Composed Silence: Microsound and the Quiet Shock of Listening

Abstract

Composed Silence: MlCROSOUND AND THE Quiet Shock of Listening L__7fa 1 Thomas Phillips I would like to begin this paper on composed "silence," in contradis tinction to the traditional decorum of scholarly discourse, with the first person singular pronoun. It iswidely acknowledged in contemporary aca demia that the authorial "I" is implicated in itsdiscursive practices, not to mention its inevitable brush with what Julia Kristeva calls intertextuality. The same can be said of the composer in terms of the particular subject position and historical context through which his or her music is inevit ably filtered.Extending this argument a bit further,it isnot the "I" of the artist alone whose subjectivity,whose dimensions of perception and capac ities for creativity and personal development are at stake. The reader, viewer and listener are likewise implicated in an experience, or, one might say (as Iwill argue in relation to the genre of microsound), a practice of textual consumption. The underlying idea behind such practice is, of Composed Silence 233 course, that itmay be active rather than passive, an activity that isdoubt less prompted by some "texts" to a greater extent than it isby others. In terms ofmusic, those compositions that are organized according to an aesthetic of relative silence are particularly operative in such amanner as to leave (aural) space inwhich the "I" of the listenermay confront himself or herself as a listener. In other words, microsound, by virtue of its sparsityof sound, amongst other qualities, elicits a unique subjectivity (in the context of general music appreciation) and is thus asmuch about the perceiving self as it is about sound and sound design. Among the authors whose works can help us to understand various angles ofwhat it might mean to compose and to listen to microsound are Walter Benjamin, composer and theorist Kim Cascone, and a number of other writers who focus on both the politics and the aesthetic(s) of the genre. Additionally, I shall discuss an example ofmicrosound that is representa tive of the specific qualities of themusic that interestme, namely, Richard Chartier's homage toMorton Feldman, "How Things Change." As is commonly recognized by scholars of art and new technologies, Benjamin is a useful starting point for such exploration in so far asmany of his ideas paved the way, at least theoretically, for the centrality (and acceptance) of technologically infused art. Concerning sound, he offers the following advice: In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semirelax ation, to a background of insipid sounds, isdegrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant forwork as the perceptible silence of night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds (Benjamin 1986b, 80). This passage, taken from a sub-section of Benjamin's "One-Way Street" entitled "The Writer's Technique inThirteen Theses," is at once charac teristically ambiguous and pragmatic. Its terminology remains unex plained, thus allowing for contradiction to arise between seemingly kindred phenomena, "a cacophony of voices" and "wayward sounds." And yet, Benjamin is clearly pursuing a didactic line in an attempt to establish the ideal working environment for the serious writer. A crucial element of this environment, Benjamin suggests, ismusic, or rather, sound. Gershom Scholem has testified to Benjamin's ongoing battle with unwanted noise that disturbed his work innumerous residences, lending weight to Thesis Three's argument for the importance of auditory com patibility with intellectual labor (25). Unfortunately, however, we are 234 PerspectivesofNewMusic given no furtherexplanation ofwhat constitutes "insipid sounds" or how these might differ from "an etude [ironically, perhaps, amere exercise in technique] or a cacophony of voices," all ofwhich could be considered "wayward" sound in contradistinction to "the perceptible silence of night by awriter in themidst of his or her work." On the other hand, ifviewed within the context of the early twentieth century avant-garde, specifically the musical avant-garde, the passage reveals Benjamin's inclination, in contrast to earlier, pre-industrial gener ations, to accept the validity of a larger palette of sound asmusic, or, at the very minimum, as suitable auditory accompaniment to the task...