music and architecture

Music and architecture have been traditionally classified as temporal and spatial arts

accordingly. Despite these categorizations and obvious boundaries between these

disciplines, important affinities have existed over the years. 'Art' music has customarily

been performed in space, in an architectural, acoustical setting. Each space not only

causes sound to reverberate and resonate in a unique way but also offers special

architectural challenges, visual reference points and built-in cul- tural associations.' On

the other hand, architecture takes into account elements of time while offering a space

and frame for human movement and activity. We >read« or ,,perform« a work of

architecture by moving physically and mentally around or within it.

Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation wrote John Cage in

1949, and ,the soul is the gatherer together of the disparate elements.<< Performed, 'real-

time' music never exists as a whole at any given moment, but rather unfolds in a linear

manner over time and joins to an entity only in retro- spect, in the memory of the listener

or performer. In that sense it is a process diametric to that of perceiving an architectural

work, which exists as a whole at any given moment but may be retained by the observer

only by a process of observation over time, walking around, through, and above it. This

is an open, non- linear process, which is never repeated in quite the same way, and the

joining of all observation points will only surmise the whole, never quite reaching it.

In this article I shall focus on certain musical and architectural works created during the

second half of the twentieth century which challenge these very categorizations of

temporal versus spatial arts and ,linear< versus ,,open« structure, be- yond the affinities

existing within the boundaries of time and space. In particular, I discuss the reversion of

the linearity of the musical score into fluid urban design, and the transformation of the

linear process of the musical score into a modular one, leading the performer to a process

similar to that of 'performing' or compre- hending an architectural work.

TheLinearityof theMusical Score

The essential quality of scores is that it is a system of symbols which can con- vey, guide,

or control the interactions between elements such as space, time, rhythm, people and their

activities and the combinations which result from them. Scores are devices used for

controlling events and influencing what is to occur. They may also record events from the

past or notate what is happening in the present, but the real importance of a score is its

relationship to the future. Lawrence Halperin, designer and landscape architect, asserted

in his book, RSVP Cycles,that the scoring process is the crux of creativity for any artist,

be it musician, dancer, or architect: Scores are symbolizations of processes, which

extend over time. The most familiar kind of score is a musical one but I have extended

this meaning to include scores in all fields of human endeavor. ...I saw scores as a way of

describing all such processes in all the arts, of making process visible and thereby

designing with process through scores. I saw scores also as a way of communication,

these processes over time and space to other people in other places at other moments and

as a vehicle to allow many people to enter into the act of creation together, allowing for

participation, feedback and communications.<<2

As a mode of communication distinct from sounding music, musical notation has

assumed a variety of forms, reflecting the changing needs and purposes of those who

write and read it. Being a medium that facilitates the passage of music from the

composer's imagination to physical reality of the performance, notation specifies what the

composer wishes to control. The compositional score is composed in frozen

time<<(rather than 'real' time of a performance), allowing the deliberate suspension of

time. The silent reading of a score is similar to the observation of spatial art:The reader

chooses the tempo, accentuation and the linearity of the process, and may stop, turn back,

return and do as he pleases. When the silent reading of a score is performed the

interpreter must choose one possibility of the numerous ones inherent in the score.

Open Scores

In the second half of the 20th century, notation still tells performers 'what to do', but

reflects a shift in creative priorities and hierarchies. The visual codes of the notational

language have traditionally left the score open to interpretation on different realms such

as tempo, dynamics, touch and atmosphere. Yet, up to 1950, the musical score was based

on the idea that the performer reads it in a linear manner, and does not intervene in the

formal construction of the musical score. During the second half of the 20th century

composers such as Ligeti, Boulez, Stockhausen and others began to challenge the

linearity of the musical score and offered the performer a choice in the construction of the

musical work. These works are composed in terms of individual sections or fragments yet

mobile in the order of appearance, creating unpredictability before and during

performance. The conventions which underlie the intelligibility of the traditional musical

work as casual logic, linearity, continuity and predictability no longer endure since in

open- compositions each unit is predominantly important in itself and the order of these

units becomes less and less important. An open-structured composition could be

implemented many different times. The significance of the work, as is true of any spatial

art, lies not in any one of its realizations but in their very multiplicity, in the range of

interpretations the model allows.

