The art of recording and the aesthetics of perfection

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 43, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 345-362

  Hamilton, Andy ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 36349024003     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/43.4.345     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. The original quotation is: 'Much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question-whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art-was not raised' (W. Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', in H. Arendt [ed.], Illuminations [London: Fontana, 1973], p. 229)
2. Benjamin, 'The Work of Art', pp. 226, 228. Roger Scruton's implausible account of film as a recording of a dramatic work would be an example of the kind of view that Benjamin objects to (R. Scruton, The Aesthetic Understanding [London: Methuen, 1983])
3. also to R. Wolin, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 182-198
4. and May, 'Habermas and Modernism', in R. Bernstein (ed.), Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), pp. 125-139
5. Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 242
6. Adorno, 'On the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening', in J. Bernstein (ed.), The Culture Industry (London: Routledge, 1991)
7. E. Eisenberg, The Recording Angel: Explorations in Phonography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987) discusses the social significance of recorded music; several writers have questioned the decline of the aura
8. Schnabel quotation from André Previn and Antony Hopkins, Music Face to Face (London: Llamish Hamilton, 1971), p. 89. He did eventually issue many fine recordings, at least one of which the present writer, a vegetarian, has listened to while eating a peanut butter sandwich
9. Eisenberg, The Recording Angel, pp. 50-54
10. R. Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Musk and Performance, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1995), both quotations p. 354 (see also p. 6m)
11. A. Hamilton, 'The Art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Imperfection', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 40 (2000), pp. 168-185
12. s The claim of imperfection is often ridiculed, as critic Rob Cowan notes in discussing what he terms the 'perfectionist aesthetic' shown by Herbert von Karajan-'would sloppiness suit you better?' Cowan recognizes that 'rogue freedoms' also have their place in art (letter to Gramophone, vol. 77 [September 1999], p. 6). The issue is addressed further in A. Hamilton, 'The Art of Improvisation'
13. Busoni quoted in J. Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), pp. 415-416
14. C. Saerchinger, Artur Schnabel: A Biography (London: Cassell, 1957), pp. 220-225
15. A. Schnabel, My Life and Musk (New York: Dover, 1988), pp. 98-99
16. See M. Chanan, Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music (London: Verso, 1995), p. 118
17. Von Karajan is another 'perfectionist'. In contrast, it has been argued, Furtwängler's spontaneous art would 'wear out' on record-'He was the very opposite of a gramophone record' (Hans Keller, 'Furtwängler 1886-1954: An Appreciation', Opera [February 1955])
18. Douglas Kahn, Noise Water Meat (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999)
19. As noted by T. Day, A Century of Recorded Music (New Haven, CT: Yale U.P., 2000), p. 24, who argues that for classical recording, creative techniques have become less common in the digital era
20. From 'The Future of Recorded Romanticism', quoted in O. Read and W. Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph (Indianapolis: Howard W, Sams, 1976), pp. 385-386. Thus Chanan is wrong to claim that 'all acoustic recording engineers were striving for ... greater faithfulness to the source', and that only with electrical recording did engineers begin to think in terms of creating an 'aural image' (Chanan, Repeated Takes, p. 58)
21. CIMP Statement of Purpose, on sleeve to Paul Lytton Quartet, The Balance of Trade (Redwood, New York: Creative Improvised Music Projects, CIMP #114, 1996). But CIMP's commitment to imperfection is not unlimited, since the 'Recording Engineer's Notes' mention 'the creaking at the beginning of track 4 ... unfortunately [due to] a slightly loose floorboard'. A radical imperfectionist such as John Cage would have joyfully embraced such contingencies of live performance
22. P. Boulez, 'Technology and the Composer', in his Orientations (London: Faber, 1986), pp. 488-489
23. See also Jean Vermeil, Conversations with Boulez: Tlioughts on Conducting (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996), pp. 105-106: 'It's absolutely indispensable that you begin with a well-performed, real object... as far as instrumental music is concerned, one is responsible for the musical object, and the recording engineer is responsible for transmitting that object as faithfully as possible ...'
