The WALL OF SOUND WOS Effect.
The Wall of sound is usually associated with the work of John Cage and the gesture composers, but as Robert Morgan’s description of “wallpaper music” implies one finds many examples including; serial, electronic works, Motion music, drones, cross-over exotica, electronica, the once group, Musicus Simplisticus, and in my own Man and Machine series. Though classical types use the WOS as a texture within a larger work, many others use it as the entire work.
Perhaps first experienced in Bruckner’s 9th symphony third movement climax, the WOS can be understood as a point of complete musical incomprehensibility. So much musical information at once harmony, counterpoint, and volume, that the parts become indistinct and blend into a WOS. On the other hand Schoenberg’s “Colors..,” from his Five Pieces for Orchestra, is another example in a quieter context. WOS is not always about power, but it is about musical parts being equal and indistinct. WOS can also be achieved with a single instrument as a drone.
In vocal music a similar approach is to reduce all text to phonemes, vocables, words out of sequence, or several speakers/singers at once, or to have instruments unbalance (cover) the vocal sounds. It is interesting to note that the human voice (with words) has a tendency to predominate any texture. Though related to and confluent with “non-linear” technique, referring to the fact that a “story” may not have a sequential beginning, middle or an end, I would call this textual incomprehensibility or TI when the “story” can not be understood by the performance alone. Like recent visual arts it needs the “editorial” and in plain language to explain it.
The fact is that WOS and TI are not difficult techniques, This is in part because electronics and commercial recording software is available on every MAC. An electric guitar left in front of an amp turned on high will cause feed back without the need for it to be actually played — bingo WOS. Take any text and reduce it to phonemes and — bingo TI Also, WOS, even with very different approaches, have similar results because the ear only notices the big picture: Is it loud, Is it soft, Is it a drone, etc.
The Sound Artist
Many of these techniques are so easy to achieve (They can even be found objects.) that a whole new category of artists has arisen: the “sound artist”, “multimedia artist” etc. I have mentioned the problems that arise over issues of ownership of a style and/or a sound; for example: free jazz/gesture. Similar problems arise between the trained and untrained composers.
On a closer look we see that the training issue is a red herring. It is really a subject of what “kind” of training, because sound artists and media artists who primarily use music or text as a medium are in fact extremely trained just not in music or in creative writing. These artists learn their craft in arts schools.
So, a difference in intellectual approach is also noted. A sound artist has an extra-musical “idea”. Then they use music, and other media to present it. This is quite different from having a musical idea and then developing it. A sound artist isn’t interested in merely manipulating materials. The artists’s idea must have primacy. Music Composition is about technique and inspiration. Right now the art world views technique as just another style but for a composer technique is the basis of their intellectual approach, their work.
Perhaps the different in approached can be summarized as this:
Sound Artists are outside their materials and Composers are inside them.
Art Looks Ahead, Music Looks Back
Though both the art and music worlds are beset with trends, sound artists, multimedia, textual, and instillation artists are mainstream for the art world. In the America classical music scene mainstream new work is “who will be the new Bernstein”. That is; the art world does look ahead for new mediums, the classical American music world looks back to maintain. Music theater and opera straddles both outlooks as it includes music and visual arts. Preset outlooks can be stifling. Breaking out of the mold is difficult for both worlds. In both cases a great deal of excellence and importance that does not fit in to this specified mold is overlooked. For example, Varese is a composer who appeals across both worlds but was overlooked by music history in his time. If we consider the many differences between art and music; the orchestra is a living thing, and a gallery is just an empty space. Also, consider the different relationships of “patrons” to the different arts. You can own a painting-you can’t own Beethoven. This subject perhaps needs its own lesson.
Speaking of Varese, what of electronic music? The discipline of electronic music should be a way to bridge this gap between the trained art world and the trained music world. Yet one finds that the “off the shelf-ers” [users of commercial software] and the commercial DJ’s [experienced practitioners] have done an end run on schooled electronic composers as well. In a result oriented world where money=power no one cares if you wrote your own software. In fact those who composed for the 4X at IRCAM now find that their music is now unplayable because this machine no longer exists. They can still play their old recordings if they made them.