PRACTICE AS RESEARCHCHRIS CUTLER

At any given time, and in any given medium, practitioners work from abody of generally accepted knowledge and a set of common practices.
Over the past 200 years, or so, our culture has come to accept, especially inthe field of what we call ‘serious’ music, a paradigm in which composition,performance and musicological study have been almost completelydisconnected.
Composers tend not to perform, and performers are expected only toreproduce ­ as accurately as possible ­ whatever composers and conductors
ask. Musicologists, meanwhile, are left to spin theories based on a mixtureof study and extrapolation from earlier theories, since they are themselves
nearly always disconnected from both compositional and performative
practice.
In other words, while composers have been losing touch with the realities
of musical performance, performers have become increasingly – and often
completely ­ alienated from the business of musical creation. Professional
academics have to pick up the pieces and try to make some sense of them –but always as observers and not as participants.
So at the turn of the 20th century ­ the position, at least in the field of Artmusic ­ which, for our cultural gatekeepers is still the only music that reallycounts – was that research, which is to say, the practical investigation ofform and technique ­ was lodged firmly in the hands of composers, since it
was they who in their works announced discoveries, made musicalproposals and experimented with new ways of organizing sound.
Of course there were other musical practices, disregarded by the elite
culture, which continued to work from very different norms andassumptions – folk musics and popular musics, for example. And, as thetwentieth century unfolded, it was their generative paradigms, rather thanthose of the art elite, that began increasingly to penetrate and transformmainstream culture; a process that was mediated in large part by theuniversal medium of recorded sounds.
One of the more interesting consequences, from our point of view, has beenthat the work of creation and innovation was slowly delivered back into
the hands of performers.
I say back because, of course, for most people and for most of humanhistory, music has always been understood as something made in real­timeout of the fabric of a performer’s memory and imagination. This is because
all performances in aural cultures are manifestly transient acts of directcommunication ­ fleeting events that occupy no more than the moment inwhich they are realized before vanishing back into oblivion. Or, rather,
they emerge out of a single memory before being absorbed into a cluster ofmemories.

In such cultures, music is simply what musicians do.
It was the introduction of writing into the practice of music that set in train
the division of performance from creation ­ and of theory from both.
The reason is simple: a performance cannot be separated from theimmediate time of its realization. In other words, a performance is always aprocess ­ while a score is an object. Far from being a manifestation of animmediate present, a score is a frozen agglomeration of superimposed
moments from the past.
So when performers play from the page, they are not remembering but
repeating a formula that superimposes a fixed past onto a fluid present. A
performer is no longer making the music, but rather reproducing – or atbest ­ interpreting it.
Writing also offers extraordinary rewards because it gives certain kinds ofminds the means to calculate, experiment, visualize and apply theories ­and to correct and perfect musical ideas. Completely free of thestraightjacket of sequential time.
In this way, writing made possible the creation and orchestration ofmusical effects of a previously unimaginable complexity and perfection. To
writing we owe all of early polyphonic, medieval, renaissance, baroque andclassical music. And much of today’s too.
Writing also underpinned the evolution of analytical theories andcomparative studies and the birth of musicology as an independent
discipline, as well the establishment of a vast and permanent library ofreproducible works.
In other words, writing gave music a history.
It also gave birth to today’s orchestras and ensembles – no longer
constituted as groups of performers involved collectively in music making,but rather as factories for the reproduction and interpretation of scores.
In short, writing institutionalized a brilliantly sophisticated music that wasincreasingly assembled from alienated specialisms: a music designed bycomposers, controlled by conductors and operated by skilled, but obedient,workers.
Which is how musicians lost touch with the source of music.
It was no coincidence, either, that this massive shift in the understanding ofwhat music was, followed so closely the technological shift in the
productive and reproductive process of music­making itself; that is to say,the shift from the dominance of subjective memory to the dominance ofobjective memory. Or to put it another way, from the organic negotiation ofindividual recollections to the unquestioning acceptance of a single,
definitive text impervious to change.

