Aleatory Techniques Research Articles

The Music to Valentin Kataev’s Fairy Tale The Wishing Seven-Colored Flower in the Space of Russia’s and China’s Screen Culture

The present article focuses on music in the space of screen culture. It discusses the interpretation of Valentin Kataev’s fairy tale The Wishing Seven-Colored Flower [Tsvetik-Semitsvetik] that was presented in the following artistic projects: a) the short television film The Wishing Seven-Colored Flower, created in the late 1960s through the collaboration of composer Evgeny Krylatov, directors Garnik Arazyan and Boris Bushmelev; b) the animated film with the same title by Russian and Soviet director Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Soviet composer Yuri Levitin (released in 1948); c) the animated film by Chinese director Cao Xiaohui and Chinese composer Lu Shiling (1974), whose title retains also a similarity to the original source title. In regard to Krylatov’s and his colleagues’ film, addressed to a children’s audience, analyzing the interaction between the musical component of the film text, the video sequence, and the verbal-plot sequence clearly reveals Krylatov brilliant talent, his professionalism in the field of orchestral style and symphonic dramaturgy, as well as the organic synthesis of his inherent modern thinking — one that is recognizable by his composition techniques, as well as the traditions of the Russian musical classics. In a similar way, Yuri Levitin’s music carries out a dramaturgical function when accompanying animate films, while demonstrating elements of contemporary compositional means (namely, the aleatory technique). Modern compositional techniques also appear in Lu Shiling’s music, making themselves present in the texture of clusters as the main elements of sonorical sound. However, in contrast to the work of his Russian colleagues, the latter’s music carries out a purely illustrative function in the animated film.

«Ach Golgatha!» Карела Гуйвартса в аспекте синтеза сериализма, алеаторики и минимализма

Karel Goeyvaerts was a Belgian composer whose musical output exerted an influence on Western European serial and electronic music. the compositional techniques which he incorporated into his music at various periods of time always served his main goal – to manifest the ideas of the Absolute and Perfection. During the 1970s and the 1980s the composer focused his attention on the aleatory technique and minimalism. His best compositions from those years include five “Litanies” written for various instrumental ensembles and the opera project “Aguarius”. The present article focuses its attention on the composition “Ach Golgatha!”, which was created in 1975 and turned out to be one of Goeyvaerts’ first minimalist works. Virtually the entire material of the composition is based on a single quotation – a one-measure accompaniment to the recitative “Ach Golgatha” sung by the alto voice in Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” which is subjected to deconstruction. The composition is written for harp, organ and percussion, while the score is written by means of graphic notation. On the basis of detailed analysis of the musical material, its pitch, rhythmical, registral and timbral structure, the author arrives at conclusions that this composition synthesized in an organic way Goeyvarts’ parametrical thinking, characteristic for the serial period of is work and distinctive for its analytical approach, and new tendencies connected with the aleatory technique and minimalism, which determined the variable nature of the musical text and the commenting type of thinking. Keywords: 20th century music, Karel Goeyvaerts, “Ach Golgatha!,” serialism, aleatory technique, minimalism, repetitive technique.

Мобильные формы в архитектуре, живописи и музыке как парадигма современного пространственного образа мира

The object of research in this article is formed by the mobile forms in 20th architecture, sculpture, painting and music which appeared in the art and the lives of humanity in connection with the changes of conceptual foundations of science, philosophy and culture. The issue of the research consists in determining the universal foundations, regardless of whether or not all of these experimental forms are united by a common paradigm based on a fundamental reevaluation of the world. The innovative discoveries of science in the 20th century formed a new, ambivalent, multilevel method of thinking which generated a complex polyvalent artistic epi-system. The mobile forms turned out to be the expression of a new perspective of the modern world. The methodological basis for the world is comprised of the study of the history and theory of contemporary art and architecture, philosophy and science. The methodology for the research was comprised of the polyvalent analysis of scholarly literature on the theory and history of 20th century architecture, art, science and philosophy; the graphical-analytical of the compositional structures of works of art and architecture, as well as the capaciously spatial modeling; a comparative analysis of the compositional techniques and methods of the 20th century avant-garde trends in the visual arts, architecture and music. This research has shown that the expression of profound and mobile perceptions of human consciousness, reflections on the world, self-realization in the cosmic space, and the perception of the instability and polyvalence of the image of the Universe, in which everything changes rapidly and everything is ambivalent, has also begun to attract the attention of art. The scholarly novelty of the subject is present in the systematization of the mobile forms in the various arts, the disclosure of the connections between them and the scientific and philosophical foundations, the recognition of the common organizational and constructive ideas of the mobile forms, as well as the determination of the future perspectives of application of mobile forms. Keywords: mobile forms, architecture, open plan, painting of action, sculpture, mobile forms, aleatory technique.