The temporal arts are given to the mercy of the performers who interpret the artwork on

its way to the audience. Spatial arts induce an inner interpretation by the observer and

they do not demand the execution of a mediator.3 Traditionally, the audience was a

recipient of a specific rendition by the performer in terms of spirit, tempo, dynamics,

touch etc., but not in structural choices or formal processes. In open-compositions the

traditional role of the performer is changed, as he now takes part in the formal

compositional process. The audience's role in the reception of such works remains

unchanged, as it is unaware of the choices ex- posed to the performer and perceives an

integral and linear musical composition.

The unraveling of an open-composition lends a choice of movement to the performer and

allows him to move freely or randomly about the musical work. In such constructions, the

function of the musical score changed from an object to be read by the performer into a

process to be built. The choice of movement ruptures the linearity of the score inherent in

the performance of a musical composition up to that time, and resembles a silent reading

of a score in which the reader may stop, turn back, return and do as he pleases. In this, the

process of performance becomes similar to that of a movement within a structural space,

where the observer chooses his way about it. In a comparable manner, both performer in

the open-composition and observer in the structural space gather several of the infinite

existing possibilities inherent in the art-work to an artistic entity which is but one of its

many realizations.«

One of the notable examples of such open-compositions is Karlheinz Stockhausen's

KlavierstuckXI (1956). This work is constructed of nineteen groups placed on one

manuscript, to which the composer instructs:

At the end of the first group, the performerreads the tempo, dynamic and attacks

indicationsthatfollow,andlooksatrandomtoanyothergroup,whichhethenplays in

accordancewith the latterindications.'Lookingat randomto any othergroup'implies that

the performerwill never link up expresslychosen groups or intentionally leaveoutothers.

Eachgroupcanbejoinedtoanyoftheothereighteen:eachcanthus be played at any of the six

tempi and dynamiclevels and with any of the six types of attack.4

The work reaches its end when the performer chooses a group for the third time. The

order of groups is open to the performer's choice but his freedom is confined by

restrictions appearing at the end of each group, which instruct how to perform the next

group, whichever it may be (in terms of tempo, dynamics, touch etc.) This makes the

possibilities between three sections at the minimum, to thirty-

3In the same period the development of electronic music was at its peak. Pierre

BOULEZ,in his article >At the Ends of Fruitful Land,<<Die Reihe1, 19, states that

>,electronicmusic changed the neces- sity of a mediator performer to realize the

composer's artistic creation. He now may directly produce the sounding material that can

be heard over and over without the slightest variation once it has been realized, bringing

pieces composed in this way into the neighborhood of the products of the plastic arts. The

composer is simultaneously the performer, in that he has a direct control over the quality

of the realization, the musician takes on a function similar to that of the painter<<.

4Universal edition No. 12654 LW. K. Stockhausen, KlavierstuckXI.

eight (38 x 37 x 36 x 35...) at the maximum. This, along with the tempo, dynamic and

attack variances, creates a work whose notes in terms of fragments are con- trolled by the

composer, yet the results will tend to indeterminacy.

Physically, an observer of an architectural construction chooses a ,,path«<with which he

goes about the space. This path is built of the sequence of his movements and creates a

linear process, a succession of events. Each event is relative to the preceding one (moving

from a closed to an open space, from light into the dark etc.), and affects future responses

and choices. The observer of a building weaves his path by combining choice with

restrictions. He may choose to stop, walk faster or slower, look around, reverse his

position in space, but his freedom is confined to certain obstacles on his way, corridors,

staircases and points of view that affect his perception. In many ways this is a process

similar to the performer of Stockhausen's KlavierstuckXI, in which the performer

constructs a linearity of music by moving his eye randomly between the sections of the

work, constructing an interpretation for each individual section utilizing choice and

chance. Chance be-

ing foretold by the guidelines at the end of the preceding section, and choices inherent

in any interpretation of music.

