The Narrator of a Pop Song
An Exploration of Musical Notation, Diegesis, and Anti-Opera
A thesis
by
Andrew Demczuk
March 2024
________________________
Thesis Committee
Jordan Tate, Chair
Michael Fiday
Caroline Anderson
University of Cincinnati — DAAP
Keywords: Victory Over the Sun, sound, poetics, diegesis, Dr. Dog, art theory, visualization, album art, Popular Music, ambience, emergence, templates, film, opera, embodiment, musical scores, music notation, translational tools, multi-media art
Introduction
“Where was the narrator’s consciousness during the gaps, the microseconds that separated one screen from another? Did it dissolve into the noise of the machine, decomposed back into ones and zeros?”
—Katherine Hayles (Literary Critic)
Sound plays a significant role in human lives, and the nuanced ways in which the aural realm is perceived often go unnoticed, underappreciated, or misunderstood. Sound can add meaning, pacing, and enrichment for day-to-day experiences as well as cultural media. Music, film, and literature attempt to utilize sound to heighten a narrative’s impact—via soundtracks, soundscapes, aural description, musical symbolism—that can be perceived by both/either the characters within the piece and/or the audience (diegetic and non-diegetic respectively). How sound is recorded and structured make a large difference to the sensorial reception and therefore how it is felt by the listener.
Popular music, for example, is led by industry professionals who work at major record labels and have long been researching what works and doesn’t work—i.e. what earns the most money. This formulaic approach to music and soundtracks is “tried and true” in that the audience quickly responds to certain aesthetic moves. However, by reducing emotional responses to what is expected and what is conventional, an oversimplification of what ‘love’ or ‘fear’ should sound like has become prevalent. This can be seen in popular music time and again, which often utilizes only four chords[1] to construct songs. For example, “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King, “Earth Angel” performed by the Penguins, “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran, “Runaround Sue” by Dion, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen to name a few, are all based on a I VI IV V chord progression[2]. In other words, if the song was written in C major, it would cycle its main section through C–A minor–F–G and then change for the chorus and bridge. Music is structured sound that essentially is built with order-out-of-chaos, and it is understandable that musicians would want shortcuts so that they can write music that will be easily sung and remembered.
For generations, artists and musicians have challenged the repetitive and templatic nature of popular music. Notable sound artists of the 20th century such as John Cage, Brian Eno, Pauline Oliveros, have all experimented to great success in the art world. They showed curious listeners for decades that music does not have to tell a linear story or rely on prefabricated emotions—expanding the definition of music itself through the use of dissonance, playing with and omitting structure, improvisation, feedback, adding field recordings, ambient drones, silence and more.
Artists in the 1960s–80s spanning genres from rock and pop to experimental and blues, ventured boldly with popular music structures. Figures such as Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Sonic Youth, Björk, and Sun Ra pushed the boundaries of the accepted structures and yet appealed to both the spirit of the rebellious youth and mainstream culture, appearing on popular charts and radio—while simultaneously attempting to address the very same ontological limitations of Western music as the previously mentioned sound artists did. However, these music visionaries faced the additional challenge of reconciling their artistic ambitions with the demands of record labels and the commercial imperative to produce consumable products. One example of this compromise is when songs are forced into what is termed a “single release” or “radio edit”— which can entail cutting a section of a song like an extended guitar solo, or the censoring of provocative language for example. In one case, such as the controversial Beatles’ song “Revolution” an entirely different recording to the album versions was made for the single release—one that was faster and more polished—which appeared on the B side of “Hey Jude” in 1968 and was the most ‘commercial’ of the three versions that were produced[3]. John Lennon also notably cut the lyrics “You can count me in”—alluding to supporting violent protests (Wenner).
By 1967, and arguably earlier, the Western pop music landscape, once dominated by hyper specific and traditional conventions rooted in show business, vaudeville, and 1950s rock n roll—underwent even more profound transformations with the introduction of the album era. 12-inch vinyl records with 33 Revolutions Per Minute (rpms) were introduced by Columbia Records in 1948 offering higher fidelity, more durability, and longer playing times compared to 78s made of shellac which were smaller and could only play 3-5 minutes of music per side. The album, or LP, became the ultimate medium for music artists in the mid-60s, a form which allowed up to 22 minutes on each side of vinyl. Artists began to break barriers with more unconventional lyrics and narrative storytelling in part thanks to the longer length and the coupling of music with album art. By pairing the musical content with a cohesive image on the front and back cover, inside sleeves and accompanying posters, thematic albums became highly profitable for the music industry. The Beach Boy’s sold a lifestyle of hot rod racing, surf culture, and cherry Coke with the release of Little Deuce Coupe in 1963, one of the first rock albums with almost all original songs. A few years later, full length “concept” albums of all original music became common: Frank Zappa’s Freak Out (1966), Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds (1966) and the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) to name a few.
