Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avantgarde. Georgina Born. Berkeley: University of American Anthropological Association. PUBLICATIONS · leondumoulin.nl · AAA.
Table of contents
- Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde
- Hermann, Georgina Born's Rationalizing Culture
- by Born, Georgina
- My Shopping Bag
Born does all these things almost constantly. No doubt this helped her maneuver herself into a well-pd 'educator's' position but it doesn't do much to enhance the value of her opinion , wch she doesn't present as such, for me. Born is all about avant-garde vs pop, modernist vs post-modernist, serialist vs anti-serialist — but is everything so clearly divided? The "world of serious composition" is far more complex than the "split" she describes.
As such, they try to ride the trends that will enhance their careers. Born's statement reminds me of the typical: In other words, the pseudo-intellectual process involves: I hope it's obvious that there aren't just 2 possibilities in either politics or music. Ok, I'll accept that as a duality — but I'm open to other opinions. To pull a quasi- reductio ad absurdum here, that's like saying there are only 2 notes: That wd make me relevant to the period under discussion.
Or is it Post-Modernist? Is it Serialist or is it Anti-Serialist?
Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde
To me, it's none-of-the-above. I prefer M Usic, the root word is "use". Low Classical Usic is M Usic for people who don't really fit into the conservatory, into the academy. There's even an "Ordinary Piano Solo" on there: But how "ordinary" is it really? What boxes does it fit into?
The visuals are almost entirely black. Musically, it doesn't sound that exceptional. It probably wdn't rub a tonalist the wrong way. But a moment's thought wd make a person realize that the technique used to trigger the sounds on a guitar neck are far more limited in terms of harmony than they are on a keyboard. That cuts out various string-player techniques like glissandi. The point is that the 'ordinariness' isn't so 'ordinary' after all.
Or what about "cellfeed 01", https: The full review is here: Dec 25, Max rated it liked it. Dec 04, Christopher rated it liked it.
Hermann, Georgina Born's Rationalizing Culture
In Born, a musician-cum-ethnographer spent a year observing the institute, and this expanded version of her subsequent Ph. D thesis was published in Fans of contemporary music--and I'm one--will be pleased to have the opportunity to learn something of the structure and day-to-day life of IRCAM. Born details the bureacratic hierarchy, the various types of employees, and the "squatters", composers entering after-hours to use the centre's equipment and hoping to be established workers there.
She talks about typical visits by composers who come to be trained and to realise a piece at Ircam, and about the use of the fearsome 4X machine, IRCAM's early technological breakthrough. Born could not use real names in the preparation of her thesis, so instead people are referred to with random initials or with general attributes, but it's not particularly challenging to guess who is who.
Among the author's ethnographic themes are the phenomenon of the avant-garde the "outsiders" becoming subsidized by the government "the Establishment" and IRCAM's early shift from composer-scientist equality to scientists at the service of composers. Born mixes what should be a dispassionate report about the sociology of IRCAM with her own opinions on contemporary music, which she seems to loathe immensely.
Right from the beginning she writes that she left the conservatory to play in rock bands because she didn't like modern styles.
In the chapter on music, while reporting the discussions of some composers on their inspirations, she even suggests that what they are doing isn't real music at all. Throughout Born writes in such a way as to make the reader think that IRCAM is a worthless institution on the verge of being shut down. Granted, IRCAM took a while to get off the ground, and if one goes only by Born's chronicle, one might get the impression that it's not a terribly productive place.
In all of the technology--a couple of huge servers--seems to be constantly on the fritz and without sufficient processing power for all users, but within a couple of years the centre transitioned to PCs and work gets along fine. Born does dedicate a few pages in the last chapter to later events in IRCAM, but she still ends the book in a critical fashion, not acknowledging any of the great achievements of the centre.
Hand-in-hand with this are snipes at Boulez, whom Born seems to think a tyrant who holds music back instead of a benevolent dictator who has done so much to advance the art. At least there's little outright sniping at him here--on a recent radio BBC programme she accused him of "stealing" French music funds instead of really deserving them--but there is nonetheless a serious lack of respect.
It can be informative. Mar 24, Alex Johnston rated it it was amazing.
