The New Discipline, by Jennifer Walshe

“Theater provides the unique experience of watching the body in real time, inside a story…there is reality occurring in front of viewing eyes, and the combustible mix of reality with what is being presented on stage is enticing and electric.”

— Richard Maxwell, Theater for Beginners

“…I was born with an ectomorphic body, all skin and bones. However, after being inspired by a passage from the diaries of the Pop artist Mr. Andy Warhol – a passage where he expresses his sorrow after learning in his middle-fifties that if he had exercised, he could have had a body (imagine not having a body!) – I was galvanized into action…..Hence, I now have a body.”

— Douglas Coupland, Generation X

“The New Discipline” is a term I’ve adopted over the last year. The term functions as a way for me to connect compositions which have a wide range of disparate interests but all share the common concern of being rooted in the physical, theatrical and visual, as well as musical; pieces which often invoke the extra-musical, which activate the non-cochlear. In performance, these are works in which the ear, the eye and the brain are expected to be active and engaged. Works in which we understand that there are people on the stage, and that these people are/have bodies.

Examples of composers working in this way include: Object Collection, James Saunders, Matthew Shlomowitz, Neele Hülcker, François Sarhan, Jessie Marino, Steven Takasugi, Natacha Diels, myself.

The New Discipline is a way of working, both in terms of composing and preparing pieces for performance. It isn’t a style, though pieces may share similar aesthetic concerns. Composers working in this way draw on dance, theatre, film, video, visual art, installation, literature, stand-up comedy. In the rehearsal room the composer functions as a director or choreographer, perhaps most completely as an auteur. The composer doesn’t have aspirations to start a theatre group – they simply need to bring the tools of the director or choreographer to bear on compositional problems, on problems of musical performance. This is the discipline – the rigour of finding, learning and developing new compositional and performative tools. How to locate a psychological/physiological node which produces a very specific sound; how to notate tiny head movements alongside complex bow manoeuvres; how to train your body so that you can run 10 circuits of the performance space before the piece begins; how to make and maintain sexualised eye contact with audience members whilst manipulating electronics; how to dissolve the concept of a single author and work collectively; how to dissolve the normal concept of what a composition is.

And always, always, working against the clock, because the disciplines which are drawn from have the luxury of development and rehearsal periods far longer than those commonly found in new music. Then again, the New Discipline relishes the absence of that luxury, of the opportunity to move fast and break things. In this way, it is a *practice* more than anything else. And the concomitant: the New Discipline is located in the fact of composers being interested and willing to perform, to get their hands dirty, to do it themselves, do it immediately.






The New Discipline thrives on the inheritance of Dada, Fluxus, Situationism etc but doesn’t allow itself to be written off merely as Dada, Fluxus, Situationism etc. It’s a music being written when Dada, Fluxus, Situationism etc have aged well and are universally respected. It takes these styles for granted, both lovingly and cheekily, in the same way it takes harmony and the electric guitar for granted. As starting points. As places to begin working.

New Discipline works can easily be designated, even well-meaningly ghettoised, as “music theatre”. While Kagel et al are clear ancestors, too much has happened since the 1970s for that term to work here. MTV, the Internet, Beyonce ripping off Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Stewart Lee, Girls, style blogs and yoga classes at Darmstadt, Mykki Blanco, the availability of cheap cameras and projectors, the supremacy of YouTube documentations over performances. Maybe what is at stake for the New Discipline is the fact that these pieces, these modes of thinking about the world, these compositional techniques – they are not “music theatre”, they *are* music. Or from a different perspective, maybe what is at stake is the idea that all music is music theatre. Perhaps we are finally willing to accept that the bodies playing the music are part of the music, that they’re present, they’re valid and they inform our listening whether subconsciously or consciously. That it’s not too late for us to have bodies.

Jennifer Walshe, Roscommon, January 2016

jones big ass harmonisation

Where does this fascination for the harmonization come from ?

A lot of musicians nowadays post arrangements of anything spoken, sung, whether it is spectacular, like Obama 's speech, or funny and cheap, like the example of Jones Big Ass Truck rental.

What is the source of this attraction, and of this interest ?

First one must say that the technic is not new: already in the seventies, and early eighties, artists like Zappa have been interested in the music of the speech, and reinforced it by simple doubling :

Then the next step in elaborating on spoken voice introduced into music was to add an harmonization, by Steve Reich, for instance:

Here the samples of the voices are very short, and the music is more important than the quantity of text, of prerecorded material.