Review of The Game Audio Strategy Guide

Review of <i>The Game Audio Strategy Guide</i>

Mark Belodubrovsky, a Versatile Contemporary Composer, Violinist and Educator

Mark Belodubrovsky is one of the most accomplished contemporary composers living presently in Moscow who has written a substantial amount of solo, chamber and vocal musical compositions of high quality, which are performed in Russia and in a number of other countries. His musical output is especially noted for its versatility of different styles of music: some of his compositions are traditional and romantic in their style and tonal in their harmony, with a strong infl uence of Russian folk music which the composer actively employs in a number of his compositions, while other works follow innovative avant-garde trends and incorporate serialism, including serial rhythm, sonoristics, aleatory technique and a number of other techniques. Some of his compositions are very accessible to a broad audience, containing memorable melodic and rhythmic traits, while others are written in a highly complex language, based on musical experimentation, comprehensible for the most part to a sophisticated audience well-versed in avantgarde trends in music. Some of his works are based on extroversive theatrical gestures and even contain comic elements, while others bear an inner philosophical discourse. Nonetheless, both of these contrasting features combine together to express a highly original style of the composer’s music which cannot be mistaken for that of anybody else. Belodubrovsky is known and highly regarded as a composer, a violinist, an enthusiastic cultural activist who discovered and popularized rare compositions of the early 20th century Russian modernist trend, the long-time director of the Nikolai Roslavetz and Nahum Gabo Festival for the Arts in Bryansk, and simply as a very open musician with a broad-minded approach towards various musical styles and directions. All of this has undoubtedly created an impact on his multifarious musical style which combines opposite stylistic directions. The article describes the life and the musical activities of Mark Belodubrovsky, then proceeds to describe an analyze his musical compositions. It is shown that notwithstanding the fact that his compositions pertain to different styles, they are all united by one individual stylistic trait which defi nes the composer’s artistic individuality.

A Multimodal Analysis of Hommage à Marina Tsvetayeva by Sofia Gubaidulina

The article reveals the stylistic features of the contrapuntal technique Sofia Gubaidulina applied in her choral composition Hommage a Marina Tsvetaeva. This study analyzes Sofia Gubaidulina’s contrapuntal technique of synthesizing the poetic and musical texts. It examines the genre archetypes of each movement of the suite, analyzes the types of contrapuntal approaches in terms of the parameters of tradition and innovation, and carries out a contextual analysis of the suite as an exemplary contemporary choral composition. The five movements of the composition are categorized into three genre archetypes (canon, motet, and psalmody), five types of contrapuntal techniques (canonical imitation, hoquet, antiphon, continuous imitation and responsory) and four types of 20th century compositional techniques (sonorism, pointillism, quotations and sonoric aleatory technique). Nine vocal techniques and five types of vocal sound are utilized in this composition. These vocal techniques and types of sounds are especially distinctive in the third, fourth, and fifth movements of the work. This is, in all likelihood, the first article to examine the technique of contrapuntal writing as a separate phenomenon in contemporary Russian music on the example of Sofia Gubaidulina’s composition of Hommage a Marina Tsvetaeva, written in the genre of a cycle of pieces for a cappella chorus. Keywords: Sofia Gubaidulina, Marina Tsvetaeva, contemporary polyphonic writing, choral polyphony, choral suite, canon, psalmody, motet.

