The ghoul (or zombie) can be viewed as contra to metaphysical conceptual order: it is either dead or alive, yet it is neither dead nor alive, while it’s also dead and alive. Thus, the ghoul is another pharmakon, slippery and unstable. Cage might have found common ground with Derrida through his conception of the mobile hierarchy between performer, composer, environment, and audience, noting in Composition in Retrospect: “No beginning, middle, or end (process, not object). … Anything can follow anything else (providing nothing is taken as the basis).”1 Also, his quoting of Satie in Silence¹ (1961) in the form of a “cut-up” conversation points to a much earlier engagement with this idea: “Personally, I am neither good nor bad. I oscillate, if I may say so. Also I’ve never really done anyone any harm—nor any good, to boot.”

So, where does the composer’s performance fit into this nebulous arena, where “nothing is taken as the basis”? Cage remarked, “a work should include its environment, is always experimental (unknown in advance).” A compelling example of the unknowable can be seen in his celebrated 1960 television performance of Water Walk (video example 1).

Video example 1. John Cage performs Water Walk on the TV programme I’ve Got a Secret presented by Garry Moore, 24 February 1960. Video playback starts at 5:38.

Water Walk (1959) was originally composed for performance on the Italian television quiz show Lascia o raddoppia?  (Double or leave it?). Cage spent five weeks answering questions on mushrooms—eventually winning five million lira—and prefaced each appearance with a performance of some of his music (including Water Walk, Sounds of Venice, and Amores). In 1960, he repeated his performance of Water Walk on the US show I’ve Got a Secret—hence the indication on the score that Water Walk is for a “solo television performer.” In a letter to David Tudor in January 1959, Cage writes: “I’ve finished + performed (!) Water Walk which I think you’ll enjoy one day. Includes a dozen roses. Everyone it seems was delighted all the way from artists to street cleaners. No doubt critics just as furious as ever. They now

This first movement manifests Messiaen’s distinct kind of serialism, with its method of coordinating note values, modes of attack, timbres, and registers of pitches. These techniques are employed to stage a dramatic interplay between three rhythmic characters (of Hindu origin). The expanding note values of the pratâpaçekhara “attacks” the diminishing gajajhampa, while the immobile sârasa surveys the scene from the Grand-Orgue. In the composer’s Trinité recording, these rhythmic personalities are effectively projected. The forceful Bombarde 16′ inspires Messiaen to an energetic attack for each pedal entry and this massive sound lingers as a background behind the following entries on the manuals.

Audio example 6. The first movement of Messiaen’s 1953 recording of the Livre d’orgue at Villa Berg, Stuttgart.

The difference in acoustics makes Messiaen perform the piece almost two minutes shorter at the Villa Berg than at Trinité. The Gothenburg performance is more similar to the Stuttgart version, both in interpretation and timbres. At Trinité, a flexible and rhythmically sustained legato allows listeners to “imagine the movement of the stork’s long neck in motion” (sârasa means “stork”).12 In Stuttgart, the sense of drama arises from a quicker tempo, rather than from the idiosyncratic character of the individual voices. In Gothenburg, Messiaen occasionally lingers on the sârasa figures more in the manner of the Trinité performance, as if wavering between two different attitudes to these motifs.

Gavin Bryars, in this interview, gives us a perspective that art, composition, performance is sometimes about trying to do something, and it is the gap between that trying and managing to do it that provides the interest. A thought arrives that this “gap” is one of the clues to inhabiting a Gavin Bryars work—a space into which one must place a similarly humble and unassuming stance. Questions of authenticity will remain unanswered for the time being, and this is not because Bryars is unwilling to address the question; it is simply because he has not considered the question, nor sees the need. For this performer-composer, the notated scores published by Schott provide the urtext for his composed body of work. The working practice of the scores’ performance lives in the moment and will continue to do so. Conferences and researchers will continue to provoke questions about that practice. For the time being, the future performer of Gavin Bryars’s works needs only curiosity, intelligence, humility, and listening—and humour—to explore the performance environment and to find the subtle nuances of acceptance and conversation that foster the agency of the performance. Just a willingness to try … something.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself—and there is one crucial bit of information I’m deliberately withholding. For now, let me clarify that my learning the sonata—the first of a most famous trilogy (opus 109, 110, and 111)—occurred after welcoming into my life a replica of Beethoven’s Broadwood piano. As this was the first such replica, there was some pressure to put it to extraordinary use. To mark the moment, I took it upon myself to learn and perform Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata in B♭ Major, opus 106, the work that Beethoven was writing as he received his Broadwood. It was only a matter of time before continued curiosity and determination would have me play also his last three sonatas using the same equipment that Beethoven had when composing them (which you can listen to in the Spotify player below).

