Ben Goldscheider’s solo horn took centre stage in a rewarding and fascinating concert featuring new and older compositions that combined his instrument with live electronics

We’ve come a long way from the early days of electroacoustic music, when a ring-modulated piano or a flute or a violin dialoguing with electronic echoes of itself was often the height of technological sophistication. Even so, it still seems strange to find a solo horn as the focus of a concert featuring real-time electronics. But Ben Goldscheider spent his time during lockdown in 2020 looking into the possibilities of combining his instrument with live electronics, and he presented the results of his research in a recital with the “media artist” Philip Dawson, which featured the premieres of three specially commissioned works.

Goldscheider also included the work that had started him on his explorations, the 1979 Fantasie for Horns II by the German-born Canadian Hildegard Westerkamp, in which the solo horn has a taped accompaniment assembled from the sounds of many different horns, including fog, car and alp. The writing for the live instrument is entirely conventional, the tape background mostly continuum-like, until shortly before the end the horn embarks on a solo that seems to come straight out of a 19th-century German opera. Thea Musgrave’s Golden Echo III was Goldscheider’s multi-channel recreation of a piece originally composed in the 1980s for solo horn and 16 other horns on tape, which places the audience at the centre of a surround-sound celebration of brass sonorities.

None of the new works could match that kind of sonic luxury, although Alex Groves’s Single Form (Dawn), which he describes as a “slow-motion, sonic sunrise,”,built up an impressively dense texture from the instrument’s harmonics. Zoë Martlew’s Nibiru places the soloist at the centre of a global apocalypse – the title comes from Babylonian mythology – with the horn pleading for humanity’s salvation, amid sounds drawn from a variety of cultures, and ending with the song of an extinct Hawaiian bird. And in Mark Simpson’s Darkness Moves II, inspired by the work of the artist-poet Henri Michaux and his experiments with mescaline, Goldscheider’s extraordinary virtuosity and the potential of the real-time electronics were fully exploited, and there was a true dialogue between the two. Simpson’s vivid, surreal musical gestures and their interactions with their digital transformations were spectacularly vivid, so that the piece acquired a theatrical dimension that was totally compelling.

Although there is a lot of focus these days on the pandemic, we are all at some level aware that lurking in the background is a much bigger issue for which there is no vaccine – the climate crisis with the threat of rising seas, worsening storms, runaway fires and more. These issues are increasingly becoming the focus for many artists of all disciplines, myself included. How do we continue working as creative people with all the impending disasters just around the corner? What relevance does the next orchestral composition or sound improvisation have in light of the issues we’re collectively facing?

I recently approached one of my composer colleagues, Claude Schryer, whom I originally met when we were both graduate students in composition at McGill University in the 1980s, for his thoughts on all this. Schryer has been involved for years in issues related to the relationship between sound, listening, musical composition and the environment, an area that has become known as “acoustic ecology”. This particular field of ecological awareness, encompassing both artistic practice and academic scholarship, was originally born on Canadian soil out of the work of composer R Murray Schafer and his colleagues in the World Soundscape Project (WSP) during the 1970s.

Later, in 1993, a conference was held at The Banff Centre for the Arts called The Tuning of the World, the title of Schafer’s influential book published originally in 1977. Schryer was instrumental in behind-the-scenes organization of the conference, but, as he points out to me, it was a group effort that brought about a watershed moment: the birth of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) and its Canadian spin-off called the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology or CASE.

Soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp was one of the key members of the World Soundscape Project (WSP) in the 1970s, and during the 1980s had often mentioned the idea of a conference to Schafer, as a way of following up with all the contacts they had made over the years. It took until the 1990s, though, at the initiative of Michael Century, director of The Banff Centre’s Media Arts Division, to finally get the ball rolling. At initial planning meetings a few years prior to the festival, Westerkamp took on the creation of a Soundscape Newsletter to help bring together the far-ranging community and create an audience for a potential conference. Sent to the large mailing list that had grown over the years, the response to it was very enthusiastic, and a conference date was set for August 1993, with Calgary-based composer Tim Buell getting involved in the organization of it, along with Schryer.

Birth of the World Forum

Throughout the conference, daily early morning meetings, facilitated by both Westerkamp and Schryer, were held to discuss the idea of creating a structure that would provide continuity and connection for those present after the conference was over, as well as for others on the mailing list. With people having travelled from the USA, Europe, Australia and of course from Canada, enthusiasm was riding high, and by the end of the week the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology had been created.

