Iris ter Schiphorst
New Order/Disorder: "Contemporary Music" 2021
Questions from Primoz Trdan to Iris ter Schiphorst about curating the Ljubljana New Music Forum 2021,
from the programme booklet
Against the background of the global change, triggered by the digital revolution, this festival would like to explore the question of whether and how this New Order of time and space is reflected in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Are the old systems of order (categories like nations, gender etc., but also the subdivision into genres and styles) still relevant today?
Or are they - on the contrary - possibly gaining in importance again?
How does the ubiquitous availability of old, new and newest compositions on the Internet influence the work of young composers?
Has globalization brought the contemporary music scene closer?
And who or what will determine the music of the 21st century - and who or what will belong to it and why - and who or what will not? Will the established genres such as chamber music, ensemble music, etc. gradually have to give way to other formats? What does 'self-willingness' or 'resistance' mean today? (Iris ter Schiphorst)
Primoz: As an "autodidact" composer you seem to be in a way freed from myths and prejudices that surround the praxis of western art music. In New Music Forum program we find new pieces by Tomaž Grom and Nina Dragičević, immensely musicians and composers who never studied composition, and there's a new piece by Tilen Lebar who had created several great pieces long before he started his compositional studies. A question arises about what it means to be a composer, where is a point at which creative musician becomes composer, is it necessary for a composer to fixate pieces in writing? How do you think of a proper paradigm of being a composer?
Iris: It is true that I did not go through 'proper' composition studies. Nevertheless, I would disagree with your attribution of 'self-taught' composer. I have studied music (I am a trained pianist), attended numerous composition and analysis seminars and workshops, including at the ‘Hochschule der Künste Berlin’ with Dieter Schnebel and Luigi Nono, or at the ‘Technische Universität Berlin’ with Carl Dahlhaus and Helga de la Motte ... to name but a few. I have always consulted the most diverse composer personalities - and not least, in the course of my almost 40 years as a composer, I have analyzed countless scores by other composers and attended countless concerts. So, I am not 'naïve' about the history of music.
What perhaps distinguishes me from some other composers - at least of my generation - is that I have no fear of contact with other musical styles and practices. For example, I played bass in various bands in Berlin in the 1980s, and at the end of the 1980s I founded and led my own 'new music ensemble' (called INTRORS with a line-up that was quite unusual at the time: in addition to two female voices, flute, classical violin and piano, it also included an electric violin, a sampler and an electric bass). In our concerts, mostly original compositions, which partly grew out of improvisations, we integrated videos, performance techniques and light already in the early 90s. One of our greatest successes was the first prize at the ‘Blaue Brücke Wettbewerb’ in 1997 in Dresden Hellerau, which I shared at the time with the composer Carola Bauckholt. And my first full-length, what I call '3-D opera ANNA'S WAKE', premiered in Berlin in 1993 with Anna Clementi in the leading role was composed for solo voice, live performance, tape and 35 mm film.
It is not absolutely necessary to study composition in order to succeed as a composer on the music market. Moreover, 'composing' is not a protected activity and composer is not a protected profession. This designation is mostly found within the traditional and academic-institutionalized field, i.e. in the so-called 'bourgeois music culture' or 'established avant-garde'.
In other fields, other labels are often used, also and specially to distinguish oneself from these academic-institutionalized fields. Tomaz Grom describes himself on his website as a double bass player and author - I know him as an excellent improviser.
However, there is a paradox here: on the one hand, many young musicians want to distance themselves from the old institutions and try to go other ways - quite rightly! But at the same time, they want the recognition of these old institutions, they want to 'belong to' - and last but not least, they want to be subsidized like them.
But with or without academic training: All composers are subject to the laws of the market. And this market functions primarily through networks, economies of attention and gains in distinction. Quality is a very subjective term - and always context-dependent. On the one hand, ideas of quality have to do with historically developed educational standards within a society/culture, and on the other hand with the personal educational background of decision-makers, curators, organizers and teachers. In the artistic field, 'quality' is thus a term that is constantly being renegotiated.
You mention, among others, Tilen Lebar: yes, his pieces were already fascinating before his composition studies; however, I find it interesting and telling that he still wanted to study composition and did everything possible to achieve this. I experience something similar at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where I teach media composition. For example, more and more young applicants come to the entrance examination with very interesting sound experiments created on the computer, instead with own scores. This causes serious problems for an institution with its rules and regulations, with its centuries-old canon. What do you do with these creative applicants, some of whom can't even read music properly? And at least as interesting for me: why do these young people want to study composition at an academic institution? Obviously, they are driven by an irrepressible need to learn about music – like Tilen. I find that fascinating.