In the case of pre recorded material, like Big Ass Jones, the idea is more to give a musical environment to natural sounds, whether they are vocal, or environmental, accompanied with image. In the case of Reich, it's more a material to elaborate a classical composition.

THe fundamental idea in this doubling is the idea of melting different layers of perception and reality: one being daily, without value, with no importance: the spoken voice, even for Big Ass Jones, parody, dirtiness of signification. To give it a new value, a astonishing value, a preciousness which is far from being implied by the first material :

 In the case of Reich, it's a bit different, since the samples are cleaner, and selected to such a degree that they could have been recorded on purpose.

The basic, the fundamental idea in this confrontation of reality and the precious world of delicate harmony (in the case of Big Jones Ass it's particularly sophisticated) is the magical idea of revealing the invisible in the visible, namely to reveal the hidden musical structure of the banal common life. 

It is restauring a sort of unity which is not lost, but seems to have always been here although hidden.

It is not religious, since it doesn't imply an idea of any god or any humiliation/passivity/acceptance, it's really inside the nature of music, which is to be a magical act of revealing the secret relations between our perception and nature.

body and music

The relation instrumentalists have with their physical body is of a particular kind. Their body is substituted by the instrument, at least during the performance. All the muscles, the nervous system is dedicated to make this weird keys and holes system that we call a clarinet obey to the sound image the performer wants to transmit.
When this practice lasts for years, to ask a musician to take the instrument out and express him or herself without, is a source of serious difficulties.
As a retired cellist i´ve always considered the instrument to be part of the chain which doesn´t make music but more surely keeps us encapsulated in the net and the chains of duty, control, and conventions (a certain idea of beauty, a repertoire, orchestras, etc.).
It doesn t mean that using the body to produce music necessarily goes into either the direction of Bobby mc Ferrin (substituting the sound of the instruments by the ones of the body) or dance. The body can express many sound activities, either while producing sound, or by the memory of it. By memory i mean that some gestures convey some sounds even if they are produced in silent. Our memory reconstitutes the absent sound. And this effect is of the same nature and importance than the dissociation of the sound and its source provided by the loudspeaker. It is an abstraction, an opening towards broad interpretation, and the substrat for layering and constructing a work.
For that reason i would like to insist on the perversion and the highly problematic usual denominations “music”, “theatre”, “music theatre”, “performance”. I know like everybody else the reasons and the usefulness of these terms, and i´m not claiming the need for a new one. But they are terribly misleading because they isolate phenomenons, an isolation which doesn´t belong to us. I think we are generally analogic in our interpretations, and synesthesic in our perceptions. The example of the memory of the sound given by the look, the example of the instrument that we visualise when we hear its recording shows (among thousands) that our life is entirely depending on this supreme faculty: associating, reflecting, reverberating impressions, perceptions, consciously or not. It has nothing to do with one special field.
The separation of activities, already theorised by Plato, and then generalised in our every day life certainly is part of the source of these conception. “ You shall do one thing only, for the sake of the City”. The ancient idea of the poet, who sings, composes, writes texts and carries the divine voice is pulled back to earth by the social and economic regulations. In other cultures, like central Africa or Thailand, the artistic practice is not reserved to the specialists but can be part of everyday´s life, mixing the sacred, the decorative with the functional and the useful aspects of life.



This synesthesic approach, where our senses and our memory are sollicitated without distinction is certainly a completely underestimated one, even in art.
I´ve been experiencing these ideas in a series of short pieces, called Situations. These pieces use one or two found phrases (slogans, proverbs, aphorisms), a certain physical configuration (one, two three performers), a space (chair, table or nothing, preferably nothing), and use a very traditional notation that can be read by music beginners. They can be performed in any language, with no gender, age etc. considerations.
They float between music, theatre, music theatre, performance, actions, rituals. But they all have in common the importance given to the gestures, the net of significations deployed by them. The different layers (text, situation, gestures) are not necessarily consistent, which connects to the absurdist theatre of the 60´s, with a possible comical effect. However, the musical notation keeps them in a different shape, or texture than the one of theatre, which is the time order: the set of actions is musically organised.
Useless to say that these little pieces (although they are very successful among musicians) still have difficulties to find their perfect performers: a lot of musicians have difficulties to give up with their instrument (their transitional object). Opening the borders of music towards these crossed perceptions (involving maybe the eyes, or the smell, the touch) requires an absence of specific in one specific domain. One must be able to give up with a lot of excellence references in order to find the fine tuning between the fields of action, voice, action, rhythm.
These Situations are very small, very short, and confidential (for a very limited audience and small amount of performers), but i keep looking at them as one of the keys to unlock our categories, our limitations and our absence of bodies.

