The Procedure Scale

The Procedure Scale

Elis Czerniak

Nothing in life is procedure-less. The act of doing nothing, or not doing something, involves some form of procedure as we are choosing what happens subsequently. Therefore if everything we do is a procedure, how can we escape from it? One could ask the question why do we need to escape from it? In music nobody really ‘needs’ to do anything; they simply just search for a medium that they find artistically and aesthetically pleasing. This usually stems from the influence of  musical upbringing combined with their everyday artistic encounters. However one’s creative choice should come purely from striving to find a new and interesting subject; to obtain something unlike anything else. As an artist that really goes without saying no matter what field you are in; the search for innovation continues.

Controlled Sound         

What is there left to explore in music? In this day and age most elements of music have already been practiced leading to the mindset that everything has been done. Well, then how are people still being stimulated? Perhaps the general concert goers just enjoy past concepts reproduced in different ways or may not want anything new at all. This is quite a depressing thought so a better question to ask is what needs to be brought to light? What has been left in the dark?

One major element is the relinquishment of control, for that is what music is: controlled sound, isn’t it? Controlling sound has always been the issue throughout the history of music composition. Anybody can come up with an idea: a pitch group, gesture, melody or certain timbre combinations but how to structure it was always the key. This is what separates musicians, composers and academics from everyone else as they are able to apply processes to control sound in order to create ‘music’.

Music has always been preoccupied with process and construction, with the main major breakthroughs coming about through rearranging systemised controls. At the start of the twentieth century, with the advances in musical innovation and technology, composers merely sought to bring these elements within the existing logical state of order instead of concentrating on the sound itself. As this was pushed aside the emphasis was placed upon unifying these new measures into a worthy form.

Why should the relinquishment of control be attempted? Well, a notable argument is that organisation contradicts the purpose of sound, which is a very primal and natural entity that lives and breaths on its own. This philosophy comes from a more Eastern belief with the study of sonorous energy being placed in the forefront taking on a responsibility to treat music in terms of actual sound entities, rather then forcing constructive relationships. It is thought of a tone as a living cell and not something that can be controlled by mathematics or rearranged to suit people’s expectations. Distancing ourselves from structure and procedure can lead to somewhere unobtainable through the safe passage of false unifications; somewhere  perhaps transcendent beyond visibility.

These unifications that have been constantly obsessed about for centuries stem from procedure, which usually dictates how much authority the composer has upon the sounds they are using. Therefore to try and rid ourselves of control would mean discarding procedure, which I have learnt an impossible feat, as everything action (even an action-less action) is a procedure. This is where the implementation of the Procedure Scale comes into effect.

High Procedure Levels

Procedure-less music does not exist, therefore it is best to think in levels of procedure; a scale measuring the dominance it has on the music being produced. The main breakthrough compositional movements throughout the twentieth century have all dealt with various levels of procedure. Although each differ greatly from one another, primarily in musical ethos, they are all unified by their reliance on different procedural methods in order to generate material.

Total Serialism and Chance

The most obvious would be the beginnings of total serialism where composers were solely dependant on constructing rows of pitch, duration, dynamics and articulation, before letting the music compose itself. This can be seen as having a high procedure level as each element of the music is meticulously put through numerically driven operations in order to give the composer vast amounts of material that can be transferred straight to the score.

At the same time the complete opposite was happening as aleatoric chance music developed in rebellion to the mainstream serialistic growth. However the early stages of this music, although more autonomous, also put procedure ahead of the music it generated. Yes, the music holds a lot more freedom with regard to structure and spontaneity, yet the process in which material is generated still relies on strict hermetic means; the constructing of sound charts with selection being decided by chance methods such as the roll of a dice, the flip of a coin or the influence of a text. Just like total serialism this method was an incredibly effective way of quickly generating large amounts of material due to the pre-devision of all musical elements.

These two styles of controlled composition are clearly relatable to the time period in which they were developed when composers sought to bring a new stable meaning to art and to life after the terrors of the Second World War. This again shows mankind’s fear of relinquishing control, and rightly so as many had just lived through years full of uncertainty. Now they sought to bring new significance within the musical environment and attempt to create a utopia where all questions would be answered. Unfortunately this instead led to even more segregation within the musical community as, ironically, whoever was able to control sound more efficiently was in turn able to control the musical society.

Spectralists

The Spectralists pushed the boundaries of sound dissection but they too were scared to break away from the organisation process with their precise formations and dynamically constructed compositions. Splitting sound apart and then putting it back together in a very systemised scheme seems like a very hypocritical way of proceeding; freeing sound and then capturing and controlling it again. Perfect examples of high procedure levels are found in the early pieces of Spectral music, which seem more like exercises in writing within the harmonic series, where you can literally hear the processes that are taking place with the music either gradually moving up the partials, changing between noise and pure tone, or morphing from equal to unequal temperament. Other processes usually included the interplay between electronic and organic synthesis, displaying incredibly high levels of procedure forcing interpolation between harmonicity and inharmonicity.