Episode 6 - Noise vs Silence

This is the final episode of the Make Art Not Warhol radio show, focusing on noise. The history, applications, and aesthetics of noise are discussed, with music by John Cage, Lamont Young, and Yasunao Tone. The idea that noise is unwanted and unnecessary is challenged, and the importance of silence is explored. John Cage's compositions, including Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds, are highlighted, as well as his thoughts on sound and silence. The Lecture on Nothing by Cage is also mentioned. The episode ends with the idea of noise evolving from nothing, with Lamont Young's music as an example. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello and welcome. You're tuned to Resonance 104.4 FM, that community art station with all the crazy stuff on it. This is the Make Art Not Warhol radio show, and I'm your host and crazy carpool buddy, Ilya Rogachevsky. Make Art Not Warhol is a six-part series dedicated to drawing a narrative arc through the history of sound art and experimental music. The idea is to prime your earbuds to the various disparate sonorous possibilities out there while trying to explain the why of what's important. We've been through a lot together, and as sad as it is to admit, admit it I must. This is indeed the final episode of the lot. But fear not, having studied the politics of drama, I have saved the very best till last in a bid to keep you entertained for the next 90 minutes of sweet, sweet airtime. Today's focus is noise, and lots of it. I will be talking about the history of noise, its applications and aesthetics, as well as speculate on its future trajectory. There will be lots of music by the likes of John Cage, Lamont Young, and Yasunao Tone. But before I get proper sticky with all that, let's hear a few words from the poet Steven Jesse Bernstein on the matter. I live on a street where there are many, many cars and trucks and factories that pump and bang and grind all night and day. It is a miracle that I can write poetry or sleep or talk on the telephone or that my lover will visit me here. There is so much noise. Every few minutes a jet comes in low or a prop job swings down like a kamikaze. There is an airport at the end of my street. The new age people say that you choose all these things, choose the cars and trucks and airplanes, me and all of my neighbors. Well, maybe this is true. Maybe we can't live without all this goddamn noise. Maybe I need the noise to write poems, make love and eat. I'm going to hang a sign out my window that says, more noise, please, or thank you for making noise. Maybe we are the kind of people who need to have what we don't want just to get along, to do the basic things. Myself, I could not sleep last night and I could not close the window either. I tried to tear the window out of its frame and put it in a closed position, banging and ripping with the hammer and a screwdriver, standing on the window ledge in my socks, three stories up. But the window wouldn't come out. The factory was screaming and the trucks were rumbling and the whole world was praying for silence and it was up to me to shut the window and I couldn't get it down. I was just making more noise. A jet went by and all the people waved. Thanks, I yelled as the shift changed without a lull in production at the big plant across the street. The workers lined up at the bus stop, watching me with my hammer in the window. I put sponge stoppers in my ears, but I can't stand those things for more than a few minutes. Finally, I put my head between two pillows. It's the same every night. I love it. I need it. Without you, I could not live. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. I would not have written this poem, I yell, the window dangling half on, half off. It is commonly understood that all art is subjective. Our tastes might cross over to some degree, but ultimately dividing factions will arise in many a conversation about the subject. You might find my affection for Scott Walker distasteful, for example, while I would struggle to identify with your James Bay fixation. But these little details are irrelevant when it comes to the general public trying to understand noise. If noise is defined as something that is unwanted, extraneous, and unnecessary, a type of interference that stops you from being able to enjoy life or concentrate on certain tasks, then why do so many people out there enjoy it and actively seek out noise music? To help explain this phenomenon, I'll have to backtrack a little bit to the time of the Futurists, who were covered in the first episode. You may remember an Italian artist called Luigi Russollo. In 1913, he wrote a text called The Art of Noise. In the essay, he argued that the human ear will grow accustomed to new noises and new machinery. Not only will we find these sounds bearable, but we will also master ways of controlling them, performing them, and enjoying them. Russollo also stated that, I quote, the variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simple imitative way, but to combine them according to our imagination. For a long time, noise was the specialised forte of the European avant-garde. Futurists, Dadaists, and Surrealists all experimented with noise to some degree, but found only a limited audience for their endeavours, usually