(Jean François Laporte - from http://www.electrocd.com/en/bio/laporte_je/)
Thursday 5th November - Phipps Hall
I hadn't really heard much about Laporte or his works before I attended his concert yesterday, I went partly because his approach to listening sounded quite relevant to my study, and also partly because I was curious about what his own musical instrument inventions might entail. I'm glad to say I wasn't disappointed. His instrument set up, called a babel table, can be seen in at the start of the video below (in fact I'm fairly sure this was actually one of the works he performed) along with electronic pre-recorded audio which was mixed and digitally altered live and fed through speakers set up around the room. The effect was that I felt immersed in the sound as it was swapped between the speakers, which added a further dimension to the performance which I haven't really experienced before.
I am in awe of the sheer breadth of sound that can be created by this instrument! I heard birdsong, crickets, groans, moans, sighs, cries, breath, wind, clicks, whirrs, hums... There were parts of the performance, particularly in the third peace, which sounded to me like an active conversation in another language between the digital audio and the instrument itself. Determined to concentrate on my 'listening' exercise, I tasked myself with creating a list of all the sounds I could hear or what they reminded me of, which I now realise was impossible and also quite fruitless, because regardless of how accurate or fitting my description of the sound at the time, my perception it may well have changed by the time I even got home. 'Birdsong' for example, is a very general concept: Which bird is singing? Is it in a bush? In a church? Far away? Under water? The sound I heard could have been an exact tone of a blue tit in a Bosch model WAB24161GB washing machine but would I be able to describe it as such so accurately? No. Even if I had, if I became aurally distracted by a blackbird on my walk home would I forget what my own notion of that sound was? Probably. Still, in my effort to listen 'properly', I even went so far as to close my eyes to stop the performance from 'distracting' me and telling myself off whenever it did.
The nature of a performance, even one with such a wealth of interesting sounds, is surely that it is a performance and therefore surely should be enjoyed as such; a whole performance. Laporte himself discusses this here (the part to which I am referring is near the end of the clip at around 3:32, although the whole thing is quite an interesting insight to his work and listening practices), that the context in which you are listening is almost as important or maybe even more important than the listening itself. The lightning in the room, the temperature, the movement of the performers and my position in the space, all made the performance what it was, for me, at that time. Cornelius Cardew makes a similar point in his essay, 'Toward an Ethic of Improvisation' (found here) when discussing the recording of improvisational performance:
It also struck me at that time that it is impossible to record with any fidelity a kind of music that is actually derived in some sense from the room in which it is taking place -its shape, acoustical properties, even the view from the windows. What a recording produces is a separate phenomenon, something really much stranger than the playing itself, since what you hear on tape or disc is indeed the same playing, but divorced from its natural context. What is the importance of this natural context? The natural context provides a score which the players are unconsciously interpreting in their playing. Not a score that is explicitly articulated in the music and hence of no further interest to the listener as is generally the case in traditional music, but one that coexists inseparably with the music, standing side by side with it and sustaining it.
So maybe I was wrong to be annoyed with myself for being unable to purely listen, and maybe what I should have been doing is concentrating on listening but in the context of my surroundings. This could pose some equally interesting questions: Would I have had an entirely different experience if I was in a different part of the room? Would it be best to sit in the centre to get the full effect of the surround sound? Or around the edge where there is more contrast? Would I have heard the sounds differently if I didn't know where they were coming from or couldn't see the instrument? Would I hear more sounds? Would I be able to tell the difference between the ones coming from the instrument and the mixing desk to my left? Would I hear differently if I saw it a second time or on a different day? What if the room was hotter or colder, or brighter, would I hear differently then?
Sound in its context (I also refer to my earlier posts with regards to 'unwanted' or 'innapropriate' sound) is something that is becoming increasingly interesting to me and something that I will consider more in future.
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