ON MUSIC RESEARCH

Ian Shanahan: unpublished, September 1999.

From: i.shanahan@nepean.uws.edu.au <Ian Shanahan, 20 September 1999>
To: g.marchant@nepean.uws.edu.au
Cc: m.atherton@nepean.uws.edu.au, j.franklin@nepean.uws.edu.au
Hello Graham, Mike, and Jim,
Im still playing catch-up after my recent vehicular escapade involving an immovable telegraph pole ...
so Ill try to be brief; and, hopefully, even a little articulate (although I do suspect that my brain is going
to mush at the moment). Sorry if theres a little too much noise in my signal!
I assume that this symposiums topic of Research in the Creative Arts is a partial response to the recent
Green Papers deplorably unidimensional attitude towards research in academe: in pretty much ignoring
the humanities and creative arts therein, our Federal Government still apparently regards research as the
sole preserve of scientists and captains-of-industry (i.e. the usual economic-rationalist bottom line, and to
hell with knowledge for its own sake). Ill bear this in mind.
Anyway, here goes a position statement on my attitude towards research, and the nature of research in
music:

ON RESEARCH (etc.)
PREAMBLE. I, Ian Shanahan, am a practicing and creative professional musician (a composer, a
performer, an educator, and a thinker) who has also studied mathematics to quite a high level over many
years. Therefore, I do concede to being an ardent devotee of the modern quadrivium i.e. the
music/science/theology alloy! It is from this perspective that I offer the following observations:
1. I personally find it deeply problematic to separate art from science (NB: Alloys! [Xenakis]). Why?
Research is, per se, creative a journey of discovery. As a musician, I see composition (i.e. the
discovery and embodiment as acoustical phenomena of structure that unfurls in space and time [as
frequency {fine time} and architectonically coarser times]) as the primary creative act of music-making
(and, therefore, the purest form of research in music) primary research. Everything else is recreation [performance] or commentary [theory, analysis, criticism, musicology] all of these are,
hence, secondary research. Moreover:
(a) This is not necessarily imposing a hierarchy of value upon different zones of activity within the
musical continuum. Obviously, composition and its re-creation in sound/space via performance are highly
interdependent acts... To give some specific examples of research reciprocity in music:
i. In composing (thence workshopping) my alto flute solo Dimensiones Paradisi (1991/1998), I carried
out a great deal of preliminary research into extended techniques such as microtonal flute fingerings
etc.; their viability and accuracy was then tested thoroughly by my player, Kathleen Gallagher. These
fingerings (indeed, the instruments physiology itself) then became an important creative impetus: thus,
there evolved a lovely collaborative flip-flop of creative discourse throughout the joyful process of
conceiving, notating, crash-testing, publicly performing, and modifying this piece. (Just as it should be!)
ii. Composers scholarly writings about, and analyses of, their own compositions (e.g. Iannis Xenakiss
Formalized Music and Olivier Messiaens Technique of my Musical Language) may insinuate new
avenues for compositional exploration for themselves as well as for other composers.
~1~