On the question of written fixation: It is quite clear that when working with traditional institutions (such as Academies and Universities) and instrumental ensembles (from chamber music ensembles to large to orchestras, etc.) that have grown for centuries, one will still not be able to get by without knowledge of writing/notation. Here, musical notation is still the main medium of communication - and will remain so in my opinion. But not only!
In today's compositional practice, different writing systems/storage systems/memory systems and editing systems intertwine: notation is one medium among others, alongside the multitude of different electronic storage and editing possibilities. The point is to interweave these different media into (one's own) sign systems in such a way that they can be used to think and act constructively or critically or deconstructively, i.e. to compose.
Primoz: Use of electroacoustic means and multimedia in highly complex way establishes a kind of dependency on well equipped studios, special spaces with limited access, which can in a way be analogous with court ensembles centuries ago. There are alternatives, reaching to lo-fi and noise aesthetics. It seems this festival's program includes both technological strategies, pieces realised in well known studios and self made solutions?
Iris: Yes, exactly.
However, one ist no longer as dependent on professional studios as one was a short time ago. Thanks to digitalization and the rapid development of processing power, technical media have become affordable for a broad mass of people. Anyone can now learn how to 'use' them in relevant tutorials on the Internet - at least to a certain extent. This is why there is sometimes talk of the 'democratization' of media. And even more complex programs, like the professional music software MAXsmp, which is mainly used in today's concert, is reasonably affordable and its use is quite well described in tutorials on youtube.
MAX SMP is a musician software developed in the famous Ircam Studio in Paris. Brigitta Muntendorf and Ann Cleare learned to work with Max smp there. Sure, you are right, access to this studio is limited, not everyone can work there. You have to go through an application process first. In the end, of course, it's only the well-educated young composers with the appropriate background who can research and work there. The so-called 'high culture', if you will, even if it doesn't sound like that anymore. (By the way, I myself was proposed for a one-year fellowship at the Ircam in Paris in the 90s, but as a single mother I could not realize it at that time).
But that doesn't necessarily mean that the compositions of this evening by Brigitta or Anne were actually realized there in this studio. The two of them learned their skills there, but of course they can apply them anywhere. And in the meantime, programming in MAXsmp or OPEN SOURCE (the free version of MAX) is part of the curriculum for composers in many music academies.
I don't really know if Stefan Prins has ever worked in Ircam. But Stefan Prins is not only a graduated composer with an additional degree in 'Technology in Music', but also a studied engineer, so he knows a lot about programming. He is now a professor in Dresden and runs an electronic studio there. The program of his today's composition he has written together with a programmer friend also in MAX SMP.
Strictly speaking, only my own piece is really Lo-Tec, because it uses only simple electric guitar effects to manipulate the instrument sounds. But as I have heard the guitarist in tonight's performance also programmed it all in MAX, because he doesn't own the effects units called for in the score. I am very curious to know whether the result will sound different or not.
‘Rainbow’ by Milan Stibilj is the oldest piece of the evening (from 1969), which is indicated not only by the medium of tape, but also by its completely different sound. The term 'sublime' comes to my mind, as controversial and misleading as it is today. #Rainbow’ is the only piece of the evening that was indeed composed in one of the most important studios in Europe (together with the sound engineer, programmer and composer Jaap M.Vink), the studio for electronic music of the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht/Netherlands.
You mentioned the term noise. I think it perhaps applies most closely to the piece by Anne Cleare. In her composition, the accordion is virtually shredded into countless sound particles by the electronics; we hear completely fragmented noise sounds that actually remind us of noise aesthetics in some moments.
In the case of Brigtta Muntendorf and Stefan Prins, I think it's different: they are more concerned with 'experimental arrangements' about today's media environments, which subsequently result in certain sonorities, but are not an end in themselves. With Brigitta it is composing with youtube footage, i.e. with material that in no way originates from high culture, and with Stefan Prins ‘Piano Hero’ it is the ironic, taken to extremes play with extended techniques of the interior piano, which very well belong to high culture, but here are called up by the keyboarder at the touch of a button and brought together at a speed in which their noise dominates.
Primoz: How does your interest in technology, using sound media, sampling etc. influence the choise of material in your works or the procedure of composition itself? It seems it enables more possibilities of making connections in what Zimmerman calls "Kugelgestalt der Zeit"...
Iris: My first compositional studies were experiments with so-called 'field-recordings' and multi-track tapes, which I played forwards, backwards and at different tape speeds, partially cut up, then reassembled etc. At that time there were no digital editing possibilities. With my first sampler, a Casio with 1 MB storage capacity (sic!) came another device with which I could edit sounds (in the sampler itself - which was incredibly tedious).
