Manfred Werder's Music

Hearing the music in the moment of experiencing the natural and immediate relation to the world

Manfred Werder shows that music exists all around us in our natural environment, and leads the listener to experience this via performers’ realizations of his scores. The music Werder presents has the least involvement of the performer’s individuality of any of the Wandelweiser composers, allowing the natural state of a place to remain as intact as possible. Werder wrote to me, “The music I love most occurs when it happens that, in a moment of confidence I sit somewhere indoors or outdoors and don’t do anything at all. The world and its music unfolds differently in such a moment, and all worries for purposeful content seem so vain, actually destroy this natural and immediate relation to the world.”

In Werder’s scores, both the immensity and the minimal nature of his concepts can be overwhelming. The immensity is illustrated in his compositions ein(e) ausführende(r) seiten 1-4000 and stück 1998, two epic projects Werder started in the late 90’s. In ein(e) ausführende(r) seiten 1-4000, the performer is instructed to play one action in each time unit of 12 seconds, over several pages from what will eventually be a 4000 page score. The whole piece will in the end result in having 160,000 actions in total, over a duration of 533 hours and 20 minutes. This activity is taken up by different performers at different times in different places – each one picking up where the previous one left off. In contrast, the minimal character of his more recent work can be seen in his composition 2005¹ and other similar subsequent projects, in which only one or a few sentences or words are noted in the score, with the duration and the number of performers indeterminate.

When looking at Werder’s scores, we may try to imagine the possibilities of the music that could be born from a score of 4000 pages performed in 533 hours and 20 minutes, or the music that could be born from a score with only a few words. When we are wondering about these possibilities, we are already peering into the depth of Werder’s infinite world, standing at the entrance of it. Here, I would like to explore his world by discussing two CDs: ein(e) ausführende(r) seiten 218 – 226 and 2005¹.

ein(e) ausführende(r) seiten 218 – 226 was released by Edition Wandelweiser in 2006, with a realization by Antoine Beuger. The 72 minute recording, which is a small part of Werder’s 533 hours and 20 minutes epic piece ein(e) ausführende(r) seiten 1-4000, consists of very quiet single electronic sounds, one at a time, punctuated by short silences. In this piece, the performer is instructed to play one action consisting of six seconds of sound, followed by six seconds of silence. The sound is instructed to be ‘to itself, clear and objective, simple’.

Antoine Beuger’s minimal electronic sound, evoking in me a chirp of a small cricket on a quiet autumn night, contains an absolute purity that seems to reject any kind of excessive noise and discord or human attachment, seemingly purifying the air to create a peaceful, harmonious world. While sustaining this absolute purity, Beuger’s sound never contains obstinacy or insistence, and instead, it contains a humility and flexibility that perfectly integrates with nature. Everything in this room – a low, almost inaudible continuous noise from my CD player, various sounds jumping outside of the window, silences between sounds, and the movement of my mind – are gradually drawn toward the humble gravity of Beuger’s quiet electronic sound that exists in the room as a core.

Even when the sound is alternated with silence, there is no feel of suspension. In the silences of this piece, the music is still moving forward. The various textures of the silences gradually unfold, with each of Beuger’s sounds acting as an agent, extracting something out of the subsequent silence – something hidden but normally not perceived. The substantial textures of these silences seem to be as important elements to this composition as the sounds. With Beuger’s electronic sound as the axis, the discretely scattered environmental sounds are now all connected as one to equally become essential parts of the world of Werder’s music. The tranquil, profound and introspective world of the piece seems to indicate some sort of enlightenment that all the phenomena in this universe are connected in some way, directing the listener’s mind toward the infinite external world. After listening to this 72 minutes, the listener may think of the hypothetical music that might make up the rest of the 533 hours and 20 minutes, experiencing the tremendous immensity of Werder’s world.

In this piece, the performer restrains his individuality as much as possible, assimilating his sounds into the naturalness of the environment as best he/she can. The minimal involvement of the performer becomes even more extreme in Werder’s later work 2005¹, in which the performer ideally becomes completely transparent.

