland European lineage) and postmodernist music (engaged with "popular culture" and less obsessed with the primacy of the written score, often American), and I'd even agree those are the terms to use, but if the former represents an all-consuming regression and the latter is representative of a new, insidious form of American cultural hegemony, does Born see a way forward or is she content to end her book on an open-ended question? Where exactly does Georgie Born - member of Henry Cow (an explicitly ideological group "in opposition" that drew from so-called popular culture forms like rock and free improvisation as well as rigidly scored modern classical) and the Feminist Improvising Group (as one can imagine, both strictly ideological and devoted to free improvisation, which Born often seems to discuss as opposing poles, at least in the context of IRCAM), Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her services to higher education and 3rd generation academic - stand? I think a great work of cultural criticism would make a coherent ideological statement, but for all the politics here, I don't think it does. Perhaps that lack of ideological commitment makes for a better ethnography, but it's not like it's lacking an ideological angle, so I am ultimately pretty comfortable chalking it up to bad writing. Still - thought this was pretty good, although couldn't possibly recommend it to anyone not already interested in the subject matter.
April 9, 2017
this book loses 1 full star for ending in a hypothetical question. its like dang why are u askin me ur the one who did the fuckin study
December 4, 2008
RATIONALIZING CULTURE is Georgina Born's ethnographical presentation of the Institut de Recherce et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), one of the world's foremost music research centres, located in Paris at the Centre George Pompidou. In 1984 Born, a musician-cum-ethnographer spent a year observing the institute, and this expanded version of her subsequent Ph.D thesis was published in 1995.
Fans of contemporary music--and I'm one--will be pleased to have the opportunity to learn something of the structure and day-to-day life of IRCAM. Born details the bureacratic hierarchy, the various types of employees, and the "squatters", composers entering after-hours to use the centre's equipment and hoping to be established workers there. She talks about typical visits by composers who come to be trained and to realise a piece at Ircam, and about the use of the fearsome 4X machine, IRCAM's early technological breakthrough. Born could not use real names in the preparation of her thesis, so instead people are referred to with random initials or with general attributes, but it's not particularly challenging to guess who is who. PL, the "black American composer" is Alvin Singleton, for example, and WOW is Jean-Baptiste Barriere. There are photos of IRCAM's hallways and offices, one containg a young Kaija Saariaho at work. Among the author's ethnographic themes are the phenomenon of the avant-garde (the "outsiders") becoming subsidized by the government ("the Establishment") and IRCAM's early shift from composer-scientist equality to scientists at the service of composers.
In spite of the book's informative presentative of IRCAM, it is fraught with problems. Born mixes what should be a dispassionate report about the sociology of IRCAM with her own opinions on contemporary music, which she seems to loathe immensely. Right from the beginning she writes that she left the conservatory to play in rock bands because she didn't like modern styles. In the chapter on music, while reporting the discussions of some composers on their inspirations, she even suggests that what they are doing isn't real music at all.
Throughout Born writes in such a way as to make the reader think that IRCAM is a worthless institution on the verge of being shut down. Granted, IRCAM took a while to get off the ground, and if one goes only by Born's 1984 chronicle, one might get the impression that it's not a terribly productive place. However, in the years following, many wonderful pieces came out of IRCAM, by such composers as Saariaho, Lindberg, Benjamin, and Eotvos. In 1984 all of the technology--a couple of huge servers--seems to be constantly on the fritz and without sufficient processing power for all users, but within a couple of years the centre transitioned to PCs and work gets along fine. Born does dedicate a few pages in the last chapter to later events in IRCAM, but she still ends the book in a critical fashion, not acknowledging any of the great achievements of the centre. Hand-in-hand with this are snipes at Boulez, whom Born seems to think a tyrant who holds music back instead of a benevolent dictator who has done so much to advance the art. At least there's little outright sniping at him here--on a recent radio BBC programme she accused him of "stealing" French music funds instead of really deserving them--but there is nonetheless a serious lack of respect.
If you're curious about IRCAM, I'd recommend seeking the book out at your university library. It can be informative. However, Born's bias against great music, which permeates the whole book, is infuriating and I wouldn't recommend purchasing RATIONALIZING CULTURE.
Fans of contemporary music--and I'm one--will be pleased to have the opportunity to learn something of the structure and day-to-day life of IRCAM. Born details the bureacratic hierarchy, the various types of employees, and the "squatters", composers entering after-hours to use the centre's equipment and hoping to be established workers there. She talks about typical visits by composers who come to be trained and to realise a piece at Ircam, and about the use of the fearsome 4X machine, IRCAM's early technological breakthrough. Born could not use real names in the preparation of her thesis, so instead people are referred to with random initials or with general attributes, but it's not particularly challenging to guess who is who. PL, the "black American composer" is Alvin Singleton, for example, and WOW is Jean-Baptiste Barriere. There are photos of IRCAM's hallways and offices, one containg a young Kaija Saariaho at work. Among the author's ethnographic themes are the phenomenon of the avant-garde (the "outsiders") becoming subsidized by the government ("the Establishment") and IRCAM's early shift from composer-scientist equality to scientists at the service of composers.
In spite of the book's informative presentative of IRCAM, it is fraught with problems. Born mixes what should be a dispassionate report about the sociology of IRCAM with her own opinions on contemporary music, which she seems to loathe immensely. Right from the beginning she writes that she left the conservatory to play in rock bands because she didn't like modern styles. In the chapter on music, while reporting the discussions of some composers on their inspirations, she even suggests that what they are doing isn't real music at all.
Throughout Born writes in such a way as to make the reader think that IRCAM is a worthless institution on the verge of being shut down. Granted, IRCAM took a while to get off the ground, and if one goes only by Born's 1984 chronicle, one might get the impression that it's not a terribly productive place. However, in the years following, many wonderful pieces came out of IRCAM, by such composers as Saariaho, Lindberg, Benjamin, and Eotvos. In 1984 all of the technology--a couple of huge servers--seems to be constantly on the fritz and without sufficient processing power for all users, but within a couple of years the centre transitioned to PCs and work gets along fine. Born does dedicate a few pages in the last chapter to later events in IRCAM, but she still ends the book in a critical fashion, not acknowledging any of the great achievements of the centre. Hand-in-hand with this are snipes at Boulez, whom Born seems to think a tyrant who holds music back instead of a benevolent dictator who has done so much to advance the art. At least there's little outright sniping at him here--on a recent radio BBC programme she accused him of "stealing" French music funds instead of really deserving them--but there is nonetheless a serious lack of respect.
If you're curious about IRCAM, I'd recommend seeking the book out at your university library. It can be informative. However, Born's bias against great music, which permeates the whole book, is infuriating and I wouldn't recommend purchasing RATIONALIZING CULTURE.
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