{"id":298,"date":"2017-10-21T18:38:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-21T18:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/?p=298"},"modified":"2022-02-28T21:10:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T21:10:50","slug":"staging-listening-corporeal-dimensions-of-new-music-in-choreographies-by-xavier-le-roy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/staging-listening-corporeal-dimensions-of-new-music-in-choreographies-by-xavier-le-roy\/","title":{"rendered":"Staging Listening: Corporeal Dimensions of New Music in Choreographies by Xavier Le Roy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephanie Schroedter*<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
G\u00fcnther Lebbing and Tom Pauwels in Mouvements f\u00fcr Lachenmann<\/em> by Xavier Le Roy, Tanzquartier Wien, 2005.
Photo by Monika Rittershaus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Corporeal dimensions of music as an audible though not visible art of movement manifest themselves in no other form of art as forcefully and plastically as in dance; that is, in the interaction with choreographic or improvised movements. Even beyond music visualizations[1]<\/sup><\/a> or music illustrations[2]<\/sup><\/a> through physical movements, which have repeatedly fallen victim to the verdict of trivial redundancy at least since postmodernism, music especially encourages an understanding in which motion and emotion correspond directly with each other.<\/p>\n

A precondition for this approach to music is a specific corporeal movement listening<\/em>\u2014a situated movement listening<\/em> or rather embodied movement listening\u2014<\/em> which experiences and conceptualizes music in<\/em> motion, to <\/em>motion and as <\/em>motion. For instance, popular music is above all experienced by incorporating it rhythmically, in order to comprehend it directly by listening in <\/em>motion.[3]<\/sup><\/a> This mode of listening, in which the perception of music is directly linked with clearly recognizable physical movement that coincides with it, I propose to describe as kinetic listening.<\/em> In the case of kinaesthetic listening<\/em> though, in which music is also immediately experienced as<\/em> movement, the physically resonating movement does not necessarily have to be visible or congruent with what has been heard. The music does not even have to be audible to be experienced as movement\u2014which will be demonstrated in the following by analyzing the concert performances staged by the French dancer and choreographer Xavier Le Roy, based on selected compositions by Helmut Lachenmann. Furthermore, apart from rhythm being important for kinaesthetic listening, melody, harmony and tone colour, as well as sound volume, are of equal importance in order to perceive music in its movement potential.<\/p>\n

Finally, the auditory (and also visual) perception can not only be linked to the sense of movement, that is, the proprioception or kinaesthesia (see, among others Stewart, Gapenne and Di Paolo 2014: 183-218; or for a dance-theoretical perspective Batson and Wilson 2014: 87), but, due to the close connectivity of the receptor and sensory cells, also with the tactile and haptic sensations, and so comprising sensorimotor performances in the widest sense. At this point, the transition between kinaesthetic and synaesthetic listening (which is combined with other senses) is fluid, thus showing once more how important it is to differentiate between the various modes of listening,<\/em> particularly with regard to the experience and understanding of music. Thereby, the music can be audible or just barely or no longer audible, exclusively present in the imagination, and the movement can be visible or invisible; that is, imaginary.[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Music in<\/em> Motion, Music to<\/em> Motion and Music as<\/em> Motion<\/h5>\n

In contrast to the kinetic listening mode directly connected with one\u2019s own bodily movements\u2014listening to music while being in <\/em>motion\u2014music, sounds or noises in music- and dance-theatre, film or post-dramatic, event-like performances are heard to<\/em> very different and often also highly differentiated movements, through which the viewer\/listener is moved (inwardly); that is, affected. The audible events do not necessarily have to relate to visible occurrences nor particularly coincide with the; instead, they can cause irritations while listening and watching. In the course of the presentation, imaginary movements between<\/em> listening and watching arise in the perception of the listeners, that can lead to those emergence <\/em>effects,[5]<\/sup><\/a> in which the sum of auditory and visual\u2014that is, audio-visual\u2014impressions result in more, or rather, in something new and completely different than the audible and visible individual components presage in themselves.<\/p>\n

Finally, music in a concert hall, that is, music not performed scenically, can be heard as<\/em> (imaginary) motion due to its implicitly inherent, theatrical or performative dimensions\u2014as can be comprehended very vividly in the case of Lachenmann\u2019s music, which \u201cstages\u201d the process of the sound production\u2014not least supported by very detailed playing techniques and playing instructions. Under these conditions, the gestures of the musicians can look like choreographed, so that the music takes on body-like or corporeal contours.<\/p>\n

