RE-PATCHED RESEARCH PHASE
Re-Patched is an international music project dedicated to the figure of Bogusław Schaeffer and his legacy in contemporary Central Europe, emerging from the cooperation of five organisations (Art Ritam from Novi Sad; The Mlok Association from Prague; ISCM Slovak Section from Bratislava; IN SITU Contemporary Art Foundation from Warsaw; Pro Progressione from Budapest) with the support of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, the Academy of Music in Banska Bistryca and the Transparent Sound New Music Festival in Budapest.
The Re-Patched project follows on from the previous research "Pres(s) Schaeffer", in which Ljubomir Nikolic, and later in collaboration with Elia Moretti, recomposed the sound material created by the composer Bogusław Schaeffer in the Electronic Music Studio in Warsaw (PRES) and Belgrade (Elektronski Studio). In fact, at the beginning of the seventies of the last century, following the trend in other European centres, the establishment of the Electronic Studio at Radio Belgrade was started. Thanks to the work and vision of Vladan Radovanović and Paul Pignon, and with the support of the management of Radio Belgrade, the Synthi 100 EMS synthesizer was purchased in 1972, which became the fulcrum of the studio's future work.
The Synthi 100 was designed by Peter Zinovieff at the EMS Studios in London and represented the avant-garde of electronic music technology at that time. A limited number of units were produced and installed mainly in electronic music studios at radio stations in Europe. In the 1970s, three Synthi 100s were installed in the "Eastern European" countries - Belgrade, Sophia and Moscow.
During the 1970s, the Elektronski Studio was a hub of activity, and numerous local and foreign artists came to Belgrade, who, with the help of Radovanović and Pignon, created new works and put the Radio Belgrade Studio on the map of electronic music in Europe. The Polish experimental composer Bogusław Schaeffer was one of the artists working in the Elektronski Studio at that time (1973). In particular, the compositions he created in Belgrade (e.g. “Synthi Story”) were the focus of Ljubomir Nikolic's Pres(s) Schaeffer project.
(13th December 2022, Belgrade. Outcome of the first research “Pres(s) Schaeffer” https://youtu.be/ZaJsCI6eLWU a live concert broadcasted from Studio 6 for the third channel of Radio Beograd.)
“Whatever is possible in music, that is music” (Bogusław Schaeffer)
If in this precedent process "Pres(s) Schaeffer" there was a clear reference to and analysis of the historical context of the 1960s and 1970s. Re-Patched aims to situate the legacy of Bogusław Schaeffer in the contemporary environment of Central European New Music. In fact, the main methodology we have proposed is discourse analysis. We aim to shed new light on the creative and pioneering music of Bogusław Schaeffer by analysing his important artistic and cultural legacy. Discourse analysis in the sense that we don't study Bogusław Schaeffer in a positivist or descriptive way, but rather in terms of how his practices reacted in their contexts and what traces they have left us today, and how we can create contemporary music by thinking through them.
Discourse analysis allows to question our sense of reality, as if the meaning of every cultural object, performative action and artistic event were the product of a permanent, routinised interaction. In this context, Bogusław Schaeffer, in his idiosyncratic position, offers a perspective that is capable of critically exploring the processes of new music on different levels of creation by combining knowledge relations and conditions in society and culture, which we will do by referring specifically to the Serbian context (Novi Sad and Belgrade), as well as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, so to speak situating this research from a Central and South-Eastern European perspective.
The present study, however, does not purport to offer a universalist conception. Our "perspective", which unfolds through the thinking of Bogusław Schaeffer, is to be understood in the sense of selected, disparate snapshots of the closely interwoven musical history of Central and Southeastern Europe, in all their plurality and certainly not as a comprehensive consideration of it. This is not a representative selection of compositional concepts by Bogusław Schaeffer with the greatest possible stylistic range from a bird's-eye view, but rather an attempt to thematise exemplary sonic thinking in which the fault lines of cultural, historical or aesthetic discourses become audible and perceptible.
Re-Patched involves practices in which textual and artistic approaches are closely intertwined. In such artistic research we produce writing that critically reflects on the making, while conversely the practice informs and feeds into the writing. This text is itself an example, as an outcome/report of the very first phase of the research.
There is no longer a divide between critical theory and artistic practice, but the practice itself is critical and philosophical. In this respect, Re-Patched responds to contemporary philosophies that question the divide between idea and matter.
