Sound, Noise and Music
The readings for this week (Cage and Russolo) opened up a can of worms for me. I could write several long essays (I wrote one several years ago) about the topics these two raised but I’ll try to keep it short for this assignment. Both readings are reflections on the crisis in music, particularly Classical Music, at the start of the 20th Century. Coming out of the Romantic Period, composers of that time were very uncertain what to do. Many composers and musicologists believed that all of the great music had been composed already. In response, composers tried to create a whole host of new styles and genres for their music. Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky are two of the main examples of this period and their music went in opposite directions.
Russolo is also a good example as the Art of Noises was written in 1913. His take on the crisis was to look to noise as the answer. Cage came a little later and by that time the crisis and the resulting controversies about what was proper music were already in full bloom. Cage tried many different strategies including noise and silence. The question, however, still remains: can one consider the methods these two men pursued (or in Russolo’s case, what he wanted others to pursue) real music? Or is it something else? This debate has now raged for a century and it even consumed the life of poor Arnold Schoenberg, the father of atonal (a poor word, actually) music.
My take on this actually has to do with a question I have been pursuing for many years. In fact, this question is one of the things that led me to ITP. My question is this: what is it about music, good music in particular, that can cause an emotional response in a person? Music, after all, is just sound. How can these sounds, however simple or complex, make a person feel something? Russolo seems to believe that noise can accomplish this feat, but I am not so convinced. One of Russolo’s most interesting points is that before the industrial age, humans lived in a relatively quiet space. His belief that noise can be exciting and emotionally stimulating is probably just a result of the fact that he hadn’t experienced the cacophony of sounds that we live in today. For him, it was simply something new.
Having just undertaken a close examination of sound with my field recordings, I will say now that noise can certainly be interesting. But I do not believe it is interesting enough to cause an emotional reaction. Another reason why I believe this is fact is that I have a strong suspicion that music, particularly good music, is strongly related to the sound of human speech. Certain genres of music make this clear but I wouldn’t be surprised if almost all genres in some way exhibit this relationship. This might be the answer to my question, but I will need to make more studies of sound, speech and music to be sure.
A note on my field recordings.
I tried to just focus on capturing sounds and making them sound interesting. However, very quickly the musician in me came out and several of my little recordings seem to sound like unusual percussion instruments creating fascinating rhythms.
Back and Forth
Bang Step
Fake Hammer
Honk - Beep
Motorbang
Sqeak-Beep
Water Clicks
Water Steps