The Process That Is the World: CageDeleuzeEventsPerformances by Joe Panzner

Author:Joe Panzner [Panzner, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music, General, Genres & Styles, Electronic, History & Criticism, Recording & Reproduction
ISBN: 9781628925739
Google: pfCuCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2015-12-17T20:51:19+00:00

5

“Through Many a Perilous Situation” (Performances)

What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real … A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back “to the same.” The map has to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an alleged “competence.”1

A Happening should be like a net to catch fish the nature of which one does not know. And at this point the word “discipline” means what it originally meant—namely, giving up oneself in order, one could even say, to know oneself.2

How are we to judge a performance of Cage’s music when Cage has displaced most traditional criteria for the judgment of performance? In his indeterminate scores, there is rarely an order of resemblance between notation and sounding result—most scores require several degrees of translation and modification to render them performable. There are few ways to compare the fidelity of a performer’s actions to the instructions in the score, actions that are always bound to diverge from the performer’s intentions as complex situations unfold. There are occasional signposts provided in the compositions themselves (a gesture, notated pitches, timed reference points), but rarely a means of mapping a sonic object back upon any composed prefigurations. Cage insists that it is never sufficient to look for criteria of “correctness” or adequacy—the very idea of correctness holds little appeal. “A ‘correct understanding’ doesn’t interest me,” he asserts in For the Birds. “With a music-process, there is no ‘correct understanding’ anywhere. And, consequently, no all-pervasive ‘misunderstanding,’ either.” Every performance is its own unique event and carries its own unique charge of indeterminacy; like sounds themselves, every performance implicates a complex, dynamic field that exceeds any individual agency. To perform within this complex field is not to act unilaterally, but to modify and tweak the conditions under which an action expresses itself. And like sounds themselves, performers should be active and dynamic but should not “worry about whether they make sense or whether they’re heading in the right direction. They don’t need that direction or misdirection to be themselves. They are, and that’s enough for them.”3

Moreover, Cage’s judgments about performances and seemingly contradictory attitudes toward concert preparation further complicate matters. Cage was staunchly averse to most preconcert preparations: one of the compositional priorities listed in his introduction to Themes and Variations is A MUSIC THAT NEEDS NO REHEARSAL.4 Yet, he routinely demanded extensive rehearsals for orchestras after a series of debacles involving under-rehearsed and careless ensembles, and he worked closely in performance preparations with any number of musicians.5 In some cases, Cage praised performers who apparently deviated consciously from the score or performances that seemed marred by external complications that made it impossible to execute the score’s demands faithfully. In other cases, performances that appear to follow the letter of the law lead to swift and occasionally angry condemnations. These judgments show less concern for fidelity to the score than a concern for maintaining an ethical stance

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