2005¹ was realized by Swiss-based composer/performer Jason Kahn and was released from Winds Measure Recordings in 2012. This set of eight CDRs contains 31 tracks, each an 18 minute unedited recording of the ambient sounds of the Zürich central railway station, recorded by Kahn. The recordings were made every morning at 10 AM for a month from March 1-31, 2010. The score of the piece has only three lines of words: place, time, (sounds). In fact, this piece was composed by the minimal conditions of place, time and sounds.

Every place has its own unique vibration. It may not be recognized easily by our ears or other senses, but it is always there regardless of the flow of time, sending out the particular vibration to the air like a human heart. If you are standing or sitting in a place for long hours, you may be able to sense the rhythm of the vibration of the place, as if you found a slight hint of distant sounds from an underground water vein. If you do so, you are now connected to the core of the place.

In the train station where this recording was made, time passes by. And as it does, various phenomena happen there, appearing and disappearing while leaving some small traces behind. Voices and footsteps of various passengers approach and recede, trains arrive and leave, and as they do, the ambient sounds change slightly and gradually. The only thing that remains fully intact is the core (heart) of the place. When I was listening to the ambient sounds of the recordings on the 8 CDRs, I started to feel as if I myself became the Zürich central railway station – or as if I happened to get into the heart of the station. As I feel I became the core of the station, the passage of time and the sounds happening there began to feel more crisp and sharp.

Near the end of the second CDR, I found myself starting to listen to the ambient sounds of the railway station as a kind of music. This is music that was born from casual meetings of the sounds of various passengers and trains and all the phenomena occurring at the same place at the same time, transiently and incidentally creating a mixture of sounds with various pitches (heavy bass tone, bass tone, midrange tone, high-pitch tone, etc.) and various volumes, intertwining with the vibration of the core (heart) of the place. This co-performance of all the ambient sounds gains a vital energy as one entity with a certain rhythm. Each form of music from each morning of the 31 days may sound quite similar to the others, but each track is slightly different if you listen to it carefully.

What attracted me were the unexpectedness and the freshness of the development of the sounds and the subtle changes of the flow, completely free from any human guidance. This music was born from pure contingency, without any mediation from the performers. The performers of the music here were passengers’ footsteps and voices, distant machinery, noises of trains, and so on. Without them knowing, this fascinating music was made, morning after morning. Once I realized the presence of the music in the ambient sound here, I was confronted with the simple fact that the world is full of music with intact sounds.

Something else that struck me while listening to Kahn’s realization was the relation between sounds and silences. Between tracks (each of which lasts exactly 18 minutes) is a short silence cut in rather abruptly. Normally, the silence is considered to be a canvas and the sound is considered to be a subject painted on the canvas, if music is compared to painting. However, after my ears were immersed in the world of the ambient sounds on the recordings for many hours and became completely accustomed to it, this relation started to feel inverted. After listening to 3 or 4 discs, the ambient sounds of the Zürich central railway station started to feel somewhat transparent and naturally existing like the air around me, and the short silence after each track started to feel like an unexpected incident or a subject, like hearing a loud sound. The experience of the inversion of sound and silence was shocking – the ambient sounds of the station I heard initially as the ‘sound’ became the canvas, and the silence I heard initially as a pause between tracks became the subject that vibrated the air around me. In a way, Jason Kahn was performing the silences in this piece.

In field recordings, sometimes the performer’s mediation (or intention or control) gives sounds more meanings or colors than the original sounds innately possess. In this way, the presented sound often becomes the performer’s ‘voice’ or his/her tool of self-expression. However, if the recorded sound can remain free from human mediation as much as possible, it can keep its original nature close to intact and the natural musical flow of the environment can be preserved. In Manfred Werder’s 2005¹, the only part that reflects the performer (recorder)’s aesthetics or individuality is the framing: how to choose the place to record, when to record, how long the duration should be, and how to arrange the recordings on the CD, while keeping Werder’s score (consisting of particular words or poetry) in his/her mind. Meanwhile, in terms of the content or the development of the field recordings, the recorder’s intention or manipulation is not involved at all. Here, the recorder’s role is just to prepare the frame under the influence of Werder’s words on the score, and the music happening in the frame is an ensemble of the casual sounds born from the world with pure contingency. In a way, the ‘place’ plays the music itself, independent from anyone’s intention, within the frame prepared by the recorder (performer).

