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Writings 1982-2021
translated from German by Meaghan Burke
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Christian Scheib:
PETER ABLINGER/STATIC'S MUSIC/NOISE INQUIRIES
1997/98
RECITATIVE AND ARIA
There're at base only 2 things: recitative and aria.
Or said differently: telling a story (narrative) and stopping time. Or put yet another way: the consecutive, the 1-after-the-other, and the simultaneous, the all-at-once.
The first in all these examples (the sequence, the succession) lets itself be reduced to a common denominator: language. The second does not; locked up with it is the indescribable, the unspeakable, the unutterable.
At times I think this second might also be called music.
No sense but hearing is so little tied to linearity. No other sense is so intensely capable of the simultaneous. And yet only rarely has music been prepared to make use of this capability. So often being only the obsequious servant of language. And is still.
We represent even the unutterable as speakable, even eternity after the model of language: as a 'stretch'. As the spinning apart from beginning and end. As thinning (an infinitely thin line), dilution.
I maintain the opposite. That eternity is everything at once. Is beginning (taking up, starting) and ending (stopping) now in this instant. Is the condensed, compressed, infinitely thick Now of this moment - in every moment. And the series of these moments again and again in every moment. Now and always.
All music simultaneously - this would be the waterfall, (white) Noise. All symphonies and operas at once, all the jazz solos ever played and that ever will be, every drum rhythm that can be beaten anywhere, every 'good night' song, even that which is sung and forgotten.
And yet what we perceive is not this Everything. What we hear is not really that Noise. We make a selection. We do what Debussy has said: I start with all the notes, keep out the ones I don't like, and let in the ones I do. This selection is our being.
When we stand at a waterfall, we perceive our thoughts and ideas, but not the waterfall itself; and if it succeeds in quieting our minds, letting our thoughts rest, we hear a melody in the din. Each his own!
What happens here is MADE by no one. It is instead through Noise, by It, MADE-POSSIBLE.
Putting the realization of this 'making-possible' of Being, this selection, this enabling, before 'making' exists as an attitude in the arts. Above all in pre-historic (pre-literate!) art: one doesn't 'create', one makes no 'works', one makes only an arrangement of what is (one sets up a circle of stones, one beats on a drum, one repeats the same syllable again and again) - an arrangement, an order, within which something can happen - through which some-thing can pass.
This idea is preserved in Eastern European icons. And at times finds itself in newer art.
Not counting(-on), registering, the DIFFERENT, but instead the SAME, through which the ONE can be manifest.
transl. by Bill Dietz
HEARING IS THE WORK
(from Catalogue "Sonoric Perspectives", Kunsthalle Rostock 2006)
Hearing is the work. The path of the sun from rising to setting describes a line on an open field in Rümlingen, Switzerland, on which 36 chairs and 6 bamboo plants are set up.
(Chairs, Bamboo, Sunrise, Sunset, 1996/97) The axes of listening and viewing are aligned with this path -- oriented along sunbeams. Chairs in the landscape become a part of a larger sculpture that combines motives of Land Art with those of conceptual composition. Hearing and observing, and the orienting of these two important senses in nature: this motive can be found in the most various of forms throughout the work of the composer and experimental sound artist Peter Ablinger (born in Austria, 1959) whenever the question is of extracting aesthetic qualities from the sounds of nature in the landscape. Indeed, the more unspecific the sound configuration presents itself, the greater seems the challenge to get to the bottom of it. This is particularly clear in Ablinger's musical works devoted to the phenomenon of white noise.
ON THE PHOTO PIECES OF THE SERIES SEEING AND HEARING
"In 1994 I was searching for a way to significantly increase sound density -- as in "Der Regen, das Glas, das Lachen" -- that would also allow me to continue collaborating with instrumentalists. "Significantly" meaning, I had a conception of sound comparable to noise: in which individual events would become colors. I was close to the solution that eventually led to the IEAOV pieces when I began taking photographs with extended exposure time and while moving the camera: movements in space that condensed into color spectra.
("Seeing and Hearing")
For me, these photos were in no way visual art. And yet, the soon to follow condensification pieces for instruments and electronics (IEAOV) were always more like huge colored plates than music -- huge colored plates that nevertheless, were composed for the concert hall... However, if in the beginning the photos were studies for the concert pieces, they later asserted themselves as an independent and self-sufficient series of works --which, to me, only make sense when I consider them as music: when I, so to speak, hear them -- or maybe better: when I must provide them with a further, additional sense, a sense where seeing has only a preparatory function and where hearing becomes and extra-physical process..."