Since this new form of memory – the written score – was entirely under thecontrol of composers, it would naturally be composers who determined thedirection music would take. Because composition had become a processfrom which performers were effectively excluded.
But, as Plato remarked: when the mode of the music changes, the walls of thecity shake.
And the mode of the music has categorically changed over the last century,
thanks mainly to the emergence of a third memory system, which has been,
in its revolutionary power, quite as radical as notation was 1000 years
before it.
That new form of memory is sound recording. It’s a technology that isneither subjective and unreliable ­ like biological memory ­ nor objective
but silent ­ like written instructions, but which remembers sound itself.
That means recordings remember performances. And personalities.
The quintessential model for this paradigmic shift was early 20th century
jazz ­ a music rooted in an oral culture, and mediated still by biological,
rather than written, memory. In other words, a music in which
performance was immediate and primary. And to which improvisation wasfundamental.
And what gave this music the ability to invade and colonise musicalthinking across many generations and continents was the existence ofsound recording. Because sound recording gave it material form.
To explain: until sound could be recorded, a performance existed only for
whoever was able to be in a particular place at a particular time. And whilescores survived, and could travel, performances didn’t and couldn’t. So ascore might reverberate down the centuries and circumscribe the globe,
but a performance could only influence a roomful of people. But once aperformance could be recalled… note for note and sound for sound ­ then asingle performance could send a shock wave around the world.
Sound for sound. That’s the point. And musicians understood this
immediately, since recording was a technology that remembered them.
­Of course, in the Art world, individual voices were of secondary
importance. A composition was never a sound; it was a score.
Performances were just possible ­ and interchangeable ­ iterations of thatscore. They would inevitably be lost, but the music – that is, the written text
­ would endure.
This is a concept that would be wholly alien to an aural culture, in which
performance is everything ­ and where music depends intimately onsomething that musicians describe as feel.
We have no idea how the music of Monteverdi, Bach or Beethoven soundedin their own time, but there would definitely have been a feel that

performers knew how to embody. Today ­ although we can reproduce thenotes ­ the feel is lost. So we have to interpret it in our own way. Don’t getme wrong, I’m not saying this is a bad thing – it’s just indicative of the factthat once written down, the music and it’s feel are divided.
Which is why written music so quickly ceases to be living music.
What we know as funk, reggae, rock and jazz are all feels –by which I meanthat they are expressed in a way that has to do with their being fully
immersed in a material cultural practice.
Jazz that doesn’t swing, isn’t jazz. And jazz notation certainly doesn’t swing.
It can’t even tell you what swing is.
But a recording can.
1. J.S BACH, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Jacques Lussier
By the same token, it’s a simple fact that every great instrumentalist has avoice that is uniquely his or her own.
That was just as true in 1568 as it is now.
But in 1568 sound couldn’t be preserved. Therefore sound could have noplace in musical history. And musical history, equally, had no place for any
music that depended on its sound ­ or on the individuality of itsperformers.
Until 1877. That was the year Thomas Edison built the first working soundrecorder. Now everything changes. Because, once sound can be recorded,
the specificity of individual sounds becomes, not just an aspect ­ but inmany cases the most important aspect – of a musical work.
In other words, sounds and performances are no longer incidental but havebecome primary materials from which music can be shaped and given
form. And these materials – along with feel, personality and timbre – areunder the immediate control not of composers, but performers.
I only have to listen to 10 seconds of this ­­­­
2. KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN, Gesang der Junglinge
Or this3. ALICE COLTRANE, Universal Consciousness
Or this4. THE BEATLES, All you need is love

And I know immediately both the performer and the work.
In fact, in a real sense these performances are the works.
This is the revolution that sound recording engendered.
Unsurprisingly, then, it was in those musical genres that were populated bymusicians who were still in contact with the creative roots of music­making
that the potential of the new medium was most thoroughly investigated.
Let’s consider, because it’s the most personal of instruments, the humanvoice…
For a singer, the first task is to fill a space.
In public spaces, singers had, above all, to project.1The operatic voice, the lieder voice, even the music hall voice are the directproduct of that purely technical requirement. These are, we might say,technical voices.
But the process of recording eliminated physical space. There was no space
to fill any more. Just the few inches between a singer’s mouth and amicrophone.
Art composers, trapped in their writing paradigm, didn’t notice. It was ofno significance.
But singers did. Listen to this, for instance, recorded in 1926, a few years
after the introduction of electrical recording:
5. WILLARD ROBISON, The Devil is Afraid of Music

This is not a song; it’s a person. Outside the nursery, such intimacy wasnever heard. And it’s not the invention of a composer, it’s the invention of aperformer experimenting with a new means of communication. Crooning,is classic instance of practice as research
By research I mean investigation by empirical experiment; through a hands­
on, improvisational, trial­and­error method that, if successful will befollowed by a public presentation of results, leading in turn to further
refinement by others following the same method.
The critical point I am trying to make is that recording gives formerly
unquantifiable qualities like sound, expression, timbre, feel, personality
and character parity with ­ if not domination over – more formal vectors
such as structure and composition, and this shifts productive power in thedirection of performers.
In fact it implicitly privileges performers, who are uniquely able toresearch and exploit their own skills (and gifts) ­ especially in the
1 And on early recordings, singers like Caruso still had to project – in order to make a substantial physicalimpression in the resistant wax.

laboratory conditions of the recording environment, which empowers
them not only to fix but to compose with their own performances.
­It should also be said that a studio is not just a tool; it’s the wellspring of auniversal forum through which ideas can circulate and be conserved.
And naturally, once sound can be preserved there’s a far greater pressure
to experiment ­ to find new sounds and unusual sounds and new andunusual ways of organizing them, setting in train the cascade of empiricalresearch that distinguishes the musical history of the twentieth century.
John Cage’s formalisation of piano preparations is a well­known example.
In 1938, pressed by circumstances, and recalling something his old teacher
Henry Cowell had done, Cage embarked on a series of experiments. First helaid a pie plate on the piano strings and hit the keys. Then he listened. Thenthat he put nails between the strings and after that screws, because thenails kept slipping out. He listened again. Next he tried rubber strips andcoins… all the time listening and taking note of anything that sounded goodto him. In other words, he improvised directly with his materials. And,
having created his palette of sounds, he composed his piece with them.
6. JOHN CAGE, And the Earth Shall Bear Again
Staying with the piano, here’s Stephen Scott. All his techniques too are thedirect product of experiment and research. This piece was played in realtime on a single concert grand by ten people working together.
7. STEPHEN SCOTT, Vikings of the Sunrise
Or take the pianist and composer Zygmunt Krauze. Same story, except, he’s
working with rounded rocks.
8. ZYGMUNT KRAUZE, Stone MusicIn all these examples, it’s the performers who are doing the research andwho are generating the material; and all their researches are conducted
through a process of focused improvisation.
Plainly, no one knows better what an instrument can do than someone wholives and works with it all the time and, conversely, it is virtually
impossible to discover techniques like these without having a deep andphysical intimacy with an instrument.
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Let’s return to the voice for a moment. Some of the earlier vocal
innovations in Art music have been associated with composers like Luciano

