1977
Notes on the text 'As You Please'
The idea occurred in 1977. I had been invited to spend a year on a fellowship in Berlin working as a composer. I arrived fresh from realizing the transcontinental performance of Radio Net in the US. It had been the culmination of the ideas for broadcast/telephone networks in which lay people have sound dialogs. In realizing these works over the previous eleven years I had become convinced that it was here that my future activities in the field of music would be.
I saw the idea of building aural networks to allow music as performance by lay people as a step beyond the then current controversy over the changing roles of performer and composer. At the age of eighteen I had been thrown into the midst of this discussion by enrolling in a music conservatory specializing in percussion ensemble music. Percussion music is by definition contemporary and Cage's ideas of chance had put into question the traditional roles of performer and composer. By this time, twenty years later, I had reached the point where I was no longer interested in those questions. I had become tired of the negative side of the composer/performer revolution: the composer's exploitation of the performer by not really creating anything and claiming the performer's musicality as his own, and the performer's exploitation of the composer by using his name to get attention and then playing anything he wanted.
The most important result of the revolution for me, was that it opened up the centuries old relationship between composer and performer and allowed the possibility for something new to exist as well. With these telephone/broadcast works I had found an area to work in where the composer and performer did not exist. I vowed then that I would never act as a traditional composer and write works for others to perform.
During this period of relative confinement, I invited a soprano of my acquaintance to visit for a few weeks. I was quite in love with her and one afternoon when we were in bed she sweetly asked me to write a solo piece for her to sing.
It does not pay to argue with sopranos. Because of their professional training, they are capable of an inordinate amount of noise when distressed. She also had, even before asking, made quite sure that I was firmly in a position which I could not refuse... with reluctance, I finally had no choice but to agree.
Later on, I began thinking. ---
I had always felt when walking out on stage as a soloist in front of an audience, that I was in the presence of a many headed animal -- all you can see are the faces, sometimes a thousand or more, all pointed in your direction and focused on you. Once you conquer your fear, it is fantastic. You get a rush of adrenaline that makes you feel that you can do absolutely anything.
Performance in front of an audience, especially a solo one, is not just one-way communication from the performer to the audience as one might imagine. The audience reacts as a whole to the smallest gesture you make and if you are a good performer, you feel every one of its reactions. A solo performance is two way intercourse between you and this many headed organism.
I think most performers would agree, though, that the performance of a piece of music in front of an audience is an asexual act. Or perhaps more accurately that the sensuality of ones whole body is displaced and channeled into the instrument -- a performer feels strong emotions during a performance but they are centered in the parts of the body which are manipulating the instrument.
Several female performers including this one had told me that before going on stage they sometimes had sexual fantasies of exhibitionism and also having sex with groups of partners. Might not these sexual fantasies be the anticipation of the act of performance -- the expectation of the future sublimation of this profound motivator.
Why the sublimation?
What would happen if the sexual drive itself guided the actions of a musician -- if it became the composer -- if a performer's own sexuality was allowed to govern her musical actions.
Thus arrived As You Please. It is the only work I have ever made to be performed by others.
Max Neuhaus
MNE-TEXT 'As You Please' Complete Text Copyright