Вокальная симфония в трактовке Лейфа Сегерстама и Пера Хенрика Нурдгрена

The present article analyzes the approach toward the genre of the vocal symphony of two contemporary symphonic composers – Leif Segerstam and Pehr Henrik Nurdgren; analysis is given to Segerstam’s Symphony No.14 “Moments of Peace III” and Nurdgren’s Sixth Symphony “Interdependence” (1999–2000), which have different orchestral ensembles and structure. Segerstam’s symphony presents a 16-movement cycle for tenor and symphony orchestra and discloses a spectrum of feelings of its lyrical hero. The symphony combines sonoristic and aleatory techniques, reflecting the features intrinsic to Segerstam of the authorial “technique of free pulsation.” In this case the specificity of its realization is connected with the special role of the verbal text in the overall composition. According to the composer’s indications, the aphorisms of John Brown, which lie at the symphony’s foundation, have the option of not being sounded, since the soloist’s timbre during the process of performance is variable (either a voice or one of the instruments). Consequently, the text here preserves its connection with verbal notation: Segerstam used it in his first oeuvres created in his technique. Nurdgren’s symphony draws different performance means: an orchestra, a chorus and two solo vocalists (a soprano and a tenor). The massive ensemble is determined by the composition’s theme: it is written on the text of the “Declaration of Interdependence,” the document which states the basic principles of environmental law. The symphony consists of three movements; all of their particular features (its composition, applied means of vocalization, etc.) are determined by the vocal text, since the directives of the “Declaration” serve as the predominating element in the composition. Thereby, the analyzed compositions demonstrate the fluency of the vocal symphony, its ability to embody diverse types of content and artistic conceptions. At the same time, they demonstrate two paths along which this genre can develop. Being a hybrid genre in its nature, it brings in the means of a vocal cycle (Segerstam’s symphony) or a cantata or oratorio (Nurdgren’s symphony). Keywords: vocal symphony, Leif Segerstam, Symphony No. 14 “Moments of Peace III,” John Brown, Pehr Henrik Nurdgren, Symphony No. 6 “Interdependence,” David Suzuki, Jan Sibelius, “Kullervo” symphony.

Artistic and aesthetic ideas in “Plays” for two pianos by P. Dambis

Artistic and aesthetic ideas in “Plays” for two pianos by P. Dambis

Особенности композиционной работы в «Sechs Vermessene» Эрнста Кшенека: взаимодействие сериализма и алеаторики

Ernst Krenek happily accepted the ideas of integral serialism in the 1950s testing them in their musical practice (“Spiritus Intelligentiae, Sanctus” орus 152, “Sestina” орus 161, “Sechs Vermessene” орus 168, “Quaestio temporis” opus 170). The peak of this interest on his part concurred with the period when total serial determinacy experienced a crisis, and contemporary composers directed their attention to the opposite musical pole – the aleatory technique. Krenek’s theoretical elaborations on the issue of serialism, as well as on the interactions between the predetermined and the random elements found their reflection in the article “Extents and Limits of Serial Techniques” (1960). The resulting musical manifestation of these thoughts was the piano cycle “Sechs Vermessene” орus 168 (1958), the title of which imprinted the untranslatable pun of two conceptions: the German word “vermessen” can be translated simultaneously as “measured” and “self-willed.” The serial expansion in this composition encompasses the spheres of pitch and rhythm, as well as density, intensity and register. The article analyzes in detail the first four pieces of the cycle. The author draws parallels with the compositional procedures of Milton Babbitt (the method of registral delamination), Pierre Boulez (the counterpoint of parameters), Olivier Messiaen (the technique of symmetrical permutations) and John Cage (the method of random actions), reconstructs the pre-compositional sound material of the fourth piece, and demonstrates the mistakes and inaccuracies arising upon the realization of the serial schemes in the piece. The analysis reveals the close interconnection between the determined and undetermined elements in the compositional process of the “Sechs Vermessene.” For example, the mathematical computations carried out by the composer for the precise fixation of rhythm leads to the necessity of making use of a new means of notation (wavelike stems), which in the end reflects the precise meanings only approximately. Study of Krenek’s piano cycle, as well as of the composer’s theoretical works, makes it possible to reevaluate the traditional correlation of serialism with the aleatory technique. The transition to composition using the method of random actions must not be considered a reaction to total determinacy; moreover, these methods must not be presented as being opposed to each other. The aleatory technique is, in essence, a natural and inevitable consequence of serialism. Keywords: Ernst Krenek, “Sechs Vermessene,” Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Olivier Messiaen, Milton Babbitt, serial music, serialism, aleatory technique.

