So's work has been described as using disparate media to explore ordinary situations in various open frames of perception and action, typically proceeding through simple methods of recording/transcription/reading, as well as changing experiences of silence. As critic Petra Hedler notes, "Mark So strongly embraces the phenomenon of the just barely audible, taking up a broad palette of sound-producing devices (including glasses, stones)."[1] Artist/writer Madison Brookshire elaborates:
there are not just sounds and silences, the sounds are stretched over the silence, just barely there. They do not supersede the silence; they are parallel to it, moving along with it. And at times, impossibly, even the silence itself can be stretched too thin. The piece breaks and you are simply, profoundly in the room or in the environment. The tightrope snaps and you can no longer pretend to float above or beyond the world. There are often moments of great beauty in a So piece, but there are never moments of transcendence.[2]
Drawing a contrast with composer John Cage, he continues:
Cage made it his project to reveal that music could be any sounds in any order. This involves an equivalence—one thing is like another—that negates value judgment. So goes further: any sounds in any order, but instead of an equivalence between them, there is a radical disparity. Cage famously made an enemy of harmony, but in a sense, he used silence in all of his pieces after 4′33″ as a kind of harmony—the sounds of the environment always “fit” inside a Cage piece. In So, the silences are dissonant. There are layers of silence and they are in contrast if not outright contest.[3]
On July 10, 2006, So collaborated with composer James Orsher, artist Michael Parker and 16 area musicians to bring about a 3-hour performance of James Tenney's In a large, open space (1994) at the 40,000-square-foot (3,700m2)Cold Storage temporary art facility in downtown Los Angeles.[4][5] On September 23, 2007, So participated in a worldwide performance of Hungarian-Swiss composer Istvàn Zelenka's Phontaine (1997- ), organized by fellow composer Jürg Frey.[2] So gave the first performance of Christian Wolff's Small Preludes (2008–9) at CalArts on October 24, 2009.[6][3][permanent dead link] He appears on two CDs of music by composer Michael Pisaro released on Edition Wandelweiser Records: as a pianist on harmony series 11-16,[7]and contributing a sine tone to a realization of an unrhymed chord[8] produced by Joseph Kudirka. More recently, So has pursued unique collaborations with artists working beyond the field of music, including a performance-based study conceived with artists Julie Tolentino and Stosh Fila and done in Los Angeles in 2010;[9] a pair of notebook scores with poet Eileen Myles—his (IDLE.) 51 THINGS TO DO WITH TWO HANDS for Eileen Myles and her Moving whole heart for Mark—which they performed together in 2011 in New York[10] and Los Angeles;[11] and a series of multi-media performance environments with artist Rick Bahto and later, with Bahto and musician Julia Holter, realized in various Los Angeles venues, including the wulf., Jancar Jones Gallery, and MOCA (2011–2013).[12][13][14] Describing the first of these ventures, a performance entitled "Slides & Sides—Still Lifes, Donuts, Twice Around, Palms" presented by So and Bahto at the wulf. in October 2011, critic Liz Kotz writes:
For more than four hours, Bahto used two 35mm slide projectors to cast two series of images—of Los Angeles area doughnut shops and cacti—onto walls, floors, and ceiling, in constantly varying rhythms and configurations, while So played a tape (Twice Around, comprising different field recordings) and performed his notebook, A Book of Palms, at the piano. With four tracks of (apparently unrelated) material being activated in different ways, the evening nonetheless created a compelling whole.[15]
James Orsher performs Mark So's Sur la plage at Goleta Beach, CA, November 11, 2007, during mark so: late early works.
So's music was featured in the week-long retrospective mark so: late early works, which took place at UC Santa Barbara and environs in fall 2007, and explored a variety of work across diverse locations (many of them outdoors) and sometimes extreme durations (up to 6 hours).[16][4] In 2009, So published BANGS,[17] a book detailing Swiss composer Manfred Werder's ongoing performance (begun in August, 2006) of So's 2005 composition BANGS [to Manfred Werder], including the score, correspondence between the two composers over the course of the realization, reflection upon the process, and photographs of salient incidents.[18] His three-opera Heliogabalus cycle (2009–10), combining Antonin Artaud's Heliogabalus[19] with a text of his own and scored for 1, 2 and 3 amplified readers, premiered at the wulf. in Los Angeles in February 2010; the performers were So, Julia Holter and Tashi Wada.[20] So composed the original music for Gabor Kalman's documentary film There Was Once...,[21] which went into limited release in 2011.
