Analysis as Improvisation: A Phenomenology of Otomo Yoshihide's <em>Anode 2</em>

Abstract

ANALYSIS AS IMPROVISATION: A PHENOMENOLOGY OF OTOMO YOSHIHIDE’S ANODE 2 SCOTT GLEASON N HIS ANODE PIECES (1999–2008), Otomo Yoshihide (b. 1959) seeks to suspend a musical listening, encouraging listeners to hear sounds just on the cusp of music, before reifying into predetermined analytical categories. Otomo further encourages listeners to become co-creators: listening is improvising, composing. Phenomenological analysis would appear most suited to this type of listening situation. Can we, as phenomenological analysts, evoke analytical categories without allowing sounds to solidify into things? Can we, as co-creators of this music, respond to Otomo’s Cagean performance requirements? Can we, then, present a phenomenological analysis of Otomo’s Anode 2 that is, also, an improvisation? Otomo’s performance/compositional “requirements” for all of the Anode pieces: 1. Do not respond to the sound of others. 2. Do not form a course from the introduction to the conclusion. 3. Avoid any popular rhythm, melody, cliché, etc.1 I 122 Perspectives of New Music I have often taken as a particular mark of group improvisation its seemingly unique ability: that of its participants to respond intelligently, compositionally, intensely “in time” or during the moment, to, with, and for one another, and us. Otomo, following John Cage, suspends this value, stating that for Anode its negation “is the most important factor. . . . It is important to note, however, that this has to be done while still listening to each other” (Otomo 2001). The part of a descriptive analysis approaching or figuring itself as a kind of performance or improvisation, as itself a co-creator,2 seems to negate Otomo’s first negation, to demonstrate precisely an aural/verbal/visual responsiveness to the sounds of others.3 Analysis usually values responsiveness, sensitivity. Analysis also usually emplots itself, creates a narrative, with an arrival toward its end, gathering together a number of threads, creating a sense of progress, unity. And of course analysis carries its own clichés: unity; the gaze from the position of the total; progress; the “eureka” moments of excitement, insight, or revelation, moments that in a more critical vein I think solely provoke continued labor; or the still under-examined notion of analytical “interest.”4 Perhaps, however, along with Otomo we can suspend these values. I would like to imagine, then, that analysis begins from a state whereupon I sit still, listen, without attempting to respond or intervene, allowing sounds to occur, be, there, letting responses resonate and simply occur, without consciously attempting to fit the sounds into predetermined analytical categories. Despite or because of the cultural conditionings of these imaginings, I imagine too that my goal can be “to find out what can be realized in the improvisation by introducing this ‘new’ sense of hearing” (Otomo 2001). I assume, however, that to actualize this goal—to discover or hear, listen to, the what—requires or at least strongly encourages a talking through of the sonic details as I hear them, during the processes of learning to hear them.5 I invite readers to attempt honestly to hear the qualities, sounds, motions, and places I describe, to bring these sounds and this discussion fully into an aural actuality, even if only fleetingly, for themselves, such that, for example, the aural relations imaged and implied within Example 1 carry a certain presence for readers, even before proceeding with listening and reading to what I have to say. I thus attempt to evoke, not so much experiences with no names,6 but episodes of sonic and bodily consciousness, via names, descriptions.7 I do so because I value analysis, talk about what we normally take to be music’s details, even if, or perhaps because, the music itself or sounds themselves continually slip away, flee.8 I want to know what I hear, and I will assume knowing involves speaking.9 I do not believe that the Analysis as Improvisation 123 descriptions I offer merely reproduce sounds readers have heard already, without my descriptions. I do not believe words confronted with music otiose. To a degree I accept the notion that music is created during listening, and it is the listenings I offer here that, again, I honestly wish to communicate, to...