Next event: Pieces →
Ear Here, Democracy in Action & Gamelan Mobilel et al.
by Philip Corner
The first part of Philip Corner’s performance took place at The Culture House where a bus was waiting to carry the audience to the library for Corner’s scheduled performance. However, before entering the bus the audience was invited to listen to the sound of the engine. A sign attached to the side of the bus read “Ear Here – læg øret til her”.
At the library, Corner started out with the performance A Reverence for the Piano. He stood in front of the piano, his arm stretched out while he slowly descended on the stool. The slow movement ended when Corner eventually touched the keys with his bowed head.
As Corner’s bowing reached its limit at the keyboard, he performed OneNoteOnce as a head tone-cluster. In immediate continuation of this piece, Corner performed elementals, repeatedly striking a note in regular rhythm by hands at each extreme of the piano register while his head was held down.
Eric Andersen then entered the stage and explained to the audience the nature of the next piece Democracy in Action. Corner would continue striking the same keys until the audience decided that he should stop. Every couple of minutes the audience was asked whether or not Corner should continue with his performance. Finally a vote decided that he should stop (30 for stopping, 4 for continuing).
As an encore, Corner played another version of OneNoteOnce.
Corner’s next piece continued the investigation of democracy. The performance and termination of the work Consensus was based on the audiences’ ability to reach a unanimous decision. However, this proved to be difficult and after app. 10 minutes of debate, Corner terminated the performance without having played a single note but he thanked everyone for an optimum performance. Instead he decided to perform no isms, to go. This piece reminds the listener of their freedom to leave whenever they like. This is usually done by printed statements on the seats, but there are no records of that being the case in Roskilde.
The piece Objective Necessity is concerned with ending a performance due to specific external circumstances which impose fixed time, in this case Anne Tardos’ performance at 9 pm. Corner decides to perform the work gamelan MOBILEL – a transcription for piano of one of the compositions from the “gamelan” series, based on Corner’s many years of involvement with the ensemble Son of Lion in New York, which plays contemporary music on classic Javanese instruments.
gamelan MOBILEL opens up symmetrically from the centre of the keyboard, each hand mirroring the other with chromatic scales moving progressively outward. There are gradual expansions and contractions in the dimensions of speed, loudness, and pedalling colour, mirroring the pitch structure. Since it could conceivably go on until the outer limits of the keyboard have been reached, it could be stopped at any point, which it was.
1985
“At the library the audience is led in to a hall where Corner is standing bent over a grand piano for a very, very long time. The name of the composition is of course: Respect for the piano. Finally, to our great relief, we hear the first note and it is so incredibly beautiful. Philip Corners next composition, a piece about reversed democracy where Corner monotonous is striking the same note again and again. Every other couple of minutes a fellow Fluxus performer gets up and asks the audience whether they are for or against Corner to stop playing. It takes a whole hour before a very resolute member of the audience invites Corner to the bar.
The piece is naturally raising several questions about definitions of democracy that not even VS (Left Socialist party) have reached. Should the majority decide whether the minority should be allowed to listen to the music? Shouldn’t those, who do not want to listen to Corner repeating his own note, just leave the room? Philip Corner has also wondered about this, and he has therefore composed another piece, Consensus, that was not quite as monotonous. He played this piece for the audience while they were coming to terms with whether or not he should play and the logical solution was that there ought to be total agreement.”
Torben Weirup. “Da Avantgarde km til Korsbæk” in Kunstavisen p. 13. 1985
1985
“… In the evening Philip Corner played a concert at the library where most of the time was spent voting on whether or not Corner should continue to play his monotonous piece with the title Reversed democracy, which actually was Corner just striking the same note over and over or whether there was consensus for him to play his other piece titled Consensus? And when Bob Watts continued to stick to his reluctance for letting Corner play the second piece, Corner gave up and instead he played a third piece that urged those who did not agree, to leave the room!”
- Arild Batzer: Art makes me sad – from a reporters’ dairy
1985
”Philip Corner has an entirely different relationship to his audience. His psychological provocations, rather than being arranged for their own sake, are intended to make the audience a structural part of the meditative musical compositions. But he is simultaneously serious and mock serious.”
- Henry Martin, Art News / September 1985
1985
7PM PHILIP CORNER
This performance was a memorable one for me. He began by sitting with a bowed head before the piano in silent meditation for many minutes, before beginning to play the simple, repetitive composition he had begun performing as Ben nailed the keys down last night. At the end a democratic vote was taken to determine how long the second two-note piece should go on, or rather several of them. A consensus of the audience had to agree whether there would be a third one or not, and since the other Fluxus “fantastics” would not agree to let him play for a long time, it was rather short, a long time being spent in argument.
- Ann Noël in her diary, May 1985
1999
One afternoon Philip was performing his Democracy in Action, a work in which he keeps playing the piano until the audience votes to have him stop. Was this the first time I became conscious of his extraordinary virtuosity as a pianist? I sat in awe at his command of the instrument and his breathtaking interpretations of classical music.
- Geoffrey Hendricks, New York, October 1999
(For a CD of Piano Music to be released by Phil Niblock and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation) Printed in FLUX stuff by Philip Corner
2006
I have a profound memory of Phil Corner’s performance in a small concert hall of Democracy in Action where he plays what ever he wants and periodically stops to have a vote to see if he should keep playing. The score might have been a little different than this. But the most vivid memory of this event was a realization of what a fantastic musician and pianist Philip was. I was deeply impressed and delighted to have him keep playing. Then we were all down in the street and pushing a piano somewhere or perhaps simply performing Philip’s Piano Activities.
- Geoffrey Hendricks, On Festival of Fantastics, June 2008
April 7th, 2009
The bowing is entitled “A Reverence to the Piano”.
Endless manners of doing this are possible, for which i formulated the “Japan Honoring Version” for Mieko Shiomi with her students in Osaka. I have to imagine how beautifully varied the sequence of solo entrances was.
When done by an instrumental ensemble in Gonova, some actually got down on their knees before their chair.
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As the comments show, there are different memories of what actually took place—-some more accurate than others.
The addition to “Democracy in Action”, which is appropriate for any performance with open-ended inner content, came about in Wiesbaden (Fluxfest 1982) because Takako Saito objected, rightly calling it a dictatorship of the majority.
As in politics, the arrival at a true consensus is difficult.
Often impossible, as in this case.
Alison Knowles was reasonable….she wanted to know what i planned for the next part of the program. Bob watts became the only holdout, and it was evident that he would never agree—a good example of the tyranny of the minority. (Meant well, ofcourse. We have remained friends.)
I think it clever of me to have broken the impasse by declaring it only a performance piece, then continuing to do what i wanted.
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