Reynolds Wonderful Times

Wonderful Times
Author(s): Roger Reynolds

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 44-55
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
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WONDERFUL TIMES
ROGER REYNOLDS
CHARACTERIZING SO SUBTLE a musician as Robert Erickson is no easy

matter. The abundant music, the fluent conversation, his distinctive
publications, including The Structure of Music and more recently Sound
Structures in Music, evoke a tantalizing though elusive figure. He is pre-
sented here in his own voice, and I have glossed my assemblage of his
remarks, trying to join them without doing unnecessary damage to their
incisiveness. His thoughts range widely from sound and personal origins to
compositional philosophy, to more practical musical matters and some-
thing of his evolving view of himself and his working environment.
*There are three sources: Chapter 10 of an unpublished autobiography, the tran-

script of an extraordinarily candid and revealing UCSD Music Department Seminar
that occurred in 1983, and an interview by one of his occasional instrumentalist col-
laborators, Daniel Dunbar.
Wonderful Times 45
I. I THINK SOUNDS (NOT ABOUT SOUNDS).
My music is concerned with the power Sound itself is at the center of

and mystery of... all sounds-natural Robert Erickson's music. The fas-
sounds, environments. I include facto- cination extends in all directions:
ries and traffic, all sounds everywhere; those found and those made (by
little sounds, big sounds. And I whatever means)-his curiosity has
include their environs-outdoor, never flagged. His awareness
indoor. extends beyond the immediate
substance to the ambient qualities
of the environment in which each
Sound gets its creative power from sound lives. Everything counts.
environments, places. The sound itself is at the center,
but its potential for transforma-
tion, the way it can be nurtured in
a musical context is what lends it
[The clavichord] lived in a particularly evocative force.
quiet environment, something we can
As listeners, we are from time to
hardly imagine. If you cough, you lose time reminded of the decisive
the whole phrase. Now that's a very
impact which our surroundings can
striking idea, that there must have
have upon sounds about which we
been a time, in the 17th and 18th Cen-
care. Normally the issue is intel-
turies, when things were a lot quieter
ligibility, more rarely enhance-
than they are now.
ment, such as that provided by the
resonances of a cathedral. Only
I think the environment is intimately a very occasionally, however, does a
part of the music. Ifyou live in a noisy composer embrace the wholeness of
environment, you're going to make the auditory world: in gathering his
noisy music. materials, in shaping their presen-
tation, in assessing their prospects.
... We have all those whooshes that However, often it is thoughtlessly
they never had in the 19th Century. observed that our times are new,
And screeches, bangs, hums, beeps and that they are different; the domi-
crackles. We'vegot a lot of sounds that nance of traditional modes of music
are new, that are sky sounds ... and making in our daily lives tends to
it's finding its way into our music. obscure the facts. The artist's ears
are assailed and cajoled by vast
numbers-even categories-of
There's nothing very deeply philosoph- sounds not in the world of reality
ical about it except that all of those or even of imagination for musi-
noises are as important as all of those cians of past centuries. Most com-
pitches. posers try to contain the situation
46 Perspectives of New Music
by drawing some lines of demarca-

tion, by delimiting their commit-
ments as musicians to what they
sense is manageable. A few go far-
ther. They continue to think about
it all, to hear insatiably. These few
are unwilling to parse their
auditory world in traditional ways:
music in one pile, noises of various
sorts in another. It all matters; it is
all alluring and eventually useful.
Some of what is heard, of course,
turns out to be incomplete in some
fashion. Tantalizing, suggestive of
Building instruments puts you in inti- whole unknown realms, these
mate contact with sounds like no other fugitive sounds remain only indica-
activity. You really are there ... it's tors. The most inveterate explorers
like being in at the birth of sound. continue, then, by building their
own instruments, by fashioning
mechanical devices that can be
Fooling around with instruments will worked with, adjusted, repeatably
take a lot ofyour time. It will change enjoyed. This is a theme that
your ears. .. It's not something for returns in Erickson's work: some-
everybody. thing intriguing is noticed, small,
inadvertent. The pursuit begins.
The campaign to tame and incor-
porate may go on for years as in the
case of the monumental "noise
organ" constructed of taped-
together tin cans. This device,
intended to process in tunable rela-
tionships any sound materials
played through it (oceans, traffic,
airplanes) remains unfinished. It is
indelibly in my mind and ear as the
centerpiece of the first afternoon I
spent with Erickson in 1968.
All of this observed, it is worth fur-