Since 2011, So has created numerous works for audio cassette. These tapes, typically comprising multiple layers of time that alternate between segments of taped sound and segments advanced without recording sound, have taken on diverse functions, from stand-alone pieces to multi-channel backgrounds in more complex performance settings. Reading 'Illuminations' [readings 41] (2011), So's scenario for 4 audio cassettes and two readers using John Ashbery's new English translation of Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations,[22] was commissioned for the 2011 AxS Festival[23] and premiered by So and Julia Holter in October 2011 at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design. The tape components of this piece were later released on a cassette from Recondite Industries in 2012, paired with So's keyboard notebook A Book of Palms.[24] In October 2012, So performed his piece Into Silence - readings 23 [for John Cage] (2007), a 6-hour, 15 minute solo reading, during the John Cage Festival at the Florida State University, situated among three tape sources playing through a total of nine cassettes. This scenario expanded to four tape sources and 15 tapes when So next performed Into Silence at Michael Strogoff Gallery in Marfa, TX, in June 2013.[5] Between these events, he collaborated with composer Michael Winter on a performance at the wulf. during morning twilight of March 31, 2013, in which Winter's minor third abstract (2011) for solo piano slowly gave way to a two-channel realization of So's tape though we haven't read it, we know there is a script [“The End of New England” by Eileen Myles] readings 44 (2012).[25] Reviewing this performance, writer Stuart Krimko observes:
Several iterations of spring were cropping up: there was the spring that appeared in the essay, and another that So read out loud on the tape as he uttered the phrase ["And look at this, it’s Spring."],[26] and the most tangible one that was taking place in real time, on an early Sunday morning at the end of March. Together, they emphasized that coincidence and heightened attention are dependent upon one another, and that in concert they can take hold of the senses and direct them to their own ends, revealing unexpected beauty, symmetry, and congruencies of form. This is the kind of awareness that arises when art is treated as an active agent of simile, a force intent on bringing disparate things into proximity.[27]
So, Mark. a box of wind: Ashbery Series 2006-2011, Impossible Objects/Marfa Book Co, 2017.[33]
So, Mark. "text | composition - scores and structure after 4'33"" in The Open Space Magazine, Fall 2013/Winter 2014 (46-51).[34]
So, Mark. from "text | composition - scores and structure after 4'33"" and 2 scores, performance documentation, commentary in Lely, John and Saunders, James. Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation, Continuum, 2012 (58, 60, 353-9). ISBN978-1-4411-7310-2[35]
So, Mark. "nearing/hearing" in Everybody Loves Difficult Music (Orsher, So and Roberts, eds.), Machine Project, 2007. ISBN0-9753140-2-5[37] (companion volume to the series Everybody Loves Difficult Music and You Too Can Play Difficult Music at Machine Project)[38] and The Open Space Magazine, Fall 2008 (119–123).[39]
Notes
↑ Hedler, Petra. "CalArts Studenten in Dortmund und Düsseldorf", Nordrhein-Westfalen Gazette, Düsseldorf, May 1, 2006.
A definition of music endeavors to give an accurate and concise explanation of music's basic attributes or essential nature and it involves a process of defining what is meant by the term music. Many authorities have suggested definitions, but defining music turns out to be more difficult than might first be imagined, and there is ongoing debate. A number of explanations start with the notion of music as organized sound, but they also highlight that this is perhaps too broad a definition and cite examples of organized sound that are not defined as music, such as human speech and sounds found in both natural and industrial environments. The problem of defining music is further complicated by the influence of culture in music cognition.
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.
Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect.
4′33″ is a modernist composition by American experimental composer John Cage. It was composed in 1952 for any instrument or combination of instruments; the score instructs performers not to play their instruments throughout the three movements. It is divided into three movements, lasting 30 seconds, two minutes and 23 seconds, and one minute and 40 seconds, respectively, although Cage later stated that the movements' durations can be determined by the musician. As indicated by the title, the composition lasts four minutes and 33 seconds and is marked by a period of silence, although ambient sounds contribute to the performance.