Being in the midst of a national park in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, the Banff Centre is surrounded by an abundance of wildlife. As Westerkamp recalls, just as the vote was completed to create the Forum, a knock was heard on the window. It was an elk. Everyone laughed and agreed: “We have confirmation.”

Schryer took on the initial role of coordinator of the World Forum. Part of the vision was that different countries would create their own individual chapters, but with Canada already having a lot of momentum via the WSP, it wasn’t until 1996 that CASE, the Canadian sound ecology chapter came into being. Fittingly, the vision took shape during a world soundscape workshop held at the Haliburton Forest & Wildlife Reserve, the wilderness location where Schafer created his annual collaborative Wolf Project.

Schryer became the founding president of CASE, with composers Gayle Young, Tim Knight and Schafer as collaborators.

Canada has been uniquely positioned as a leader in the field of acoustic ecology and soundscape composition, Schryer says, with many Canadian sound artists and academics taking a leading role in the further evolution of the field. In 2018, during a conference in Germany celebrating the 25th anniversary of the World Forum, many participants remarked on the great impact that the WSP, The Tuning of the World and the subsequent WFAE has had internationally.

The Carry-Over

Our conversation shifted to the topic of how Schryer has taken his involvement in these organizations and awareness of environmental sound into his creative work. During his studies at McGill he learned and developed his craft of electroacoustic and instrumental composition. However his passionate interest in the combination between art and environment has been there from day one. “With my music training, I just kept expanding further into sound-related fields that were more and more broad, expanding into acoustic ecology, radio, interdisciplinary work and cross-sectoral work like arts and health. Sound has always been my base and a way for me to enter other fields and to collaborate, either with other artists or with practitioners in other fields such as scientists.”

His career as a composer and sound ecology activist temporarily came to a standstill in 1999, he says, when he took a job at the Canada Council [for the Arts], leading the Inter-Arts Office where he became involved in developing policy for this new artistic practice. However, in 2016 he felt the need to go back to creative work and integrate it with his practice in Zen Buddhism.

Based on his passion for meditation and stillness, he created a series of 175 three-minute audio and video portraits called simplesoundscapes (www.simplesoundscapes.ca). “I just loved doing that. I was recording interesting moments from places all around the world, three minutes of a moment that were often interesting in very minute ways.”

When that project came to completion in July 2019, Schryer decided to become more involved in the climate change movement “because of the obvious need for us all to be involved,” he said. He began spending more of his time, both the Canada Council and in his personal life, working at a social level on the production of environmental projects. “We need to change the way we live so let’s think about how we produce artistic events,” he says.

Then, in May of 2020, he started the conscient podcast, and during its first season he was “hungry to explore the relationship between awareness, art and environmental action.” With the second season beginning in March 2021, the conversations are now focused on accepting reality and ecological grief. “I call it a shared learning journey, educating or re-educating myself and sharing as I go.”

The first episode of season two is called reality and mixes quotations from various authors, recordings from his simplesoundscape collection, and excerpts from a 1998 soundscape composition titled Au dernier vivant les biens. Calling on his skills as a composer, this new direction has become “a journalistic project that’s about raising awareness and looking at how artists can play a larger role in what we’re calling climate emergency. It’s not just climate change, it’s a climate emergency which is part of the larger ecological crisis that includes biodiversity.”

In September 2020 he chose to leave the Canada Council so he would have time and resources to invest in projects of this nature. With conscient, he says, he can give a voice to artists and climate workers to speak about the ideas they’re developing, the concepts, theories and actions being taken. “That seems very concrete to me, and is what I’m planning to do for the rest of my life.”

Currently he’s also involved with an emerging national project called SCALE – Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency, a coalition of arts and climate workers doing projects internationally, exploring how the arts can play a role. “People are doing similar things in different parts of the country and now we can align our efforts and put some pressure on the decision makers, inform artists on tools that are available to reduce their footprint, and create a series of activities that will help advance the arts and cultural sector’s contribution to the climate emergency.”

Re-engagement

And so we come back to the question that prompted me to contact him in the first place: What relevance does the next orchestral composition or sound improvisation have in light of the issues we’re collectively facing?

“There are all kinds of ways that artists, including musicians and sound artists, can contribute and it’s up to those individuals to see where they want to put their energies and where they think they’re most useful to society. Sometimes it’s in their art practice, and sometimes it’s more about the way an arts organization operates and the environmental footprint that is created. We should not be wasting anything, such as one-time use theatre sets, but we should be focusing on what’s important – connecting with people and getting the artwork out there. It doesn’t have to be about touring around the world the way that we used to. Maybe there are other ways to get the word out there. That’s where we’re at now.”

“So how do you approach the issue of our deep alienation as a society from nature and the environment?” I ask. He replies by speaking about how deep the disconnect is, “going back hundreds of years through the different doctrines and European ways of seeing the world and the idea that we control nature.”

The way we have been educated in the Western world is to take nature for granted, that it’s there to be exploited, he says. “We have to change that. We have to see ourselves as part of nature. Trauma comes up a lot in my conscient interviews. The Western world is so traumatized in its relationship to nature. It’s lost touch, it’s flailing.”

So how do we re-engage with nature? “I don’t think there’s an easy solution, other than valorizing nature, rethinking who you are, re-educating yourself, changing the systems on the longer term; and listen to Indigenous voices who have always had a relationship with nature that has been symbiotic as opposed to oppositional or exploitive.”

Take the time to listen to the people he has featured in his conscient podcasts, he suggests – “to what they are saying and the struggles they are engaged in.”

Part of the task ahead, as musicians and sound artists, is to help cultivate new artistic forms and practices that deal with the issues and require action, as we collectively face the ever-growing climate emergency ahead.

The trans_canada festival of electroacoustic music by Canadian composers at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe was certainly no everyday experience for the interested German public. A festival of acousmatic music—and acousmatic music only—is quite unusal. The German avant-garde music scene is still uncommonly lively, but most composers prefer either instrumental music (with electroacoustic elements) or multimedia works. The idea of invisible music seems not to touch the German musical sensibility.

Despite this, 460 visitors found their way to ZKM. During 10-13 February, 2005, they experienced a four day-long plunge into the Canadian way of composing, and had the opportunity to learn more about the “Canadian Example” as Daniel Teruggi of the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM) called it in his paper. According to Mr. Teruggi, the liveliness and outstanding quality of the electroacoustic music scene in Canada is the result of good composers but also of academically sound research and training and a wide range of philosophical approaches to music. The opening of the festival showed another aspect of this “example.” Paul Dubois, the present Canadian ambassador to Germany, came from Berlin to open the festival—cultural policy in Canada apparently knows and supports the electroacoustic scene intensely, quite contrary to German policy.

Francis Dhomont, Robert Normandeau, Gilles Gobeil, Nicolas Bernier, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Louis Dufort took part in the festival and presented works (Ned Bouhalassa was invited but for health reasons was unable to attend). Nine pieces were commissioned by ZKM and received their world premieres at the festival.

trans_canada not only offered an occasion for Germans to learn about Canadian acousmatic music; apparently, it also connected the Canadians themselves. “It seems we had to come to the ZKM in Karlsruhe to get together,” said Robert Normandeau at the last concert. And so, the Francophone composers from the east, rooted in the Paris school of “musique concrète,” met the Anglophone soundscape composers from the West coast. “I was very much surprised when Francis Dhomont told us that he does not like the original sounds to be changed so much that you can’t distinguish their origin any longer,” said Hildegard Westerkamp. “We are not as far away from each other as I used to think.”

This proved to be quite true, as could be heard. The parallels between their new works, Brief an den Vater by Mr. Dhomont and Für Dich—For You by Ms. Westerkamp, were striking. Both compositions were not only inspired by but also formally based on literature and the structure, the sound, the rhythm of the text. The work by Mr. Dhomont, with the scraping of a pen as a sort of leitmotif, was no less abstract than Ms. Westerkamp’s music with its sea-sounds (gulls, wind, waves). And her fantasy land called “home” is not more “real” then his world of inner struggle. Both works showed an extreme sensitivity for subtle, delicate sounds which were spread in many layers, throwing shadows of sound, and constantly and slowly developing into new shapes and shades. The differences between the works seemed after all (to this listener at least) to be ones of personal style and expression than of basic principles.

Another new work with words came from Darren Copeland. I don’t want to be inside me anymore was quite singular in the festival due to its definite focus on content, on a “real story.” This fact gave the piece a strong dramatic quality leaving hardly any room for imagination. The intention of the sounds to build around the absorbing, sometimes even vexatious, words seemed to force the listeners to constantly keep their full attention on the meaning of the text. It was a deeply impressive piece, even if it was to a certain extent more dramatic than musical. (Although other listeners might experience it differently if they do not understand the German text.)

In a way, this work resembles a compositional style of a very different kind, that of Barry Truax. The connection may be found in the very sense of reality in both composer’s works: the reality of the feeling of isolation on one hand, and the reality of an existing landscape (streams, peaks, caves) on the other.

Even Gilles Gobeil’s magnificent medieval drama, Ombres, espaces, silences…, followed roughly this direction. This piece was not about feeling or landscape, it was about reality, too, in this case the reality of history, only by far more sublime, sensitive, and imaginative. Not “cinema for the ear” but a “novel for the ear” (something like The Name of the Rose?)! However, the form and structure of this work is by far more of a narrative nature than strictly abstract-musical.

It was Robert Normandeau and the youngsters of trans_canada who were most abstract, and therefore the strongest advocates of a true “invisible music.” It was not only not to be seen, it was not to be imagined. There was nothing real, nothing you could get hold of, it was more or less a complete deconstruction of sounds, ideas, narration. They appeared not to start from any landscape, be it imagined or real, inside or outside the head; they started from ideas, ideas of sound, ideas of form. Even the antique Writing Machine in the work by Nicolas Bernier was more a (slightly exotic) sound than a sense, more a historical reminiscence than an element of form.

Coincidence shows her unaccountable face, experiment and surprise follow. You could hear experience and mastery in the work of Robert Normandeau, of course. You were always sure that it was him who played with coincidence and not the other way round. His world premiere, ZedKejeM, was highly dynamic, with the energy and rhythm from a dancefloor, but still showed the deepness, density, and versatility of a deep-thinking organizer of energy and fantasy. Every single sound seemed well calculated, the effects carefully set.

The music of his younger colleagues, Mr. Bernier and Louis Dufort, was more spontaneous, wandering dreamily through all the possibilities of technique and sound, to find out what would happen. Mr. Dufort spread a richness and variety of colors in a free, open structure that simply followed the beauty of the sounds created. In contrast to that, Mr. Bernier followed an intellectual plan, he set his rules and let them work. One always sensed the will behind the music, one always tried to follow and understand the experiment instead of just enjoying the result. But, on the other hand, this method produced a certain strong energy in the work. This composer had the power to raise and hold the intellectual interest of the listener.

All in all, it was fascinating to take in over a few days such a wide range of styles and personalities, and to learn a little about their methods.

trans_canada also provided the chance to meet the composers in person. Each of them delivered a paper about their work. They could only give a rough survey, of course, in a 45-min talk. Rather than concentrating on techniques or software, most composers just tried to acquaint their colleagues and the small number of other interested people with their sources of inspiration, their opinions, their philosophy. Remarkable was the clear delivery of all the composers and the relaxed atmosphere of these sessions. There seemed to be no need to impress anyone, and not so much need to discuss, let alone debate. Everybody was open-minded and respected the others, as if trying to learn and understand, not to question fundamentals.

It was like a good talk between colleagues and friends. Mr. Normandeau provided insight into his large archive of sound and his permanent work on the human voice. Mr. Gobeil expressed his preference for the sound of exotic instruments (like the Daxophone) and his dislike of techno music (inducing him to write a techno-piece). Mr. Dhomont talked about the relation between accident and control in his work, marking his own position somewhere between Pierre Boulez and John Cage: “Boulez would say: ‘This is incidental, throw it away;’ Cage would say: ‘This is incidental, so I take it;’ I say: ‘Look, there is an interesting incident, but should I take it?’” He also used the opportunity to call for more polyphony in electroacoustic music instead of the exclusive concentration on creating the most original, most exotic new sound: “In an orchestra, you mix different instruments, but the single instrument becomes not less beautiful.”

The exceptional environment of ZKM supported this beautiful richness of sounds and the inventiveness of the composers immensely. The two concert venues offer exquisite acoustics. They were equipped with 70 concert loudspeakers, placed in either circles or in a kind of “acousmonium surround environment.” This, in conjunction with the timbral and spatial qualities of the works, created an extraordinary musical experience.

Les sons environnementaux (field recordings) ont toujours fasciné les compositeurs électroacoustiques, ceci depuis les Cinq études de bruits (1948) de Pierre Schaeffer et ses enregistrements de trains modifiés. Avec le Vancouver Soundscape 1973 (1972-73) de R Murray Schafer, ces sons du quotidien s’articulent autour d’un discours qu’on nommera «écologie sonore», où les sons gardent leur signification originale, et ne servent plus comme contenu anecdotique à la merci du compositeur. Le lecteur curieux notera que Jonty Harrison fait une intéressante synthèse de ces deux approches dans son texte {cnotice:imed_0052-0001/À propos d’Évidence matérielle/cnotice}.