Classical music during the 20th century saw similar genre blending and formal innovation with composers like Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein who utilized elements of folk and jazz music and even modern visual art, which influenced artists across all mediums, especially painting, literature, and dance. Today, music is interconnected with the digital age, where the influence of computers is unmistakable. From songwriters using their phones to record voice memos to capture fleeting ideas, to algorithmic generative programs that can transfer weather data to musical frequencies—music has become a reflection of the capabilities of the coders and the technologies available to the songwriters. Music has always been designed with numbers even before computers; now, however, melodies, chord progressions, drumbeats, and even singers’ voices can be generated with AI and midi. Technology can also be used more subtly—notably, in 2023, the Beatles (with the help of director Peter Jackson) extracted John Lennon’s vocals from a demo tape he made in 1977 called “Now and Then” using AI. Fans all over the world had mixed emotions about the artificial intelligence used in creating the track even though it was still John Lennon’s recorded voice coming through the speakers.
These innovations will be examined in this paper through art operas such as Victory Over the Sun (1913) composed by Mikhail Matyushin and Psychedelic Swamp (2015) by indie rock group Dr. Dog, as well as the music score paintings of Mark Applebaum, an artist who blurs the lines of improvisation and determination using hybrid, graphic sheet music. In parallel, this thesis will focus on the ways pop, classical, and sound art influence my interdisciplinary work via my chapbook A Day in the Life of an Opera Player (2022), soundscape Amoeba Variations (2024), and midi-pop-album-turned-painting-series Twelve Hours (2024).
A Day in the Life of an Opera Player
The quest to be liberated from structure often cycles back to structure, like a hero’s journey. After detours of wildly unorganized experimentation, artists tend to feel exhausted from their own experiments, their own evolution—a return to society and a look into what has happened before and what is happening now is needed from time to time. Perhaps in part because of my desire to pick up a different medium the moment I feel my ideas stuck, I tend to utilize several disciplines simultaneously ranging from music, painting, video, to poetry and fiction. My practice speaks on this intermedia dialogue—a dialogue of structure/chaos, music/language, diegetic/non-diegetic, and analogue/digital.
In my chapbook titled A Day in the Life of an Opera Player, I used a combination of poetry, prose, and illustration to evaluate the complex relationship between performers and composers. I invited viewers to read the text and drawings as a musical score, to imagine the sonic world and the diegetic opera occurring in the narrator’s world. The text exposes the trancelike state that occurs with writing, playing, and reading and likens it to daydreaming.
The book shows how ideas can permeate throughout time, and through different mediums, messages, and even people—taking different shapes and containers (such as a haiku, prose poem, photograph, or drawing). One influence of this concept was Writing Machines (2002) by postmodern literary critic Katherine Hayles, who explains the mechanics of what literature is and how a function of it is to achieve a type of embodiment. Hayles states, “texts must always be embodied to exist in the world. That materiality of those embodiments interacts dynamically with linguistic, rhetorical, and literary practices to create the effects we call literature” (31). Writing Machines calls to mind the mechanics of the imagination—to become aware of what happens when we sit down to read or write a book or perform or listen to a piece of music. Writing is a technology using words or graphics on a surface that enter our minds as ideas, images, instructions, musical notes, and scenes that then turn into stories. With the rise of digital media, cybernetics and networks, texts can evolve from the page into an even further complicated array of mediums such as film, podcasts, video games, virtual reality, and digital painting; however, new media have limitations of their own.
A Day in the Life of an Opera Player is a text that incorporates a time-based plotline, where the plot moves forward every two pages (or if on the internet, the viewer is required to scroll down the hours). By highlighting the mechanical advancement of time, the text mirrors feelings throughout the day in increments. Each poem is like a three-minute pop song, a package of predetermined and engineered thoughts. The act of flipping the page moves forward the clock, much like the musician who turns the page—which signifies the advancement of a musical piece. At an orchestral concert it is possible to look at the conductor’s score and watch how many pages remain yet to be turned from the right to left—this is a visceral representation of time. A Day in the Life contains music that swells in and out of the pages, the narrator is at times fully aware of the orchestra and at times ignores it, diving into long stream of consciousness rants about structure, music, and death. In this excerpt, which occurs in the poem titled “03:00”, the narrator hears diegetic music that seems to be mimicking her actions and heightens the experience of her dream.
