The Primacy of the Ear
by Jonty Harrison |imed_0409-0002|
The starting point is always the sound — the individual sound in all
its uniqueness. The details of its internal structure, of its spectral and
temporal evolution reveal its potential and hint at what might be. The
sensitive ear draws in and evolves other sounds with related potential
— the dynamics of structure are unleashed, from micro-structure through
to whole pieces.
What distinguishes the work of Denis Smalley from
that of many other composers who would recognize the experience just
described is—quite apart from the exquisite nature of the sounds
themselves — the sureness of touch, the unerring sense of timing, the
‘rightness’ of the size, shape and placing of every gesture.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Denis Smalley is
a composer who works exclusively in the electroacoustic medium, which permits
a more complete control of the final sonic event, of the aural experience of
the listener. The works for instrument and tape do not contradict the
essentially acousmatic nature of Smalley’s work.
Though in one sense (conceptually?) so distant from what is normally
considered instrumentally ‘idiomatic,’ they somehow
(perceptually?) epitomize aspects of the clarinet or the piano, elucidating a
less immediately obvious, but nonetheless present and essential morphology of
the individual instrument, transformed into the underlying structural logic
of the whole work. Here too the individual sound event is the impulse for
phrases, sentences and paragraphs; even whole works are sometimes linked by
common (and tiny) morphological seeds: Gradual and Pentes; Pneuma and
Darkness
After Time’s Colours; Tides, Clarinet Threads
and Wind Chimes; Piano Nets and Valley Flow.
The sensitive ear interacts with sound, constantly experimenting, probing,
assessing. What is ‘right’ is what works for the ear and for the
perceptual/intellectual mechanism of interaction we call listening.
Listen…
Jonty Harrison,
Birmingham (UK) [viii-92]
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