How such research can expand the vocabulary of Re-Patched will be the subject of further investigation. Namely, in the online introductory workshops that will be held by the six experts in February 2024: Ljubomir Nikolić, Gerard Lebik, Daniel Matej, Orsolya Kaincz, Petr Vrba, Elia Moretti, with additional guest speakers Marek Chołoniewski, who studied and worked with Bogusław Schaeffer, and Paul Pignon, who founded the Electronic Music Studio in Belgrade together with Vladan Radovanović. The workshops will therefore form the basis for the five young musicians who responded to our open call: Pavol Béreš (SK), Anežka Matoušková (CZ), Marcell Csuka (HU), Aleksandra Wtorek (PL), Maria Rašić (SRB). All of them will work together in a creative process aimed at disseminating the results of their artistic research.
A first problem for the analysis is to decide when a particular feature is relevant to the specific knowledge required. Are there general principles that determine the relevance or nature of such expertise?
In front of such a tricky question, we could only answer with a quote from Bogusław Schaeffer himself: “a composer must be able to submit himself to his inner creative compulsion and not to the pressure of conventions or anything from the outside” (Bogusław Schaeffer, “Audio Visual Music” p.6)
Bogusław Schaeffer can really be our guide through this research process. He offers us many different kinds of writings (e.g. the seminal "Introduction to Composition" among many others, such as "New Music. Problems of Contemporary Composing Techniques"; "Small Guidebook of Twentieth Century Music"; "Twentieth Century Music. Creators and Problems"; "Classics of Dodecaphony"; "History of Music. Styles and Creators"). Beside of these, so far we have collected other material such as scores, music, videos, articles, testimonies, opinions (the main source material is provided by the Polish Foundation Aurea Porta, the most significant foundation that is researching and presenting Schaeffer`s work; the Polish Theatre Institute; the many reviews in which Bogusław Schaeffer published his musicological writings - We are in communication with the foundation Aurea Porta, which have organized the Schaeffers Era festival for 15 years, and in particular they can suggest the what of Schaeffer’s pieces haven’t been performed yet).
Bogusław Schaeffer has created over 550 musical works, 400 graphic pieces, 46 plays translated into 17 languages and written 17 books. However, we don't want to catalogue and present Schaeffer's works in a descriptive or representative way. We will analyse these works and confront them with other material, because we want to understand to what extent and how it is possible to develop self-expression through graphic art, music composition, script writing and performance. We will pay homage to Bogusław Schaeffer not by doing something similar to what he has already done, but by learning his lesson of being authentic and creative, aiming to create works that are unique in terms of the time and situation in which they were created, as well as the genre they form.
Schaeffer's interdisciplinary practice proposes an inclusive view of music as a polyvalent and fluid structure, threads, languages, expressions and technologies, with very different means (e.g. he has created theatre by thinking through music and vice versa).
Re-Patched has the potential of giving Bogusław Schaeffer’s practices a perspective toward the nowadays. It gathers practices that are defined by a common characteristic of criticality rather than a common disciplinary and institutional context and work approaches and attitudes of thinking-through-practice. Inclusivity is without any doubt an asset of the critical thinking of Bogusław Schaeffer.
The research has been proceeding on parallel ways focusing on different, but ever intertwining, themes, such as methodology of composition; notation; graphic scores; open scores performance practice; performativity and music theatre; electronic music studios of Warsawa and Belgrade.
Schaeffer was not only a very prolific artist, but also had an experimental and truly original approach to his methodology, which allowed him to open up many possibilities for notation systems.
Particularly in the case of graphic scores, the problem is usually one of identifying the code, since the musical parameters are not clearly articulated by a simple reference, such as the key and stave for pitch in conventional notation.
Bogusław Schaeffer provided rich material for such a study and also defined the concept of sonograms, a convergence of performativity, electronic music and graphic art. Sonograms are graphical representations of sound waves that capture parameters such as frequency, duration and intensity. We studied these sonograms through existing samples and their graphic representations, noting the parameters and symbols used. This is a peculiar expression of Schaeffer's view and theory of electronic music, which allows for a medium between notation for acoustic and acousmatic music.
Figure 1 one example of Schaeffer's Grafiki
Figure 2 Concerto per Sei e per tre, 1963
Figure 3 Excerpt of the score “Symphony”, 1966.
The performance of open works (graphic scores included) presents the musician with complex performance tasks. In fact, graphics express the idea of the composer, a system of signs, where the main task of the performer is to look for analogies between graphic forms and specific parameters of musical structures.
The problem with any kind of notation, but especially with the performance of open works, is the possible distance between the spectator's perception and that of the performer. Indeed, this kind of performance practice draws attention to how the audience is perceptually engaged. The narratives are multiple, sometimes contradictory. How do we perceive ourselves in relation to these kinds of notations? It's an exercise in self-reflection. It is above all an embodied and enacted process, a way of being in the world that consists of an individual's whole-person act of attending to the world. The performers confront the audience with their own modes of perception and the possibility of contributing to the creation of the aesthetic moment, which also refers to the idea of active participation in society.