This recording of Manfred Werder’s piece showed me that the ambient sounds of a daily event could be heard as music – music genuinely composed with incidental elements without the performer’s intention, by being cut out from the world and put in a frame. In Werder’s music, the composer himself is silent, via the lack of explicit instructions in the scores, which are like open fields where performers can realize the work with a free spirit without precise restrictions. When I imagine that this same score could be realized by various artists in various places in the world, as various different recordings of ambient sounds, which could be heard as various forms of music, and that this ultimate minimal score with only three lines of words has a possibility of inspiring an innumerable number of works of music, I am overwhelmed with the vastness of the tremendous scale of Werder’s world.

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マンフレッド・ヴェルダーは、自然の環境音の中に音楽が存在することを示し、そうした音楽を日常の中から見つけ、切り取り、音楽として「聴く」ことにリスナーを導く。それは、演奏者の介入が一切入らない、環境音のみで構成された音楽である。「室内や屋外で何もせずにじっと座っていると、自分を取り巻く環境音が音楽に聴こえてくる。それは人間によって演奏されるいかなる音楽よりも美しく、心を惹きつける」とヴェルダーは言う。

ヴェルダーの作曲スコアは、「2005¹」を始めとする一連のスコアでは、白紙に1行か3行程度の指示（たいていは書物からの引用文）が記されているだけで、演奏時間や演奏者数などの内容は不確定であり、そうした具体的な内容の決定は演奏者の自由に任されている。一方、「stück 1998」は合計4000ページのスコアから成り、各ページに記された40のアクションを演奏し、最終的には16万回のアクションを533時間20分かけて行うという長大なスケールのスコアだ。

こうしたヴェルダーのスコアに書かれた、たった1行の指示から生まれる音楽とはどんな音楽なのか。あるいは4000ページのスコアを533時間20分かけて演奏して生まれる音楽とはどんな音楽なのか。実際の音楽を聴く前に、その膨大なスケールを持つことになりうる架空の音楽を聴き手に想像させることも、ヴェルダーの目的のひとつかもしれない。ここでは、2012年にwinds measure recordingsからリリースされたマンフレッド・ヴェルダーの「2005¹」の内容から、ヴェルダーの作品世界を探ってみたい。

■Manfred Werder - 2005/1 (realized by Jason Kahn) wm28

2012年にリリースされたマンフレッド・ヴェルダーの「2005¹」は、スイス在住の演奏家ジェイソン・カーンが、2010年3月1日から31日までの31日間、チューリッヒ中央駅で毎朝午前10時から18分間、雑踏の音を録音し続けたフィールドレコーディングを無編集のまま、8枚のCDRに収録したものだ。１日分18分間の録音が１トラックに収められ、各トラックの間には短い間が入っている。ヴェルダーによる楽譜には、「場所（place）、時間（time）、音(sounds)」と書かれているだけ。この作品を構成しているのは、まさに場所と時間と音という最小限の要素なのである。

すべての場所には、その場所から生まれる特有のヴァイブレーションがある。それは、人の心臓のようにその場所の根底に根付き、時間の経過に関わらず、常に普遍のものとしてそこにある。誰にも知られずに地下を流れる水脈のように、それはそこに存在する。その場所の「軸」といってもいいかもしれない。その軸の上を、時間が経過していく。そして時間の経過とともに、様々な事象がその場所に現れ、小さな変化を見せて消えて行く。様々な人の足音や話し声が波のように現れては遠ざかり、列車がホームに入って乗客を乗せて去っていく。時間は通り過ぎ、人や列車も通り過ぎる。その場に留まっているのは、その場所の根底にある軸だけだ。

