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Objectivity and Intersubjectivity in Pauline Oliveros's "Sonic Meditations"

2008; Perspectives of New Music; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/pnm.2008.0019

2325-7180

Stephen T. Miles,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Objectivity and intersubjectivity in pauline Oliveros's Sonic Meditations Stephen Miles PAULINE OLIVEROS firstentered my consciousness in the early 1970s through a photograph in amagazine: dressed in a robe and sporting a necklace of large beads, Oliveros was shown leading an outdoor pro cession as she beat some kind of gourd. The iconography?including the beatific smile on Oliveros's face?suggested the blissed-out, back-to nature counterculture of theWest Coast, something which, then as now, made me a bit queasy. At the time Iwas certainly in favor of coun tercultures, just those of a Marxist variety. Make that Marxist revisionist: these were my early undergraduate years, a period during which I first read theworks of Theodor W. Adorno and was excited by the prospect of combining progressive politics and modernist aesthetics of music. Adorno's argument, thatmusic can criticize society symboli Objectivity and Intersubjectivity inSonicMeditations 5 cally through its formal structure, became the guiding force inmy devel opment and informsmy music and aesthetics to this day. Central toAdorno's conception was the idea of "advanced material," that a composer's use ofmusical material should confront its embedded history: by undermining the false authority of tradition and negating the distortions of commodification, autonomous music offered a more rational and humane form of consciousness. This was an uncompro mising approach to music, one that valorized aesthetic clarity over accessibility to a larger audience. Though few would argue with the notion thatmusic is shaped by its location in specific cultures and that it even can take the form of social critique, many took issuewith Adorno's modernism and his unwavering advocacy of new music. Indeed, the linkage of new music and advanced material was being attacked during the 1970s by numerous composers, particularly in the United States. Tonality, which had supposedly been liquidated in the early twentieth century and discredited as a basis for serious composition, began to resurface in the works of George Crumb, David Del Tredici, George Rochberg, and many others. Also, theminimalism of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley was beginning to be felt as an important influence, though its overwhelming dominance was still to come. Though these composers employed diverse compositional methods, they were united by their questioning of the modernist premise, their insistence that the affective vocabulary of a different time and place could be equally valid in the present. What disturbed me about this attitude (and practice) was its conspicuous consonance with political quietude. The early seventies in America were years of political retrenchment: after the violence of the Vietnam war, the killings at Kent State, the long struggle for racial equality, the country then had to deal with theWatergate scandals. Against this backdrop of civil unrest and political upheaval, itwas hardly surprising that the ideals of truth and beauty would return with full ideological force: at moments of historical crisis it is comforting to believe in the transcendent power ofArt. At the same time, progressive composers who questioned the eternal verities through dissonant music and discourse faced a different challenge: compared with concrete battles in the streets of America, esoteric debates about the politics of aesthetics could appear trivial and irrelevant. The temptation for socially committed composers was to isolate themselves in the academe or the commune. How could composers be both in their society yet not ofit> It is in this context that Pauline Oliveros's breakthrough work of 1973, Sonic Meditations, becomes most intriguing. On the level of form, structure, and materials, these 6 PerspectivesofNew Music compositions most certainly challenged conventional notions ofmusical meaning. However, in their emphasis on meditative experience and communal unity, they appeared suspiciously escapist. Statements by Oliveros only fueled this perception. Instead of embracing "advanced material" and logical processes, Oliveros seemed to long for irretrievable social conditions: "Sonic Meditation invites participation from all present. It is related tomore ancient musical practices where listening as an audience, especially intellectually, was not the specialized practice it is today."1 Furthermore, Oliveros seemed to confirm progressives' worst fears regarding the politics of such amove: In 1972 I led a research project at the Center for Music Experiment at theUniversity of California, San Diego, where I teach. Iworked for nine weeks...