Michael Pisaro - I Didn\'t Say Anything

From Pisaro's 'Eleven theses on the state of new music': "The nature of musical material cannot be confined to an idealization of the score or of notation, nor is it sound alone. The score is a virtual space of descriptions of occurrences, of their provisional specification. It is also usually the place where the first decisions are made. Sounds are what they are: they have characteristics, qualities; they are, in Deleuze’s terminology “intensities.” They are raw. They do not begin the process of abstraction all on their own; they need a push, and therefore have a relationship to guiding set of instructions and conditions. It may be, as Badiou suggests, that sounds themselves are also virtual in their relation to the score (or the text, the recording, etc.)

As musicians we move from imagined sounds and actions to sounds and actions becoming audible and visible. As Deleuze would say—there is at first no musical “being,” there is only musical “becoming.” What happens (i.e., whatever happens), takes place at the point of contact between these points (...) The site is wherever the work takes place. This fact, however, does not keep the score and sound from following their own trajectories—they do not cancel each other out. In one sense, the site is also part of what takes place."