The violins are steady and quiet matching my footsteps until I hop off the sculpture of cocktails. My feet hit the stage floor and the whole orchestra plays a G minor chord. I imagine the audience saw me standing on liquid . . . Clarinet and flutes triplet crescendo at pace with the image of someone climbing up an apple tree Breaking Stanza with her long ladder. The paper ceiling is punctured yet again, air flows out and the scene starts wobbling like we were inside a balloon. Bassoons and trumpets are blaring fortissimo, Timpani pounds staccato quarter-notes. Cymbals. I have crossed the river into the next room. (Demczuk, 2022)
In the passage above, the narrator represents a generic character that we imagine when we hear a pop song. As she dances down a set of stairs seemingly in slow motion, she contemplates the history of music—essentially dismantling “how we got here.” She is demystified by the component parts of Western music and calls into question tuning, time signatures, frequencies, the tuxedos, as well as the concept of a genius composer.
During the poem titled “02:00” the numerology of Western music is highlighted, when she cries “The same twelve notes for so long, can you believe it? There must be more than twelve. Why is it just a face of a watch?” She becomes so overly self-aware of the limitations of the instrument, the score, and of music itself, that it drives her to near insanity. She then delves into the world of standardized cents (one hundredth of a semi-tone), seeing A notes all hovering in the air around 440Hz. She notices her heart beating at the same pace as the orchestra. “That is a coincidence if I ever saw one. 60bpm, 120/80 heart beats are so close to seconds, why we invented time around our bodies have we. . .” The passage questions the concept of note frequencies in Western music, where pitch is measured in cents and hertz (one event per second)—with notes set into alphabetical order to show incremental differences. As her mind races, she sees the system before her very eyes, the notes all in front of her in different colors: A, A#, B, C, C#, G, F, E, E♭ and so on.
Music notation dates to circa 1400 BCE used by ancient civilizations including the Sumerians, the Greeks, and the Egyptians. The modern musical notation system, however, largely descends from Western Europe. Early graphic notations like neumes, introduced by Hispano-Roman scholar Saint Isidore (c.560-636) in the 7th century aided singers in understanding pitch, examples of this would be Gregorian and Byzantine liturgical chants (Connolly Music).
While these systems of organizing sound do impose certain limitations, without them, it could be argued that music would be much harder to recreate or be remembered. Saint Isidore once said, “Unless sounds are held by the memory of man, they perish, because they cannot be written down,” a phrase which potently describes the necessity of recording audio and the need for musical scores.
Over the centuries, the need for more specific details to be given to the singers and instrumentalists became greater. So, two-line staffs evolved into four-line staffs. Pitches became more specific. 11th century Italian monk and music theorist, Guido D’Arezzo, is credited with establishing the solmization of syllables, which is the foundation of the solfège system (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti do) still in use today (Reisenweaver). As early as 1200 AD, examples of five-line staffs can be found, albeit in a much more simplified form. In the 16th century, we begin to see what resembles a more modern five-line staff, but it isn’t until the late 16th century that bar lines, quavers, clefs, keys, are developed and used more consistently in Western Europe.
The history of these systems of notation coincides with cultural and artistic advancements and trends such as vocal music becoming less popular and musical instruments such as piano, violin and woodwinds becoming more popular, especially during the Baroque period.
Modern popular music has almost come full circle, shifting as it was before the rise of instrumental classical music—into more simplified, memorable, and hummable tunes that are easily sung by listeners. I see in my work, the same evolutions and necessity for elaboration and change. Ideas become more complex, more nuanced and specific over time. However, art does not become necessarily better over time, just different, and linear growth in art is a myth. But what has to be true, after seeing the progression of musical notation is this: for better or worse, our systems, like our art, never stay the same for very long.
Amoeba Variations and Twelve Hours
(Wes Battoclette, 2024. Courtesy of the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH)
My MFA thesis exhibition is composed of two projects—a soundscape and a painting series. The following will discuss the inspiration of the sound element.
