The written/non-written duality is not without affinities with the axiomatic/intuitionist pairing, a terminology borrowed from the history of mathematics, particularly during the period when the latter sought to "found" its discipline[1]. In this text, we'll be looking at musical research from Debussy to the present day, which could also be described as a "crisis of foundations", a crisis during which sound emerged as a foundation.

In his fine article on musical listening, "L'obédience", the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard drew a parallel between the crisis of foundations experienced by mathematics and contemporary music[2]. Indeed, there's nothing to prevent us from thinking of the collapse of the tonal edifice, the proliferation of new sound materials, the plethora of inventive compositional systems and even the overcoming of the Italian stage, the openness to sound installations and the ecological critique of music - a set of mutations spanning more than a century, from Debussy to the present day - as a crisis of musical foundations. This crisis calls into question the organization of music on the model of language, on two levels: the minimal unit (the musical note) and the level of grammar (the combinatory of notes). A first state resulting from this crisis has been called "atonality"; but, as Schoenberg, one of the first actors in this crisis of foundations, thought, the term has little meaning, if not a negative one [3]. In the end, it was the very basis of music that imposed itself as a foundation, namely sound itself. To quote Lyotard again, during this crisis of foundations, " everything happened as if the task of composers was to proceed with an anamnesis of what was given the name of music. [...] In painting, after the exploration of constraints on the chromatic organization of surfaces, all that remains is color [...] Similarly in music, the analysis of pitch regulations finally leaves as sound only the material, the enigmatic presence of vibrating[4]."

To continue the parallel with the history of mathematics, several paths lead to the emergence of sound. We could group them into two paths, using the vocabulary of epistemology, by contrasting the axiomatic path with the intuitionist path. Webern's work in the first movement of his Symphony op. 21 (1928) would be axiomatic. This piece boasts a highly refined serial construction - acting like "chromosomal material[5]" - which gives the music analyst plenty of work to do! But today's ear, accustomed to music-as-sound, immediately apprehends it - due to the fixity of the notes in register and the canonical writing that leads to the repetition of echoing notes despite the serial principle - as a succession of composed resonances. 

In the post-1945 period, Xenakis would be emblematic of this approach. Beginning with Metastaseis (1953-54), Xenakis used graph paper to draw sound shapes and probability calculus to calculate the values of the notes making up his sound masses, giving us works that link composed sonorities, i.e. sections that are not conceived according to the logic of cell development, but on the model of sound.
With the spectral composers, music thought of as sound-composed was theorized, with the musical work presented as a transposition from micro-time (spectrum) to macro-time (instrumental composition). This is why, from the late 1970s onwards, Grisey, who is particularly interested in the transitory and energetic aspects of sound, dreams of an "ecology of sound, as a new science made available to musicians[6]...". Closer to home, and also mentioning electronic music, we might mention Agostino Di Scipio who, radicalizing the paradigm of granular synthesis, gives us, with pieces such as Paris. La robotique des Lumières (2003, third of the four pieces making up the Paysages historiques), are a kind of composed sound dust, offering models of "weak", deconstructed sounds - counter-models to the sonic weapons proliferating in our increasingly authoritarian societies.

The intuitionist path, on the other hand, could be masterfully illustrated by Cage, who liked to say: " I've never listened to a sound without liking it: the only problem with sounds is music "[7]. After exploring noise in the footsteps of Varèse, Cage moved towards a music in which each sound is a monad in itself, the essential thing being no longer the act of composing, but listening, i.e. becoming aware of the sound: it's a question of " letting sounds be themselves. To be themselves in order to open up the consciousness of the people who produce them or listen to them with potentialities other than those they had previously envisaged "[8]. 

But we might also think of Scelsi, a highly intuitive composer whose scores are transcriptions of improvisations. A pioneer of sound immersion, Scelsi liked to assert that " sound is spherical, but when we listen to it, it seems to possess only two dimensions: height and duration - the third, depth, we know exists, but in a certain sense, it escapes us[9]". At the same time, with albums such as A Love Supreme (1964) and Meditation (1965), Coltrane and his musicians developed an equally immersive, almost liquid music, diluting traditional jazz characteristics in sound. And there's no reason not to mention the "meditative" Stockhausen ofAus den sieben Tagen (1968), which gives texts as scores: " Play a sound until you hear each of its vibrations ", reads Fais voile vers le soleil [10]. In more recent music, John Luther Adams' Become Ocean (2013), Become River (2013) and Become Desert (2018) - a "becoming" reminiscent of Deleuze and Guattari's Mille Plateaux - plunge us into the music of sound through their listening to nature.

The pairing of axiomatism and intuitionism is reminiscent of the duality of written and unwritten music. The examples chosen to illustrate the axiomatic path refer to highly constructed and, a fortiori, totally written musical works. As for the examples of the intuitionist path, one (Adams) is written music, another (Coltrane) improvised and unwritten, a third (Scelsi) improvised and then transcribed, and the last (Cage) so-called "indeterminate" scores, in which performers have a great deal of latitude. Bringing together axiomatism and intuitionism, the becoming-sound of music also overrides the written/non-written opposition. It does not abolish it, but sees it as complementary. Certainly, the emergence of sound was made possible by the invention of recording, which is a form of sound writing. In a sense, we could say that the score produced the concept of the work, while the recording invented the sound. However, recording tends to reify sound, positing it as an object. This is why, just as the concept of the work is constantly being called into question (notably by unwritten music), other conceptions of sound than those of the object involve more intuitive approaches calling on the unwritten.

Makis Solomos

[1] At the beginning of the 20th century, several schools of mathematicians attempted to unify the various branches of mathematics and place them on a rigorous foundation.
[2] Cf. Jean-François Lyotard, "L'obédience", InHarmoniques n°1, 1986. Reprinted in Jean-François Lyotard, L'inhumain ; causeries sur le temps, Paris, Klincksieck, 2014.
[3] "Allow me to mention here that I consider the expression 'atonal' to be meaningless [...A piece of music is always necessarily tonal, because a kinship always exists between one sound and another sound, and consequently two sounds, placed one next to the other or one above the other, are in a condition of perceptible association", wrote Arnold Schönberg(Le style et l'idée, écrits réunis par Léonard Stein, translation Christiane de Lisle, Paris, Buchet/Chastel, 1977, pp. 219-220), for whom "son" means "musical note".
[4] Jean-François Lyotard, op. cit, pp. 108 and 110-111.
[5] The expression comes from Henri-Louis Matter, Webern, Lausanne, L'Âge d'homme, 1981, p. 78.
[6] Gérard Grisey, "Devenir du son" (1978 and 1986), in Gérard Grisey, Écrits ou l'invention de la musique spectrale, ed. by Guy Lelong with Anne-Marie Réby, Paris, éditions MF, 2008, p.. 28.
[7] John Cage, I've never listened to a sound without loving it: the only problem with sounds is music, translation Daniel Charles, s.l., La main courante, 1994, p. 21.
[8] John Cage, interview with Bill Womack (1979), in Richard Kostelanetz, Conversations avec John Cage, translation Marc Dauchy, Paris, Éditions des Syrtes, 2000, p. 77.
[9] Giacinto Scelsi, "Son et musique" (improvised conversations between Scelsi and friends during 1953 and 1954), Les anges sont ailleurs..., Arles, Actes Sud, 2006, p. 126-127.
[10] Karlheinz Stockhausen, Aus den sieben Tagen : "Make sail towards the sun", Vienna, Universal Edition, 1968.

Photo painting by Kazuya Sakai - Aus Den Sieben Tagen, 1976