ther emphasizing how crucial a
The sounds that intensely and immedi-
spark the actual substance of sound
ately excite me come from outside ... is for Erickson. It is not the rela-
environmental sounds ... [that] are in
tionships, not the patterns of state-
an exact sense inspirations.
Wonderful Times 47
ment, variation and return that gal-

vanize him creatively but the sonic
substance itself. So personalized
Pitches are like timbres are like faces. does the process become for him
that individual sounds are under-
stood as something akin to human
personalities. As he stresses, it is
not that sound is a subject about
which he thinks, on which he
Sounds are material to be thought muses, but rather that it forms the
about... but they are also material to literal medium in which his mind
be thought with.
creatively traffics.
My studio is lined with tape record- The countless tape recordings he

ings, floor to ceiling, but only afew are has assembled over the years are
recorded musical compositions. not of domesticated sounds in the
structured context of musical com-
positions-only rarely-but the
stuff itself, raw and provocative. Of
greatest interest for him are the
There are times when [sounds] could be delicious ambiguities inherent in
this or they could be that. Those are the untramelled, natural evolution
the more wonderful timesfor me. of environmental sound. Nothing
is so enjoyed as the possibility of
mistaken identity, doubt about ori-
[When] sounds are themselves, they gins or intent.
are charged. When they are not merely
identified by tags (civilized), they
develop charge, they develop power.
They are meaningful, and the mean-
ings are not so clear. And as they get
these characteristics, we understand
that they can be dangerous. We know
that sounds can be dangerous to our
tender ears if they're too loud... but
they can be dangerous psychically too.
So uw are not dealing with some diddly
little stuff here. This is to me the very
material out of which life is
constructed.
Everybody has his own dangers, and

those are the ones that really count.
There are also publicly defined sounds
of that sort.
Poets have favorite words,

images... these images crawl into
whatever they're doing. . and it's
that sense in which sounds could be
dangerous.
The charged quality of sound can
I'm just remembering the ways in be had through a certain kind of
which I was scared. I remember back to
unguarded listening, a determined
those things: things seen, things heard, vulnerability. For the composer, at
thingsfelt. least, it is the penetration of one's
sensibilities by some sound and its
accompanying world of associates
that constitutes both the excite-
... It's the sounds thatget through ment and the trepidation of the
when yourperceptual guards are down. creative life.
II. THE GREAT, UNWAFFLING PIVOT OF THE WORLD.
I came out of a little, no place town in The constraints-or the openness-

Northern Michigan where what we of a composer's beginnings count
played was band music and Handel's for more than a little, though, this
Messiah. said, one wonders whether even
I was an outsider rightfirom the begin- the most diligent and indefatigable
ning, because I lived with a lot of rela- of commentators ever actually
tives when I was very young. I became makes more than a provisional
quite an assessor of what kind ofgroup sense of what can be known. What
I'm in. And one thing I knew was, he is willing to say himself is cer-
that I wasn't one of the family. tainly worth consideration: a small,
rather remote and gray cultural
environment, a transient childhood
existence with strongly inculcated
[My father] was not a philosopher or values and an emotional life that
thinker, or any of that stuff, but I
resisted management by formula.
believe he had found the great, unwaf- Most of all one notices the vivid-
flingpivot of the Iwrld. He was his own
ness of his father's image, the cen-
man, and, no matter what, he was
trality of an unbendable character,
autonomous. He needed his own respect
of personal values. Much of what
much more than he needed the respect he reveals of his attitudes towards
of anybody else.
composition, towards the interplay
of intuition and rationality might
be understood as a dawning real-
I was brought up to believe that I was ization that his creative impulses
master of my life, that I could direct had their own imperatives, not
Wonderful Times 49
my actions (and my feelings, this was only unresponsive to will power

the false part) in whatever direction I but demanding a kind of delicacy
wished. Willpower was invoked; it was and lightness of hand that is, iron-
the key to eating less, practicing ically, a substantial and exhausting
harder, learning aqebra.... burden itself.
III. AMORPHOUS, FLOPPY CHUNKS OF TIME.
Composition for me is not a verbal,