Video example 1. Books on music.

In the culture of Western art music, governed largely by a tradition built upon the sound of orchestral instruments, the sounds of traffic, industrial machines, and other non-pitched sound sources from the world around us existed on the edge of the divide between the musical and non-musical world; once adopted, they prompted a colossal change. 

Audio example 7. Svetlana Maraš, 5 String Sculpture (2024).

Noise provoked a stretching of the general idea of musicality and this gave birth to new mediums that were able to carry out this concept to its furthest ends. New instruments were invented, playing techniques on existing ones were expanded, and new mediums were created that were able to deliver this new kind of musical content—most influential of all at that time being magnetic tape.

It seems to me, and this is in any case the idea that I will try to explore, that what Deleuze says of thought is exactly transposable to what listening represents for music. Yet there is very little direct connection to music in Difference and Repetition. However, the chapter that serves as a prelude to his reflection on the image of thought is a very rigorous exposition of the problem of temporality, a philosophy of time that helps us understand many fundamental elements that characterise this complex phenomenon, this thought without words that music is.

Audio example 15. The Caretaker, Everywhere at the End of Time (2016–19).

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep:
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished, to die, to sleep—
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay, there’s the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.

So, where does the composer’s performance fit into this nebulous arena, where “nothing is taken as the basis”? Cage remarked, “a work should include its environment, is always experimental (unknown in advance).” A compelling example of the unknowable can be seen in his celebrated 1960 television performance of Water Walk (video example 1).

In lieu of witnessing live performances by Grillo of his own works, documentation including scores and promotional materials become vital source material for locating and analysing Grillo’s persona. My performances of Grillo’s work, and the way I document them, are expressions of this persona as much as interpretations of the compositions themselves (video example 1). I will now draw from a broad range of such materials to explore the many ways in which Grillo expressedhis persona as it existed in the mid-1970s, the period in which a vast majority of the works examined were composed.

Video example 1. Soror Mystica: The Sonic Alchemy of Fernando Grillo, performances by Jonathan Heilbron.

In lieu of witnessing live performances by Grillo of his own works, documentation including scores and promotional materials become vital source material for locating and analysing Grillo’s persona. My performances of Grillo’s work, and the way I document them, are expressions of this persona as much as interpretations of the compositions themselves (video example 1). I will now draw from a broad range of such materials to explore the many ways in which Grillo expressed his persona as it existed in the mid-1970s, the period in which a vast majority of the works examined were composed.

Grillo often alluded to mystical and esoteric themes in his titles, writings, and promotional materials, making them significant aspects of the persona he brought to the stage. Titles of Grillo’s works employ common tropes of esoteric literature, including examples such as Arcana (1988), Das Mädchen und der Zauber (The girl and the magic) (1979), Soror Mystica (Mystical sister) (1978/81), Arc-en-ciel (Rainbow) (1987), and Innoxia Floret (Harmless bloom) (1998). His now-defunct website featured many short programme notes alluding to a diverse range of ancient and mystical philosophy, art, and science from Pythagoras and Odysseus to Guido of Arezzo and many others. Grillo’s prominent referencing of a broad range of ancient scientific and Hermetic traditions did more than imbue his performances with an air of mystical profundity. The mystical dimensions of his persona aligned him with other composers and performers in the second half of the twentieth century who also leaned on ancient imagery, philosophy, and aesthetics in their expression of persona.

Vid 1 at 36.58

Vid 2, 5:10  [Vimeo works with no cookie setting problems]

So, where does the composer’s performance fit into this nebulous arena, where “nothing is taken as the basis”? Cage remarked, “a work should include its environment, is always experimental (unknown in advance).” A compelling example of the unknowable can be seen in his celebrated 1960 television performance of Water Walk (video example 1).

