christian wolff, cardew, other things
::from an interview w/ c.w.:
'On a more pragmatic level, many of these pieces that are indeterminate are not, in the conventional sense, difficult to play. That had a lot to do with the fact that I myself am not virtuoso by any stretch of the imagination, but on the other hand, I very much wanted to be playing. These pieces were originally done at a time when it was very difficult to get professional performances. We had almost no resources. To make music that was available for performance to a wide range of performers, not necessarily professionals, that was definitely a factor. It's a little paradoxical, because I was hanging out with people like David Tudor. It really pleased me to be able to make a music that on the one hand would be interesting for somebody like Tudor, who could do wonderful things with it, and at the same time, would also be available for people like myself, who were basically amateurs, as far as performing went.'

::from an essay on marxist musical practice, Music as Metaphor for Social Order and Process:
'Wolff, during the 1970s especially, pioneered the concept of pieces in which the process of rehearsal and performance becomes a model of social interaction, a way of revealing to the performers what kind of power struggles erupt in interactive situations, and how to avoid them. His early pieces such as For One, Two, or Three People (1964) had placed performers in the situation of reacting to each other according to rules, with some leeway. Wolff says that he was later made aware of the political implications of the "democratic interdependence" required by such pieces...

In 1975, I remember performing, as a student among many others, in Exercises at the June in Buffalo festival. Afterwards the performers engaged in a discussion to examine how the piece went. Those who had taken an aggressive leadership role during rehearsals and made decisions for the group declared that the process had indeed been a model of democracy and cooperation. Those of us who had been quieter and held back pointed out that the others had been rather dictatorial, and that we felt like we had been railroaded. The performance had been a model for the problems of a democratic cooperative, but not necessarily for the solutions. The other issue for such pieces, of course, is that in a sense they seem to be performed for the benefit of the performers, with little regard for what the audience will experience. In this way one could say they assume a non-European performance practice, such as Native American dances in which every member of a village participates either as musician or dancer.'

::cardew:
'a composer who hears sounds will try to find notation for sounds. one who has ideas will find one that expresses his ideas, leaving interpretation free, in confidence that his ideas have been accurately and concisely notated.'

::christopher hobbs' Voicepiece (see p.4), rad concept, rigid rules interacting with near-randomness

::syr 4...
essay by william winant on the genesis of sonic youth's "goodbye 20th century" project... page includes 3 graphic scores:

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- posted by ...lg... @ 16:42