[MB] I’ve read that you’re more fond of using the term ‘environment’ to describe your work, when others might use ‘landscape’. Why do you prefer to think of your music as ‘environments’?

 

[MP] Actually I use both. I think environment is more general: there are an infinite number of landscapes in any environment. The dialogue between these two things is naturally of great interest to me. I think some of my pieces are properly understood as landscapes (though this is a category I associate with my close colleague Jürg Frey even more) - and others, like the piece you’re playing are more like “artificial environments.” 

 

[MB] I guess thinking about them as ‘artificial environments’ brings your controlling of a sort-of chaos into the fore. Do you see yourself as the author of these works, or more as the formal architect, or maybe both?

 

[MP] I’m satisfied with the description “composer.” But I think that most musical works are actually ‘composed’ by more than one person - if one takes composition to mean a kind of setting in order. A violin or an oboe or a synthesizer all set out sets of possibilities that belong to the materials and methods of their construction. Any location has been shaped by forces of construction, unwitting or not. But if a performer, in the midst of playing a piece begins to feel like they are actively creating (even within limits given), I’m happy.

 

[MB] In this ‘artificial environment’ music (to roll with terminology), (where) does exactness matter?

 

[MP] It doesn’t? It can’t? There is no such thing in the material world as exactness, only degrees of precision? I like the word ‘care’ better - it indicates that the person involved cares enough to do what is necessary.

 

[MB] How do you see this ‘care’ manifesting? Do you feel it emerging - or maybe respawning - in ways beyond listening?

 

[MP] Yes, I hope so. One thing I love about the people I usually interact with - not just Wandelweiser, but the experimental community in Los Angeles (including many former students), but also so many of those communities I encounter around the world, is the care they show for each other as people. To me it’s deeply connected to the way we make music - including scores! 

 

[MB] Also, your relationship to the extra-musical, specifically painting and poetry, is especially potent in your music. I wondered if you could expand on this, and what ‘care’ as a composer do you experience when creating a piece from an existing artwork?

 

[MP] I haven’t really thought about that in those terms before, but it’s interesting. Do we care for the artworks we love - poems, paintings, pieces? A few years back I attended a Buddhist funeral for a friend, and the leader mentioned that in that tradition the “afterlife” is sustained by the thoughts and actions of people who loved the person who has died. Could it be that works have this kind of afterlife - that is, we sustain them somehow by reacting to them and carrying them with us?

 

[MB] This brings us neatly onto listening, essentially the afterlife of sound put into performative practice. One thing that has struck us as an ensemble in the preparation of asleep, desert, choir, agnes for VIRTUALLYREALITY is the level of inquisition needed by the performers. Do you find performers ask the same questions when interpreting your scores, or do they ask things which surprise you?

 

[MP] They usually ask things that surprise me. I like that - and especially the sense that behind the question lies some genuine curiosity - about the piece, the style and especially about the potentials of sound in any given situation: what occurs to you because of the task you have to fulfill.

 

[MB] It’s all very emergent - we all feel like we could spend countless weeks and months getting deeper and deeper into the minutia of our sounds. Do you think there is an end to the depth of this listening, or an end to its benefits? To play ‘devil’s advocate’, when would you say is time to move on?

 

[MP] That’s for everyone to judge for themselves. I tend to think about moving forward with something rather than moving on. There’s enough diversity or difference in a good idea to keep pursuing it, and attempting to get it to yield results that take you further and keep you interested. 

 

[MB] Looking towards the future, what role do you think stillness and quietness plays in a world often associated with distraction and digital immediacy?

 

[MP] Digital silence is a nice distraction, isn’t it? But if you’re asking if stillness, quiet, silence and non-action are necessary I would say undoubtedly yes. Perhaps simply turning things off every once in a while is a good idea.

 

[MB] That’s very true about ‘digital silence’ - I know a bit has been written about the concept of screendiving, where you are absorbed in the digital world unbeknownst to your surroundings, before being jolted back into the real world by a sudden change in environment. That is totally how I see the last two minutes of asleep, desert, choir, agnes, with those startling guitar chords. It’s one of the few moments of abruptness I know of in your music, period. A lot of the composers you cite at the beginning of this correspondence (Oliveros, Lucier etc.) have a strong, absorbing relationship to listening inwards, rather than outwards in the traditional chamber (for lack of a better term) sense. Do you think this is unconsciously as a result of a heightened connectivity?

 

[MP] Inward listening is something I feel I learned from Pauline [Oliveros] and Alvin [Lucier]'s music - and then that of Antoine Beuger. It’s such an incredibly deep realm. We are not listening to ourselves exactly - though there is that. For me the flux between the inward and outward is what is so engaging - and perplexing.