The Composer as Producer

The Composer as Producer

ABSTRACT: This essay attempts to grasp the contemporary relevance of Walter Benjamin's claim that the technically most advanced artwork is necessarily the politically most advanced artwork. More specifically, it attempts to link Walter Benjamin's "The Author as Producer" to the theory and practice of John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer, two of the most important experimental composers of the Twentieth Century. After highlighting an affinity between Cage and Schaeffer's attempt to disburden music of subjective intentions and Edmund Husserl's attempt to get "back to the matter at hand," we discover that Benjamin's position, in fact, pushes Cage and Schaeffer beyond their political limitations. By supplementing their innovations with Benjamin's politics of production, instead of continuing to search for the truth of music in a "pure," a priori realm, we not only engage in a critique of the relativist ethics or depoliticized stance of post-modernity, we also begin to see a pathway leading towards new modes of collectivized (musical) improvisation. The challenge to the rigidity of musical specialization ultimately points to how the "audience" could become the producer of music in the shared space that I call the "public studio."


Keywords: Benjamin, Cage, Schaeffer, Production, Technology, Politics, Improvisation,
Revolution, Collectivity, Nature