The Scratch Orchestra and Visual Arts

I read Michael Parsons' article "The Scratch Orchestra and Visual Arts."  This article described the development of an experimental graphic music orchestra in London in the late sixties, the rise of several other such orchestras, and the eventual shift away from graphic experimental music and toward the more tonal and structured work of artists such as Phillip Glass.

The works performed by the Scratch Orchestra might be best described as symphonies in the most non-traditional and literal sense.  Rather than featuring a group of trained musicians performing intricate harmonies set down in musical notation, graphic musical pieces were made up of sound, action, and image; music performed by, as Cornelius Cardew termed them, "musical innocents."  Of his piece Treatise he said: "My most rewarding experiences with Treatise have come through people who by some fluke have (a) acquired a visual education, (b) escaped a musical education and (c) have nevertheless become musicians, i.e. play music to the full capacity of their beings." 

The pieces performed by groups like the Scratch Orchestra escewed traditional musical notation in favor of "graphic scores" which might contain images for inspiration and a set of instructions on how the piece is to be carried out.  Some instructions might be relatively explicit, directing each member of the orchestra to select an action (brushing teeth, walking, jumping, singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb") and to carry that action out, perhaps randomly or perhaps according to the defined "meter" of the piece.  As these pieces were performed, they each element would stagger, overlap, and combine, creating a cacophany, or symphony, of visual and aural activity.  Other pieces, such as George Brecht's Two Durations contained the simple instructions: "red, green," inviting the performer to interpret at will.

 

Still other pieces utilized instruments as a focus, but often in a non-traditional capacity.  Brecht's Incidental Music described activities to happen on and around a piano so that any sound that occurred was indeed incidental.  LaMonte Young's Piano Piece for David Tudor No. 1 instructed the performer to "bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink," and continued "...the piece is over...after the piano eats or decides not to."  Some pieces too, such as Young's Poem for tables, chairs, benches, etc., and other sound sources asked the performers to create music using improvised instruments.

The Scratch Orchestra and the work of these graphic composers, many of whom were artists of the Fluxus movement, were very active in the late sixties and other orchestras developed in the progressive art and music programs of universities around the country.  However, the pieces performed grew more and more anarchic, chaotic, and obscure, sparking a counter-movement of more structured compositions.  The arrival of the early music of such artists as Phillip Glass cemented this swing toward music that was experimental but more securely rooted in "fundamental musical procedures."

I must admit that while I find this art movement (or at least the descriptions of it in this article) to be self-indulgent, and most likely largely inaccessible, I also find it quite intriguing.  It is always useful, or at least eye-opening, to attempt to break down and examine conventions and accepted norms, and I think it was this, the examination of what it means to be music, to be a symphony, that is the heart of the graphic music movement.  By removing the centuries of tradition and convention, even the notes themselves, from the idea of music, graphic composers were more free to explore the most basic elements of music, such as rhythm, movement, contrast, and juxtaposition.