However, music does not inevitably have to be linked to physically visible, performed, choreographed or improvised movements (that is, movement components apart from playing the instruments) in order to perceive them regardless of their invisible corporeality as <\/em>a moving body\u2014that is, to experience and to comprehend them as<\/em> motion\u2014provided that the perceiver is able to grasp them with his\/her sense of movement.<\/p>\n

Kinaesthetic listening, which is necessary for this kind of perception, has been barely examined in relevant studies on the act of listening to date. The challenges for kinaesthetic listening are not only the emergence effects mentioned above, in which very different impressions melt into each other, but also moments of surprising difference and interference experiences<\/em> that mark a gulf between what is heard and what is seen (or heard, but not seen, and, vice versa<\/em>, seen, but not heard), and thus expand the percipients\u2019 aesthetic horizon of experiences and expectations. Hence, kinaesthetic listening (and also the respective kind of watching) is a firmly movement-sensitive and ideally also critically self-reflective listening (or watching respectively)\u2014 a listening (watching) which puts two movements in relation to each other: on the one hand, the proper motion, that is, from the skeletal muscles, the tendons and joints through proprioceptors); on the other hand, the orientation in space or the perception of people\/objects and their movements in the surrounding space of one\u2019s own body. The fact that the sense of balance, which is located in the inner ear, is decisively involved in the orientation of the body and its movements in space explains the close linkage between the kinaesthesis and the sense of hearing.<\/p>\n

However, the perception of acoustic events is not based exclusively on the sense of hearing, but also to a significant extent on the sense of touch. Due to the fact that any auditory events are based on sound waves as oscillations or vibrations, which are also tactile and felt like a touch on the skin\u2019s surface, they can be perceived by the entire body too. Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that touches of the dance partners in contact improvisation are called listening<\/em>\u2014although one cannot necessarily hear anything in the conventional sense or rather there does not have to be anything audible. As phenomena of tactile perception, hearing and touching are treated as equivalents (see Brandstetter 2012 and 2013).<\/p>\n

Moreover, musicians generally associate a distinctively haptic component with acoustic events, since the production of sound is mostly connected with a sensorimotor activity such as pressing, fingering, bowing, feeling one\u2019s way on the instrument etc. After longer practice the motoric process of sound production is so closely linked to the resulting sound experience that the movement as such can already trigger the impression of a sound or the sound can be imagined\u2014and, vice versa<\/em>, specific instrumental sounds can directly trigger in experienced players imaginations of movements, virtual movement patterns, which are necessary for the production of sound. This is comparable with a conditioning learning process (cf. Bouton 2007) combined with tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1996) or rather an embodied knowledge<\/em>.[6]<\/sup><\/a> The latter originates most notably in a practical craftsmanship, particularly in the haptic and tactile skills and sources of knowledge before it can be rationalized (mostly just rudimentary). Music is here at first tactile-haptically grasped<\/em>, in order to be gripped<\/em> by it emotionally and to grasp<\/em> it rationally.<\/p>\n

Helmut Lachenmann\u2019s Gripping and Grasping Listening<\/h5>\n

Exactly that aspect of a tactile and haptic perception of sound events, which can be experienced physically, is discussed very explicitly by Lachenmann in his \u201cmethodology of composition and aesthetics of listening\u201d (see Utz and Gadenst\u00e4tter 2008 in their explanations on Lachenmann\u2019s music). He virtually puts it at the core of his artistic practice by starting with the composition as early as the production of sound as sensorimotor activity[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u2014instead of taking traditional tonal systems or standardised articulations as the starting point. He developed composition processes with Pression f\u00fcr einen Cellisten<\/em> (1969\/70), for which he especially created a prescriptive notation (see Lachenmann and H\u00e4usler 1972\/1996: 381; for a corresponding analysis, see Neuwirth 2008: 83-92). Thus, it might not be a coincidence that Xavier Le Roy included this composition in his staged concerts.<\/p>\n