(P.A. 11/02, engl. version edited by Bill Dietz)
RAIN, GLASS, LAUGHING
"Der Regen, das Glas, das Lachen" for 25 instrumentalists: this marks the juncture of a one tone piece and white noise. The constituent polymetric one tone piece takes 20 minutes to "glissando" once through the octave and in the process turns into an all tone piece, while the total sound passes in stages through 6 further layers of simultaneous sound until it arrives at a single level of white noise. The simultaneity of the graduation from coarsegraininess (tone) to fine-graininess (= more compactness, more noise) right down to the surface (white noise) is maintained - potentially - from start to finish. This means that what is played is extremely dense and a large part of the orientation is left to the listener. Over long periods he is left alone to listen in to the various levels of the piece, to find his way IN THE SOUND.
This process of listening in is an essential part of the piece itself, the actual event, the reason it Game into being. No-one is "forced" when listening to select or distinguish between the different levels when listening to the piece. Nor is THE SOUND of the piece made up of its individual levels. I would like to say, IT OCCURS beyond the levels, through the levels, and in the ears of the listener. This is where "melodies" are created which do not feature in any of the layers, but which for example begin with a sound in layer 6, immediately followed by one in layer 4 and then in 3, only to end in layer 5. One might say that the process of listening does not run "along" the axis of chronological time but takes place "across" time. Or that it expands instead of remaining on a line. In this sense, it is a "kind of spectralisation of attention". And as a listener I enjoy oscillating between the different forms of listening - including that of absence.
transl. Anne Durand and Mark Court
Anny Ballardini:
INTERVIEW PETER ABLINGER/VOICES AND PIANO
2004
as download-document:
Word 97 (25 KB)
My material is not sound.
My material is audibility.
While others work with sound
perhaps set a sound and than a pause
I set audibility then inaudibility.
Inaudibility can arise through various means.
Through quietness but also through loudness.
Through too low notes and through too high notes.
Through slowness but also throuh swiftness.
Through too little occurring but also through too much occurring.
Through too much closeness and through too much distance.
Through too short durations and through too long durations.
Through emptiness and through fullness.
... Ablinger confirms, “I strive to make ‘perception’ perceptible... There is a way that one person can perceive sound as if they were two different people and that is what I try to achieve.”
(from: Atelier Neue Musik, "The New Conceptualism")
MORE REALITY 2, texts 1988-1999 (pdf 21 KB)
Christian Scheib:
Christian Scheib:
Anny Ballardini:
Bill Dietz:
Trond Olav Reinholdtsen:
Evan Johnson:
G. Douglas Barrett:
Chiyoko Szlavnics:
Chico Mello:
Chiyoko Szlavnics:
G. Douglas Barrett:
La Tempestad:
G. Douglas Barrett:
Bill Dietz:
Sergio Bové:
Carlos Bermejo:
WE ARE CLEAR LIKE A CRYSTAL
MUSIC AND REALITY
, notes and sketches since 1979
INVERSE PERSPECTIVE, notes on perception, 1995
as download-document (pdf, 3 KB)
AUDIBILITY, the other of sound, 1996 (pdf, 2 KB)
PHILOSOPHY / THE OBSZENE, 1996/2019 (pdf 5kb)
TO LEAVE THE CONCERT HALL, Satie, Wagner, La Monte Young, ...
a note, 1997 (PDF, 2KB)
NO TRANSGRESSION, The change between concert- and installation pieces ...