In Earl Brown's AvailableForms (1961), the first of the orchestral open forms, the

conductor determines the inclusion, omission, repetition and order of materi- als to be

performed. The score is made up of six loose pages, all of which are in view of the

eighteen performers, and the conductor indicates which sections are to be played by

moving an arrow on a large board which contains the number 1 to 6. The passages

labeled with large numbers are rehearsed individually and then com- bined in any order,

successive or simultaneous, determined by the conductor during the performance. The

open form encourages the performer thereby to a newly won spontaneity.5

Our comprehension of a musical composition owes its characteristics to the succession of

events, which is inherent in the temporal nature of music. The events currently heard are

always understood in light of the immediate preceding events and the new musical events

that subsequently appear. The idea of the build-up and release of tension, inherent to all

hierarchic-tonal music, necessitates the successive order of harmonies, leading to a

cadence and back to the tonic. If the ca-

5Other known examples to works which employ mobile-open forms are Pierre Boulez's

Third Piano Sonatawith arrangements of eight possible manners of ordering the five

movements. The work includes visual layouts of poems by Mallarme (,Un coup de des< -

The throwing of dice), Cummings and Joyce. The Sonata's score resembles a road map,

which is in its own way a kind of score for 'performance' by an automobile driver. In

David Bedford's Funforall theFamily(1970), constructed as a game chart, all players

begin on the square marked >start,<each player makes four short sounds, choosing

pitches, either ppor mfduring the duration of the square (each square lasts 20"). The

performers split off into two groups, then four and finally eight distinct parts, eventually

joining again at the end. William Duckworth's Pitch City (1969) is a work for any four

wind instruments, and specifies pitch and note-to-note successions, but not register,

rhythm, duration, instrumental timbre, or the precise synchronization of parts. Duckworth

chooses to control mood, overall gesture and large-scale continu-

ity but requires each of the four performers to follow a path from one of the corner F#'s to

the F# at the center.

dences were modulated or interrupted, they would be considered as a change of course or

branching off, always part of the ongoing flow of music. In the case of open-scores such

as Stockhausen's KlavierstuckXI, the composer does not want to control the linearity of

the process. The course of the form is no longer experi- enced as a process of congestion

and relaxation, but as a juxtaposition of colors and surfaces, just as in a picture or an

architectural space. The succession of events is a mere exposition of something that in its

nature is simultaneous; in this way in fact, one's glance wanders over the canvas of a

painting.6

Stockhausen rejected the principle that music must be constructed of ideas in

an antecedent-consequent fashion. In his article on from 1960,7 >>moment-form<<

he takes the non-linear ideas of KlavierstuckXI to an extreme, as he sets out against the

understanding that musical events are products of the past and preparations for the future.

Instead, he suggested focusing on the present as the key for eter-nity, which is attainable

at any given moment. In his works Kontakte(1959-1960) for four track tapes or with the

addition of piano and percussion, and Momente (1964) for soprano solo, four choral

groups and thirteen instrumentalists, Stockhausen moved from the concept of the

interdependent ,,group<<inherent in KlavierstuckXI to that of the autonomous

>>moment.<I<n these works each unit is important in itself, none is more important than

any other is, and the listener's attention may wander about these moments without

harming the concept of the whole. Thus, a moment form may be said to be without

beginning or end and reflects a >concentration on the Now - on every Now - as if it were

a vertical slice dominating over any horizontal conception of time and reaching into

timeless- ness, which I call eternity.«<<In Momenteeven the choice of texts include

overlap of languages, nonsense syllables, handclaps, laughter, foot stamping and

outbursts from the audience resulting in a total sense of discontinuity throughout the

piece.

The composer Gyorgy Ligeti compared the various interpretations of open- compositions

to flash-photos of a Calder mobile, in which changes are manifested only indirectly, since

each performance is merely a momentary incarnation of the manifold possibilities of the

form. In a Calder mobile, the shape, color, and design of each part is fixed, with the order

and angle constantly changing. The composers themselves claimed the analogy of the

aesthetic and emerging notations of Brown, Feldman and others with the concept of a

mobile. This implies art as a process, no longer will objects<<of music exist in that sense,

but each new performance, each new circumstance will create a continually variable

process of ideas.9

The new open attitude towards performance of temporal art is not limited to music but

can also be seen in concrete poetry, in dance, design as well as in other mediums. The

following ,Poem<<by Jackson MacLow utilizes an open approach to the reading of the

poem by >,performing<<it in any direction and combination chosen by the performer.

The directions read:

>,Thereaderbegins at any square(emptysquaresaresilences),he moves to any adja- cent

squarehorizontally,vertically,or diagonallyand continuesthis processuntil the

endofthepiece. Lettersarereadasanysoundtheycanstandforinanylanguage.

Whenlettersarerepeatedin a numberof adjacentsquarestheirsound maybe contin- ued for

the durationthoughtof as equivalentto thatnumberof squares,or they may be reiterated the

same number of times as of squares. Letters can be added occasion- ally as one letter

words denoting the letters.1

8 Cited in K. H. WORNER, Stockhausen:His Lifeand Work,trans. and ed. Bill Hopkins

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 110.

