Free Musical Improvisation and the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze
Rogério Costa · Perspectives of New Music · 2011
FREE MUSICAL IMPROVISATION AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF GILLES DELEUZE ROGÉRIO COSTA This ferment came to the forefront and made itself heard in its own right; and through the molecular material thus wrought it made audible the nonsonorous forces of the cosmos that have always agitated music—a bit of Time in the pure state, a grain of absolute intensity . . . The words “tonal,” “modal,” “atonal” do not mean much. Music is not alone in being art as cosmos and in drawing the virtual lines of an infinite variation. —Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 96 128 Perspectives of New Music 1. INTRODUCTION N THE EXCERPT BELOW, I quote from my doctoral thesis, “The Musician as a Milieu and the Territories of Free Improvisation”1 (Costa 2003), a descriptive analysis of a performance of the group Akronon.2 On the mark of 2'06", the long note of the violin begins to be set as a center for a new texture. There is actually a slow and imperceptible transformation of the texture from the gradual introduction of these objects that are sustained and tonic and are produced also by other sources (saxophone—2'21", and electronic processing ). This transition takes shape as it remains in the current texture, sparsely, objects of the previous texture (mainly in the electronic layer) and the former saxophonist instrumental gesture are “contaminated” with the new object: the fast fragments of scale are resting in its end in long notes. This new configuration of layers—fast fragments of scale leading to sustained tonics sounds, granules resulting from processing and transpositions, “islands” of diverse iterative sounds (pizzicatos, short attacked blasts on saxophone), etc.—will promote a gradual dilution of the density of texture that goes up to the mark of 3', setting up a new “landscape” sound. These transformations are not premeditated. They happen in the context of performance and are perceived in a retrospective analysis. In a more general level this analysis reveals a trend of performance where complex objects (gestalts, textures) are established gradually in layers more or less independent. These layers can move at different speeds in ways such that often there are interpolations: objects are being made while others will be scattered. Everything is connected step by step. To the extent that there is not a specific territory (idiom) that unifies the performance , it is the sonic objects that give musical consistency to this practice that otherwise could plunge into a kind of cosmic chaos, undifferentiated. The objects are an expression of a metamorphosis of repetition. Repetition, in that they only set from a repetition of components. Metamorphosis—which is the mode of being of the performances—because small local transformations gradually delineate (transitions) the appearance of new objects. This whole process takes place in full concurrence and in real time, and depends on a high power of concentration of the musicians, which gives musical objects volatility. They are like clouds that form in the sky and break up every second. Thus, each object (both layers and complex objects) has a different degree of power which I Free Musical Improvisation and the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze 129 depends primarily on its emotional content. This power determines the time of permanence of the objects. In reality the length of stay in the same musical object depends on a number of constituent factors that will determine whether this object is capable of fruitful changes without losing its identity or whether its fabric is sterile and will fade quickly. In this context the attitude of the musician can be of two types: the response (which is a sort of harmony with the elements contained in the object), in which he integrates into the existing object, transforming it from the inside, and the proposal, by which he proposes new directions for the performance and build bridges with the new objects that are coming. The advent of proposals may or may not result in changes of direction. Indeed the spirit of the response and proposal are complementary. It is simply a matter of degree. (Costa 2003, 152–154) Although the terms used in the description refer mainly to the categories created by Pierre Schaeffer—more specifically the concept of sound object...