Об алеаторике исполнительского процесса в «Антифонах» Сергея Слонимского

The article is devoted to Sergei Slonimsky’s string quartet Antiphons – one of the brightest examples of this genre of the last third of the 20th century, which possesses a unique string quartet phonosphere. This composition has paved the way for the search of modern Russian composers in the direction of reinvention of the sound of this classical musical ensemble, its characterization as a single timbre endowed with rich coloristic possibilities. The original concept of this work, implicated by the contrast of sound in time and space inherent in it, is artistically manifested by means of avant-garde stylistic traits of musical language, where a substantial position is endowed to the aleatory technique. The element of chance is an important part of the artistic design of Antiphons, not only on the level of the creation of a musical composition, but also at the stage of its realization in performance. From the standpoint of the aleatory element of the performing process, the author examines various parameters of the musical language, which are established by each of the performers of the string quartet, according to the composer's instructions, as well as those components which pertain to the performers’ range of techniques: the musicians moving around on stage, intonating as a means of artistic expression, the organization of quantal rhythm, as well as individual playing techniques and methods of sound production. They are conducive to creating the antiphonic sounds of the string quartet ensemble endowed with a wide range of sonorous colors and bright coloristic effects, which creates the impression of a living, permanently changing musical fabric and total freedom of the performing process taking place on the stage. As a result, the author of the article asserts that due to the aleatory technique of the performance present in the Antiphons, the musicians in the string quartet act as sort of co-authors of the composition, each time creating a new version of it during every performance of it. This variety of act of collaboration between the composer and the performers presents a confirmation of the fact that the musical composition is living material capable of a multitude of performance interpretations. Keywords: Sergei Slonimsky, Antiphons, string quartet, aleatory technique, the process of performance, instrumental performance.

Интерпретация иноязычных текстов в вокальных циклах Д. Смирнова

The author of the article examines twelve chamber-vocal cycles written by Dmitri Smirnov from 1973 to 2017 to texts by William Shakespeare, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Joyce, Kathleen Raine, Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issy, Friederich Holderlin. A large portion of text in other languages in music by Smirnov by the fact that the problem of intersemiotic translation, which is most significant for the composer, is realized in it by various means. The article analyzes the lexical and semantical peculiarities of the poetical texts of the vocals cycles, which are performed in English, Japanese and German, and the influence of these peculiarities on the choice of certain musically expressive means and compositional techniques. Thus the parallel between verbal and musical poly-linguity is found, the impact of the lexical-semantic field of “nature” on broad usage of sound-depictive, sonar and aleatory techniques, the reflection of the aspiration of the poets towards myth-creation and symbolism in the usage of visual signs and elements of instrumental theater. An important role in the formation of the special fascination on the part of Smirnov to the serial technique was played by his lessons with Philip Herschkowitz, the continuer of the traditions of the composers of the Second Viennese School. The methodology, means of work with the twelve-tone series, the contrapuntal qualities, and the miniature forms demonstrate the manifestation of the influence of the music of Anton Webern. Keywords: composer Dmitri Smirnov, song cycle, poly-lingual text setting, serialism, modality, sonorism, soundpictorial quality, instrumental theater, William Blake, Matsuo Basho.

«Свободная пульсирующая композиция» Лейфа Сегерстама как индивидуальный алеаторный проект

This article is devoted to the characteristics of “freely-pulsating composition.” This technique has been developed in the works of Leif Segerstam – a significant Finnish composer and conductor. Segerstam’s creativity astonishes by its extremely prolific quality. The composer wrote more than three hundred symphonies and also numerous compositions in other genres. Such artistically creative activity has been stipulated by those principles of composition which the Finnish composer has developed. Their formation and evolution took up over two decades. The “freely-pulsating phase” was initiated by Segerstam in the mid-1970s, while all the basic features of the composer’s technique were formed by the late 1990s. In its final variant, the method of “free pulsation” became connected with the sphere of the symphony: it has been demonstrated by musical compositions written since the early 2000s. These symphonies are essentially one-movement sonoristic compositions, generally, all of them of the same duration and performed without a conductor (in Segerstam’s words, they rely on an “built-in conducting mechanism”). Their musical texture is based on an aleatory counterpoint, in which the various instrumental parts are synchronized loosely. The form of symphonies consists of several (from 5 to 8) blocks, in which there is an alternation of more and less controlled sections. In general, the features of “freely-pulsating composition” make it possible to consider it an individual version of aleatory techniques and to see its preimages in the American music from the 1960s, with the works of Earle Brown and Christian Wolff. Keywords: Segerstam, aleatory technique, aleatory symphony, freely-pulsating composition, built-in conducting mechanism.