Emphasizing motor activity or highly diverse movement articulations for the accentuation of entirely new, subtly nuanced timbres, leads to the facts outlined earlier: Lachenmann\u2019s music first of all has to be felt for or rather gripped and grasped so that one can grasp it, that is, comprehend it\u2014by the musicians as well as the percipients (at least imaginarily). Accordingly, Lachenmann calls it a \u201cgripping process\u201d (\u201cAbtastprozess,\u201d see Schroedter 2012: 43-110), the scope of which is summed up very succinctly by Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus (2006: 104). He emphasizes that one essential prerequisite for the understanding of Lachenmann\u2019s music is, first of all, an original bodily knowledge of movement in the form of a specifically tactile-haptic skilfulness. Furthermore according to Lachenmann, the tonal motor activity on which sound events are based does not aim at a sympathetic \u201clistening\u201d as recognizing something familiar, rather it wants to train a self-reflective \u201ccritical listening,\u201d which questions traditional listening habits, in order to repeatedly become receptive with full attentiveness to the unusual and new.[8]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Choreographed Listening in Xavier Le Roy\u2019s Staged Concerts<\/h5>\n

Such a motoric or physically characterized concept of music, which corresponds closely with a critically reflective listening attitude, can definitely benefit from simultaneous looking: a watching and touching comprehension of the visible (instrumental playing) movements can sharpen the ear, but also unsettle it, and, finally, result in a more careful and critical listening. Thus, Gerald Siegmund describes that the \u201ctimbres of tones and sounds\u201d in Pression<\/em> seemed to him like that of \u201cother instruments, . . . like a guitar or a wind instrument,\u201d from which he deduces:<\/p>\n

This is where listening and watching are already separated from another, our perception is expanded and our imagination is appealed to picturing another scene. This dynamic between play, sound and the listeners\u2019 perceptive ability therefore is initially in a very conventional sense of a certain theatrical nature . . . : The cello and its tonal spectrum act like on a theatre stage, for it takes on the mask of something else, since it turns into something else in the consciousness of the listener. (Siegmund 2012: 254)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The change between different scenes of listening<\/em> is increased if another theatrical level is added to music\u2019s immanent theatricality\u2014as happened in Xavier Le Roy\u2019s staged concerts. Due to new experimental shifts in the concert\u2019s setting, irritations were caused between a corporeal situated listening, that is, a kinaesthetic listening (in accordance with the definition given above), and watching\u2014which will be described in more detail in the following explanations.<\/p>\n

His first staging of a \u201cconcert evening\u201d (subtitle chosen by him), Mouvements f\u00fcr Lachenmann<\/em>, originated in 2005, on the occasion of the celebration of the composer\u2019s seventieth birthday, at the festival Wien Modern<\/em>. At the beginning, one could listen and watch Lachenmann\u2019s \u201cSchattentanz\u201d (shadow dance) for piano no. 7 from Ein Kinderspiel<\/em> (1980), performed by Marino Formenti\u2014the very piece with which Lachenmann, according to his own statement, started the \u201cprovocation\u201d of listening by choosing something where the recipient feels most comfortable\u2014nursery rhymes and dance models. It was followed by Lachenmann\u2019s Salut f\u00fcr Caudwell<\/em> for two guitars (1977), which, three years later, was also the centre of the premiere of More Mouvement f\u00fcr Lachenmann<\/em>, as a further development of the first staged concert (2008). There it was framed by Pression <\/em>(1969\/70) and Gran Torso <\/em>(1971) though, whereas Mouvements f\u00fcr Lachenmann<\/em> in 2005 ended with Lachenmann\u2019s Mouvement (\u2013 vor der Erstarrung)<\/em> (1982\/84).<\/p>\n

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Mouvements f\u00fcr Lachenmann<\/em> by Xavier Le Roy, 2005: G\u00fcnther Lebbing and Tom Pauwels (right), Barbara Romen and G\u00fcnter Schneider behind risers (left). From the artist\u2019s website<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the following passage, I would like to focus mostly on Le Roy\u2019s staging of Lachenmann\u2019s Salut f\u00fcr Caudwell<\/em>, which stood at the centre of both three-part concerts, since it raised essential questions about listening and watching movements. It gives those gestures of decoupling<\/em> (of listening and watching) especially forceful contours, which I consider as symptomatic for a postmodern understanding of audible and visual, but also hardly or no longer audible and visible movement interactions in choreography and performance.<\/p>\n

Video<\/h6>\n