Wandelweiser Und So Weiter

Could you say something about your musical background, and how you encountered the music of the Wandelweiser collective?

Sound and music have played a major role since my early life: I started learning the recorder when I was about six, which was a very common thing to do, and two years later I began playing cello, which became my main instrument. In my childhood I spent a lot of time exploring the sounding possibilities of the instrument aside from learning proper notes. Obviously I felt the need to make my own music. Also there was a grand piano in the living room, which offered fantastic sonic features that I was unable to produce on the cello. I treated the piano in my own way, without knowing anything about Cage's prepared piano music. I particularly enjoyed the times when nobody was at home, when I could build a sound world by inserting various objects such as pencils or plates onto the strings. I remember playing similar successions of sounds and being able to recall them later on, but in those days I never wrote down a note. Today I can’t remember exactly what I did, just the fact that I did it.

In the late 80’s, already familiar to some extent with New Music, I remember following a radio broadcast of Feldman’s second string quartet. I didn’t have time to listen throughout, just in segments, but each time I came back to it I was astonished by the texture of the music; I’d never heard anything like it before. At the same period there was a week-long documentary on Scelsi on French radio, and my mother had to tape all of it for me while I was at school. Again I’d never heard anything like it.

Eventually I studied music at the conservatory to become a professional musician. Since the cello teacher’s repertoire was focused on the classical and romantic period I also looked for other ways of making music: I started to improvise in a group with non-professional musicians using electric cello with sound effects and tape loops. One of the members introduced me to the work of, for example, David Jackman, whose music made a strong impact on me at the time.

I found out about the Wandelweiser Komponisten Ensemble when looking for contemporary solo cello music by Swiss composers. In 2000 I contacted Jürg Frey and Manfred Werder because I wanted to include their work in a programme of radical Swiss positions in composition from the last decade of the 20th century. Finally I had many opportunities to perform at Jürg and Manfred’s concert series, and the chance to meet and perform with other exponents of Wandelweiser.

If I can side-track for a second, I’m interested that you reference Scelsi in that answer.  People don’t seem to mention him as a ‘precursor of Wandelweiser’ in the way that, say, Cage and Feldman are often cited, but I think you could argue for a strong connection in his approach to sound.  In fact I think the realisation of vier, 1-12 in the Wandelweiser und so weiter box set, which you play on of course, is somewhat reminiscent of Scelsi.  Do you feel that there’s any connection?

Yes, the work of Scelsi is seldom mentioned in discussions about Wandelweiser. I think it simply has to do with the fact that Wandelweiser started before periodicals were filled with articles on that obscure composer from Rome, and the Wandelweiser composers already had their own personal backgrounds in place. Also I have a feeling that the founders of Wandelweiser were concerned with other topics than an ecstatic vision of sound.  I was influenced or even carried away by Scelsi’s music in the late eighties because it made me happy to finally find something different from what I had heard up to that point. In some way it’s just a question of contingency: whose music you encounter when and where. It’s true that I’m interested in the quality of sound if there is ‘a note’ to play, but then with Scelsi once a sound has started it never stops until the piece comes to its end. In other words, I can’t find much of a sounding world outside of his compositions. In fact years later I was fascinated, if not even relieved, by listening to a performance of works by Wandelweiser composers that included so many – classically speaking – pauses. It’s these rests that changed the conception of listening for me. But to be brief: for me the work of Scelsi is a part of my own personal listening history, something that made my mind resonate a lot at one time.

That’s interesting; the ‘pauses’ that you responded to in Wandelweiser music, and which allow, as you put it, for a sounding world to exist outside of or alongside the composed work, are clearly significant in your music.  Do you see these ‘pauses’ as similar to the concept of ‘silence’ in much of Cage’s work, or is that not a point of reference for you?

These pauses not only reveal a sounding world outside of the work but they also allow whatever has been heard before to settle (whether those sounds were intentional / performed or not). The situation of alternating silence and sound offers a chance to linger with the sound(s) from before in the moment of the performance. With every new sound – especially if it was the same pitch played by the same instrument – an object starts to evolve in my mind, imagining its concrete materiality.