Statistical Form amongst the Darmstadt School

AbstractThis article analyses the Darmstadt composers' discourse around the concept of ‘statistical form’ in the mid‐ to late 1950s and early 1960s. Stockhausen introduced this terminology in a 1954 analysis of Debussy's Jeux, but the real inspiration lies in the nascent electronic music studio. Using score and sketch analysis, published writings and correspondence, I show how Ligeti, Boulez and Pousseur also made critical contributions to the definition and application of statistical form in music. Along the way I introduce foundational concepts from information theory and show how they were disseminated in Moles's and Meyer‐Eppler's teachings and writings. Via information theory, I investigate how Xenakis's early stochastic sound‐mass music and Cage's aleatory techniques are related to statistical form. Ultimately, I show that a network of shared ideas underlies statistical form, even when debate characterises the discourse and each composer's musical rendering of the concept is distinct. In closing, the article suggests that statistical form represents a second stage of serialism, precipitating a move towards density and texture in sound that was shared by many in the Darmstadt circle.

An Almost Unknown Land: Some Remarks on the Spanish String Quartet in the Twentieth (and Twenty-first) Century

The composition of new string quartets in Spain from the end of the 1950s undertook a path of renewal that strove toward modernity through the use of serial and aleatory techniques or new conceptions of timbre. This was in spite of the relatively scarce experience for Spanish composers of international examples of the genre. This essay offers a brief insight into the aesthetic diversity to be found in string quartets composed in Spain from 1950 up to the present, and stresses their openness toward newer hybrid perspectives of intertextuality and narrativity.

Mistaken Plaesures Pleasures

Mistaken Plaesures Pleasures Peter Schwenger (bio) The Other Day I was explaining to my panelists that although they were accepted for the mla Special Session I was organizing, the session as a whole would still have to get accepted by “the posers that be”—oops—that should be “powers.” Or maybe not: on second thought, I prefer the typo. Roland Barthes said that his typing mistakes meant that “there is something inside me that resists the word and punishes it by distorting it” (119–20). But you can also get some quirky bonuses emerging from the touch of a fat finger. These are often truer or newer than what one intended to write. And autocorrect often just compounds the problem, as shown on the next page, by the iPhone exchange posted on the web.1 What I like about errors, and their even more disastrous corrections, is that they open a chink in the so-called prison house of language. Through that chink pour all kinds of surreal possibilities—so much so that the surrealists, among others, deliberately courted such possibilities through aleatory techniques, as with Exquisite Corpse. This parlour game is best known in its visual form, where part of a body is drawn and then folded over, with only a few lines overlapping onto the next part of the page, then [End Page 16] passed over to the next artist to repeat the process. But there is a verbal form, which I used to inflict on students in my creative writing class. A grammatical structure is predetermined—usually in the form of a National Enquirer headline—and then the papers are passed around with only one word at a time showing. When you unfold it at the end, you have the headline of a bizarre news story, which you then have to write. It was a way of prying my students away from realistic fiction about the tribulations of sensitive adolescents. Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 17] This is art founded on mistakes—or is that the right word? They are mistakes if you have a notion of what is correct. When I’m typing away, presumably my aim is to produce a perfect, error-free page. But the surrealist products I have been talking about are neither perfect nor imperfect; for both these terms depend on a standard against which they can be assessed—a standardized language that is already in place. It dominates us through patterns that are not only patterns of grammar, lexicography, orthography, and so on—they are also patterns of thought. But in typing errors these patterns reveal their arbitrary and fragmented nature. The words can now be seen as a confetti of letters, letters that are nothing but lines, and “alphabetical order” is seen to be an oxymoron. And here’s another way in which I like imperfect language: it allows me to take a holiday from my official definition as an articulate, intelligent literary critic, because those descriptors are true but also false. So there are moments when I say—to myself or others—screw it, it don’t make no never mind to me: I yam what I yam, like Popeye. Deliberately using slang or bad grammar gets me off the hook on which I have hung my precious self-esteem, gives me a little vacation. Pathetic, I know. But there is also a kind of raw energy in that language that you can’t tap any other way. Put next to a fearlessly ungrammatical vulgarity, a properly constructed sentence can seem pallid and indeed somewhat repellent, the sort of thing up with which we will not put. We should also remind ourselves of all the literary practices that give pleasure precisely because they are mistakes. • Hudibrastic rhymes, especially as practised by Byron: But—Oh! Ye lords of ladies intellectual,Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all? • Metre that deliberately breaks the rule of equal accents in each line, hanging on by the fingernail of a dubious rhyme, as in Ogden Nash: Most bankers dwell in marble halls,Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals. • Or...

