Chapter 10 : Musical interactions

The sound objects are subject to casual relations with the other sound objects simultaneously present  on the stage of the sound window. These interrelations can be objectively described as sound or acoustic phenomena. An experimented musician knows generally how to organize them and produce an effect in agreement with his intentions, in the same way as a director settles his characters.

At the highest plan, the sound beings have a more permanent existence, inside the field of knowledge of the musicians, the composers or the listeners. So they can be associated with any other accessible sound being in this field, in an aware or unconscious way, and most of the time in a not causal way. The association can also concern other beings within the memory or the imagination, that is, on a wider space than that of the music, the "ideas".

To limit us about the musical creation, we shall focus our comment only on the relations which become established between sound beings inside a given musical work.

The universe of the work

From the point of view of the listener, we materially bounded in the time a musical work as a very dissociable and significant moment with regard to the usual sound environment. Although, as John Cage asserts it , any sound environment can be considered as musical, this musical character can be effectively perceived only through an attitude of listening at this particular moment.

As summarized by the following table, the work includes items which are not handled on the same plan according to the level of space to which we pay our attention.

 

Space level	Concerned items	System handling items and their relations	Information media useful to describe the system at this level
Physical	Vibration waves  of the molecules of air.	Physical presence of the auditors.	Program of the concert: participants, place,  hour and duration of the performance or the broadcasting.
Acoustic	Signals of the vibration waves.	Place of listening,  public-address system.	Analog or digital recording.
Sound	Sound objects.	Set of means of production of the sound: acoustic musical instruments or synthetic materials, voices, sound effects ...	Musical writing: score, files in control language (ex MIDI), notes of tuning or parameter setting of instruments...
Musical	Sound beings.	Work created by the composer.	No media for description.

Figure 1 : work description items according to the space level 

 

So, at the highest considered level, the work is an intended system created by the composer to establish relations between sound beings.

Musical rules

We above presented  the sound landscape as a background for the realization of the sound objects. Our description was limited to the notions of sound matter and sound window, by enumerating different way of evoking these landscapes (instruments, style, etc.).

The analysis of the sound landscape, as a stable component of a musical work, more widely addresses  the domain of the musical space. The existence of a background leads effectively to a set of relatively stable rules which apply to the formants of sound beings.

The work, which we can consider as the " super sign " formant at the most complex level, is elaborated by following such rules, while making available the most of the remaining  freedom .

For example, the Bach's pieces use the strict rules of the counterpoint, while introducing surprises by forkings through  possible contrapunctic figures.

The musical rules, bringing a previsibility, provide to the listener the necessary comprehensibility. They also structure the dramatic aspect: the listener knows that the musician will play his possibilities of invention, but he does not know at which moment in the predictable sequence. This creative and unpredictable part particularly carries information and provides an interest.

When rules are established, that is institutionally formalized  by codes and passed on by education, formants are "canonical" so that the sound landscape is "musically correct", even "academic".

Even if the creator wants to free himself from pre-existent rules, the work will be nevertheless understandable only if it integrates valid internal rules for the totality of its progress, so allowing  the part of unpredictability come up on a bed of predictability.

Interactions between sound beings

The interactions between the sound objects are factual, at the level of the acoustic or sound space, exclusively during the short-lived moments when objects coexist in the dimensions of duration, presence and color (for example during an instrumental duet).

The sound beings, having a permanent status in the imagination, could thus be put potentially in relation at any time, according to what takes place in the head of the listener. Really it is indeed the composer who brings about the "scene" where the characters meet and are explained more or less conflictually or tenderly. It will be these relations which the listener will record, will forget or will bury in sediments in his unconscious mind, and eventually will remember later.

Let us distinguish two means to establish interactions between sound beings.

bringing to light resemblances or disparities between the respective formants of several sound objects, allowing the listener to discover associations of structural and permanent nature; the established link is "morphological" or "form-driven".

managing encounters in the sound space, when simultaneously present sound objects have to share the same space: inevitably relations of coexistence and dramatic situations happen. The emotional situation brings the listeners to create an "event-driven"  link.

The interactions are lived by the listener considering the topology of his space of auditive perception. We saw exactly that the auditive topology (or cursive script) allows to appreciate the sound characters in a relative way, step by step, whereas the musician benefits from a whole perception, naturally corresponding to a visual (or synchronous) topology.

Thanks to the interactions realized in the music, new links are so weaved between the sound beings in the imaginary musical space. The topology of this space is thus a network of paths in which the music makes us travel: every time a sound being is evoked, pre-existent links wake up and original links build up themselves.