The previous and highly bizarre review of this book gives a highly inaccurate impression of what it's like to read. It's an ethnographic analysis of how the place works and how its public statements and actual practice do not harmonise with each other. The previous reviewer says that Born seems to think that Boulez is a 'tyrant', which is not a word she ever uses, and ignores the fact that the book provides plenty of documentation for the The previous and highly bizarre review of this book gives a highly inaccurate impression of what it's like to read. The previous reviewer says that Born seems to think that Boulez is a 'tyrant', which is not a word she ever uses, and ignores the fact that the book provides plenty of documentation for the ways in which Boulez has tended to centralise all authority in IRCAM to himself, while publicly and disingenuously proclaiming in Barthesian fashion that he has no authority at all.
Born's 'bias against great music' exists in the reviewer's imagination; plenty of trained classical musicians stop playing classical music and turn to something else, but it doesn't mean that they hate great music. Born herself abandoned classical music to be a significant player in the 70s art-rock scene, first with Henry Cow and later with Art Bears and other important, politically-charged bands - she is one of the few important academics to have played a killer bass line, on the Art Bears' song 'In Two Minds'.
Nowhere in this does Born suggest that Boulez is not a great composer, but that's because the book is working on a higher level than, say, Dominique Jameux's authorised biography of Boulez. The most readily available commentary in English devoted to Boulez -- such as the Symposium edited by Glock, or the Jameux book -- are informative and useful up to a point, but basically they serve to support Boulez's authority, and while the Symposium has some interestingly dissenting views about Boulez's work and at least tries to make some assessment of what he's done, the Jameux book is embarrassingly uncritical.
The previous review of this book is entirely within the fanboy tradition, in that it can't bear to hear anything that might tarnish the image of the composer as genius. I love and admire Boulez's music, but I deplore much of his practice as an administrator, as an impresario and as a commentator, and Born's book is a refreshing counterbalance to the generally hagiographical tone of most Boulez commentary in that it assesses the actual cost of his activities and - given the obvious and massive slackening-off of his compositional output since the 60s - questions the extent to which the expressed motives for much of his activity harmonise with the actual results that he's achieved.
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It's a classic, as far as I am concerned. In Born, a musician-cum-ethnographer spent a year observing the institute, and this expanded version of her subsequent Ph. D thesis was published in Fans of contemporary music--and I'm one--will be pleased to have the opportunity to learn something of the structure and day-to-day life of IRCAM. Born details the bureacratic hierarchy, the various types of employees, and the "squatters", composers entering after-hours to use the centre's equipment and hoping to be established workers there.
She talks about typical visits by composers who come to be trained and to realise a piece at Ircam, and about the use of the fearsome 4X machine, IRCAM's early technological breakthrough. Born could not use real names in the preparation of her thesis, so instead people are referred to with random initials or with general attributes, but it's not particularly challenging to guess who is who.
Among the author's ethnographic themes are the phenomenon of the avant-garde the "outsiders" becoming subsidized by the government "the Establishment" and IRCAM's early shift from composer-scientist equality to scientists at the service of composers. Born mixes what should be a dispassionate report about the sociology of IRCAM with her own opinions on contemporary music, which she seems to loathe immensely.
Right from the beginning she writes that she left the conservatory to play in rock bands because she didn't like modern styles. In the chapter on music, while reporting the discussions of some composers on their inspirations, she even suggests that what they are doing isn't real music at all. Throughout Born writes in such a way as to make the reader think that IRCAM is a worthless institution on the verge of being shut down.
Granted, IRCAM took a while to get off the ground, and if one goes only by Born's chronicle, one might get the impression that it's not a terribly productive place. In all of the technology--a couple of huge servers--seems to be constantly on the fritz and without sufficient processing power for all users, but within a couple of years the centre transitioned to PCs and work gets along fine. Born does dedicate a few pages in the last chapter to later events in IRCAM, but she still ends the book in a critical fashion, not acknowledging any of the great achievements of the centre.
Hand-in-hand with this are snipes at Boulez, whom Born seems to think a tyrant who holds music back instead of a benevolent dictator who has done so much to advance the art.
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At least there's little outright sniping at him here--on a recent radio BBC programme she accused him of "stealing" French music funds instead of really deserving them--but there is nonetheless a serious lack of respect. It can be informative. In his fierce review of Rationalizing Culture cleverly entitled Born to Die , Ben Watson, a Marxist music writer, points to a tendency that successively appears throughout the book: Ontology, Technology and Creativity.
by Born, Georgina
Moreover, it is infantile to make the assumption that popular music and jazz, in the case of this particular article inherently questions aspects of musical production such as ownership, agency, and hierarchy. See all 7 reviews. Most recent customer reviews. Published on March 26, Published on November 9, Published on June 21, Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.
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