françois sarhan, feb. 2016

un mouvement, un genre, une mode ?

la renaissance d´un genre

où le son n´est pas prisonnier d´un jeu de règle purement scolastique, qui justifie son existence par des règles préétablies

où le son est intégré, marié, à des jeux, de ressorts, des mécanismes qui en ouvrent et multiplient le potentiel

où l´interprète n´est pas un élève anonyme du conservatoire qui a réussi son concours d´entrée dans un orchestre,

où il est présent, à lui-même, en tant que personne, avec un genre, un age, une vie,
et que sa virtuosité anonyme n´est plus sollicitée que marginalement

où le corps et l´oeil sont présents, sans pour autant que la musique disparaisse, ou devienne secondaire
     c´est au contraire la musique en premier, mais la musique étendue à des dimensions plus vastes
la musique rétablie à son champ d´expression corporelle, théâtrale

une musique qui n´habite plus seulement le temps, mais aussi l espace.

qui retrouve un lien avec la vie, avec ce que la vie a de plus précaire, de moins esthétisée. c´est le rêve d´un art qui soit une médiation avec l´expérience humaine, et non un miroir abstrait de cette expérience. un art qui ne soit pas auto référentiel, mais ouvert sur les aléas et les imprévus de ce qui lui est étranger: la lumière, le mouvement, le texte, la rue.

une musique qui souffle, qui vieillit avec nous, qui ne cherche pas l´éternité comme horizon, qui ne pense pas la grande salle de concert comme étalon de son succès, comme condition de sa survie.

une musique qui refuse les prix, mais accepte la confrontation avec  le monde.

qui ne se rêve pas en statue de marbre, héritière d´un savoir millénaire.

qui réintègre la performance unique, non recommençable,

qui refuse la fonctionnalité du concert, des instruments, des ensembles, des chefs, des directeurs artistiques

qui exclut les tournée et les cds, qui vit dans des lieux qui ne la souhaite pas.

remarques

1. Chacun est libre d´écrire la musique qui lui plait, sans avoir à s´en justifier.

2. D´où vient alors ce besoin de se justifier pour messieurs Ducros et Pécuchet ? Quel chagrin ont-ils eu avec leurs papas, pour etre obligé de démonter Boulez (et tous les mystérieux ATONALISTES qui rodent !) ?

3. Il parait que les compositeurs atonals "se sont voulus vierges de tout héritage". Ah ha ? Mais pourquoi etre d´aussi mauvaise foi, mr Pécuchet ? Schönberg n´a pas cessé de se référer à Brahms, Bach, BEethoven (avec vénération), Boulez à Webern, Debussy, Webern à Ocqueghem, etc. Bien au contraire, ils se sont en permanence référés au passé !

4. Ducros, dans sa mauvaise foi phénoménale, fait passer un test chronologique à son public (acquis, comme il se doit). Personne ne peut placer Ferneyhough, Carter et Varèse sur une ligne chronologique. Mais son public serait-il plus capable de distinguer Beffa de Szymanovsky et de Scriabine ?

5. beffa fulmine contre l´avant-garde qui a"monopolisé les commandes officielles". Ah oui ? Pourtant, si on regarde les commandes officielles entre 1950 et 1970 en France, on trouve Mr Jolivet, Mr Poulenc, Mr Françaix, Mr Milhaud, Mr Messiaen, etc. La musique atonale est représentée tout autant, (Serge Nigg, etc.) mais loin d´etre dominante !

6. Alors, aujourd´hui il n´y aurait peut-etre pas assez de place dans les institutions pour Pécuchet & co ? C´est que l´orchestre de Paris qui joue du beffa, par exemple, est privé, et dénué de subventions ? Et il  enseigne à l´ENS, qui, comme chacun sait,  est une école parfaitement publique...... De quoi se plaint Pécuchet, au juste ? Qu´on ne le prenne pas aussi au sérieux que Boulez ?

