Michael Pisaro - Only [Harmony Series No. 17]

'Only [Harmony Series No. 17]' is Michael Pisaro's 17th composition in his Harmony Series project. This score No. 17 is especially unique among the whole collection of Harmony Series pieces, since it is meant for one musician to play along with natural environmental sounds. The score of this piece is as follows.

"Only [harmony series no. 17]"
for one musician

to Manfred

Void Only

Time like glass
Space like glass
I sit quiet
Anywhere Anything
Happens
Quiet loud still turbulent
The serpent coils
On itself
All things are translucent
Then transparent
Then gone
Only emptiness
No limits
Only the infinitely faint
Song
Of the coiling mind
Only.

(Kenneth Rexroth)

• In a large, open space (possibly outdoors).
• For a long time.
• Sitting quietly.
• Listening.
• A few times, playing an extremely long, very quiet tone.

21 selected artists and musicians including Michael Pisaro have realized this score individually throughout the month of August 2009. (The project was initiated by Jason Brogan, and produced by Compost and Height.) The document of this project was posted on the following website with audio files of many of the performers.
http://harmonyseries.blogspot.com/

Each performer chose one location and sat there for a long time, listening to the environmental sounds, and occasionally playing a long, quiet tone, with the score and Rexroth's poem in mind. While Pisaro's previous 'Harmony Series 11 - 16' was aimed at understanding the potential of harmonies (especially about how resonances of harmonic overtones affect the harmonies) that are born from multiple musicians' joint performances, this No. 17 is aimed at exploring the potential for harmonies which a performer could bring by adding his/her sounds to the layer of natural environmental sounds. In performing the piece himself, Pisaro said that he encountered the following questions.

"What, in the sum of things occurring now, do I hear, and how do these things harmonize themselves? How can I express my relation to this harmony as a tone? What effect does this have on my continued listening? How will I spend my time? Do I experience the void or just imagine it?"

□ Michael Pisaro - Only [Harmony Series No. 17] (Lossless audio file)
http://harmonyseries.blogspot.com/2009/08/michael-pisaro.html

This is a 15-minute excerpt of Pisaro's performance, recorded near the Austrian town of Neufelden in the afternoon of August 2009. This performance was dedicated to Manfred Werder like the score itself.

Throughout the recording, the rather strong sound of the river is the main focus, along with some high-pitched chirps of birds and low bass sounds of airplanes passing by. In the middle of the recording (7'14"), Pisaro's sine tone is added as a middle/high frequency at a very soft volume, which is (perhaps) a single tone at first, then is joined by another sine tone around 7'54" to form a duo. The sine tones, which are appearing and disappearing with a little waver, are constantly subdued and never interfere with the environmental sounds. The linear nature of the sine tones also seems to go perfectly well together with the steady sound of the river. It seems that the environmental sounds (especially the rhythmic high-pitched chirps of the birds) affect the sine tones, though the changes are extremely subtle. Around 8'52", another sine tone is heard. Around 9'39", some heavy bass sound of an airplane is heard. (For a moment, it confused me with the impression of deep bass from an instrument. Is it because my ears had begun to recognize the environmental sounds as something different, after my ears had become used to the presence of the sine tones?)

The recording gives an impression that these environmental sounds from the river, the birds and the airplanes each have specific pitches and are co-performing with the sine tones. The presence of the sine tones seems to unite all the environmental sounds together with their invisible string, while I perceive each sound more clearly than I did at the beginning of the piece, before the sine tones were added. In the last three minutes, the sine tones are gradually fading and stay at an almost inaudible volume. The sounds of the river, the birds and the airplanes are again almost totally heard on their own, but I can recognize that the sine tones hidden deeply under the layer of environmental sounds still bring a certain harmony to the whole recording.

Sound of Musician, Sound of Nature, Harmony

What is the difference between the sounds of musicians and the sounds of nature? As heard in 'Harmony Series 11 - 16', the sounds of musicians are born through the musicians' wills and minds. And in joint performances, multiple musicians with different wills and personalities try to bring harmony into the music by seeking a good balance with each other. In this circumstance, performers' interactive communication is required as a premise. That is, the sounds of musicians are intentional and human products that are affected by performers' personalities, egos and relationships with other performers. This may contain a risk to upset the balance of the harmony if performers have different levels of understanding or expressiveness, especially if the performer gives preference to playing his/her sound over listening to the sounds of others. However, the difference and unpredictability of human wills and minds (which are constantly growing) could also add inspiring, surprising and beautiful aspects to the music.

