Ep. 20
Mix including compositions by Herbert Eimart, Florian Hecker, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luc Ferrari, Farmers Manual and Jean-Claude Risset
“The Musical Model. Pierre Boulez was the first to develop a set of simple oppositions and complex differences, as well as reciprocal nonsymmetrical correlations, between smooth and striated space. He created these concepts and words in the field of music, defining them on several levels precisely in order to account for the abstract distinction at the same time as the concrete mixes. In the simplest terms, Boulez says that in a smooth space-time one occupies without counting, whereas in a striated space-time one counts in order to occupy. He makes palpable or perceptible the difference between nonmetric and metric multiplicities, directional and dimensional spaces. He renders them sonorous or musical. Undoubtedly, his personal work is composed of these relations, created or recreated musically. At a second level, it can be said that space is susceptible to two kinds of breaks: one is defined by a standard, whereas the other is irregular and undetermined, and can be made wherever one wishes to place it. At yet another level, it can be said that frequencies can be distributed either in the intervals between breaks, or statistically without breaks. In the first case, the principle behind the distribution of breaks and intervals is called a “module”; it may be constant and fixed (a straight striated space), or regularly or irregularly variable (curved striated spaces, termed focalized if the variation of the module is regular, nonfocalized if it is irregular). When there is no module, the distribution of frequencies is without break: it is “statistical,” however small the segment of space may be; it still has two aspects, however, depending on whether the distribution is equal (nondirected smooth space), or more or less rare or dense (directed smooth space). Can we say that in the kind of smooth space that is without break or module there is no interval? Or, on the contrary, has everything become interval, intermezzo? The smooth is a nomos, whereas the striated always has a logos, the octave, for example. Boulez is concerned with the communication between the two kinds of space, their alternations and superpositions: how “a strongly directed smooth space tends to meld with a striated space,” how “a striated space in which the statistical distribution of the pitches used is in fact equal tends to meld with a smooth space”;5 how the octave can be replaced by “non-octave-forming scales” that reproduce themselves through a principle of spiraling; how “texture” can be crafted in such a way as to lose fixed and homogeneous values, becoming a support for slips in tempo, displacements of intervals, and son art transformations comparable to the transformations of op art. Returning to the simple opposition, the striated is that which intertwines fixed and variable elements, produces an order and succession of distinct forms, and organizes horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonic planes. The smooth is the continuous variation, continuous development of form; it is the fusion of harmony and melody in favor of the production of properly rhythmic values, the pure act of the drawing of a diagonal across the vertical and the horizontal.” -Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari