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Forgetting and Remembering

by Robert Paredes

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about

I am interested in the play between two (among many) significant musical taxonomies, each in a state of constant opposition and interqualification with the other. In the first of these, the word "music" serves (traditionally) to denote a system or systems of pitch relationship-cum-organization for which sound functions as the required revelator. In this perceptual circumstance, pitch relationships constitute what might be called the large set and sound (or rhythm, or duration, or timbre, for that matter) function almost as (if) a subsidiary phenomenon (i.e., the background "carrier," if you will, of foreground pitch information). In the second taxonomy (and that nearer and dearer to me) the word "music" connotes an---idea/place---to which human beings come in order to construct and consider diverse sound-worlds (denotations) of their own and others’ making, for purposes of expression and redefinition, delectation and debate, reflection and inquiry. In this perceptual circumstance, sound is the larger set within which pitch-relationships---as beautiful sub-set---might be heard in the role of background "carrier" of foreground energies---say---or timbres---say---or keenings or razzberries.....say?

I like the idea that a hearing of my music might be an occasion for thought and discourse, within and between myself and others in advance of a now familiar, but no less necessary argument that the word, "music," is not intrinsically/inextricably wedded to any particular evidence or evidences in sound: that the major/minor key system, say, is an attribute of music, but not.....MUSIC (as if the major/minor key system was ((or should be)) all that need (((or could))) be....said....say?).

During the years 1984-86, I lived in Melbourne, Australia. Throughout my stay, I had many opportunities to perform new compositions, Klezmer and Middle-European folk musics, jazz, and to work in the theater (specifically, as a "devisor" of sounds for a production of Antigone mounted by the Playbox Theater Company). I was also fortunate to be able to improvise regularly with a group of musicians---[i.e. Catherine Schieve, Joan Pollock, Allan Walker, and Tim Dargaville]---at LaTrobe University (in the northern suburb of Bundoora). This latter, more private, situation afforded me a safe place in which to examine my improvisational practice and aesthetics through participation in real-time interactive performances over an extended period of time. Perhaps more than any other, this musical experience caused me to consider that the language of my improvisation---unmediated by visual notations---could, in fact, be the language of my composition: that the distinction which I habitually made between something called "composition" and something called "improvisation" might, at best, be proforma and predicated on the relative presence or absence of something called "paper."

Both works included on this disc are compositions/improvisations originally committed directly to tape. I think of them variously as a kind of painting or drawing (or writing) in which the surface of the tape constitutes a repository (not unlike a canvas) for etchings or inscriptions; traces of tactile energies and shapes (gestures and levels of pressure) to be retraced as sound via the means of playback equipment. By virtue of repeated performances, I have come, as well, to experience them more as a kind of music-theater than---(de facto)---a kind of music-music; wordless plays in which the loudspeakers are the actors: multiply-motile speak(er)ing(s) discursive within the obdurate stillness of speakers. Who are "they," and what are they saying?

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released June 22, 2021

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Robert Paredes Iowa City, Iowa

Robert Paredes (1948-2005) was a composer, performer, essayist, multi-media artist
and teacher whose output was consistently and consciously experimental. Expressing his deep interest in language, social justice and interpersonal relationships, his work was often a context to investigate the
essence of music, its meaning and its role in society.
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