Amoeba Variations (2024) is a twelve-hour long soundscape that uses the tracks of the album Twelve Hours (2023) as source material. With only about three minutes of music to work with for each track, I devised a method to lengthen each composition to one hour, which meant generating new sounds and new musical ideas, rhythms, and frequencies from a limited pallet. This involved looping the originals several times and then slowing them down significantly until the song defamiliarized and only traces of the original remained. Another technique was soloing certain instruments such as the drums and flute parts. I utilized effects such as delay, reverb, flange, wah, and compression to add nuance and character to the audio. At times, the soundscape is jarring and rumbling due to the low-end frequencies. Other moments are ethereal and calm with a meditative quality. There are also sped up passages that resemble video game or carnival music. The title word amoeba refers to how time “eats away” at biological beings and the word variations connotes with the music term theme and variation, which is a formal technique as a way of developing musical motifs through repetition and alteration. Essentially, the forms of these soundscapes are varied structures that allow the listener a wide temporal plane. Thus, the work involves as many perspectives as possible: the composer, the musician, the producer, as well as the listener/viewer. In response to the audio, I created a painting series of twelve works which resulted from dwelling in these sonic landscapes. Each painting represents one hour of time. This visual project was a way of living in the work—engaging with the sounds physically and on a different plane while simultaneously “writing the score” so that perhaps these musical ideas could be played conceptually by the viewer, even without the information of specific notes. The paintings will be discussed in greater detail later in this thesis.
This multi-dimensional project evolved out of my solo exhibition, Selection from: Amoeba Variations (2023), held at 429 Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio that featured live performance, video, and 2D work, where I investigated music, time, and the structures that bind them. In the exhibition, music was used as a cinematic tool (a camera) for examining a world that is made up of simplistic emotional qualities, all constructed from pop music motifs from Twelve Hours. The album tells the story of an opera singer returning home after a performance where she falls asleep and relives the same show—only her voice is digitized into midi synthesizers and time begins to loop.
At the start of the live gallery performance, a vocoded human voice synthesizer roared from an amplifier asking, “How much of what you play is determined by the instrument itself?” captioned with a light blue text appearing on the TV screen. A split screen image of a clock faded in as if to say the clock/structured time is the instrument determining what people do. The sounds of an orchestra warming up were playing in the background (Youtube link). As the video continued, the clocks became more distorted and pixelated (Figure 1). I then played a sinister theme on an electric bass guitar along with the backing track of Twelve Hours. Multi-modal performances allow space for profound questions like what do we do with time? or how do sounds reflect digitized realms? to be posed in a call and response manner.
(Figure 1. Still from Amoeba Variations “Eleven”)
Dr. Dog: The Psychedelic Swamp
Amoeba Variations and Twelve Hours were inspired by the layering worlds depicted in the series The Psychedelic Swamp (Figure 2), a concept album by indie rock band Dr. Dog. The album exists in four iterations: a low-fi basement tape version (2001), a live operatic performance (2015), a MIDI version (Dubbed MIDI Swamp, 2016), and a high-fi studio version (2016). Each utilized the protagonists’ perspective to build a specific aesthetic world, whose quality of life was reflected in the quality of the medium of the piece itself. World building is a term originally utilized in literary studies to describe a fictional world in all its conception: geography, language, culture, religions, etc. In contemporary art, it is also utilized to describe an exhibition’s immersive quality, from the cohesiveness of a room to the ‘inner logic’ of an abstract painting.
(Figure 2. Psychedelic Swamp. Dr. Dog)
This applies for both the characters within the piece as well as the viewer. Music, like cinema, can move characters and viewers through time with a certain quality of experience, and the camera that a director chooses whether it be a Super 8 or a Sony FX6, is akin to a musician choosing to record with a cassette 4-track machine versus a high-tech studio mixer. The narrator of Psychedelic Swamp, a character named Phrases, is stuck in another dimension because he bought into an advertisement that promised a better life in the swamp. Disoriented and alone, Phrases sends a tape to Dr. Dog saying the only way to save him is to translate his message in the form of pop music so that the masses might believe him. It is this sort of playful mystique that finds its way into my work. Psychedelic Swamp was performed as a stage show by Pig Iron Theater company and Dr. Dog with a full theatrical cast of actors, a video installation, and intricate stage props, including a cassette tape swamp monster which was assembled from cassette tapes that the audience was asked to bring to the show.