conceptual, intellectualprocess.
Although Erickson has much to say
about composition, it is more by
In composing music one's intuition inference and exclusion than by
must lead. There is no other way. The specification that his attitudes
job of[my] rational part... is to make toward the process emerge. Artists
intuition useable and meaningful in often speak of having the sense of
the world. several selves, some more well-
behaved than others. The notion
of a multiple self is a useful way of
trying to understand, or better to
expedite, the different aspects of
creative work. Each artist has his
own balances, his own strategies
for moving from the first impulses
to a finished work. Some plan
exhaustively, others plot one of
their selves against another, engag-
ing literally (and productively) in a
form of self-deception. Erickson is
a coaxer. He nourishes the wily
(and essential) composer in himself
by plotting, play, and patience.
I believe that a composer must compose The seeming contradiction in ask-

better than he knows how. ing oneself to perform at a higher
level than one can comprehend or
will is an intriguing matter. The
young athlete is told to relax, to let
go, to forego deliberate volition in
fostering the natural performance
of complex physical tasks. So, too,
a composer may find that "fiddling
It's out offiddling around that the
around" somehow opens the gate
good ideas tend to develop.
through which a needed realization
slips in. But it is not only the inter-

play of tolerance and encourage-
ment during the actual production
of music with which a composer
must cope. There is also the general
When my head is not filled with health of the creative processing,
music, boredom creeps inward, and I the evolution of his work on a level
begin to wonder what to do until the larger than individual composi-
music comes.
tions. What happens between
The time between pieces, the empty, pieces? The doubts. The uncertain-
amorphous, floppy chunks of time, the ties. They come, sometimes with
waiting time, needs filling. .. more than simply discouraging
magnitude. One learns to perform
himself, to design an attitude that
will help to pass, to span, to
endure the time in which no actual
project is consuming one's ener-
gies. For many composers, the
activity of making music is the only
really engrossing engagement there
The most important thing about com-
is. Yet energies and inspiration, let
posing is this waiting-waiting in the
alone opportunities, do not allow
right way, without fidgeting, respect-
this process to continue without
ing the unconscious interior chemistry
interruption. There is inevitably an
that will one dayfizz up as the decision
end to one project, and the prepa-
to compose.
ration for another. The handling of
these different periods in a fashion
appropriate to each individual (it's
always different) is one of the most
difficult achievements the mature
composer has had to master. It is a
very personal and often quirky
I try not to let my plans get set too matter. One will find pattern and
early... planning anathema, the next is
helpless without a specific set of
self-imposed constraints. The tim-
I'm infavor of not buildingjails that I ing of volition and assessment is all-
may have to inhabit. I like the more important.
fluid position.
Wonderful Times 51
IV. MISTAKES CHANGED INTO GLORIOUS MOMENTS
The very act of talking about my theo- Even the barest of communications
ries is building a jail I'mgoing to haveabout these mysterious matters can
to break out of. make the artist uncomfortable.
Still, the social and pedagogical
All my music is tonal; it's tonal but it
aspects of a musical life elicit frag-
doesn't have chord progressions. mented remarks from time to time.
The kind of intervallic thinking that There is, for example, the funda-
goes along with relative pitch is not mental matter of pitch and its
part of my cosmos. I am a perfect- organization. Painters as well as
pitcher... I am not the sort ofperson musicians speak of "tonality,"
who can move. which might be understood as the
perceived center, the stable refer-
ence (in tone or color) against
which contrast and movement is
measured. For some composers the
subject is replete with complex
ratios and rule-based transforma-
[My music] is much more often than
pentatonic, tetratonic, more often than tions, while for others it is a matter
not, tritonic, quite often bitonic, andof identity and experience. The
[there is] a lot of monotonic. tonality isfelt, not argued. It is con-
cerned with orientation, not logic.
The form of the music grows from