iii. Given a hypothetical composition that will embrace a plethora of at times intermodulating historical
styles, its composer will surely need to acquire via musicological research and discussion with expert
musicians a deep knowledge of the various authentic performance practices; conversely, once the piece
is documented, the performers shall then be obliged to disentangle its web of potential multiple feels (as
in a thoughtful performance of Peter Maxwell Davies Eight Songs for a Mad King, for example). The
central issue here is not really accuracy, but fidelity. How, for instance, does one modulate an authentic
mode of interpretation into another? Is this indeed always necessary, let alone possible? For such a piece
of new music, how relevant is authentic historical performance practice in the first place? Is
authenticity itself authentic? etc. etc. Clearly, from the performers point of view, such questions
demand ab initio a close collaboration with the composer in interpreting their work.
(b) Yet particular instances of research-activity within the music-world will, I think you will agree, vary
in their degree of cultural importance: a composition may be trivial and derivative or, rather,
pathbreakingly original (and therefore extremely important); a performance might be a major world
premire or just the umpteenth mediocre rendition of a Beethoven symphony; a musicological study
could be of considerable cultural significance in de-marginalizing a substantial body of music, or
instead, it could just be yet another necrophilic expos of some long-dead composer whose work truly
deserves to remain in obscurity. My sole criterion for importance here hinges upon the question: DOES
THE FRUIT OF RESEARCH GENUINELY ENRICH OUR CULTURE? ... in which case, a vital act of music
scholarship is, to my mind, certainly more important than a compositional trifle, for example.
(c) Although composition is a Western term, it does transcend i.e. apply to all cultures: irrespective
of the culture (or a cultures own attitudes towards its own musics), each piece was, at some point in
time, created by somebody ... even if it is not known by whom.
(d) Nevertheless, my sense of justice is deeply offended by the fact that, although everybody in the music
industry depends upon the output of composers, composers themselves are at the very bottom of the
totem pole when it comes to remuneration for their work. Many talented composers in Australia live
below the poverty line. I also find it problematic (to say the least) that scholars in academe can acquire
higher degrees, increased professional status, promotions and higher incomes on the basis of studying and
documenting a living composers work (usually in close collaboration with that composer), whereas the
composer themselves may well be no better off at the end of the exercise. Ditto when it comes to
ethnomusicologists working with indigenous peoples, however respectfully. Such exploitation must
end: the benefits of research need to be shared equitably.
2. Composition is, per se, theoretical: it can posit new structures, contexts and ways to be, to think, to
listen, to live... Theories about music relate both to inner composition (i.e. the pieces architectonics or
internal relationships) and outer context (i.e. how the work relates to, influences, interacts with culture,
cosmology and landscape).
3. Theory divorced from practice is just desiccated ideology: self-serving, mischievous, uncreative, a
mere shifting of hegemonies (flipping the coin without changing any problematic paradigm; a cynical
game of power politics; theorrhoea).
4. Practice without theory is meaningless and quite disrespectful to the music and its creators. The
realization of all music demands engagement with performance practice (theories relating to
ornamentation, instrumentation, temperament, etc. etc. and the cultural context within which the music
was created) and with analysis (the articulation in performance of a works structure and architecture).
Try playing a Baroque recorder piece without knowledge of authentic ornamentation or an analysis of its
stratified melodies separated by register and articulation.
5. Music and meaningful discourse about music comes from practicing musicians, not from those
cultural theorists or poststructuralists who fail to engage with the raw physicality of structured sound
unfolding in time/space. (Yet the investigation of context can be genuine research too ... so long as it
is never divorced from the work as a noumenal and sensual phenomenon.)

~2~

6. For ethical reasons, I do believe that full-time academics in the creative arts should not receive any
grants from external government arts-funding bodies such as the Australia Council for the Arts: our
enterprise agreements here at UWS Nepean reveal that we are already being paid a fortnightly salary by
the university to conduct research (amongst other things of course, such as teaching); to receive an
external grant for artistic activities that we call research is, therefore, a form of income double dipping
which robs poorer freelance artists of funding opportunities. Lets not be greedy.
7. A nice story (to conclude this section). It is often said that the creative arts rely upon science to supply
new ideas and paradigms. Heres an example of flow-of-ideas in the opposite direction: I recall reading
somewhere that George Antheil, after composing his notorious Ballet Mchanique (1925), was inspired
by this compositions structure to create a torpedo guidance system that was eventually employed by the
U.S. Navy during World War II!

MORE ON COMPOSITION & RESEARCH

I know of certain Australian composers who despise (or are at least deeply suspicious of) the idea that the
act of composition can involve R & D.
{In some cases, I do suspect that such a viewpoint is merely a post hoc attempt to justify their own incapacity
to compose a truly original utterance, to legitimize and make secure the (perhaps already exalted) status of
a decomposer ... but lets not get too polemical just yet.}

However, I believe the exact opposite: for me, composition wherein I strive to forge genuinely new
structures and original sound-worlds is always Research and Development.
{See my credo The view from my laboratory, April 1995 in Sounds Australian Journal No.46, Winter 1995,
pp.25-26, where (amid other things) these germane points were made: I emphatically assert that [the]
currently anathematized notion of compositional originality is alive and well I for one have actually
succeeded in doing it! Originality is dead only for those for whom it is dead (e.g. advocates of the
emperors-new-clothes line that a rehash of old is somehow new). Puissant composerly R & D ever
endures...}

A timely reminder: It is the creative arts wholesale embracing of postmodernism and poststructural
axioms that has led to the anathematization of the venerable concept of originality wherein, at best,
originality is now said to be a chimera. Corollary: If (for a moment) we assume that originality is
indeed a fiction, then all that is left for artists is deck-chair rearrangement upon cultures Titanic (and
thence others [(de){con}structive] commentary upon it), because research in which seeking after
truth and the new is surely a sine qua non has now been rendered obsolete (as far as the creative arts
are concerned). But we cannot have it both ways: either forget about research in the creative arts, or
surrender the post-whatevers!
{NB The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy: Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury raise the double-standard!.}

(Actually, en passant, there really never has been a post- to modernism*...