a note, 1997 (4 KB)
ART AND CULTURE, an essay written in 2003
REALITY IS A SCANDAL, 2003 (pdf 2kb)
THE SUPERFLUOUS, 2008 (short excerpt)
LANDSCAPE WITH BEETHOVEN, 2009 (pdf 8kb)
THE ORCHESTRA, 2010 (pdf 8kb)
CONCERT AND CANVAS PAINTING, on standards and institutions,
notes from 1996 to 2013 (originally from: Klangforum Vienna Homepage, pdf 55kb)
CÉZANNE AND MUSIC, Perception and Perceptual Deficiencies / Music and Painting of the last 150 Years, 2012/13 (Ear|Wave|Event - Homepage)
NOISE AND NOISES, on a basic distinction in art and music, 2013
UNIFORM, 2016 (pdf 2kb)
HYPOTHESES ON A ROMANESQUE CHAPPEL, 2016 (pdf 361kb)
HARMONY AND ELECTRICITY, 2016 (pdf 4kb)
FREEDOM, 2016 (pdf 5kb)
MUSIC IS NOT TRUE, or: Why there can be no philosophy of music, 2016 (pdf 27kb)
NONSENSE, 2016/2017 (pdf 15kb)
THE OBJECT OF THE 21ST CENTURY, 2017 (pdf 14kb)
CAN ART BE RESEARCH, or:
"What we cannot describe is what makes us happy", 2017 (pdf 888kb)
THE UNSAID - on psychoanalysis and number symbolism, 2017 (pdf 24kb)
MUSIC IS MORE THAN SAYING, 2018 (pdf 6kb)
HAND AXE AND SMARTPHONE, Notes on the Hybrid, 2018-2023 (pdf 5kb)
PHILOSPHY - a note, 2020 (pdf 2kb)
CORONA BLOG, 2020
HEARING HOLES, on Socrates' allegory of the cave, 2020 (pdf 5kb)
MUSIC & THE OTHER, 2020 (pdf 8kb)
INVERTED PERSPECTIVE, a collection of materials 1990-2020
I CAN CONTINUE DANCING, 2021
THE UNDISTINGUISHED, 2019-2021 (pdf 91kb)
MUSIC ART, 2021 (pdf 2kb)
LAST LIE, 2021 (pdf 3kb)
DISIDENTIFICATION, 2021 (pdf 2kb)
AUGMENTED HEARING, 2013-2022 (pdf 229kb)
UNDER ZERO, Zero point figures and Deleuze's "Logic of Sense", 2022 (pdf 18kb)
TIME WILL COME, the crisis blog, 2022
RESEARCH ERASES THE NON-RESEARCHABLE, 2017-2024 (pdf 10kb)
THE ART THAT THINKS, artificial and artistic intelligence, 2024 (pdf 123kb)
"General Strike of Art", see orig. german version at Golden Pudel Club, 'blurred edges', Hamburg 2022
texts in english by/with other authors:
PETER ABLINGER/STATIC'S MUSIC/NOISE INQUIRIES
1997/98
UNTITLED
On Peter Ablinger's Installations, 2003
INTERVIEW PETER ABLINGER/VOICES AND PIANO, 2004
as download-document:
pdf (8 KB)
THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPROVISATION/THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MUSIC, 2004
as download-document:
pdf (9 KB)
THE SOUNDS DO NOT INTEREST ME, an e-mail-interview with questions by the composer Trond Olav Reinholdtsen, 2005
as download-document:
pdf (13 KB)
LIKE THE CLEAR BLUE SKY, 2006
about Peter Ablinger's "1-127", about scales and field recordings
MUSIC AND ITS OTHERS, 2007
as download-document:
PDF (98 KB)
TWO COMPOSERS' TALK
Unreleased and partial transcription of interviews held in July & November 2007
Between representation and self-reference
MIMESIS AND NOISE in Peter Ablinger, 2007
as download-document:
pdf (10 KB)
TEN QUESTIONS ABOUT "CITYOPERA", 2008
about Peter Ablinger's Cityopera Graz
BETWEEN NOISE AND LANGUAGE: The Sound Installations and Music of Peter Ablinger, 2009
as download-document:
PDF (876 KB)
QUESTIONNAIRE, 2010
as download-document:
PDF (4 KB)
WINDOW PIECE: Seeing and Hearing the Music of Peter Ablinger, 2010
as download-document:
pdf (52 KB)
PETER ABLINGER SINGS WHITNEY HOUSTON, 2012
as download-document:
PDF (132 KB)
BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF MUSIC,
some connections in Peter Ablinger’s work, 2013
as download-document:
PDF (114 KB)
SEVEN PROJECTIONS
in the music of Peter Ablinger, 2013
as download-document:
PDF (25 KB)
a conversation with composer Peter Ablinger, Seth Brodsky, Philip von Zweck, and Zachary Cahill, Portable Gray, Vol.3/No.1/2020, PDF (779 KB)
Marina Sudo:
LISTENING TO NOISE AND LISTENING TO ONESELF
An Analysis of Peter Ablinger’s Orgel und Rauschen, Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies, 2020
Ismael G. Cabral:
an interview with Peter Ablinger fo the spanish music magazin "El compositor habla", 2021, PDF (18 KB)