In my work the incorporation of silence certainly has to do with knowing about Cage – and since every silence always contains sound, there is a differentiating situation at work when alternating what is usually called ‘silence’ and sound.  While listening to many of my pieces there are moments when one’s attention shifts to the ‘outside’ of the composed work. The material becomes more silent than the surrounding silence, even though the latter is thought of as the silent part of the situation. Exploring the relationship of these two components is what interests me at the moment. And thinking about composition, I ask myself what kind of sounds could be added to the sounding world since there are already sounds occurring at every moment. Through the use of insignificant material I try to leave scores like vier, 1-12 permeable for the sounding world outside of the score.

Yes, that notion of ‘the sounding world’ is a fascinating one, which evidently connects with Manfred Werder’s recent work – the idea that the world is in a sense already its own ‘work’, and the composer need only frame a moment of the world’s sounding, and let it be heard.  So you and Manfred have both produced works which are ‘just’ field recordings of a particular environment at a particular moment, with no sounds added. As I say, I find this extremely interesting, but wonder whether there’s a romanticism about ‘nature’ underlying this approach, or a kind of ‘audio-pantheism’.

I’m glad you put the word ‘just’ in inverted commas because the works in question deserve to get looked at more closely. First I’d like to differentiate between a score and the realisation thereof. These are two different things.  A score in itself reflects the composer’s conception/thought/idea/strategy by appearing as words, signs, spaces; whereas a recording or a performance (or a combination of the two) is a manifestation of a sounding possibility in relation to the score. The reason you bring ‘romanticism’, ‘nature’ and even ‘audio-pantheism’ into the discussion has to do with the fact that in many interpretations of so-called ‘field-recording-scores’, the musical material is determined as that of the environment. So to a certain extent, yes – ‘audio-pantheism’ – because the work gains by being connected to the world as ‘sounding world’ wherever it may be. On the other hand I think that the term overstates the issue. Pantheism is one of many propositions for a concept of God and implies experiencing the divine in nature. But in our case I think it’s still a question of listening to a work as an aesthetic experience.

To me themes of romantic senses of life, like being affected by the notion of infinity, seem to allude to the musical praxis we are talking about. For instance, in my score an ort, 1-9 which draws on ‘field recording’ practice, I had in mind a conception of ‘place’ as an infinitely sounding object. The score suggests a repeated action - that of parcelling nine segments out of the space-time-continuum. What I am interested in with this score is more than just listening to ‘nature’; it’s allowing a process to occur in each single unit, and, more apparently, by going from one unit to the next. Surprisingly a sound (that of one unit) is abruptly followed by another sound, and is overlaid in the moment of perceiving it. So I’m interested in having an experience at the level of sound similar to that when a canvas of the same size is painted over nine times. What remains in one’s memory after having heard the work? Since the score deals with the timespan of a year, its ending collides with its beginning and sets off a cyclical series that would again remind us of infinity. However, converging on infinity by means of an artefact is impossible due to man’s own finitude.

To come back to your question, I think that those scores of mine with obvious connections to ‘nature’ also contain their own specific features and questions about themes such as time, as in an ort, 1-9, about qualities of space, as in aussen raum, about determining time but not space, as in equinox/solstice, or about approaching a tiny part of a pure phenomenal world of sound, as in am wind.

Modernist and avant-garde traditions often define themselves in opposition to romanticism, but your answer suggests a more accommodating position.  Wandelweiser music is clearly not exploiting emotions in a gushing way, but for me often contains a strong emotional charge, and I think that a sensual element is unavoidable in music in general.  Do you agree with this?

Let’s bear in mind that music and the sounding world address one of our primary senses: that of hearing. Usually hearing is followed by a chain reaction of all kinds of associations which are very much dependent on the history of each individual’s mind. I tend myself to avoid following an immediate chain reaction because then I have the feeling that it’s only me producing these side effects.

Creating a listening situation for others through a score is one side of the structure – on the other side one or many listener(s) complete(s) the setting. I think that if you keep this primal set-up in mind, then there’s a great potential not just for sensual elements but also for other types of percepts.

So generally speaking yes, music is directly linked to the sensual, if the sensual is taken in a literal meaning as the starting-point of perceiving music at all. For me this also applies when music is narrowed down to a few hardly decipherable occurrences. In such situations every incident becomes valuable - even the sounds of one’s own body. I experience an enhanced type of the sensual where the outcome of a composition is not ‘a matter of facts’ but a point of departure.

At the moment I find it intriguing to draw a parallel between compositional strategies and the concept of homoeopathy in the sense of the more the essence is potentised (diluted) the deeper and longer lasting its effect. Transferring the idea to language utilised in composition, I discover an inviting potential in words like ‘passing’ or ‘to give way’ in order to circumscribe qualities of sound.

Interview with Sam Sfirri

Can you tell us something about your background, and how you came to Wandelweiser?

My first memorable experiences with music were my mother singing to me at bedtime. She had more or less the same line-up of songs (Minnie the Moocher, I Get a Kick Out of You, among others). It was such an interesting experience because the song was complete in her voice. A detail of those early times is her frequent stopping in the middle of a verse due to allergies. That is an equally important part of the memory, the fragmentation of these melodies.

Sometime in early childhood I started taking piano lessons. In addition to practicing the material given by the teacher, I wrote pieces and improvised. Being a fairly timid musician, I felt most comfortable playing my material at night after my parents went to sleep, but did so at an extremely low volume because the piano was located directly under their bedroom. It was in these moments that the piano began revealing itself as something to investigate.

In the summer of 2008, after having looked at Michael Pisaro's Harmony Series scores, my roommate Jason Brogan and I flew out to Los Angeles to take part in the Dog Star Orchestra, a series of concerts organized by Michael in and around CalArts. Michael and his groups of friends, colleagues, and past students were such a cohesive group, not to mention beyond warm and welcoming. This was an important experience, seeing the working collection of people doing critical work together and with such frequency and care.

Later that year, Jason put on a series of concerts entitled Silent Music: 4' 33" and Beyond. He decided to programme me playing Radu Malfatti's Nonostante II which was somehow reminiscent of my first experiences with music.

Were you studying music at the time that you flew to California and met Michael Pisaro and the others?  

I was on summer break between my Junior and Senior years at the College of Charleston, going for and later graduating with a degree in music. My focus was on theory/composition and jazz piano.

So what’s the extent of your formal musical training, and has it strongly shaped your current practice?

I continued to take piano/theory lessons on and off from childhood, having gained enough experience to convince the College of Charleston admissions committee that I was worth accepting. While a student there, the faculty sort of left me to my own devices, so long as I fulfilled the school's requirements. It might be worth mentioning that the jazz faculty regularly hired their students to play with them outside of the academic environment, which certainly blurred the lines between formal education and musical practice. On the whole, it was a nice experience that allowed me to meet some fantastic people and gave me some valuable insight towards approaching a musical situation.

After graduating I took part in two intensive periods of musical study: Ostrava Days 2009 and private study with Antoine Beuger.

The former was something like a two-year master's program condensed into three weeks. The festival consisted of lectures by famous musicians–Christian Wolff and Philip Thomas were decided highlights–interspersed with presentations by the students and days of performed music. It is worth noting that here I met two composers whose music I held in the highest regard for some years prior: Joseph Kudirka and Taylan Susam.

The latter was a singular experience of unbelievable clarity. Antoine Beuger's approach to music, as I would imagine his approach to everything, is with the sincerest humility. It would be hard to imagine that my thoughts on music from that time forward would and will be without him in mind.

Whether or not any of these experiences would be considered 'formal training', they have most certainly helped shape my current practice along with everything else that's happened in my life.

It sounds like a great training.  Let’s move on to the ‘beckett pieces’, the series from which all your pieces on the ‘Wandelweiser und so weiter’ discs are taken. Can you tell us a bit about the series and how the scores work – and why Beckett?

The 'beckett pieces' were composed during a single two-year reading of Samuel Beckett's three novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. Each of the fifteen scores are titled with a fragment from Beckett's literature and feature notation consisting of two to six complete English sentences that do not break the default line of a standard word processor template.  Within each piece, the notation is split into two sections: non-italicized text and italicized text. The former lists the required materials while the latter demarcates the procedure of the piece.