6b. Pourtant, la posture du compositeur maudit devrait séduire beffa (beffa admire baudelaire pourtant), pourquoi ne reste-t´il pas sur cette chaise ?

7. D´un coté, "Mozart parle le même langage musical que Haydn, que Beethoven, mais aussi que Salieri ou Clementi." ça ne semble pas déranger Pécuchet. Mais peu après, "La diversité dans la création, qui permettait à chaque compositeur de tracer sa voie originale a été brutalement stoppée par la mainmise paradoxale sur les institutions d’une avant-garde..." aaaah... l avant garde (on aimerait savoir ce que c´est mais passons) aurait eu raison au XVIII siècle alors ? la contradiction conceptuelle d´une phrase à l´autre ne fait certes pas peur à Pécuchet.

8. Sur l´ircam :"Dérive néfaste, le chercheur en vient à remplacer progressivement le compositeur : la musique se fait en laboratoire à l’aide de technologies informatiques coûteuses et sophistiquées. " Mais Pécuchet, va faire un tour à l´Ircam au lieu de répéter les aneries de Paris Match... Il faut etre d´une ignorance ABSOLUE pour parler comme ça. Un imbécile qui y met les pieds 5 minutes comprendra que c´est le contraire qui s´y passe. Mais Pécuchet s´en fiche, il a ses comptes à rendre, et il sait que personne ne va le contredire directement.

9. les attaques de pécuchet-beffa sont en géneral mal documentées, de mauvaise foi, imprécises, et meme parfois complètement erronées. On a l´impression de lire un journaliste des années 20 : les memes critiques éculées de rapport à l´émotion, à l´intellectualité, etc. On ne peut que suggérer aux auditeurs et lecteurs de bonne volonté de lire les réponses données à l´époque par les musiciens eux-meme.

10. beffa est populiste en musique comme les le pen le sont en politique : tout est bon pour servir leur ambition démesurée. de la déformation des faits (musicaux, sociaux, historiques) à l´invention pure et simple, tout joue sur l´élaboration d´une PEUR du NOUVEAU (= de l´étranger pour les le pen).
un nouveau, un étranger qui bousculerait le connu, l´appris, le convenu. Qui remettrait en cause nos valeurs, d´écoute, de société, etc.

11. le populisme musicologique de beffa a comme référent musical son style, emprunté au tournant du XIX / XX°. Scriabine, Szymanovsky, saupoudré de Ligeti (unique emprunt au XX° avant-gardiste). Cette musique bien sur rassure beffa et ses admirateurs, en leur fournissant une image AVANT GUERRE, essentiellement AVANT XX° du monde : l´orchestre symphonique, le concerto, la quasi tonalité, le """"lyrisme"""" dans sa version cliché (boursouflure gestuelle). Une sorte de nostalgie d´un monde européen bourgeois au faite de son pouvoir, avant l´effondrement des guerres mondiales etc.

12. cette nostalgie d´une musique symphonique qui ignore le XX° a pour pendant politique (à droite) la nostalgie d´une France qui domine on ne sait quoi, l´Europe, l´Afrique du Nord, en tous cas une France FORTE, celle de cette meme période historique, celle de la tour Eiffel et des expositions universelles.

13. beffa fait la théorie de sa pratique, et non la pratique de sa théorie : ses présupposés (il dira son "gout", ce "qu´il aime") qu´il n´envisage pas d´ouvrir à d´autres formes (c´est son droit le plus strict) alimentent sa pseudo théorie de la composition. Non que le gout ne puisse y prendre place, naturellement, mais ses limites (pourtant criantes au regard de l immensité de la musique qu il nie) sont NIEES, CACHEES, sous représentées. Par exemple, il n e parle JAMAIS de musique électronique (de quelque bord que ce soit).

14. L´idée que la qualité d´une musique se mesure à son succès public (qui est une idée populiste sans cesse suggérée par ducros et pécuchet) a pour pendant cette blague américaine :

EAT THAT SHIT !!! TEN MILLION FLIES CAN´T BE WRONG !

15. la proximité de beffa / ducros avec le populisme est démontré concrètement (si besoin était) par l interview de BEFFA par DUCROS dans CAUSEUR.  On admirera, à coté de la photo de beffa, celle de Zemmour.