The Whitney Museum of American Art is currently hosting the Christian Marclay Festival, an exhibition of work which illustrates the intersection of the visual and the auditory. Films of Marclay's are continuously shown, and some of the most respected musicians of the "downtown scene" will be performing (or interpreting) Christian's work through late September.
Christian is credited as being one of the first (if not the first) to use the turntable, not as a playing device, but as an instrument itself. Pretty important musical milestone in the late twentieth century.
His compositions often replace traditional musical notation with visual information and/or instructions. The clear example of this being the currently evolving chalkboard piece at The Whitney. Patrons are invited to add whatever they wish to the length of chalkboard with musical staves adorned on it. They can compose music in traditional notation, doodle, erase, or even write snide remarks–one that comes to mind was something like "woohoo I got a show at the Whitney". Musicians will be interpreting the chalkboard at different times during its existence at the museum.
I'm still not entirely sure what I think about this piece. For me, it invites both interest and derision by using public interaction. What is it about "we're all taking part" art that leaves a bad taste in my mouth? I'm really not that awful of a human being to think that the public has nothing to add, but it just seems so...well...easy. And I HATE saying that, because I know that that is the reaction that many people have to the music that I most admire, so who am I to react to visual art of that nature.
Perhaps its the un-public nature that is actually at hand here. A single person puts up a wall for everyone to interact with, yet its their name that claims ownership. Even with the most caring of intentions, the gallery space never really seems public; it seems more like a signing over of everyone's input to the whole–knowing that you contributed. But, ultimately, its "their" work. It's not the public that is appreciated (they're not the creators here), its the "benevolent" artist that opened their wall to the public. I may be too cynical here. This isn't really what I care about.
My next reaction to the chalkboard is of a musical nature. I am very interested in graphic notation, but due to the logical mindset that often possesses me, I just don't enjoy graphic scores that have no system of communication. By this, I mean pictures or sketches with no inherent directions that are then proclaimed "scores" as opposed to a non-traditional, visual method of communicating a piece. I understand its importance of breaking down the conventional mindset that is Western pedagogy, but frankly, improvisation does a better job of that without, yet again, marrying the musician to the page. I suppose there's more than one way to skin a cat, but this one always makes me a little queasy and then makes me feel slightly conservative for rolling my eyes. But I roll my eyes anyway.
Let me state something before I make it sound as if I despise this show (I actually don't at all): I find improvisation to be one of the most invigorating ways to create and hear music. In some pieces, Christian merely simplifies the instrumentation at hand, which is often a great way to limit improvisors and have them approach music outside of their standard practices. It's my respect for improvisation that results in negative reactions to graphic scores that barely instruct the performer in any way. It asserts the hierarchical roles of composer and performer into a creative process that otherwise would be instantaneous and pure. It continues to assert the visual, both from the public and the performer's perspective, on what is actually an auditory experience. These are the same reactions that I have to some of Earle Browne's early work, December 1952 comes to mind. I'm glad that someone in the classical world appreciated improvisation, but the movement never seemed to move past the page, which seems like running halfway up the hill.
I was able to see two performances on July 10 of Christian Marclay's compositions: Sixty-Four Bells and a Bow and Wind-up Guitar. Both of these works are a choice of instrumentation and the rest is up to the performer. I'm not aware of any graphic information that a musician is to refer to for either of these.
In his Sixty-Four Bells and a Bow, the performer is given sixty-four bells and a violin bow and can create sounds however they wish, including amplification and electronic manipulation. Nicolas Collins performed this piece more as an interaction with the bells and other systems than as the percussive improvisation that one would first assume the piece to inspire.
Nicolas approached the bells in three different ways, the first of which I missed since I was late; I believe it had to do with laptop processing. The second interaction with the bells was using speakers as stimulators. He played a recording of someone talking through speakers on the table and then placed bells on the speakers as they moved or had attachments to the speaker cones strike the bells as they reacted to the speaker's movement. (I should note that I would not have known that the recordings were of people talking if I had not overhead him explaining this to someone after the performance.) His next process was covering two microphones with bells to manipulate the feedback of the amplification system. Depending on the size of the bell and how much he covered the microphones, different pitches were summoned and swelled throughout the gallery–the bell no longer producing the sound itself but influencing the music by partitioning off a resonant volume. The resulting combination of tones were surprisingly beautiful and haunting.
I would still say that the interpretation was a successful venture. (For my own ears, I would love to hear a performance of this where the bells were only shaken, struck, and bowed. The percussive approach. I think that would be a worthwhile, though perhaps obvious, interpretation.) Something that I should mention was the inevitable inclusion of the scrapes of microphones that resulted when Nicolas would make an adjustment to the setup–the unintentional becoming part of the work and adding an eeriness to the ringing of bells, feedback, and the quiet percussive nature of the manipulated speakers. I actually enjoyed its presence.
Wind-up Guitar was performed by Alan Licht. All that I'm aware the performer is given is the contraption of a guitar with multiple music boxes installed in its body with their wind-up keys sticking out. The music is for them to find through the object.
Alan's performance that afternoon was underwhelming. Most of the time he played sloppy quarter notes and would add a music box every now and then. The performance seemed far more like a demonstration of the individual elements of the object rather than a musical piece as a whole. He also added to the instrumentation with a tuning fork and an equalizer which was used to create feedback when he felt the need. It wasn't until near the end of the piece that he decided to go with the fairly obvious method of winding up multiple music boxes at the same time–creating a nostalgic cacophony. This was interesting to listen to, but maybe too obvious of a strategy for him to embrace right off. Frankly, though, sometimes the obvious is the best choice, and the twenty to thirty minutes that it took to get there were mainly superfluous. I'm all for long performances of minute material, but improvisations do require some editing.
Here are three video clips of his performance. Photographs and videos were encouraged by the way.
So overall, I'm glad The Whitney is putting on the Christian Marclay Festival. A small niche of the creative music that has been native to New York for decades is being displayed to the public as opposed to hidden in small venues. I do, however, worry that the ingestion of this work by the public will create misunderstandings of what contemporary music is and will overly generalize one person's approach to be equivalent to all contemporary music. I think this is a legitimate concern since the museum world is, for the most part, not the territory of composers and improvisors. But hopefully this festival will invigorate the curiosity of the public in the practices of creative musicians and encourage them to investigate new music further–there is a lot to find.