sympathisers within their own circle. The story of noise, as a popular music genre, only really begins with John Cage. Yoko Ono once said that Western music can be divided into two. BC, as in before Cage, and AC, after Cage. Perhaps a little paradoxically, John Cage worked primarily with silence. He employed many different compositional methods in his work, often relying on chance operations or books like the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text, to provide him with patterns to facilitate the construction of any given piece. Arguably, John Cage's best-known composition is called Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds. Comprised of three movements, the piece can be performed by any number of players, playing any number of instruments for any length of time. The title, Four Thirty-Three, refers to the duration given to the piece by David Tudor during its debut performance at Woodstock, New York, August 1952. Despite the fact that Cage was drawing influence from Oriental minimalist aesthetics, such as those inherent in Zen Buddhism, Haiku poetry, or the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, a 1950s American audience met the composition's debut performance with disdain. In Richard Kostelanitz's 1987 book Conversing with Cage, the avant-garde composer was caught reflecting on the audience's reaction to the piece that evening. They missed a point. There's no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn't know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. The raindrops began pattering on the roof. And during the third, the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out. When conceiving this series, I was tempted to perform Four Thirty-Three as a radio piece. You know, just leave the microphone on and sit in the studio, not talking for a few minutes. But dead air is the most frightening sound a radio manager can hear, and I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable. Not yet, anyway. Instead, I will play an interview with Cage himself on the line, speaking in 1991 about his love for sound and silence. It's just as insightful, and is roughly around the same length. When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking, and talking about his feelings or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic, I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound. What it does is it gets louder and quieter, and it gets higher and lower, and it gets longer and shorter. It does all those things which I'm completely satisfied with. I'm completely satisfied with that. I don't need sound to talk to me. We don't see much difference between time and space. We don't know where one begins and the other stops. So that most of the arts we think of as being in time, and most of the arts we think of as being in space. Marcel Duchamp, for instance, began thinking of time, I mean, thinking of music as being not a time art but a space art. And he made a piece called Sculpture Musicale, which means different sounds coming from different places and lasting, producing a sculpture which is sonorous and which remains. People expect listening to be more than listening. And so sometimes they speak of inner listening or the meaning of sound. When I talk about music, it finally comes to people's minds that I'm talking about sound that doesn't mean anything, that is not inner but is just outer. And they say that these people who understand that finally say, you mean it's just sound thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless. Whereas I love sounds just as they are. And I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don't want them to be psychological. I don't want a sound to pretend that it's a bucket or that it's a president or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound. And I'm not so stupid either. There was a German philosopher who's very well known, Manuel Kant. And he said there are two things that don't have to mean anything. One is music and the other is laughter. Don't have to mean anything, that is in order to give us very deep pleasure. The sound experience which I prefer to all others is the experience of silence. And the silence almost everywhere in the world now is the traffic. If you listen to Beethoven or to Mozart, you see that they're always the same. But if you listen to traffic, you see it always different. A leading engineer explained to the composer that the former was his nervous system and the latter his blood circulation. This led Cage to conclude that there's no such thing as silence. As long as we're here to listen, there will always be sounds present. In 1959, Cage wrote The Lecture on Nothing, an esoteric essay that develops on the ideas surrounding silence. Constructed like a piece of music, divided into five large parts, of which there are 48 units consisting of 48 measures, Cage's Lecture on Nothing reads like a poetic manifesto. Now at the beginning when I said there will be music by John Cage, I lied. There won't be any music by him. If you want to hear some, go seek it out. Instead, what I will play is an extract from The Lecture on Nothing, as read by Sebastian Melmoth drummer, Laura Smith. I am here, and there is nothing to say. If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment. What we require is silence. But