"Why Beckett?" was never really a question I had in mind while working on these pieces. I suppose the simple answer would be that reading these novels opened a door for me to get some work done. During the reading, I generally made a piece per month, which gave me some time to think about and see the progress of the literature and the pieces as somehow in parallel. As I didn't know much about these novels before purchasing a copy–reasons being that we share the same first name and because he looks fantastic on the cover–the gradual dissolution of plot, character, and setting to just a voice unravelled as I read. So, the working question through the changing landscape–both literarily (in the text) and literally (in my surroundings)–was not so much "why Beckett?" but rather "how music?"

One thing that is in a way very ‘un-Beckett’ about the scores is how open they are.  As a playwright Beckett was notoriously precise and exacting in ensuring that performers realised his works as closely as possible to how he wanted.  You take a very different approach in the ‘beckett pieces’; while in most cases you offer some logistical instruction, the scores specify nothing in terms of instrumentation, pitch etc.   So first of all, why do you choose to leave the scores so open – and is this part of your usual strategy in composition?

Yes, I've understood him to be extremely meticulous with performance directions in his playwriting. When writing these 'beckett pieces', this exacting was turned toward my reading of the these three novels, paying more attention to choosing the most appropriate fragments for titles and making the clearest possible instructions. The demands I set upon myself got rid of a lot of superfluous information in terms of notation, instrumentation and pitch being two examples. On the other hand, I feel as though the directions are extremely precise and do ensure that the performance is as close as possible to what I 'want'.

Of course, the sonic outcomes may vary considerably for each of the 'beckett pieces'. The recordings on Wandelweiser und so weiter are a testament to this fact and highlight some of the diverse avenues that performers have taken. From my experience as a performer, it is clear that the nature and use of notation in any score should be carefully observed when using that score as catalyst for performance. Any score is just as open as the next if you spend enough time with it.

The act of making a score is a performance in and of itself. However, the attributes of making this document and calling it a score is specifically about framing a potential future situation. My participation in this activity is about rules and boundaries set for myself. Beyond that I can't really say I have a usual strategy, especially with regards to how a performer should use the document as a score.

Yes, I think the scores have a deceptively simple appearance, but the fact that – in good hands at least - they seem to consistently produce good musical outcomes suggests that you’ve succeeded in distilling something significant into the words.  Could you describe some of your more recent projects?

I've been fortunate to know Jason Brogan for some time now, and he's been active curating events all over the place, many of which I've been around to witness. Along these lines, I was a member of a very special ensemble including Jason, Tucker Dulin, Julia Holter, Andrew Lafkas, Katie Porter, and Ron Wiltrout performing songs from Michael Pisaro's Tombstones in early October at Issue Project Room. It looks as though there are promising plans to tour this material around the US and Europe this upcoming spring and summer. At the end of October, I took part in another project involving members of the New Music Collective–a local non-profit organization through which Jason, Ron Wiltrout, and I organize music events–as a guest ensemble for a John Cage centennial festival. Organized by pianist David Kalhous, the events took place around the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee, Florida, our involvement including performances and workshops of pieces by John Cage, Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Manfred Werder, Antoine Beuger, and Eva-Maria Houben as well as assisting Mark So with a concurrent installation of his piece Into Silence and some of his recently made cassette tapes.

Extending further back in the year, I've organized a few performances of my own pieces from this and last year. One notable event was a performance of my Trio (2011) this past April 12–23 with Mitsuteru Takeuchi and Taylan Susam wherein we performed from our respective places of residence–Mitsuteru in Kobe, Japan; Taylan in Leuven, Belgium; myself in Charleston, South Carolina–with the simple instruction that we might use various instruments and documenting materials. Another notable event was an installation–with Jason Brogan's assistance–of a few copies of my October 30 (2012) piece around Charleston on the same date as indicated in the title.

I've also had the pleasure to work carefully with Stefan Thut on a recording project of his piece drei, 1–21. I understand that you are interviewing him as well, so I'll let him speak a bit more about this if he chooses.