Bring your old cassette tapes—ones you can say goodbye to, permanently—to get them shucked and decoded. Mix tapes from forgotten lovers, old light country cassettes, or blank tapes with a tangle in them—are all welcome. (Fringe Festival brochure 2015)
The interactivity of the audience provides a deeper meaning to the tape swamp monster, in that it is literally constructed of the audience’s nostalgia and memories. Images of the performance in Figure 3 are from 2015 at the Fringe Festival at Union Transfer in Philadelphia.
(Figure 3A. Swamp Monsters and Scientists. Pig Iron Theater Company.)
The concert advertisement on the Fringe Festival brochure framed the performance as a gathering of scientists and cryptographers and promised a transcendent experience to the audience: “to agitate the cosmic order and commune in real time with the sights and sounds of another dimension.” This sentiment echoes the mission statement of the avant garde of the early 20th century. In the following image of one of the four performances, an alligator/dinosaur, spaceman, and scientists are seen surrounding the band called the Dr. Dog Pop Detachment, aka the fictional band that Dr. Dog is acting out in the swamp dimension.
(Figure 3B. Psychedelic Swamp, Dr. Dog with Pig Iron Theater Company.)
The surreal plot of Psychedelic Swamp falls in the tradition of experimental storytelling, like in Victory Over the Sun—where the audience is subject to dream logic. While the word translation is often used to describe moving information from one language to another, translation can also be used with technology as well. For example, the process of conversion of my music score to different software and the way each program processes the musical data mirrors the way humans perceive “universality” and communication itself. Translation is a multimedia experience involving images and forms. Figure 4 shows a painting which depicts “One” from my album Twelve Hours that has been time-stretched and looped with effects to be a 60-minute soundscape. This “visual soundscape” is from the music producer’s perspective and provides a ‘god-like’ view of the narrator’s dream. On the surface of the painting, mixing notes and timestamps are included, giving the viewer a look into the process of creating the soundscape. 00:00 for example, starts at the top left and 60:00 is located bottom right.
(Figure 4. One. Demczuk.)
This schematic painting is an example of how time can be shown in different formats—and the specific arrangements of shapes derived from scales and chords and the visualized space around them create both the world and the characters of the symphonic pieces of Twelve Hours. In poetry, we call responding from one medium to another ekphrasis—i.e., the source medium here is the soundscape and the target medium is the painting. The soundscape was an “ekphrastic response” of the track “One” from Twelve Hours, which was an ekphrastic response of my chapbook poem “One” which was a response to what “one o’clock” feels like. When considering the whole of this syntagm of art iterations for each hour, it is my aim that the depth of each piece begins to feel rich with backstory and meaning—even if the viewer can only feel that there is something more.
The next section of this thesis will discuss the lineage of the art opera with Victory Over the Sun which is a major influence on my work in not only its musical aesthetic, but in the way it uses language and stage design, and how the characters present themselves on stage. Many similarities can be observed between Dr. Dog’s theatrical production as well, which occurred one hundred years later.
Victory Over the Sun (1913)
“[Victory Over the Sun] was a complete scramble for everyone to learn their part. The grand piano, a substitute for the orchestra, was broken, repulsive-sounding, and was only available on the day of the performance.”
— Mikhail Matyushin
With an avant-garde project, part of the power lies in its limitations and its mystery. Victory Over the Sun was first performed in Russia. It built the foundation for Kazimir Malevich, a legendary abstract artist, to create his “Black Square” exhibition and it remains a landmark piece in the history of contemporary art despite several setbacks and political upheaval.
The score of Victory Over the Sun was composed by musician and painter Mikhail Matyushin, a leader of the Russian avant-garde. Originally intending a fuller orchestra, due to a lack of time and money, Matyushin wrote the score for only piano and voices. The first performances were played with an out of tune piano and a group of inexperienced bass and baritone male singers (Valentine 44). The music, experimental and modern even for its day, involved dissonant and rhythmic piano playing, that seemed to mirror the energy of the choreography, inspired by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913) written the same year. Conceptual elements of the music can be seen in Twelve Hours the way the work beckons the listener to take on a different perspective—it challenges logic, symbolism, narrative, and traditions. Matyushin studied physiology as well as the arts and was interested in how visual art and music related to one another in what is known as the fourth dimension, or a synesthetic space that defies our normal understanding of the senses. Matyushin’s dabbling in the fourth dimension can be seen in the persistence of the score’s dissonance and its relationship with the floating geometric figures on stage. Unfortunately, Matyushin’s score has only survived in fragments, making it difficult for composers and performers to recreate (Valentine 45).
The librettist[4] of Victory Over the Sun, a radical Futurist poet named Aleksei Kruchenykh, invented his own dialect which featured non-sensical (or perhaps hyper-sensical) and highly rhythmic ways of speaking that he termed as Zaum, or beyond reason—involving intuitive sounds of words that seemed to deconstruct speech itself. The libretto[5] is deeply philosophical and combines surrealism with an almost folk-tale ambience—it shows the multiplicity of the modern times in its refusal to adhere to a genre. This work was part of the Russian Futurists movement, a group of Russian artists and poets (1910-1917) who were interested in the speed of modernity and humanities’ relationship with machines. According to Valentine, they utilized alogism, a term coined by director Nikolai Evreinov (Valentine 41), or
…a form of abstraction, a foreshadowing to Dada and suprematist art that was highly unpredictable and indistinguishable at first glance, but deeply symbolical and rigid in its meanings. It was also viewed as a balancing act between the normal, and the absurd. (Valentine 41)
Language was seen as part of the artistic revolution. For example, in Act I Scene IV, this line reads as something out of the Dada movement: “We pulled the sun out by its fresh roots.” The organic yet proto-60s psychedelic imagery is plentiful throughout the libretto which apparently aims to destroy words and their relentless allegories. Another striking element of the libretto in Victory Over the Sun is its unconventional plot. The protagonists are referred to as “strongmen” who are searching for the sun, a symbol of order and reason, to capture and destroy it in hopes of creating a more liberated future. The societal critique in the opera challenged the state of things as they were—it was anti-high art, anti-nationalist theater, anti-oppression. Its spiritual and transcendent yet anarchist quality are what drives its aesthetic and moral views. Like the Cubists, including Pablo Picasso and George Braque, the Russian Futurists wanted to transcend to a higher state of being with their art—and while they did not want to be controlled by technology or machines, they did embrace the use of technology if it meant greater quality of life (Valentine 42). However, the industrialized future they depicted was bleak and not idealized.
(Figure 5. Victory Over the Sun. Benedetti. 1983.)
The artists of both the original and the new versions have accomplished a unique combination of elements of fiction, painting, and music to create a lively interdisciplinary piece which displays the struggle in searching for meaning, the paradox of the power in symbols, believing that the bulk of everyday life was unknowable. This legacy lives on in the experimental works of artists like Dr. Dog and John Cage, and video artists such as Jaap Drupsteen, who critique in a similar way the very foundations of what music or video is meant to be or meant to accomplish. The possibilities with artistic mediums and the instruments we use are as vast as the human minds that create and play them.
Constructivism is a visual inspiration for my work in how it connects geometric shapes to forms of thought during meditation—they often reveal mystical registers of human conscious. Kazimir Malevich, the stage designer of Victory of the Sun, achieved widespread recognition for his pioneering fusion of abstraction and 2-D geometric shapes, most notably in his "Black Square" exhibition two years later (Figure 6), an early showcase of pure geometric abstraction and non-objective painting in Western modern art. In fact, “Black Square” was inspired by the use of black paint during Victory Over the Sun, due to their lack of money for paint colors (Valentine 40). The costumes were also extremely simple geometric shapes that were meant to convey a deconstructed version of figures that almost became more important than the actors themselves. In the opening moments of the original play, the curtain is torn off and the first scene is revealed, a literal breaking of the fourth wall.
(Figure 6. “Black Square” Exhibit. Malevich. 1915.)
Alternative Systems of Logic
“The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind. . . Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.”
—Italo Calvino (1972)
In this thesis, I have discussed how music is organized and iterated into scores via specific and evolved systems of notation. While these methods are logical, they are also highly influenced and controlled by Westernized thought. To a large degree, the system is effective and there is a reason why it is now used by musicians all over the world. However, these systems can also be overly controlling and overly demanding of musicians and while it can produce very accurate and consistent performances of even complicated music of say French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz, it can also stifle creativity because of its specificity. If musicians were given more room to breathe, more room to interpret and perhaps even more tools to experiment with their instrument such as electronic effects pedals, or a notation system that allowed for a wide range of note choices, that could open the potentiality of new and exciting music that is both respecting a tradition of this organized sound and attempting to expand into new horizons of the sonic world.