9 Another example for mobile type structure indeterminacy is Roman Haubenstock-

Ramati's Mobile for Shakespeare(1960). The work is comprised of boxes, each giving a

fairly straightforward, mostly traditionally notated fragment. The order of each box is not

predetermined and therefore while the composer has indeed composed each note the

performances are quite different and unpredictable. The complete piece (for voice,

keyboard and percussion) is contained on a single sheet, offering a vari-

ety of sound events (mostly notated graphically) and many possible paths of connecting

them. '0HALPERIN, RSVP Cycles, 17.

In the score for the dance Parades and Changes by Ann Halperin, cell blocks« resembling

the musical blocks of Stockhausen's work are employed as a scoring device. Each

collaborating artist, musician, dancer-choreographer, lighting design, sculptor,

coordinator, evolved a series of sound actions, movement actions, light actions,

environmental or sculptural actions in discrete thematic ideas called cell blocks.

The cell blocks' principle is so organized that not only are all the parts inde- pendent and

therefore can be reassembled, assembled and reassembled in infinite combinations, each

combination generating a different quality, but the sequence can start from any point. In

terms of development new cell blocks can be added, others omitted, so that over a period

of several years the same score can be in operation but entirely new cell blocks can be

inserted to the extent that the original has very little resemblance to the new one.

This approach, offering a glimpse of the whole and its parts simultaneously, while

lending a multilayering of time, may be observed also in the visual book and landscape

design by Paula Horrigan and Margaret McAvin's for Clute Memorial Park in Watkins

Glen, New York. The site reveals an active mining site that lies beneath the picturesque

waterside park. The reader may read the book and the landscape at their own pace, in part

or whole, in or out of order.« The form of the design is analogous to the interpretation of

and interaction with the landscape.

Thisis a landscapecreatedby water:the inlandsea, the glaciers,the canals,and the

waterpipesthatflushoutsaltasbrine. Whenclosedandtiedthebook/site presents

acoverofgreenlandandsilverwater.Overthislandscapewe imposeagridofexplo-

rationorofsubdivision.Eachpage/layerisamaporderthatprevailsassurface.Within

eachpage/layer,wecanopenwindowsintothepast.Weturnpages/layersandopen/

closewindows creatingpermutations.Thegriddeepensandfragments.Ouruniver-sal and

superficialunderstandingof the landscapebecomeslocaland circumstantial.«

In 1969, Lawrence Halperin advances the idea of open-scores one step further and

devised a mechanism to utilize scoring not only as a reading« or ,performance« of the

architectural plan, but for participating in the actual planning process. The use of open

scores for him is similar to that of the performer in a musical event utilizing open scores:

it is the mechanism which allows us all to become involved, to make our presence felt.«

He revolts against the general ten- dency of the immediate past which implied passivity

on the part of the people as an audience for art, and made them receptacles for works

developed by others - the artists. He proclaimed that over the centuries artists have

become specialists

for the people, they made laws for the people. This created a dichotomy between the act

of art and the act of life, between decision-making and results. A dichotomy which did

not exist in primitive cultures where all the people were artists, nor does it even now exist

among children or the free young people of the revolution who do not differentiate

between the act of symbolization and the life process itself. In searching for ways to

break down this dichotomy and allow people to enter into the act of making art as part of

the art process he used >,open ended« scoring devices, which act as guides, not dictators.

These kinds of scores have built-in possibilities for interaction between what is perceived

beforehand and what emerges during the act. They allow the activity itself to generate its

own results in process. They communicate but do not control. They energize and guide,

they encourage, they evoke responses, they do not impose.

Halperin goes on to say that these open scores redefine the role of the artist, as it is no

longer adequate for him to be a solitary hero he must now reposition himself in society

and relate once again to the whole community. He is required to know more than the

techniques of his special craft, and is becoming aware of art as a creative community

experience by evolving scores, which allow for creativity of others as well as himself.

Thus, the artist now becomes part of a total configura- tion of all the people involved,

including every age level and every ethnic group in our society. This new attitude of the

artist as scorer redefines the role even further: The artist now sees his work to be not only

as a form maker himself but also as responsible for the creative drives of his total

community.12

music and architecture

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