My music is based on ornament and the central importance of some
structure. The short notes are orna-
small number of primary, unmov-
mental to the long ones; the notesing pitch centers. It happens
where you land. The long notes are through embellishment, a moving
where the fundamental structure lies. to and fro. These movements are,
in Erickson's music, expansive and
Whatyou have in the ornaments... is
shapely. Important tones are
a sense of quite rich, not too easy to
emphasized by duration and prom-
grasp, melodic progression which nev-
inence of position in the phrase.
ertheless sounds in some way more or
less diatonic. Extended tones are spoken subtly
by unexpected mixtures of instru-
ments. Individual players make
My music is phrased... I am in love sudden, rapid flights; the central
with long phrases. These phrases are tone is obscured, rediscovered,
likely to be athematic. As the music more occasionally moved. There is
moves on it is not thematically worked. a stately rhythm to the fluctuation
It is not motivically worked. It is the of timbre (the musician's color).
very antithesis of developing varia- These balances of sonority are not
tion. .. It is arabesques, ornamental to be thought of as expressive
structure. My music is oriented to inflection so much as the subject of

rhythm and tone color. the music itself.
My music is made from drones, hocket Alternation, give and take, the
and microtones. I think of hocket as communal instinct, these are basic
communal music. in Erickson's music. On one level it
can be the tonic and the slightly
deviant, the microtonal variant.
Although there may be an actual
alternative (a new tonal level) there
is perhaps only a distinct inflection.
In the field of rhythm the situation
is a bit more clear cut for the lis-
tener. Rapid alternations from one
instrument to another, where sev-
eral musicians contribute to one
lively rhythmic composite; this is
[The hocket people] are doing things termed hocket. It is a performance
that we cannot do because we are not ideal naturally cultivated by the
doing communal music. We are doing Balinese, for example, in their
dictator music: you sit, or else. gamelan ensembles.
The kind of microtones I use are Although Indonesian instruments

between the keys... The microtones (and some of Erickson's) are
come not from quarter tones, not from designed as vehicles for microtonal
arithmetic, not from all that wonder- music or at least unfamiliar tun-
ful planning; they come from what is ings, another route for developing
possible on various instruments. such materials is through the non-
standard approaches to familiar
instruments, the use of unusual
fingerings and embouchure, for
example. The enterprising and dili-
gent performer seems capable of
finding a way to do virtually any-
thing in a fairly reliable way if given
enough time and musical entice-
ment. This is a rarely explored
dimension of music.
[As I began to work] with performers Robert Erickson has collaborated

like Stu Dempster... I began toget the with numerous instrumentalists.
message that ifyou took the time, you These interactions have been inten-
couldget a lot out of the performer that sive, two-way processes that may
you didn't have in your own have begun with instrumental spe-
head... like what kinds of mistakes cifics, but often developed into a
Wonderful Times 53
can be changed from mistakes into full-fledged hocketting of expertise

glorious moments, the opening up of and musical insight. The commis-
the instrument. sioning process that has been such
a widespread factor in enlarging
instrumental repertoire during the
second half of this century nor-
[In collaboration] there are no holds mally produces a rather per-
barred... It's like a couple of crazy functory sort of exchange: details
schoolboys disturbing the peace. You of fingering, phrasing, and artic-
have a lot of fun doing it, but you can't ulative nuance. Few composers
do it with just anybody. A certain kind possess the sort of appetite for fresh
of social/human relationship is cru- avenues, for unheard sounds, that
cial. .. Some people can't break that result in a commitment of their
barrier down. Ifyou don'tget the bar- time to such a demanding trial and
rier down, then it's not collaboration. error process. Then, of course,
there is the importance of the
payoff for the performer. Only a
very special set of composerly ears
The real point is that the performer and inquisitiveness will summon
puts into the music what I am unable the adventurous performer to long-
to put in. Iput in what he can't but term engagements. In Erickson's
he puts in what I can't. extraordinary case, what arises out
of such collaboration is not, as one
might think, an improvisatory
response by the performer to guid-
ing structure supplied by the com-
poser. He actually fashions a
custom-made work to the dis-
covered resources of the instru-
ment and a particular performer.
Although he explored improvisa-
tion, per se, earlier in his career,
The great danger with composing Erickson's primary fascination with
improvised stuff is that you can get sound itself argues for a close and
people who do not know how to thoroughly explored relationship
improvise, people I characterize as New with his performers. Dedication
York money players... They'll kill you. and responsiveness, not the rou-
There is no way to survive that kind of tine of pat professionalism, allow
I-played-my-notes professionalism. his music to flower.
V. IN CALIFORNIA YOU ARE ALLOWED A DIFFERENT TOMORROW.
The real America is California. You Erickson's most productive years