One aspect of my work explores how thoughts can be written into such alternative systems—such as colors and shapes or rhythms and notes in the musical score, and how these structures of logic reflect how society simplify and deconstruct emotion, stories, memories, places, into coded forms of meaning. Figure 8 shows painting “Four” from Twelve Hours series, that depict geometric blocks resembling parts of cities, staircases, windows, doors as well as faces and drums that are organized in a spatial map on the page.
(Figure 8. Four. Demczuk)
The visual work in Twelve Hours seems extracted from the electronic music world—bright, simple colors and patterns existing on a floating grid. The free-hand automatic lines are meant to be seen as both human and digital—deep and flat at the same time, like peering into a screen.
Mark Applebaum (b. 1967) stands out as an artist who embraces geometric and schematic elements in his musical scores. Unlike conventional musical notation, Applebaum's metaphysical graphic notations offer an alternative approach, designed to be visually intriguing for musicians and viewers alike. One can navigate the intricate song maps with a sense of experimentation and openness. At the same time, the notations provide a wealth of detail on how rhythms and intervals should be interpreted. Applebaum employs geometric shapes suspended on lines, each embellished with quaver-like tails reminiscent of standard notation. This unique blend of intuitiveness and specificity is a departure from the limitations of stricter traditional musical notation which does not often call for subjective iterations of pitch, rhythm, or dance-like body gestures for example. Additionally, Applebaum's scores are adaptable for multiple musicians, expanding the possibilities of collaborative interpretation.
(Figure 9. “Medium” a score for four players. Applebaum.)
The piece displayed above, challenges the viewer to imagine what the music would sound like if it were performed. As an image, it stands alone as a geometric abstract drawing, but the forms at the same time, shows familiar marking of rhythmic instructions—the sixteenth note quavers for example are very recognizable. The boundary of interpretation and instruction is a constant consideration for musical composers and artists alike.
(Figure 10. The Metaphysics of Notation. Appelbaum 2008.)
Applebaum’s work has been shown in a variety of venues and iterations. According to his TED Talk, “The Mad Scientist of Music” in one project titled The Metaphysics of Notation, he had 72 feet of graphic scores split into 12 sections on display for a year at Cantor Arts Center lobby balcony, and on Fridays from noon to one, musicians were invited to interpret his scores for the public, totaling in 45 performances.
In Robert Arnold’s insightful documentary titled There’s No Sound in My Head, whose subject is the aforementioned exhibition, Applebaum opens the interview with the bold statement, “I am really tired of sound.” He is indicating a shift from thinking about specific notes and rhythms while composing music in favor of silence. Watching him compose, he is clearly in a meditative state, reflecting on shapes, lines, and architectural structures as he draws. In the documentary, he goes on to explain different types of musical notation such as determinate and indeterminate scores. In Figure 11 he is showing a hybrid notation of one of his works titled “56 ½ Feet” which begins conventionally determinate (scores where musicians are expected to play the same way every performance) then becomes more and more experimental and picture based. In this instance, the trumpet is given two notes, but the instructions insists that it is up to the musician to choose when to play at any point within the two bars of time. He states, “[the notes] can be split apart, pressed together, moved to the beginning or the end,” and so the relationship between the trumpet part and the horn part for example, is indeterminate, it will be different every performance. By instilling specific parameters yet allowing for play and interpretation, the improvisers look to the pen and ink in a visual graphic on paper as a new platform for creation, rather than just interpretation, and the art piece becomes an interactive and effective vehicle of communication for both the musicians and the viewers who witness a static image being brought to life by sound and human energy.
(Figure 11. Still from There’s No Sound in My Head. 2009.)
Applebaum is just one of many artists using an alternative method of visual representations of music. The live technique called sound painting, developed by Walter Thompson in 1974 is a sign language of now over 1500 gestures that cue musicians, dancers, and artists to perform indicated material that can include pitch, volume, rhythm, loop, speed, tonality, movements, and more. Similarly, performer and composer Rodrigo Constanzo developed new technology with what he calls dfscore system that involves dynamic screen displays for each musician over a Wi-Fi network, the musicians are given individualized cues in real time to develop a complex and sophisticated improvisation that would be almost impossible for a composer to score in the same way because many of the ideas are coming from the musicians themselves.
While my current work is not as reliant on groups performing improvisations, I see myself as part of the cohort of musicians/composers who both break the boundaries of traditional music, but also see value in learning music technology, theory, notation, and the music business, to understand where the conventions are helpful and where they limit us and how to develop new ways of approaching music and music-based visual art in the 21st century.