Silence is the absence of ambient audible sound, the emission of sounds of such low intensity that they do not draw attention to themselves, or the state of having ceased to produce sounds; this latter sense can be extended to apply to the cessation or absence of any form of communication, whether through speech or other medium. Remaining mute can be a symptom of mental illness.
Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation became popular in the 1950s, and can be used either in combination with or instead of traditional music notation. Graphic notation was influenced by contemporary visual art trends in its conception, bringing stylistic components from modern art into music. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective. Other uses include pieces where an aleatoric or undetermined effect is desired. One of the earliest pioneers of this technique was Earle Brown, who, along with John Cage, sought to liberate performers from the constraints of notation and make them active participants in the creation of the music.
Michael Pisaro is an American guitarist and composer. A member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, he has composed over 80 works for a great variety of instrumental combinations, including several pieces for variable instrumentation.
The Wandelweiser Group is a collective for composers and performers of contemporary classical music. Inspired by the work of John Cage, the Wandelweiser Group writes experimental music, which is typically of a very quiet nature and often incorporates performance art. The musicologist Tim Rutherford-Johnson describes them as a "significant feature of art music in the 21st century."
Indeterminacy is a composing approach in which some aspects of a musical work are left open to chance or to the interpreter's free choice. John Cage, a pioneer of indeterminacy, defined it as "the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially different ways".
Dean Rosenthal is an American composer of instrumental and electronic music, sound installations, and field recordings. His pieces have included field recordings, text scores, digital pastiche, and instrumental works focussed on natural observations of properties in mathematics such as perfect tilings, combinations, graph theory, and permutations. He has conducted and performed internationally since 1996. He is the composer of the ongoing international community experimental music work Stones/Water/Time/Breath that is celebrated annually by Fête de la Musique in multiple cities across North America and Europe. He also serves as co-editor of The Open Space Web Magazine and is a contributing editor to The Open Space Magazine. He has worked closely with Guggenheim Fellow David Parker's dance company The Bang Group on several works, including their collaboration Turing Tests. Most recently, he was commissioned by the Oral History of American Music at Yale to compose a new work on the life of Vivian Perlis. This piece, There Was Only One of Her , was placed in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Ulrich Krieger is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles.
Irritable Hedgehog Music is a Kansas City-based record label, focused primarily on minimalist and electroacoustic music.
Three Bagatelles, for David Tudor, better known by its original French title Trois bagatelles, is a 1961 solo piano composition by Hungarian composer György Ligeti. The composition is well known for its tacet sections.
Music for an Aquatic Ballet is the most commonly used title to refer to an untitled composition by American avant-garde composer John Cage. It was presumably finished in 1938, for its performance at the National Aquatic Show in Los Angeles. Even though the score of the composition is lost and has never been published nor performed after its premiere, some of Cage's fellow musicians have loosely reconstructed it.
Taylan Susam is a Turkish-Dutch composer of experimental music. He is a member of the Wandelweiser group, which has been described by The New Yorker as "an informal network of twenty or so experimental-minded composers who share an interest in slow music, quiet music, spare music, fragile music."
Dante Boon is a Dutch composer and pianist. A member of the Wandelweiser composers collective, he is perhaps best known as an interpreter of experimental piano music. His own music has been performed internationally to wide acclaim.
Another Timbre is a record label, based in Sheffield and known for its releases of free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music. It was founded by television sound recordist Simon Reynell, who also engineers and produces most of the label's recordings.
Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is an experimental musician, multidisciplinary artist and composer based in London. Her text scores, publications, and performances explore the materiality and musicality of language while proposing playful encounters with our "interior or exterior landscape and each other."
The Revenge of the Dead Indians is a 1993 documentary film essay directed by Henning Lohner about composer John Cage and his theories about music. It pays tribute to Cage's thoughts, music, and influence and has been described as "an unexpected and fascinating combination of intellectual thought, viewpoints and opinions."
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