know what New York magazines and have been spent in California; its
newspapers say about California, and environments, whether northern
you may not understand that the rea- or southern, have fit him beau-
son they say that is that they too knowtifully. Many of its most vital musi-
that the wind is blowing from Califor- cal institutions have been touched
nia towards the East. They may not by his vision: UC Berkeley, KPFA,
like it, but that's what it is. So you are the San Francisco Conservatory,
the center of the USA. California is and the University of California at
one of the places where you can be an San Diego. In recent years, his
outsider still. It takes work. I'm not at views on regional characteristics
all sure you can be an outsider in the have become increasingly pungent,
East. Maybe. Ives was. Ruggles was. I and his appreciation of California
know you can be an outsider here has deepened. He speaks rarely
about the other musical prospec-
because I'm testing it in every way.
tors who have lived and worked
across its cultural landscape: Cow-
ell, Cage, Partch, Harrison, but he
I came to San Diego in 1967... with clearly shares their independence of
1500 pounds of metal, stone and wood musical vision, their determination
that Ifelt I couldn't leave behind. All to make whatever did not yet exist,
my previous sounds. to press into service whatever col-
laborative skills were required.
I knew Harry [Partch] when I was in These composers, fully informed
San Francisco... I thought it's crazy about the traditions of the West,
togo so far outside the system. Tou'll became, as well, engrossed in the
neverget your music played. amazements of the East. Aware of
history in a global sense, they did
not find precisely what they
I'm not thinking of tremendous suc- needed and made, as a result, some
cesses in Paris, London and New York. history of their own.
I'm thinking of having it sound good
Robert Erickson paid for his
in my garage in Encinitas.
increasing independence by a simi-
The fact is that I'm an outlaw. I used larly growing sense of isolation.
to wear a tie. My God, I could blend. But this was a personal sensation,
not mirrored by the fate of what he
has done: in his music, his writ-
ings, the force of his musical values
as manifested in his students and
It is possible not to be a cooperative colleagues. All this-the work-
Wonderful Times 55
member of the group if you can stand continues to grow: solo composi-
the isolation. tions, orchestral commissions, new
I'm going to follow my whim, I really manuscripts and recordings.
don't need to be bound... I just don't
want to be bound ... I don't advise
anybody to do this... You need to be America has a tradition of confer-
immune to loneliness, and very few ring on certain of its lawbreakers,
people are. Because you're going to be its outlaws, a special status. It is a
lonely. generous tradition, not easily
tapped, and we are enacting it as
participants in this festival.
Erickson's continuing achievement
brings us here. He the outlaw, we
the people, these the celebratory
times.

Reynolds Wonderful Times

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Reynolds Wonderful Times

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Wonderful Times

Author(s): Roger Reynolds

CHARACTERIZING SO SUBTLE a musician as Robert Erickson is no easy

*There are three sources: Chapter 10 of an unpublished autobiography, the tran-

I. I THINK SOUNDS (NOT ABOUT SOUNDS).

My music is concerned with the power Sound itself is at the center of

by drawing some lines of demarca-

All of this observed, it is worth fur-

ment, variation and return that gal-

My studio is lined with tape record- The countless tape recordings he

Everybody has his own dangers, and

Poets have favorite words,

II. THE GREAT, UNWAFFLING PIVOT OF THE WORLD.

I came out of a little, no place town in The constraints-or the openness-

my actions (and my feelings, this was only unresponsive to will power

III. AMORPHOUS, FLOPPY CHUNKS OF TIME.

Composition for me is not a verbal,

I believe that a composer must compose The seeming contradiction in ask-

slips in. But it is not only the inter-

IV. MISTAKES CHANGED INTO GLORIOUS MOMENTS

The form of the music grows from

structure. My music is oriented to inflection so much as the subject of

The kind of microtones I use are Although Indonesian instruments

[As I began to work] with performers Robert Erickson has collaborated

can be changed from mistakes into full-fledged hocketting of expertise

V. IN CALIFORNIA YOU ARE ALLOWED A DIFFERENT TOMORROW.

The real America is California. You Erickson's most productive years

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