Fire and Ice: A Query
Priscilla McLean · Perspectives of New Music · 1977
A new auditory phenomenon has emerged with the birth of music produced by the tape recorder and synthesizer (electronic, musique concrete). It could be described as a sonic experience that is neither a continuation of the traditional abstractions (melodic-rhythmic groupings with timbres and textures as primary or secondary considerations) nor kidnapped environmental aura, but a sonorous occurrence somewhere in between. For example, much electronic music seeks to imitate various musical instruments via the synthesizer, or uses recognizable sounds from the environment (bird calls, whale songs, radio communique, etc.). These sounds are then altered, but the actual source or intended imitation is still clearly perceptible. Also recently explored is a sound which is removed several degrees from any obvious source onto a more abstract level, either by altering the original drastically as to obliterate any direct reference to it or by synthesizing a musical event reminiscent of an environmental sonority but on its own level of abstraction. This imago-abstract sound, often gestural in nature, evokes dual sets of realities and is often misinterpreted by listeners and composers, who tend to react with suspicion and hostility toward electronic music of this kind. In an article entitled Toward Good Vibrations,' Charles Wuorinen draws the basic premise that the imprecisions and generalities of exactly notated music, which implicitly demand the performers' interpretation and projection present problems for electronic realization, and that many composers in the electronic medium, instead of creating a more precise, clear unfolding of the structures, confuse and blur the network of relations by using more generalized noise-oriented (not pitch-rhythmic) sounds and concentrating on the sound-events themselves (called things