In contrast, the sounds of nature or environmental noises are born incidentally in pure forms without any human input, and there is basically no relation between each sound source. While the balance of musicians collaborating is rarely perfectly equal, since they are created by performers themselves who often express their personal egos and characteristics, there is no particular leading role in the sounds of nature, since every sound in the environment exists equally without any force of expressing a certain ego. This may be in tune with a state of Zen.

'Only - Harmony Series No. 17' features the sounds of nature (or environment) in the central role, and a performer, who is supposed to form a harmony with his/her tones, should be a part of nature. The performer establishes a one-way communication to connect with the environmental sounds, unlike the interactive communication of a joint performance. Only the performer has the power of how to influence the existing sum of sounds. After carefully listening to the various sounds in the environment and figuring out what is happening there, then the performer will try to add a few sounds to create a harmony. In order to participate in the sounds without causing any disturbance, the performer needs to give preference to listening to environmental sounds over playing his/her sounds. By doing so, perhaps the performer may figure out precisely which tone he/she should add at what level of volume.

Then, what kind of changes will the performer experience when he/she is carefully and sensitively listening to the sounds on the premise that the main role here is the environmental sounds, and not his/her sounds? When a performer plays sounds while thinking about the above-mentioned matters in 'Only - Harmony Series No. 17', he/she may start to experience a feeling that he/she is gradually turning into a translucent being and blending into the environment. This sense of integration of the performer and the environment comes from Rexroth's poem in the score - "All things are translucent / Then transparent / Then gone / Only emptiness."

This experience in which the performer is required to listen to the environmental sounds carefully and sensitively should have a tremendous influence on the performer's attitude. When listening to the sounds of nature, free from any artificial or intentional characteristics, a performer may realize that his/her tones need to be as pure and natural as those environmental sounds. And if the performer succeeds in playing such a pure tone without losing its natural beauty via thinking about how to incorporate the tone into the environment in the most natural way, the performer may find the way towards being one with nature completely - again, a sort of Zen experience.

What if multiple musicians try to play together after having performed this piece on their own? By trying to become this kind of translucent being without projecting his/her personal ego or characteristics obviously within the music, musicians may be able to bring a very natural harmony that may sound very distant from artificially produced sounds, possibly creating music of universal beauty.

If musicians try to play other scores from the 'Harmony Series' after trying the 'Only - Harmony Series No. 17', I think that the results could be very interesting. Perhaps, through this whole series of compositions, Michael Pisaro's end goal was aimed at realizing this potential for harmonies with a universal beauty.

Musician As A Transparent Medium - Michael Pisaro

In many performances, musicians tend to take the approach that they express their own inner voices through their instruments, which results in a wide range of creative expression. 'Inner voice' means the musician's personality, ego, identity and originality. Meanwhile, there is a risk that this approach could end up altering the original nature of a sound, limiting the potential of the sound, changing the natural volume, or losing its pureness in other ways. Every sound has a most natural and purest way to be born and develop in the course of the music, but sometimes this purity is lost behind the strong expression of a performer's inner voice. (Just to avoid any confusion, I do not mean that this is the wrong way - I am just talking about this from a particular perspective focusing on the 'natural pureness' of the sound.)

Perhaps this is just my personal response, but when I sense something unnatural, artificial, excessive, forced, intentionally added, or distorted by personal ego in some music, I often start feeling uncomfortable or suffocated. However, Michael Pisaro's music has never given me those negative reactions. This may be because Pisaro, as a transparent medium, creates situations in which all the sounds, including environmental noises and silences, are blended into the music so they can exist equally, without giving preference to expressing his personal ego. Pisaro’s music gives me the impression that he knows how to find the simplest and most effective way to present and develop each sound in the most natural and purest form, as if he instinctively knows how to liberate them. (In terms of the natural and pure nature in the sounds and how they develop, I find a similarity to some of Mozart's compositions.) This transparency is Michael Pisaro’s primary identity and originality as a composer and musician.

The music that is born in this kind of purest form obtains a tremendous power despite its simplicity, and moves people naturally. This is the music that may fascinate people over centuries with its universal and eternal beauty, just like nature itself has been fascinating people since the dawn of time.

These approaches by Pisaro in 'Only - Harmony Series No. 17' and 'Harmony Series 11 - 16' were dramatically combined later in his 2009 composition 'July Mountain' (just released on CD in February 2010 from Engraved Glass) - a magnificent and powerful musical masterpiece.