From Beat to Noise. A Music−Analytical Inquiry Into the Function of Noise in Contemporary Music for Non-Pitched Percussion

This research seeks to explore the constructive dimension of noise in contemporary musical practices. Music is generally viewed as an ordered arrangement of sounds pleasing to the ear, and noise as its opposite: chaotic, ugly, parasitic, aggressive, sometimes even deafening. In some musical contexts, noise acts as a tool to express resistance to predominant cultural values, to society, or to socio-economic structures. Rather than viewing noise as a ‘defect’ or as a mere destructive device, this research project aims at studying its aesthetic potential. The focus will be on describing and analysing the use of non-pitched percussion – as the historically first noise generator in art music – in its transition from beat and rhythm to sound and noise. A systematic musicological and music-analytical approach to the study of noise music has been lacking until now. It is exactly this knowledge gap that the present proposal seeks to fill up. Its two main research objectives can be summarised as follows: 1) making an in-depth study of the four cases (4 composers/performers, 12 musical products). This objective can be expressed in a number of research questions all dealing with the transformation of beat and rhythm into sound and noise: - (1a) how do dense rhythmical structures lead into noise textures, and what is their musical function? - (1b) do sounds produced by non-pitched, micro-tonally pitched and pitched percussion instruments impact differently upon the transition from beat/rhythm to sound/noise? - (1c) how does music for non-pitched percussion instruments in which the rhythmical aspect has disappeared and is entirely substituted by changes in the noise texture function? - (1d) what is the impact of sound modifying techniques applied to acoustic non-pitched percussion instruments? 2) understanding the constructive potential of noise in contemporary music for non-pitched percussion in different musical practices. This objective follows from the previous one and includes research questions such as: - (2a) how do we proceed from the mere description to the interpretation of noisy musical events in this repertoire, or from the phenomenological to the functional and formal level of understanding? - (2b) can we create a typology of noise music, resulting from the categorisation of its sonic structure? - (2c) can we conceive a model for the interpretation of noise percussion music that is generic and at the same time sufficiently flexible to accommodate different subgenres of noise music, including noise music for other instruments (acoustic and electronic)? Underlying all objectives and questions is the desire to create synergies between new music, experimental, improvisation and post-rock music studies.