As should be evident from the above example, the materials are presented in such a way as to appear fleeting and ephemeral. Events slip by quickly and it soon becomes difficult to discern what is being repeated. The sense of confusion is mirrored in the treatment of the improvised electronic part and live instrumental materials: each digitally captured sound is played back irregularly and erratically in real time with the instruction that the peak of each sound should occur at the end of the sample. This instruction is echoed in the instrumental parts for flute, saxophone, and violin, with instructions to exaggerate crescendo attacks on specified pitches. The intended effect is to create a juxtaposition of materials that sound as if they are being played backwards (rather like a piano recording played in reverse) as well as forwards.

In bar 51, the first significant textural change in the work takes place in which a live instrumental loop (performed eleven times) is replaced by a sampled loop of the same material (played thirty-five times). Please listen from 2.00 to 4.00.

Video example 2. Bryn Harrison, Dead Time (2019), performed by Wet Ink Ensemble, recorded at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November 2019. Video playback starts at 2:00.

Both come with a solution, however. Already in the autograph of opus 111, Beethoven specifies an ossia for the easily disposable E♭ (see figure 2.6, top). Intriguingly, this ossia

was actually printed by Schlesinger in Berlin (figure 2.6, bottom), whose edition was after all marketed to German pianists, who would have had the high notes anyway: it is the low notes—or anything below F—that were potentially problematic for them. As to the second exception (the c♯⁴s in opus 109; see figure 2.3), not only are there so few of them, but these C♯s make their entry only at the very end of the piece after Beethoven has steered clear of them for more than seventeen pages. Furthermore—now disclosing what I have so far left in suspense—nowhere in the sonata does Beethoven write a high C♮. Theoretically at least, this opens the option of tuning the high C up to a high C♯—a scordatura procedure that I have successfully and repeatedly applied in performance and that leads to the following tale.

Table 2.1. Piano works by Beethoven composed as and after he received his Broadwood.

The C♮ that wants to be a C♯

Critics of opus 109 have felt a desire to define “the melody” of the first movement. Is it a sequence of rising thirds and falling fifths (circled in figure 2.7, top)? Or is it the long notes of what some authors have identified as “Lombard rhythms,” resulting in a sequence of falling fourths with rising seconds (as, among others, Glenn Stanley has proposed: boxed in figure 2.7, top)?

As should be evident from the above example, the materials are presented in such a way as to appear fleeting and ephemeral. Events slip by quickly and it soon becomes difficult to discern what is being repeated. The sense of confusion is mirrored in the treatment of the improvised electronic part and live instrumental materials: each digitally captured sound is played back irregularly and erratically in real time with the instruction that the peak of each sound should occur at the end of the sample. This instruction is echoed in the instrumental parts for flute, saxophone, and violin, with instructions to exaggerate crescendo attacks on specified pitches. The intended effect is to create a juxtaposition of materials that sound as if they are being played backwards (rather like a piano recording played in reverse) as well as forwards.

In bar 51, the first significant textural change in the work takes place in which a live instrumental loop (performed eleven times) is replaced by a sampled loop of the same material (played thirty-five times). Please listen from 2.00 to 4.00.

Both come with a solution, however. Already in the autograph of opus 111, Beethoven specifies an ossia for the easily disposable E♭ (see figure 2.6, top). Intriguingly, this ossia

was actually printed by Schlesinger in Berlin (figure 2.6, bottom), whose edition was after all marketed to German pianists, who would have had the high notes anyway: it is the low notes—or anything below F—that were potentially problematic for them. As to the second exception (the c♯⁴s in opus 109; see figure 2.3), not only are there so few of them, but these C♯s make their entry only at the very end of the piece after Beethoven has steered clear of them for more than seventeen pages. Furthermore—now disclosing what I have so far left in suspense—nowhere in the sonata does Beethoven write a high C♮. Theoretically at least, this opens the option of tuning the high C up to a high C♯—a scordatura procedure that I have successfully and repeatedly applied in performance and that leads to the following tale.

This complex construct of a temporal unit and an envelope can be considered under the rubric of computational and combinatorial transformations starting from temporal data. This will result in an intrinsic formal potential, resulting from these same operations. Assuming that this procedure also operates on dynamics, let us consider a temporal unit composed of nineteen prolationa (proportions) with a pitch content and a set of levelled linear envelopes generated from the circular permutations corresponding to the pitch matrix of our temporal unit, as shown in table 12.1.

Table 12.1. Pitch set circular permutation matrix of the temporal unit of figure 12.11.

The first envelope’s profile corresponds to that of the pitch of the associated temporal unit (see figure 12.11).