24. K. Walton, 'Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism', Critical Inquiry, vol. 11 (1984), pp. 246-277
25. A similar case against transparency in photography is made hy J. Snyder and N. Allen, 'Photography, Vision and Representation
26. P. Alperson, The Philosophy of the Visual Arts (New York: Oxford LLP., 1992), p. 294
27. also in Critical Inquiry, vol, 2 (1975)
28. P. Boulez, 'Technology and the Composer' in Orientations, pp. 488-489
29. Conditions of audition are discussed in O. Read and W. Welch, From Tin Foil To Stereo, ch. 25
30. Publicity for the Edison Company between 1916 and 1925 showed blindfolded listeners taking a 'tone test', in which they try to distinguish singer Frieda Hempel live and on record (Day, A Century of Recorded Musk, illustration 3)
31. Eisenherg, The Recording Angel, pp. 110-111
32. Chanan, Repeated Takes, p. 59. For Chanan, purism brings the listener into the studio or auditorium, with the microphone placed at a distance that includes the natural room resonance of the studio, or acoustic reflections of the auditorium. In contrast, 'creativity' such as Glenn Gould's-of which more shortly-uses an acoustically dead studio and close-up microphones to create an artificial intimacy as if the performer is transported into the presence of the listener (Repealed Takes, pp. 59-60)
33. As one reviewer put it, 'one seems to be overhearing the player, as if one were wandering around the house'. The recording is discussed in A. Kazdin, Glenn Gould at Work: Creative Lying (New York: E.P. Dutton/Penguin Books, 1989), p. 139
34. see also O. Friedrich, Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations (London: Methuen, 1994), p. 229
35. Gould, Selected Letters, p. 180
36. 'The Prospects of Recording', High Fidelity, April 1966, reprinted in T. Page (ed.). Tile Glenn Gould Reader (London: Faber & Faber, 1987)
37. Selected Letters, pp. 178 and 101
38. 'The Grass Is Always Greener in the Outtakes: An Experiment ill Listening', in T. Page (ed.), The Glenn Gould Reader, p. 359
39. 'Ueber die musikalische Verwendung des Radios' ['On the musical employment of radio'], Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970-1986), vol. 15, p. 392
40. quoted in T. Levin, 'For the Record: Adorno on Music in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility', October, vol. 55 (Winter 1990), pp. 23-47
41. Kazdin, Glenn Gould at Work, pp. 19-20, 26-27
42. As Jonathan Kettle explains in 'Don't Believe All You Hear', in The Piano: BBC Music Magazine Special Issue (London: BBC, 1997), p. 56
43. see also Day, A Century of Recorded Music, pp. 26-29. This seems an extraordinary figure, though no doubt much more editing goes on than is generally realized. The present article has been reworked to death and contains an edit at least every two words
44. An interesting non-classical example is Panthalassa, Bill Laswell's remix of Miles Davis's 1969-1974 recordings (Sony/Columbia CK 67909, 1998). Paul Tingen comments that the result is 'imbued with '90s perfectionist production values. But... the music loses in spontaneity and here-and-now aliveness and the instant interaction between the musicians is less apparent' (P. Tingen, Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-91 [New York: Billboard Books, 2001], p. 141)
45. Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance, p. 6rn
46. David Helfgott's recordings of Rachmaninov are a notorious example of recorded performances without coherence or accuracy. These issues are further discussed in N. Spice, 'Hubbub' (review of Chanan, Repeated Takes) in London Review of Books, 6 July 1995, pp. 3-6
47. J. Levinson, 'Performative vs. Critical Interpretation in Music', in M. Krausz (ed.), The Interpretation of Music: Philosophical Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
48. Kahn, 'Audio Art in the Deaf Century', in D. Lander and M. Lexier (eds), Sound by Artists (Toronto: Art Metropole, 1990), pp. 301, 309
49. Noise Water Meat, pp. 80-81
50. Quoted in J. Diliberto, 'Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry: Pioneers in Sampling', Electronic Musician (December 1986), pp. 54-59, 72. The Acousmatics were members of the Pythagorean brotherhood required to listen to lectures delivered unseen from behind a curtain
51. R. Scruton, The Aesthetics of Musk (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1997), pp. 35, 74-75
52. A. Hamilton, 'Music and the Sonic Arts', in preparation
53. An early example was the glissando of factory sirens and other industrial sounds, used by composers such as Varése and Antheil, which moved Sergei Yukovich to exclaim in 1922 that 'The electric siren of Contemporaneity bursts with a mighty roar into the perfumed boudoirs of artistic aestheticism!' (quoted in D. Kahn, Noise Water Meat, p. 84)
54. T. wishart, On Sonic Art (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, rev. edn 1996)
55. Stockhausen quoted in Kahn, Noise Water Meat, p. 112
56. Schaeffer quoted in Kahn, p. no. Kahn comments that in Cage's own audiotape works such as the pioneering 'Williams Mix' (1952), 'associative properties [of] the recorded sounds ... are almost entirely obliterated' (p. 113)
57. Wishart, On Sonic Art, p. 136
58. 'Presque. Rien' is discussed in R. Sutherland, New Perspectives In Music (London: Sun Tavern Fields, 1994), p. 51. Many examples of post - Ambient industrial and environmental recordings are found in the catalogue of Empreintes Digitalcs (www.electrocd.com and www.empreintesdigitales.com); other interesting examples include Li Chin Sung, Past (New York: TZADIK TZ 7014, 1996), and Katharine Norman, London (London: NMC DO 34). Sound-art is discussed in M. Boon, 'Removal Company', The Wire, 212 (April 2002)
59. A. Edidin, 'Three Kinds of Recording and the Metaphysics of Music', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 39 (1999), pp. 36-37
60. Ted Gioia explains how recording was essential in the development of jazz in The Imperfect Art (New York: Oxford U.P., 1988), pp. 63-66
61. Teo Macero's work with Miles Davis is discussed in Tingen, Mites Beyond, pp. 67-70, 139-142
62. on Zappa, see Ben Watson, 'Frank Zappa as Dadaist: Recording Technology and the Power to Repeat', Contemporary Music Review, vol. 15 (1996), pp. 109-137)
63. Charlie Gillett discusses the impact of auteur theory in 'The Producer as Artist', in 11. Wiley Hitchcock (ed.), The Phonograph and Our Musical Life: Proceedings of a Centennial Conference 7-10 December 1977, ISAM Monographs no. 14 (Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 1980)
64. This article would not have been possible without the painstaking guidance especially on technical matters that I have received from David Lloyd, Many thanks also to Berys Gaut, Brian Marley, Max Paddison, James Page, Mark Sinker, Michael Spitzer, Roger Squires, Ben Watson, and participants at a British Society of Aesthetics meeting in Lancaster, June 1997; and the anonymous referees from this journal