With these media I could work directly on the sound, like a sculptor on his sculpture, exclusively by hearing, - without 'detour' via writing. Of course, such an approach led to completely different results than traditional 'note-writing': the ear decides differently than the eye. All traditional compositional procedures on paper, including serial techniques are 'literary' procedures and irrevocably coupled to the reading/analyzing eye. They could not be accomplished in any way via hearing alone.
These tape and sample studies were important to me in that they gave me a different concept of material and time. Sticking together and rearranging 'sound objects', existing material or already existing music not only inevitably leads at some point to working methods such as collage and montage, but also to a concept of time that is determined by simultaneity of completely heterogeneous material, instead of the idea of a successive sequence, or linearity.
This has influenced my composing to this day. In all my larger pieces there are overlapping layers of sound and time of different material, heterogeneous elements from different times and spaces.
I could describe my approach in this respect and my different strategies in concrete works in detail, but unfortunately we don't have the space for that here. In any case, I still find the inclusion of a sampler - also and especially! in ensemble or orchestral music, exciting, although this technology is now several decades old. It allows me to include very different samples into my scores with temporal precision and thus create a heterogeneous world of sound which, depending on the concept, makes completely new contexts possible; be it with snippets from old sound documents, with voices from media, alienated instrument fragments, other music, etc., etc. In each case, other references become possible and the fixed genres and spaces are opened up to something different.
Basically, I believe that systems need 'disturbances' to stay alive, to escape the danger of entropy and repetition - including the system of music.
You ask about a connection to B.A. Zimmermann. Yes, of course there is! Then also B.A.: Zimmermann worked quite consciously against any concept of coherence, tried to force completely heterogeneous material together with certain compositional categories. In doing so, he was of a stylistic openness unheard of for his generation.
About the ‘Kugelgestalt der Zeit’ the he writes: "Past, present and future are, as we know, merely bound in their appearance as cosmic time to the process of succession. In our spiritual reality, however, this succession does not exist ... Time bends together to a spherical shape (=Kugelgestalt) . From this idea of the spherical shape (Kugelgestalt) of time I have developed my...so-called pluralistic compositional technique, which takes into account the complexity of our musical reality."
Primoz: Festival programs include "diversity" and "pluralism" in the concert titles. Is this another way of showing influence of media on perception of music today?
Iris: The term 'diversity' is the title of the concert on 4 November in the Philharmonie, in which composers of the middle and younger generation from 6 different nations will present larger ensemble works. They all have in common that, despite their different origins (Japan, England, Israel, Italy, Slovenia and Turkey), they completed their compositional training in Western music institutions.
They are thus trained in the most diverse ways of thinking about 20th century composition. They have studied - independently of their respective teachers - scores such as those of Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Gérard Grisey, Helmut Lachenmann, but also John Cage, Maurico Kagel, Dieter Schnebel or Karl-Heinz Stockhausen (to name just a few, who stand for different 'approaches' in the field of 'new music'), know how new playing techniques, so-called 'extended techniques', can be put down on paper most efficiently, how composing can be made easier with the help of algorithms and what constitutes the differences and finesses of microtonal composing. In addition, the younger ones in particular (Utku Asuroglu, at 35, is the youngest - and the only so-called 'digital native') have knowledge of electronic music and thus have a compositional 'toolbox' at their disposal like no generation of composers before them. Add to this the universal availability of all scores on the internet today.
The question is: how do they deal with this knowledge, this wealth of information? How do they find their own way in all these possibilities? And: how do the different origins of the composers inscribe themselves in their compositions?
Are questions about the 'own', about 'origin' still (or again) relevant today? At the symposium 'Music Cultures' of the 'Darmstädter Ferienkurse' in 2006, it was agreed that the new 'art music' is independent of any culture and knows "no identity problems", since in it (art music) otherness is virtually the basic prerequisite, as the German music philosopher Harry Lehmann points out...Can we agree with this idea without reservation in the year 2021? Or is the situation - not least due to the digitalisation of all areas of life - much more complicated?
However, the middle and younger generations benefit not only in terms of content but also in practical terms from the many institutions for 'new music' that their predecessor generations tried to anchor in the musical life of Europe - and the world - after the Second World War, sometimes against fierce resistance from the old elites. Especially in post-war Germany, starting from a reorganisation of almost all cultural institutions enforced by the Western occupying powers as a consequence of the abuse of art in the Third Reich, a network of the most diverse institutions and actors in the field of new music was established with the help of the newly structured broadcasting system.