その音風景を聴いていると、自分があたかもチューリッヒ中央駅であるかのような気がしてくる。自分がその駅の心臓部（軸）に入り込み、自分の上を通り過ぎていく時間と雑踏の音をじっと聞いているような気がしてくる。そんな風に自分が軸になると、普段は気づかない時間の流れと音の変化というものが、目に見えるかのようにありありと感じられてくる。

2枚目のCDRを聴き終わる頃には、自分がこの雑踏音を音楽として聴き始めていることに気づく。チューリッヒ中央駅という場所特有の心臓から生まれるヴァイブレーションと、その場所を通過する人々や列車などが、偶然の共演者として絡み合い、そこに生まれる様々な音によって構成される音楽である。重低音、低音、中音、高音など様々な音域と音量、ヴァイブレーションを持つ様々な音が、その瞬間、その場所で、偶然によって出会い、共演する。そこには不定期ながらも命の通うリズムが生まれる。31日間、毎日、同じ時間に同じ場所で、同じように聴こえる音楽だが、毎回少しずつどこかが違う。作曲者や演奏者の手が一切加わらない、純粋な偶然性からのみ生まれる音の変化がもたらす面白さと新鮮な驚き。参加している人々は誰一人気づかぬまま、その魅惑的な音楽は生まれている。

8枚のCDRを聴いているうちに、耳に奇妙な変化が起きていることに気づく。トラックとトラックの間に、短い沈黙の間がやや唐突なカットで入るのだが、雑踏の音風景にすっかりなじんだ耳には、その沈黙の間はどきっとするほどの衝撃を与える。いつの間にか、チューリッヒ中央駅の雑踏の音風景が、自分を取り巻く空気のように自然な存在として感じられ、18分間のトラックを聴き終わった後の沈黙が、大きな音を聴いた時のように、ずしりと響く。あたかも、空気と物体が入れ替わったかのように、雑踏の音風景と沈黙が反転する。初めは「音」として聴いていた雑踏の音風景はいつの間にか空気となり、初めは音の区切りとして聴いていた沈黙の間が、いつの間にか空気を揺らすヴァイブレーションとして感じられるようになっているのだ。そうして見ると、この作品の中で、ジェイソン・カーンは「沈黙」を演奏しているともいえる。音ではなく沈黙を聴かせるという反転の立場で、空気と化していく音風景の中に沈黙の間を挿入し、沈黙を「音」として聴かせているのだ。

演奏者の意図や操作は、音や音楽に本来のあり方以上の色づけや意味づけを与える。それにより、音は音本来の響きとしてではなく、演奏者の「声」となり、自己表現手段としての道具となる。しかし、そうした人為的な関与から解放された音は、本来の自然な響きを取り戻し、その音が構成する音楽は、自然な流れと呼吸を取り戻す。この作品の中で、唯一制作者（録音者）の美意識が反映されるのは、録音場所や時間、長さ、各トラックをどのようにCD上に配置するかといった枠組みの決定のみであり、作品の展開自体には、多くのフィールドレコーディング作品に見られるような録音者の意図や操作や思い入れなどが、一切介入していない。制作者はあくまでも枠組みを作る存在であり、そこで奏でられる音楽は、あくまでも偶然性が生む音の集合体だ。いわば、制作者が用意したフレームの中で、その「場所」が自ら奏でる音楽ともいえる。

「場所」と「時間」と「音」のみによって演奏される音楽。具体的な場所や時間、長さといったフレームの中に切り取られることで、ただの日常の雑踏音が「音楽」として聴かれるようになる。それは、人為的、意図的に計算された音楽ではなく、演奏者の自我や意図が介入しない、偶然の要素によって構成された音楽だ。この同じ曲のスコア（楽譜）が世界中の様々な場所で、様々に異なる音風景として録音され、そこから様々に違う音楽が生まれることを想像してみる。たった3行で書かれたミニマリズムの極みともいえるスコアから、無限にも近い無数の作品群が生まれる可能性を考えると、そのスケールの壮大さに目がくらむ。この無限大に近づく音楽を提示することこそが、マンフレッド・ヴェルダーの目指す目的だといえるだろう。

Label website:
http://windsmeasurerecordings.net/en3er.html