Figure 4 The ensemble MW2
Figure 5 The ensemble MW2
As far as the performativity of sound is concerned, we take Bogusław Schaeffer's work, in particular what he has done with the ensemble MW2, as an invitation to explore the materiality of sound. MW2 is an example of how music and theatre, sound and performance, can provoke critical reflection on different ways of being, creating and perceiving, and the relationship between them. This research seeks to draw attention to agency as fundamental to how theatre, music and performance work: how music theatre can invite its audience to hear, move, see, feel, think and be in different ways to what they are confronted with. Here sounds are given an almost anthropomorphic position in the exploration of their affordances, sound being objects, events, effects or practices. But do sounds really have agency?
Schaeffer's interdisciplinary practice suggests that sound should be understood not just as an auditory phenomenon, but as a multisensory experience that engages our whole being. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Bennett and Massumi, we can point to the materiality of sound and its ability to affect and shape both human and non-human entities. According to such concepts, sound has a vibrational quality that extends beyond the auditory realm and permeates various aspects of our existence. This notion challenges the traditional understanding of sound as a purely acoustic phenomenon and opens up new possibilities for exploring its potential in different domains. By conceptualising sound as living matter, we will highlight the dynamic and transformative nature of sound, its ability to create and shape affective or performative spaces. In sound studies, this is referred to as sonic materialism, a contemporary trend that we can refer to through the writings of Christoph Cox and Salomé Voegelin, two notable theories that remain distinct due to different conceptions of matter.
Rather than relying on conceptually or theoretically contaminated perceptions, sonic materialism emphasises the importance of immediate intuition in engaging with the sonic realm. By prioritising direct sensory experience, this approach seeks to circumvent the limitations of language and cognition, allowing individuals to more fully engage with and understand the intricacies of sound. In essence, this perspective challenges the dominance of conceptual frameworks in favour of a more intuitive and sensory exploration of the sonic landscape.
We situate this research project in the line of Radio Belgrade's important activity in the expansion and development of musical aesthetics for Serbia and the rest of the Balkan region. In her article 'The Role of the Third Programme of Radio Belgrade in the Presentation, Promotion, and Expansion of Serbian Avant-Garde Music in the 1960s and 1970s', Ivana Medic ́ taps into the previously unexplored archival collections of the first radio station in Serbia (then Yugoslavia) dedicated to the presentation and promotion of new, avant-garde, and experimental music. Medic ́ provides a detailed study of the crucial role played by the Third Program in the modernisation of Serbian art music and the development of critical thinking about contemporary music in the 1960s and 1970s. Founded in 1965 during Yugoslavia's post-war cultural isolation and overwhelmingly traditional (neoclassical) aesthetic, the Third Programme was the main source for hearing the latest compositional techniques and learning about the latest technologies.
Performativity is about making difference. However, what is being suggested here is not that we make difference through performativity, but, as Lynette Hunter puts it, that 'performativity is a place where collaboration supports co-workers in opening up to what is happening and how it is changing the self so that it is present differently' (Hunter, 2020): 61), which in Re-Patched concerns the ways in which the ensemble that will emerge from the collaboration between the six experts and the five young musicians who responded to the open call will form a causal relationship between acoustic instruments and electronics, a specific dialectic that allows for rich feedback loops between performers, instruments and electronics.
This point of view recalls an approach that the anthropologist Tim Ingold calls the education of attention: “We learn to attend the world around us and respond to it” (Ingold, 2001). Ingold explains how the concept of attention itself is a double edged one: attention is about bringing the objects, bodies, situations and actions of the other into a correspondence with your own perception. Re-Patched will be first of all about listening to Synthi100, to search for attunement – rather than doing and searching for control. It’s a complementary participation between human, instruments and technology. Indeed, Ingold also reminds that perception is an action we need to commit to, however wide is the range of our intention and attention. In this way, sound offers a process of becoming attuned to the properties of the environment, which, on the other hand, influence the empathic and perceptive experience of the performance itself. As science studies scholar Karen Barad has eloquently put it: “We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because “we” are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming” (Barad 2007: 185). Only because we are already of the performance-world, only because we are spectators along with the objects that command our attention, we can perceive them. There should be no contradiction, then, between participation and perception; rather, the one depends on the other.
Elia Moretti and Re-Patched team
Figure 6 Elektronski Studio and Synthi 100