Berio and Peter Maxwell Davis. But, in fact, both depended profoundly on
the researches of individual singers:Davis wrote his highly influential 8 Songs for a Mad King specifically for theactor Roy Hart who, with his teacher Alfred Wolfson, had worked fordecades on discovering the range and abilities of the human voice.
Here is a little of Hart’s research:
9. ROY HART, Octave exercises
And here’s one of his applications
10. T.S. ELIOT, The Rock Roy Hart
This was what inspired Maxwell Davis, who wrote the Eight Songs for a Mad
King specifically for Roy Hart’s experimental techniques.
11. PETER MAXWELL DAVIS, Eight Songs for a Mad King
Even more directly, Luciano Berio’s groundbreaking Visage wasconstructed collaboratively using studio improvisations by his then wife,
Kathy Berberian.
12. BERIO/BERBERIAN, Visage
Finally, here’s the British improviser, Phil Minton, who is a living
laboratory of singing techniques
13. PHIL MINTON, Extracts
Once marginal, this method of generation and composition is now
increasingly applied across a wide range of musical genres.
This Raashan Roland Kirk, from the world of jazz:
14. ROLAND KIRK, One Ton
From the world of contemporary art music, the harpist Anne LeBaron
15. ANNE LEBARON, Harp Study No.1From the world of free improvisation, trombonist Connie Bauer
16. CONNIE BAUER , Märzfeber
From the world of rock, guitarist Eddie van Halen
17. EDDIE VAN HALEN, Eruption
I could talk for a year and not run out of examples. New techniques, unique
sounds, personal expression – they are all ubiquitous today across mostmusical fields. And they are the work of performers, not composers.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the most innovative practices tend to be avoided
or ignored by an increasingly isolated musicological community, which has
failed to develop the tools with which to understand it.
Which is why, of course, it is so important to theorise our own practices.
­I hope you are persuaded that finding new sounds, and ways effectively to
use them, is no longer a matter of ideas but rather of empirical research.
And it’s fairly clear that no form is more welcoming – or more conducive tothis kind of research ­ than improvisation, when it is used not as a goal, but
as a tool ­ an aspect of improvisation, curiously, that is seldom mentioned.
­I’ve spoken of recordings as a means to spread ideas. And I’ve described
how the studio environment encourages performers to create new works
through direct experiment and research. But we can also understand thestudio as a laboratory. A workshop that releases its users from thedemands of time; a medium that supports the creation of both imaginary
and impossible spaces, all ripe for exploration And not only by individuals
exploiting their own abilities and skills, but also by groups, working
collectively. Improvisation is the collective form of creation, par excellence,and the studio is in its essence a working medium, ideal for collective work.
The last piece I’m going to play started out as a long collective
improvisation. The band ­ there were six of us – selected just 48 seconds ofit, and made an enormous loop –18 metres long ­ so long, in fact, we had towind it all the way around the studio, using bottles as capstans.
By the time it had gone around the room once, the accumulated friction of
the bottles had slowed the tape down by about three semitones. It also
made the transport unsteady, giving the sound a rather fragile, febrile
quality. This was what led us to our next step.
First we added various small extra textural details using guitar andsaxophone. This was to vary and articulate the track, and to obscure therather brutal loopness of the loop. The players just improvised, following
the intention ­ and the group decided what to keep.

Next we thought we needed, a counter­theme to give the piece sometension, shape and content. And by chance, we had earlier in the day heard
one of the melodies from another composition we had been working on
running at half speed. This also sounded shaky and querulous, so wedecided to use that as our second element.
So we copied the tracks we needed – omitting the rhythm section ­ noting
how the half­speed tempo made an interesting contrast with the rather
frenetic character of the first theme. To make it sound slightly less unreal,
we wrote extra parts for the half­speed melody, which we overdubbed at
normal speed.
More discussion followed. We tried and abandoned a lot of possibilities andfinally decided just to make a very long, slow crossfade between the firstand second block.
Before play it, I should say – because I think it’s interesting – that,throughout the process, we almost never discussed what we were doing inmusical terms, but only in visual, dramaturgical and cinematic terms. We
understood this process wasn’t about notes or rhythms, but a inchoate
attempt to capture a feeling of fragility and loss.
Here’s how it ended up. This is Deluge by Henry Cow.
18. HENRY COW, Deluge
In all the activities I have described, we have found ourselves back inside anexus of integrated music­making, a nexus in which interrogating
instruments, interrogating sounds, or interrogating procedures orjuxtapositions is no longer a work that has to be subservient to someoverarching theory, but is rather a work of practice. A practice, moreover,whose primary technique, is improvisation.
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Hiroshima 10. 11. 2013