Giving shape to “airy nothing”. Poetics and reception of the open work in contemporary children’s literature (Prince or Princess?)

According to Umberto Eco the idea of the open work (opera operta) serves to explain the apparent radical difference between modern and traditional art. The open work represents through its formal properties an epistemological difference in the whole experience of the world. It reflects the relativity, subjectivity and discontinuity of the modern world. The concept of “openness” — the artist’s decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of the work to the addressee — anticipates major themes of contemporary literary theory such as the multiplicity of interpretations and the literary response as an interactive interplay between reader and text. With references to works of some great illustrators of children’s books such as M. Ocelot and J. Piencowski, masters of dramatic silhouettes, and analysing their innovative and even aleatory techniques, we explore a set of theoretical issues such as the reception of suggestiveness/openness of a text, the meaning of blankness and the aesthetic of silence in children’s books’ illustration.

The Music of Mauricio Kagel (review)

The Music of Mauricio Kagel. By Bjorn Heile. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. [viii, 209 p. ISBN 10: 0-7546- 3523-6; ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-3523-9. $99.95.] Music examples, photos, notes, chronological list of works, select bibliography, indexes. This is the first monograph in English devoted to the music of Mauricio Kagel, a major figure of the European musical avant-garde in the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Buenos Aires in 1931 and self-taught as a composer, Kagel immigrated to Cologne, Germany in 1957 where he received international recognition for his music. Although he possessed a varied compositional palette that included aspects of integral serialism, indeterminancy, and classical electronic music, Kagel focused on visual and theatrical elements in his works as a means to critique modern attitudes toward music. For him, improvisation was a means whereby performers could uncover new sounds and theatrical modes of expression, making musical performance, in essence, a dramatic event. Besides being active as a composer, conductor, lecturer, and professor since 1958, Kagel has been writing and directing television films since 1965, and authoring radio dramas (Horspiele) since 1969. He has garnered numerous awards, honors, and prizes, among which include the Koussevitzky Prize (1965), the Mozart Medaille of Frankfurt (1983), the French Order des arts et des lettres (1995), the Erasmus Prize (1998), Prix Maurice Ravel (1999), Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis (2000), and the Rolf Schock Prize for Music (2005). In this important book, Bjorn Heile examines Kagel's development as a composer and the musical aesthetics driving his work. He notes Kagel's expansion of the conceptual boundaries of music through both an elaborate imagination and a subversive humor bordering on the bizarre. Characteristic of Kagel's style is the absurd combination of strict compositional technique and playful rhetorical gestures involving irony and paradox. Kagel is, in short, a musical satirist who examines the various ways in which society views music, whether as a commercial product, a significant component of a religious experience, or the subject of scholarly expertise. Heile states that The Music of Mauricio Kagel is both a traditional monograph with pieces examined in chronological order as well as a series of essays on different aspects of Kagel's musical style (p. 5). One can either read the book, Heile maintains, from cover to cover as a critical investigation of Kagel's music or use it as a reference work. In the former case, readers will find that Heile has outlined the different elements of Kagel's musical style in an impressive manner, skillfully placing them in their wider critical contexts. In this reviewer's opinion, readers will also react favorably to how Heile has revealed the breadth of Kagel's imagination and the multiple contexts informing his work. After outlining the goals and structure of The Music of Mauricio Kagel in an introduction (In Search of Kagel), Heile reveals the remarkable range of Kagel's creativity in six chapters. In the first (Buenos Aires), the author explores the roots of Kagel's compositional aesthetics-especially his fascination with how musical expression can be achieved through diverse media and extra- musical contexts-by examining the composer's formative years in Buenos Aires. In particular, Heile notes the pivotal influence of Jorge Luis Borges, Kagel's English teacher at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores and a great South American writer in his own right. For Heile, Borges's impact on Kagel can be seen in the latter's preoccupations with labyrinths, encyclopedias, cabbalistic concepts and techniques, and the idea of parallel realities governed by strange rules (p. 11). Chapter 2 (Beginnings in Cologne: Serialism, Aleatory Technique and Electronics), deals with Kagel's early years in Cologne as a devotee of serialism, aleatoric techniques, and electronic music. …