{Proof: the continued existence, activity/activism, and ever-expanding oeuvres of myself and of like-minded
composer colleagues; in music, history and evolution aint dead yet by no means! but are still alive
and kicking. [Sorry to all of you post(whatever)ists out there in theoryland.]}

...and, moreover, a plurality of voices has always been present throughout the creative arts [ever
accompanied, alas, by ideologically-driven attempts to censor or suppress some of these voices at any
given historical instant; but thats another story!].)
* For Western (art-)music, modernism is, I believe, its primary distinguishing ethos. No, not only post-

WWII Modernism la Boulez, Stockhausen, Babbitt et al.; rather, Im thinking of the modernist vision in its
entirety, which has been with us continuously ever since the 14th-century Ars Novas Philippe de Vitry
definitely not (being vastly superior to) a Philip Glass! stepped up to the plate as Europes first consciously
avant-garde composer. (Obviously, such an unbroken intellectual lineage spanning more than 600 years is
not going to disappear overnight, just because PoMo or a stone-cold Foucault says so...)

~3~

APPENDIX: ON CULTURE NOWADAYS A LATE-NIGHT NONCONFORMIST

STANCE
Alas, Ive now reached the conclusion that far too much late-twentieth-century culture is just a
celebration of the stupid ... particularly (but not exclusively) in so-called popular culture, which spawns
and glorifies shallow trivia and whose concoctions are, per se, ephemera.
{As Im writing this (while more than a bit tipsy, I confess [being chemically challenged by a bottle of Queen
Adelaide Chardonnay], waiting for my video to finish rewinding), David Lettermans Late Show is on the
box [18.9.99, 12.38 am]. Right before my eyes as I scribble these words down, this overpaid media clown is
extolling some 18-year-old pop-music bimbo who will undoubtedly become just another nobody in a month
or so. Quod erat demonstrandum.}

Serious art, au contraire, endures; it is created for the long haul.

{But even some people who would seriously think of themselves as serious artists have dumbed down
seriously: the moronic excrescences of self-avowed anti-intellectuals such as Arvo Prt or John Tavener are
perfect exemplars of the New Stupidity. (I am greatly alarmed by their musics apparent popularity: I
despair at the publics collective lack of discernment which bodes ill for the reception of any music that is
not immediately 100% assimilable.)}

Yet late-twentieth-century culture is also subjugated by a museum-mentality in overdrive, which tries to

preserve and even canonize what is often intentionally transient: fashion spin-doctored and
illegitimately offered up as (pseudo) high-art.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So thats about it from me for now. If you blokes think that any of this is bullshit, misses the point, needs
fleshing out or whatever, then do please get back to me. In any event, moreover, feel free to disseminate
the above remarks however you see fit (via e-mail, print-out ... whatever!). But I make no apologies for
the at times somewhat severe and perhaps slightly unwieldy or abstruse quasi-equational format (i.e. all
those nested parentheses [and square brackets {and curly braces}]) ever the mathematician!
Cheers,
Ian.

PS: Ive attached the Abstract to my (not yet completed, but getting there) PhD, A World of Becoming
[appended below]; I think it is relevant, perhaps.

~4~

The Platonist expression World of Becoming signifies a physical manifestation, in time and
space, of abstract ideas and archetypes from the metaphysical World of Being an absolute
eternal realm, beyond space-time. All human art-forms therefore belong to our World of
Becoming. Yet music arguably the least tangible of the arts is capable of bridging these two
Worlds. The series of compositions herein represent increasingly sophisticated attempts to
build such a bridge.
Composing music is intended, ultimately, to be a search for unity. As the sequence of eleven
pieces unfolds within A World of Becoming, it will become apparent that multilevel architectonic
self-similarity reconciles seemingly heterogeneous forms into a unified whole. Self-similarity
proves to be an efficacious tool for designing multidimensional, life-like sonic objects unified
holistic organisms whose structural and acoustic richness begins to approach that of the
Cosmos itself. The result is a Natural music in the Boethian category musica mundana which
could even be a true musica humana, a mystical music that affirms diversity embraced in unity
rapprochement and interreferentiality in deep conceptual abstraction, beyond superficial,
fictitious dualisms.
Besides self-similarity, some of the principles and strategies resident in the authors works that
achieve such unity and imbue the music with meaning are: number, pattern and proportion
(from Sacred Geometry and gematria); permutation (elements of self-contained autopoietic Cyclic
Groups); broken symmetry; metaphor and acoustical symbolism. As abstract ideas, they comprise the
mechanisms for spanning the sensual and noumenal domains. Prior to the scores exhibited
within each chapter, further explication of these ideas shall be provided through analytical
notes snapshots that discuss the compositional techniques therein. The Appendices include
two published texts which outline the authors evolving aesthetic stance, as an artist who is
creating new music in the late twentieth century.

~5~