Zugl.: Jena, Univ., Diss.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Technische Universität Berlin, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 194-196) and index.

Many scholars exclude New York painter Philip Guston (1913-80) from the artistic tradition of Abstract Expressionism due to his absence from New York City during the group's early formative years. This thesis asserts, however, that Guston's role in Abstract Expressionism can be firmly established through his unique interpretation of the formative influence of surrealist automatism. Though never engaging with the surrealists directly, Guston explored automatist ideas upon meeting New York School experimental music composers John Cage and Morton Feldman. This trio's engagement with the Zen Buddhist concepts of unimpededness and interpenetration influenced Guston to create compositions through chance operations, a process Cage would call "indeterminacy." My aim is to enrich an understanding of Guston's idiosyncratic relationship to Abstract Expressionism and, ultimately, to offer a more expansive definition of Abstract Expressionism in general, allowing for a broader understanding of the formation of American modernism.

This thesis explores the possibilities of communication in the context of a sound composition. In RevealingReveilingReveling, a series of questions concerning communication posed by John Cage, coupled with an extension of those questions posed by myself, are set to recorded sounds-in-the-world. The intention is to create a greater awareness of that which there is to listen in our world. The first part of this essay discusses influences of philosophical thought during the process of composing RevealingReveilingReveling. Two distinct twentieth-century thinkers that have impacted the creation of this piece and their areas of thought are Martin Heidegger: language and Being; and John Cage: sound, silence, and awareness. The second part of the essay is a structural analysis of the piece, discussing the recording of Cage's questions, sounds-in-the-world, sound-manipulation techniques and thought-processes, as well as periodic mention the aesthetic decisions made.

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[pt] John Cage esteve circundado em sons e seus desdobramentos por toda a vida. Sua relação ativa com os ruídos e silêncios do mundo reverberam em todas as práticas nas quais esteve envolvido. Textos, poemas, músicas, artes visuais, filmes, performances, suas diferentes formas de escrita dão corpo a uma poética que se faz da escuta intensa da realidade. Poética que, no exercício de sua complexidade, entre ordem e contingência, põe em movimento formas inventivas e potentes de desestabilizar o mundo e suas linguagens, e dá voz a outros modos possíveis de constituição de comunidades. Circunstância, devoção, disciplina, estrutura, imitação, indeterminação, intenção, interpenetração, método, notação – dez palavras listadas por Cage como características de seu trabalho. É nessas dez palavras que esse texto se escreve e se inscreve, atravessado por procedimentos e acasos, colocando em exercício seu pensamento ético e estético. / [en] John Cage was surrounded by sounds and their consequences throughout his life. His active and inventive relationship with sounds and silences of theworld reverberates in all practices in which he was involved. The different ways in which texts, poems, music, visual arts, films, performances, are written embody a poetics that is created by listening intensely to reality. Poetics which, in the exercise of their complexity, between order and contingency, sets in motion inventive and powerful ways to destabilize the world and their languages, and gives voice to other possible formations of communities. The following ten words have been chosen from his various works: circumstance, devotion, discipline, structure, imitation, indeterminacy, intention, interpenetration, method and notation. It is in those ten words that this text is written and inscribed, crossed by procedures and chances, putting into practice its ethical and aesthetic thinking.

[pt] O trabalho discorre acerca de algumas relações entre a música e a teoria, partindo da ideia de Indeterminação Musical proposta pelo artista norte-americano John Cage e suas consequências para a música, a linguagem, a ontologia e o pensamento de modo geral. O primeiro capítulo aborda o tema aproximando-se do conceito de indeterminação, das práticas musicais experimentais e das experiências verbais de notação musical, isto é, de partituras formadas apenas por palavras. No segundo capítulo, investiga-se a existência de certa zona de indiscernibilidade entre os escritos de Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari e a música, procurando elementos de um possível pensamento-música, isto é, um modo de orientação do pensamento e de concepção ontológica nos quais a música e o som não estão submetidos a critérios filosóficos pressupostos, mas funcionam eles mesmos como material fundamental para a construção de uma filosofia. / [en] This work discusses some relationships between music and theory, starting from the idea of Musical Indeterminacy proposed by the North American artist John Cage and its consequences for music, language, ontology and thought. The first chapter approaches the subject through the concept of indetermination itself, experimental musical practices and verbal experiences of musical notation, that is, of scores formed only by words. The second chapter discusses the existence of a certain zone of indiscernibility between the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and the music, looking for elements of a possible music-thinking, that is, a mode of thinking and an ontological conception in which music and sound are not subject to presupposed philosophical criteria, but function themselves as fundamental material for the construction of a philosophy