En fait, chaque compositeur semble privilégier une approche différente par rapport aux sons environnementaux. Alors que l’écologie sonore voit fleurir des artistes du microphone tels que Claude Schryer et bien sûr Hildegard Westerkamp et sa fameuse Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989), des préoccupations autrement plus documentaires alimentent un disque tel que Corazón Road (1993), carnet de voyage sonore du duo français Kristoff K Roll. Entretemps, le compositeur new-yorkais Jon Hudak part d’une palette extrêmement minimaliste afin de trouver l’«essence» des sons utilisés, ce qui donne à l’auditeur de doux «soundscapes» planants. Élève du ci-haut mentionné Harrison, Natasha Barrett se rapproche davantage de la tradition acousmatique tout en concevant des paysages sonores de toute beauté à partir de sons environnementaux très discrets.

De jeunes compositeurs s’ajoutent constamment au paysage (sonore…) et il serait malvenu de les confiner au silence tant leur travail nous semble digne d’intérêt. Mentionnons d’abord le californien V. V. (de son vrai nom Ven Voisey), qui intègre ses sons trouvés dans une architecture rappelant la musique concrète «vieille école» — ce faisant, il montre combien Schaeffer n’est peut-être pas si éloigné esthétiquement de Merzbow… Avec Relisten, l’autrichien Bernhard Gal nous fait découvrir ses épisodes, soigneusement choisis, de «musique trouvée» (c’est-à-dire de structures musicales existant déjà dans le matériel environnemmental.) Enfin, de par son foissonnement d’idées et son rythme toujours soutenu, le surprenant flume ridge.halifax.lisbon (2001) du montréalais Cal Crawford réjouira sans doute les auditeurs à l’affût de nouvelle acousmatique.

Deux petites friandises pour terminer. D’abord, le joli mini-CDR Aenviron: one présente cinq instantanés sonores (et ce, sans aucun traitement!). Après tout, s’il existe du cinéma pour l’oreille, alors pourquoi pas un album photo pour l’oreille! Question de boucler la boucle, nous proposons également de s’arrêter au récent mini-CD de Lionel Marchetti au titre évocateur de Train de nuit (Noord 3-683) (1998-99). Cette œuvre pour un seul haut-parleur, dédiée (on s’en douterait!) à Pierre Schaeffer, nous rappelle, une fois de plus, l’importance toujours renouvelée des sources environnementales dans l’océan électroacoustique.

Remember that afternoon on the beach just a few months ago? The flash of sunlight on water, the feel of hot sand under your feet, the tang of lemonade on your tongue. Chances are the sounds of children laughing and icecubes tinkling will come to mind last, if at all. Why does hearing so often take a back seat to vision or taste? Have we been suppressing unwanted noise for so long that we have dulled our capacity to hear? Vancouver-based composer Hildegard Westerkamp offers our ears a wake-up call, reminding us that sounds are as much a part of place as images and smells.

Westerkamp records whatever reaches her microphone in a particular place and then transforms and combines those sounds electronically. Her “instruments” include everything from creeks and ravens to truck brakes and train whistles. “I transform sound in order to highlight its original contours and meanings,” she says in the extensive liner notes of her CD Transformations. “This allows me as a composer to explore the sound’s musical/acoustic potential in depth.”

If you are thinking “Solitudes” music, you’re on the wrong track. The first composition on the CD, A Walk Through The City, explores the sounds of Vancouver’s Skid Row’ carhorns, jackhammers, voices. Although perhaps the most challenging of the five works on this recording, it captures the beauty and complexity even in those sounds that we often try to filter out.

In Kits Beach Soundwalk the “intimate sounds of nature” like clicking barnacles and sucking mussels are set against the pervasive hum of the city, blurring the line between nature and non-nature. Beneath The Forest Floor offers an opportunity to experience the deep peace that the composer felt while recording the sounds of BC’s Carmanah Valley.

Cricket Voice emerged from a Mexican desert region called, strangely enough, the Zone of Silence. The cricket’s high-pitched trills become the desert’s heartbeat when slowed down in the studio. Cacti spikes, dried up roots, and the echoes of an old water reservoir provide the instruments for background percussion.

Westerkamp thinks of sound as a part of ecological systems and is careful not to overmanipulate it. “I feel that sounds have their own integrity and need to be treated with a great deal of care,” she says. She also recognizes that her compositions, played far from the places in which they originated, become part of another “soundscape.” Indeed, my dog spontaneously howled through Fantasie for Horns II, adding his voice to those of foghorns, train whistles, and a French horn!

More recently, Westerkamp has been working with photographer Florence Debeugny on At the Edge of Wilderness, a sound/slide installation about ghost towns left by industry in BC. It opens as part of a larger exhibition on September 8, 2000 in Vancouver. She also travels widely, giving workshops, lectures, and concerts, and she plans to put out a double CD in the next year with works based on her experiences of India.