“All good music consists of many contrasting ideas. An idea achieves its distinctiveness and validity in contrast with others. Heraclitus called contrast ‘the principle of development.’ Musical thinking is subject to the same dialectic as all other thinking.” – Arnold Schoenberg

“Just as the knowledge of acoustics does not make one musical–neither on the productive nor on the appreciative side–so no color system by itself can develop one’s sensitivity for color. This is parallel to the recognition that no theory of composition by itself leads to the production of music, or of art.” – Josef Albers

One of the non-music related books that has been the most influential on my music is The Interaction of Color by Josef Albers. It’s justly famous, and I’ve always wanted to teach a sound art course where it was the only textbook. There is a lot to love about Albers and his prose, but what really struck me on my first reading was his self-conscious placement of practice before theory. From the introduction: “What counts here–first and last–is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision–seeing.” Albers does want to tell you about color, he wants you to experience color. And to that end, the majority of the book’s pages are full-color plates of specifically arranged strips of construction paper.

I became obsessed with the examples in the book demonstrating how multiple instances of the same color on the same page can present as distinctly different colors based on their placement in relation to other colors, as well as how different colors can present as identical based on the same. This phenomenon of contextual perception was something I was already playing with in my musical compositions by exploring how repetition can sound like new material, and how new material can sound like a repetition.

It was only recently that I connected The Interaction of Color to Schoenberg in Hi-Fi, but it’s not a bad analogy. When Albers demonstrates that the same piece of construction paper is experienced as two different colors based on its surroundings, you learn something that is hard if not impossible to translate into words. What I’ve typed here is only a description, it is not the information. The experience is the information, and the first time you experience it you have the real feeling of having learned something. Visual knowledge demands visual learning. When I arrange these Schoenberg works, Schoenberg’s music stays intact–all the notes and all the rhythms are there. But the new timbres and above all the injection of percussion make them a new experience. Through that experience I learn something about Schoenberg’s music, though that “something” is not easily translated into words.. Musical knowledge demands musical learning.

You might even say that Albers’ pedagogical color plates are works of art in themselves, which brings them even closer to what I am trying to do here. Analysis through art. The performance is the analysis.

In his book Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey, Allen Shawn shares a personal anecdote about hearing Piano Piece, Op. 33a live:

"What if the technical aspect of Schoenberg’s music had been kept secret when it was first introduced?...Played in a jazz context at the Village Vanguard in the late 1970s by Paul Jacobs, the opening sliding four-note chords of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone opus 33a sounded like harmonies found under the fingers of a progressive jazz pianist, the quicker flurries of pitches like brilliant impromptu riffs, the songful phrases like wisps of melancholy soulfulness. The very first time I heard the piece, in a classroom, I had been handed a sheet showing its row forms and asked to put the appropriate number above every note in the piece. This ‘analysis,’ which led to neither comprehension nor pleasure in the piece, connected itself in my mind with the title, opus ‘THIRTY-THREE’ ‘A,’ and it was some time before I could look at the title without associating it with the effort it took to decode that strange mathematical puzzle."

Schoenberg in Hi-Fi creates a speculative reality in which Schoenberg’s music was intentionally marketed as “new sounds” in midcentury America. Sound before symbol, music before numbers, practice before theory.