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One man's noise is another man's music: The demise of pitch in Kevin Malone'snoise reduction

2000; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07494460000640461

1477-2256

Pamela Nash, Kevin Malone,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Artistic taste is a relative quality. What one person considers music, another person may consider to be unstructured or unwanted sound: in general, noise. From the diabolus in musica to pitch clusters and beyond to white noise, there is no objective divide. In another guise, noise is ever-present in the physical action of making and recording music. Players and listeners are taught to filter it out, composers pretend it doesn't exist, and recording engineers strive to reduce it in their medium. To intentionally expose noise while producing pitch is to undermine several traditions: musicians are trained to produce pure pitches (with minor exceptions); composers expect performers to express their music through relationships between pitch, rhythm and dynamics, an equation which excludes noise. In Malone's work, these traditions are confronted, then parodied, and finally undermined. the keyboards of the harpsichord are the stage on which the drama takes place; the physical act of playing the pieces becomes a theatrical experience for the performer and listener. Noise becomes recontextualized as an embraceable component of the act of making music.