Conclusion
A Day in the Life of an Opera Player and Amoeba Variations highlight how systems of logic are curated around the limitations of form and choice of instrument which define the experience of both the performer and viewer. More specifically, the focus resides on the theatricality of music in its ability to build worlds and how profound those worlds can in fact be despite the rules of composition. The narrator of these work’s perception of diegetic music (the music happening in her world) is important as she exists in a hypothetical culture that is stuck in melodic evolution—limited by conventions of pop music. It is a dimension made up of stretched time, like memories recorded on deteriorating tape. The pop narrator lacks control over the complexity and elaboration of their musical environment and therefor their emotions are molded into a simplistic template of predictable outcomes, much like the chord progressions discussed in the introduction of this thesis. The pop narrator does not possess the language to express what they want to say, and yet time keeps pressing forward, music keeps playing.
Through this practice of art as a mirror reflecting the world and its conditioned perceptions of time, structure, and linguistic systems, a compelling vision emerges for the potential of alternative modes of expression. By embracing more experimental and interdisciplinary compositions, the ability to express the unsayable and transcend the confines of artistic norms becomes enhanced. This departure from established forms invites the audience to reconsider their ways of listening just as it changes the composer’s way of writing.
Works Cited
Applebaum, Mark (2012). TEDTalk “The Mad Scientist of Music.” YouTube.
Andrewes, William J.H (2006). Scientific American. “A Chronicle of Timekeeping.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-chronicle-of-timekeeping-2006-02/
Clements, Andrew. The Guardian. Review. “Victory Over the Sun.” 1999.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/1999/jun/22/artsfeatures2
Connolly Music. StringOvation Team. September 24, 2021.
https://www.connollymusic.com/stringovation/the-gift-of-medieval-music
Dr. Dog. Psychedelic Swamp. Anti-Records. 2001, 2016.
Hayles, Katherine (2002). Writing Machines. MIT Press.
Kisselgoff, Anna. Review. Theater: “Victory Over the Sun.” Jan. 27, 1981.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/27/arts/theater-victory-over-the-sun.html
Reisenweaver, Anna J (2012). Guido of Arezzo and His Influence on Music Learning. Cedarville
University. P. 48.
Valentine, A. Oliva. “Rejecting Reason and Embracing Modernized Art.” George Mason
University. 2014.
Wenner, Jann. Rolling Stone Magazine. February 1971.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/john-lennon-the-rolling-stone-interview-part-two-160932/
List of Figures
Figure 1. Still from Amoeba Variations “Eleven”. Demczuk
Figure 2. Dr. Dog. Psychedelic Swamp.
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/27/463990634/first-listen-dr-dog-the-psychedelic-swamp
Figure 3. Dr. Dog. Psychedelic Swamp with Pig Iron Theater Company (2015).
https://temple-news.com/dr-dog-and-pig-iron-theatre-company-swamp-is-on/
https://www.joshuahiggason.net/swamp-is-on-1
Figure 4. One. 16 x 20 inches. Acrylic on panel. 2024. Demczuk.
Figure 5. Victory Over the Sun. Benedetti. 1983. 1983. Photo: Tom Caravaglia
https://blog.bam.org/2012/03/1983-victory-over-sun.html
Figure 6. Malevich, Kazimir on view in “The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting 0.10,” Black
Square in the upper corner. St Petersburg, 1915-16. Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Figure 8. Four. 16 x 20 inches. Acrylic on panel. 2024. Demczuk
Figure 9. Applebaum, Mark (2009). Atlanta Center for the Arts. Excerpt from “Medium” a score
for four players. https://atlanticcenterforthearts.org/event-or-exhibition/breaking-boundaries-exploration-and-collaboration-at-atlantic-center-for-the-arts-2/mark-applebaum-music-score-detial/
Figure 10. Applebaum, Mark (2009). The Metaphysics of Notation.
https://web.stanford.edu/~applemk/portfolio-works-metaphysics-of-notation.html
Figure 11. Applebaum, Mark (2009). Still of There’s No Sound in My Head. Film.
[1] In music, chords are typically three or more notes sounded together used to provide harmony.
[2] Roman numerals are used in music theory to represent the chord constructed from a note in a scale. In C major, the 7 chords would be: I C major. II D minor. III E minor. IV F major. V G major. VI A minor. VII B diminished.
[3] “Revolution 1” and “Revolution 9” appear on The Beatles (“White Album”) 1968.
[4] Lyricist of an opera.
[5] Lyrics of an opera.