what silence requires is that I go on talking. Give any one thought a push, it falls down easily. But the pusher and the pushed produce that entertainment called a discussion. Shall we have one later? Or we could simply decide not to have a discussion, whatever you like. I am making the silences, and the words make, help make the silences. I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry as I need it. This space of time is organised. We need not fear these silences, we may love them. This is a composed talk, for I am making it, just as I make a piece of music. It is like a glass of milk. We need the glass, or again, it is like an empty glass, into which at any moment anything may be poured. As we go along, who knows, an idea may occur in this talk. I have no idea whether one will or not. If one does, let it. Regard it as something seen momentarily, as though from a window while travelling. If across Kansas, then of course Kansas. Arizona is more interesting. Almost too interesting, especially for a New Yorker who is being interested, in spite of himself, in everything. Now he knows he needs the Kansas in him. Kansas is like nothing on earth, and for a New Yorker, very refreshing. It is like an empty glass, nothing but wheat, or is it corn? Does it matter which? Kansas has this thing about it, that any instant one may leave it, and whenever one wishes, but you may leave it forever and never return to it, for we possess nothing. Our poetry now is a realisation that we possess nothing. Anything, therefore, is a delight since we do not possess it, and thus need not fear its loss. We need not destroy the past, it is gone. At any moment it might reappear and seem to be, and be the present. Would it be a repetition, only if we thought we owned it? But since we don't, it is free, and so are we. Most anybody knows about the future and how uncertain it is. What I am calling poetry is often called content. I myself have called it form. It is the continuity of a piece of music. Continuity today, when it is necessary, is a demonstration of disinterestedness. That is, it is a proof that our delight lies in not possessing anything. Each moment presents what happens, how different this form senses from that which is bound up with memory, themes, and secondary themes, their struggles, their development, the climax, the recapitulation, which is the belief that one may own one's own home. But actually, unlike the snail, we carry our homes within us, which enables us to fly, or to stay, to enjoy each. But beware of that which is breathtakingly beautiful, for at any moment the telephone may ring, or the aeroplane come down in a vacant lot, a piece of string, or a sunset, possessing neither. Each acts, and the continuity happens. Nothing more than nothing can be said. Hearing, or making this in music, is not different, only simpler than living this way. Simpler, that is, for me, because it happens that I write music. That music is simple to make, comes from one's willingness to accept the limitations of structure. Structure is simple because it can be thought out, figured out, measured. It is a discipline, which accepted, in return, accepts whatever, even those rare moments of ecstasy, which, as sugar loaves train horses, train us to make what we make. How could I better tell what structure is than simply to tell about this, this talk, which is contained within a space of time, approximately 40 minutes long? That 40 minutes has been divided into five large parts, and each unit is divided likewise. Subdivision involving a square root is the only possible subdivision which permits this micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure, which I find so acceptable and accepting. As you see, I can say anything. It makes very little difference what I say, or even how I say it. At this particular moment, we are passing through the fourth part of a unit which is the second unit in the second large part of this talk. It is a little bit like passing through Kansas. This now is the end of that second unit. Now begins the third unit of the second part. Now the second part of that third unit, now its third part. Now its fourth part, which by the way is just the same length as the third part. Now the fifth and last part. You have just experienced the structure of this talk from a microcosmic point of view. From a macrocosmic point of view, we are just passing the halfway point in the second large part. The first part was a rather rambling discussion of nothing, of form and continuity, when it is the way we now need it. This second part is about structure, how simple it is, what it is, and why we should be willing to accept its limitations. Most speeches are full of ideas. This one doesn't have to have any. But at any moment, any idea may come along, then we may enjoy it. Structure without life is dead. But life without structure is unseen. Pure life expresses itself within and through structure. Each moment is absolute, alive and significant. Blackbirds rise from the field-making, a sound delicious beyond compare. I heard them because I accepted the limitations of an arts conference in a Virginia girls' finishing school, which limitations allowed me, in quite by accident, to hear the blackbirds as they flew up and overhead. There was a social calendar and hours for breakfast. But