An Analysis of Lutoslawski`s Venetian Games with an Emphasis on His Aleatory Techniques

An Analysis of Lutoslawski`s Venetian Games with an Emphasis on His Aleatory Techniques

An Interview with Harry Mathews

Born in New York in 1930, Harry Mathews studied music at Harvard University. Though he has frequently taught writing in the United States, since the 1950s Mathews has lived in France. His first novel, The Conversions, appeared in 1962.(1) In 1973 he was asked to join the international experimental writing group Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle) whose members included Italo Calvino and George Perec.(2) Oulipian writers practice and theorize the use of what they call constrictive in the writing process. Because Oulipians explore an astonishingly wide range of such procedures (mathematical formulas, limited vocabularies, aleatory techniques) and use them in quite different ways, their texts can be collectively identified only by a consistent attack on the romantic notion of authorship as a matter of inspiration and genius. Even before joining Oulipo, Mathews was especially influenced by the French writer Raymond Roussel, whose deadpan tone, minutely descriptive narratives, and bizarre text generation techniques became one of the most important precedents for the Oulipo and for Mathews. Roussel, for instance, by switching one vowel in one word in a sentence composed of words with multiple meanings, would come up with two very different sentences; relating these sentences then became the task for his novel, moving from the first to the second meaning as the envelope of the narrative. Mathews's early novels present deceptively simple quest narratives that get side-tracked into realms of absurdly specific erudition. Though plot concerns always seem to drive the need for the protagonists (and the reader) to sort through these complicated, interwoven, and beautifully told bodies of knowledge, the collective effect of Mathews's tales within tales is often to collapse plot into a mosaic of diversions that foregrounds questions of interpretation and relevance. While Mathews's earlier novels tend to be anti-psychological, in his more recent fiction psychology reappears filtered through an Oulipian lens. The narration of his novel, Cigarettes (1987), is structured by the depiction of fourteen character-relationships. In The Journalist, the protagonist's increasing desire for realism in his diary gradually takes over the narrative and the character's life. Mathews is also a significant critic and poet; his 1977 book of poems, Trial Impressions, exhaustively rewrites a short Elizabethan love lyric by the English poet and musician John Dowland into the linguistic and social world of the 1970s. The following interview took place in Paris in May of 1994. LYTLE SHAW: I want to ask you about the concept of play that holds so much interest for Oulipians. The way I understand it, a number of twentieth-century theoreticians and writers have reimagined German Idealism's concept of play by arguing for a kind of radical interpretive participation or readerly involvement that comes to be seen, in many cases, as a form of non-alienated labor. But since the early 1960s, when you wrote your first novels, the discourse surrounding play has become more self-reflexive and now, for instance, a number of important critiques of the political efficacy of play have emerged. How, then, do you see the evolution of this concept over the last thirty years? Do you still find some kind of political liberation in the idea of readerly participation? HARRY MATHEWS: The answer to that is certainly yes. But I'd like to say at the beginning that for me the approach that I found in Raymond Roussel - getting to material through arbitrary, game-like procedures - was primarily a way that allowed me to get myself out of the place where I was stuck - feeling and thinking certain ways about the world, confronted with the huge difficulty of working directly from that into the production of the text. The playful procedures gave me something completely different to do and moved me onto another terrain from which I could come back to the material, whatever that might be. …