New Ontology of Music, Nam June Paik

Postmusic

The Monthly Review of the University for Avant-garde Hinduism.

edited by N. J. PA I K

FLUXUS a- publication
- An essay for the new ontology of Music

New ontology of music (PAIK)

I am tired of renewing the form of music.
- serial or aleatoric, graphic or five lines, instrumental or bellcanto, screaming or action, tape or live ...
I hope must renew the ontological form of music.
In the normal concert,
the sounds move, the audience sit down.
in my sosaid action music,
the sounds, etc., move, the audience it attacked by me.
In the "Symphony for 20 rooms",
the sounds, etc., move, the audience moves also.
In my "Omnibus music No.1" (1961),
the sounds sit down, the audience visits them.
In the Music Exposition,
the sounds sit, the audience plays or attacks them.
In the "Moving theatre" in the street,
the sounds move in the street, the audience meets Of encounters them "unexpectedly" In the street.
The beauty of moving theatre lies in this "Surprise a a priori", because almost all of the audience is uninvited,
not knowing what it is, why it is, who is the composer, the player, organizer - or better speaking- organizer,
composer, player.
"Music for the long road" - and without audience,
"Music for the large place" " - and without audience
me more platonic.
Alison Knowles notifying no one escaped secretly from the hotel and saying nothing unrolled 1000 meter sound tape
in a street of Copenhagen.
There was not one invited "audience", not one photographer; only the program was due to be printed,
Announcing "Time indeterminate, date indeterminate, place somewhere in Copenhagen and Paris."
"The music for high tower and without audience" is more platonic. Alison Knowles "ascended" to the top of the
"Eiffel Lower" and cut her beautiful long hair in the winter wind. No one noticed, no programm was printed,
no journalist as there. Sorry, Dick Higgins saw It. It is just the Unavoidable evil. He is her husband.
The most platonic music was xxxxx with ooooo , which no one in the world knows about, except us two.
Precisely speaking, only this xxxxx can be called a "happening". "Happening is just one thing in this world,
one thing through which you cannot become "famous", If you make the publicity in advance, invite the critics, sell
tickets to snobs, and buy many copies of newspapers having
written about it, - then it is no more a "happening".
It is just a concert. I never use therefore this holy word "happening" for my "concerts", which are equally snobbish
as those of Franz Liszt. I am just more self-conscious or less hypocritical than my anti-artist friends. I am the same
clown as Goethe and Beethoven,
The Post music "The Monthly Review of the University of
Avant-garde Hinduism" comes in succession from my search
for the new ontology of music, and simultaneously is
The first 'Journalisme pour la Journalisme" in the sense of "l'art pour l'art", or
"La post pour la post" in the sense of "I'art pour I'art".

Every revolution of musical form was due to, or had something to do with the new ontological form of music.
for example In the gregorian chant the time when it was to be played was of main importance.
Imagine how matin services in the early mornings sound completely different from vesper services in the evenings,
although melody is almost same for the outsider.
This WHEN (time of day and day of year, a very interesting measure, which shall be intensely developped & exploited
in my post music "The Monthly Review of the University of Avant-garde Hinduism") disappeared in 18th century
when that music escaped from the church.
Pre-classical symphony (mood music a la MANTOVANI) came into life to entertain the half-intellectual nobles
in their dining rooms, grew up to the Ninth Symphony to satisfy the heroism of romantic free-bourgeois And then
fell down to the Schubertlieder, to be sung in a Vienna "gasse".
Bach's Goldberg Variations should be so long as to make the "lord" fall asleep.
KARJAN's show business and
CALLAS' idiotology are
unthinkable without the record industry.
New American style boring music is probably a reaction and resistance against the too thrilling Hollywood movies.
Post music is as calm, as cold. as dry, as non-expressionistic as my television experiments-
You get something in a year.
When you are about to forget the last one you received you get something again,
This has a fixed form, and this is like the large ocean.
calm sunny calm calm
rainy calm windy calm sunny
calm sunny sunny sunny calm
stormy calm stormy stormy
stormy calm stormy rainy calm calm calm etc.


Nam June Paik's New Ontology of Music essay from his "Monthly Review of the University of Avant-Garde Hinduism"

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