These include, in addition to the many support institutions for young composers, the institutes for 'New Music' at universities and colleges, the many newly founded festivals, but also the radio studios, which were of decisive importance for the further development of New Music after 1945. And these include also the many great ensembles for new music, that have been formed from highly specialised graduates of music academies all over Europe since the 1970s, great instrumentalists, who have dedicated themselves entirely to the cultivation and expansion of the repertoire of new music.
The fact that the CIA helped to initiate these developments in the late 1940s and 1950s through generous financial support is just as much a part of this history as the sad fact that nowadays these institutions have to fight for their survival - and not only since Corona: the advancing capitalisation of all areas of society does not stop at 'new music'.
Perhaps I should mention that all the compositions for this concert were financed by commissions: Misato Mosachiko's and Vito Zuraj's from the ‘Wittener Tage für Neue Musik’’ (founded in 1969 by the city of Witten / Germany and Westdeutscher Rundfunk), Mauro Lanza's from the 'Bienale die Venezia '/ Italy (founded as an art exhibition in 1895, hosting a music festival since 1930, which from 1948 mainly exhibited' avant-garde art '), Mary Bellamy's from the famous English music ensemble ‘London Sinfonietta’(founded in 1968) and Chaya Czernowin's from the ensemble 'Norbotten /sweden' (founded in 2007); all institutions that have to fight harder nowadays, than in the 10s, in order to be able to provide financial funding of this kind.
Finally and lastly: Three of the compositions were created around the turn of the millennium (that of Misato Mochizuki in 2000, that of Mary Bellamy in 2001 and that of Mauro Lanza in 2002), the other three after 2014 (that of Chaya Czernowin in 2015, that of Utku Asuroglu in 2014 and that of Vito Zuraij as the last, namely 2018). And one could end up with the question of whether these temporal differences can be heard in the compositions - and if so, how and by what means?
Primoz: To expand this theme - where one can find interesting new music in today's world of media, mediators between artists and audience, big streaming services, their smaller alternatives, big festivals of new music currated in a way which offer little surprises and many smaller festivals? Most recordings of your pieces are in fact hard to find...
Iris: It is not so easy to answer this question briefly. Today, of course, there are endless streaming services that can be found very easily on the internet. Composers, for example, often use Sound-cloud or ... but stop! ...I don't want to advertise for corporations here.... The small field of new 'art music' is usually not very well represented in the large streaming services; in addition, these services are usually not curated and, for example, unknown composers are in danger of being lost in the flood of data. Sometimes the diversions via completely different markets, e.g. Asian or Latin American streaming services, helps to find something. Most of the younger composers are active in the many existing so-called social medias, publish 'newsletters' to fans and colleagues or/and run their own youtube channels, etc.
Some of the larger festivals for contemporary music with corresponding resources provide streaming recordings of the performed compositions for a certain period of time; and some of the better-known music publishers provide the scores of their composers for streaming on the internet.
On so-called 'sharing sites', one can find PDFs of countless scores, whereby the line to illegality is blurred, especially if they are copies of publishers' scores. Apropos: uploading one's own works, whether scores or recordings, is not so easy from a legal point of view, because before each publication, the consent of all the rights holders involved must be obtained, i.e. the organisers, the performers, the publishers (if any), the text authors, ... even if many composers do not take this into account. Furthermore, it is easy to overlook how much personal data we pass on - mostly unknowingly - to the big companies with our uploads and downloads, key words being 'fingerprints' and 'tracking'.
If we composers see the process of digitalisation mainly as a new technical possibility to distribute or publish our music on the internet, we might miss the profound (cultural-historical) changes that the digitalisation of all areas of life brings about. This includes, among other things, the power of computer scientists (and thus of the corresponding high-tech corporations that employ these computer scientists), which the American legal scholar Lawrence Lessing already described in 2006 as 'new legislators', because they not only determine, for example, the standard settings of the internet, but also whether and how privacy is protected, to what extent anonymity is permitted and access is guaranteed at all.
However, the process of advancing digitalisation also includes changes in our perception and the use of our senses, because digitalisation brings its own aesthetics, spaces and materialities into play. The arts are directly affected by this. It goes without saying that what we are used to calling music and composition is also at risk.
I think that the 'old institutions', among others, should be taken to task here: the universities, colleges and academies, which - in part - still have the resources and the (self-)mission! to reflect on these social transformations and to explore them artistically. For this, independent spaces and structures, time and the bundling of forces of the most diverse actors are necessary - as well as opportunities to experiment (failure included). ... Composers like Brigitta Muntendorf try it….