Ce travail est dédié à l’analyse des partitions graphiques et de l’interaction son-image qui en résulte. Notre corpus de recherche comprend aussi bien des partitions qui utilisent une notation plus plastique que le sous-type textuel ou verbal et quelques partitions mixtes lesquelles permettent un regard sur la relation établie entre le texte et l'image; comme la musique instrumentale est un art performatif, nous examinerons également les aspects énonciatifs présents dans l’écriture de l’œuvre menée par le compositeur et dans son interprétation, au moment de sa lecture et de son exécution par l’instrumentiste. La méthodologie consiste à élaborer et appliquer les concepts d’intersémioticité, en insistant sur leurs base linguistique, et ceux de linéarité et tabularité dans l’énoncé visuel. Nous voulons aussi rapporter ces concepts à la façon dont l’énoncé se produit dans les différentes instances du texte musical. En outre, cette thèse aura également un biais diachronique, dans le sens que nous voulons aborder certains types de notation utilisés tout au long de l’histoire de la musique et la façon dont s'est passée la transition d’un système à l’autre. / The purpose of this research is to analyse graphic scores and the sound-image interaction arising thereform. The research corpus includes both scores that use a notation of a more plastic caracter like the subtype textual or verbal, and some mixed scores, which allow a glimpse into the text-image relationship established. Once the instrumental music is a performative art, we will also deal with some enunciative aspects presents both in writing the work, carried out by the composer, as in his interpretation, during reading and performance of the work for the interpreter. The methodology consist in developing and applying the concepts of intersemioticity, emphasizing its linguistic basis, and linearity and tabularity in visual enunciated. We also intend to relate these concepts to the way occurs the enunciation in different instances of the musical text. Moreover, this research will also have a diachronic bias, in the sense that we intend to address some types of notation used throughout music history and how the transition between systems of notation occurred.

abstract: In 1975 the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) invited John Cage to write a composition for the bicentennial birthday of the United States. The result was Lecture on the Weather, a multi-media work for twelve expatriate vocalists and/or players with independent sound systems, magnetic tape, and film. Cage used texts by Henry David Thoreau, recordings of environmental sounds made by American composer Maryanne Amacher and a nature-inspired film by Chilean visual artist Luis Frangella. The composition opens with a spoken Preface and is arguably one of Cage’s most overtly political pieces. A year later the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and six major United States orchestras commissioned Cage to compose another work commemorating the United States bicentennial of the American Revolution. In response, he created Renga with Apartment House 1776, which follows his concept of a “music circus,” or simply, a musical composition with a multiplicity of events occurring simultaneously. Scored for voices, instrumental soloists and quartets, Renga with Apartment House is a multi-faceted work marked by layers of American hymns and folk tunes. Cage’s United States Bicentennial compositions – and his other pieces created in the 1970s and 1980s – have received little attention from music scholars. Unique and provocative works within his oeuvre, these compositions raise many questions. Why was Cage commissioned to write these works? How did Cage pay tribute to this celebratory event in American history? What socio–political meanings are implied in these pieces? In this thesis I will provide political, cultural, and biographical contexts of these works. I will further examine their genesis, analyze their scores and selected performances, reflect on their meaning and critical implications and consider the reception of these works. My research draws on unpublished documents housed in the CBC’s archives at McGill University, the archives of C. F. Peters, the New York Public Library and it builds on research of such scholars as David W. Bernstein, William Brooks, Benjamin Piekut, and Christopher Shultis. This thesis offers new information and perspectives on Cage’s creative work in the 1970s and aims at filling a significant gap in Cage scholarship. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Music 2015