one day I saw a cardinal and the same day heard a woodpecker. I also met America's youngest college president. However, she has resigned. And people say she is going into politics. Let her. Why shouldn't she? I also had the pleasure of hearing an eminent music critic explain that he hoped he would live long enough to see the end of his craze for Bach. The pupil once said to me, I understand what you say about Beethoven and I think I agree, but I have a very serious question to ask you. How do you feel about Bach? Now we have come to the end of the part about structure. However, it occurs to me to say more about structure. Specifically this. We are now at the beginning of the third part and that part is not the part devoted to structure. It's the part about material. But I'm still talking about structure. It must be clear from that that structure has no point and as we have seen, form has no point either. Clearly we are beginning to get nowhere. Unless some other idea crops up about it, that's all I have to say about structure. Now, about material, is it interesting? It is and it isn't, but one thing is certain. If one is making something, which is to be nothing, the one making must love and be patient with the material he chooses. Otherwise, he calls attention to the material, which is precisely something, whereas it was nothing that was being made. Or, he calls attention to himself, whereas nothing is anonymous. The technique of handling materials is, on the same level, what structure as a discipline is on the rational level. A means of experiencing nothing. Not many people would argue with the fact that John Cage was the most important and influential Western composer of the 20th century, apart from maybe a few YouTube trolls, but nobody's listening to them. John Cage's ideas and approach to composition are echoed in the music of many other artists, but my use of him here goes beyond mere glorification. Originally, I had intended to frame this episode as a Blue Peter special or some sort of diabolical game of checkers, where a near-silent piece of music would be followed by noise, which would then in turn be followed by near-silence again. This dance would go on until the whole hour and a half were exhausted. During the research stage, however, it became evident that Cage serves as the perfect starting point, a metaphor for singularity, silence and nothingness. From Cage, we extrapolate a constant, serving as a fertile garden from which other sounds evolve, becoming louder and more intense as the episode progresses, culminating in an explosive climax of noise and ecstasy. And so, from nothing comes a long repetitive vibration in the form of American composer Lamont Young. Born in an Idaho log cabin in 1935, Young proved to be an accomplished jazz saxophonist prior to his career as a minimalist composer. After having been awarded his BA from the University of California at Los Angeles under the tutelage of Leonard Stein, former assistant to Arnold Schoenberg, Young moved to New York in the early 60s to work with Richard Maxfield. Young's relationship to composition changed significantly after his discovery of Cage, and much of Young's work focused on time's relationship with media, or simply time itself after this junction. To use an example, in a piece called The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, Young and three associates would chant an open chord of intrinsically infinite kinetic possibilities within a confined space. Young's vision amplified to the threshold of aural pain. Public performances would normally consist of two sessions, each nearly two hours in length, within a darkened room illuminated only by projections of pattern art. Music here is the predominant force where the visual stimuli contribute to the production of a multi-sensory environment, suggesting infinite kinetic possibilities within a confined space. In an article published in 1993 on what it was about sound he found so attractive, Young stated that the harmonically related frequencies I'm interested in have so much to do with the way we hear and the way so many sounds are structured. These common characteristics reinforce each other. Alan Danilu points out in an article on sound in the Psychedelic Review No. 7 that he feels the mental mechanism of sound is related. What happens after the information carried by the sound passes the reception stage at the ear? It is highly likely, as I hear it, that what makes me like this sound is more than just the way the ear receives information. The brain finds this kind of information congenial. I'm now going to play a piece by Young called Composition 1960 No. 7. This piece is one of a comprehensive series of experimental compositions, all composed in 1960, which embodies poetic significance. One score instructs the performer to build a fire, another to set a jar of butterflies free in a concert hall. The piece I'm about to play comes with instructions to play an open fifth chord, a D and an F sharp, and to hold it for a long time. Here it is performed by Italian improv ensemble Blutwurst, with Michele Lanzini on cello, Cristiana Abbati on viola, Eduardo Ricci on bass clarinet, Marco Baldini on trumpet, Alessandro Ricciardelli on theremin, and Daniele Fanteci on accordion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .