# López, Francisco (1964-)



## science

López, "an avant-garde experimental musician and sound artist" according to the current Wikipedia entry, was the "talkclassical composer of the month" in January 2015, and I believe most of us who participated listened to the recordings available in the fairly popular Kairos set (which appears to consist of a collection of previously released work):










Most or all of us enjoyed it very much: I don't remember even a single unambiguously negative reaction.

So it is well past high time thirty he had his own thread on the guestbook!


----------



## Haydn man

Well I certainly enjoyed that set, after some time and effort. The key for me was to stop trying too hard and let the sounds paint the pictures in my mind e.g buildings New York was very evocative for me when I let it be so.
Some of the untitled pieces reminded me of 70's progressive rock like Pink Floyd and if a guitar riff had started it would not have seemed out of place. This is not meant in a negative way and may be an entirely personal observation.
I would recommend Lopez, but be prepared for something different if you are not familiar with modern composing styles


----------



## tortkis

I am curious how you think of the "silence" in López's works. Actually, it's not "silence", there are very low rumbling sounds even when there is seemingly no sound. First I thought López might have been inspired by Cage, but now I feel that their concepts of "silence" are completely different. In the liner notes of one of his album, there is this "warning."

https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/presque-tout-quiet-pieces-1993-2013
_">>> WARNING: Due to the extreme subtlety of these recordings, virtually all of the audio content is completely inaudible through laptop or equivalent small speakers. Quality speakers or headphones-as well as a very quiet surrounding environment-are highly recommended for ideal listening. <<<"_

So, his intention is to focus on the extremly subtle recorded sounds, ideally shutting off any environmental sounds. This is very difficult, and during the quiet parts I hear nothing unless I turn up the volume quite a bit. How do you listen to López? If nothing can be heard, just let it go, turn up the volume, or search for a quiet place?


----------



## Haydn man

tortkis said:


> I am curious how you think of the "silence" in López's works. Actually, it's not "silence", there are very low rumbling sounds even when there is seemingly no sound. First I thought López might have been inspired by Cage, but now I feel that their concepts of "silence" are completely different. In the liner notes of one of his album, there is this "warning."
> 
> https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/presque-tout-quiet-pieces-1993-2013
> _">>> WARNING: Due to the extreme subtlety of these recordings, virtually all of the audio content is completely inaudible through laptop or equivalent small speakers. Quality speakers or headphones-as well as a very quiet surrounding environment-are highly recommended for ideal listening. <<<"_
> 
> So, his intention is to focus on the extremly subtle recorded sounds, ideally shutting off any environmental sounds. This is very difficult, and during the quiet parts I hear nothing unless I turn up the volume quite a bit. How do you listen to López? If nothing can be heard, just let it go, turn up the volume, or search for a quiet place?


Interesting point
I had not really thought about this until I read your post. On reflection just about every time I have listened to Lopez it has been using headphones. I think the more intimate environment they produce really helped me 'understand' if that's the right phrase what was happening.
I am not by nature a headphone user and we have a reasonably good hi fi which I would choose over headphones anyday for orchestral works etc
I would be interested in the views of others on this


----------



## science

I noticed the near-silence parts and I enjoyed that because it's something I've thought about a lot, especially since _From Me Flows What You Call Time_ has been one of my favorite works for about 20 years now. I was listening on my headphones, and I sometimes pulled them away from my ears to make sure I was hearing the sound of the recording and not just my own ears ringing or whatever.

But I really dig that ambiguity, breaking into the assumed dichotomy between the sound of the world and the sound of the mind. The question isn't, am I really hearing this? Because I am. The question is, is what I hear out there or in here? It's an exciting postmodern thing, revealing the dichotomy between self and other.

In other sections of the music, when it wasn't quiet at all, I noticed that the changes in pitch or volume (or whatever) were often very subtle, so that there was a similar problem: did it change a little tiny bit, or did I just imagine that? And of course, there must have been subtle changes that I didn't notice!

Because of this kind of thing, I found the works very enjoyable. I was consciously enjoying my initial experience of them, because if I listen to these recordings many times, I'll begin to know what I'm hearing, to confirm or reject impressions I had this first time, and my uncertainties will settle into certainties. The self/other illusion will reassert itself!

Anyway, the sounds were relaxing and pretty, so that was nice too.


----------



## tortkis

I found an interesting essay by López: _Cagean philosophy: a devious version of the classical procedural paradigm_ by Francisco López, December 1996
So, López is an anti-Cagean. This somehow backs up my impression. Basically, he is telling that Cage's "revolution" was not actually revolution:

_[...] silence indeed does exist; in music. If I were a sound physicist I would say: when the sound level is below a certain limit that I have fixed beforehand with a certain purpose, then there is silence._

_Cage "revolution", instead of "freeding[sic] music from taste and traditions", re-restricted it again to the fences of the same old Western paradigm of formalism and proceduralism._​
(Sorry if I am helping anti-Cageans. )


----------



## SeptimalTritone

So far, I've liked disc 3 (buildings: new york) and disc 4 (the various short nature-oriented pieces) the most out of the box set.


----------



## science

tortkis said:


> I found an interesting essay by López: _Cagean philosophy: a devious version of the classical procedural paradigm_ by Francisco López, December 1996
> So, López is an anti-Cagean. This somehow backs up my impression. Basically, he is telling that Cage's "revolution" was not actually revolution:
> 
> _[...] silence indeed does exist; in music. If I were a sound physicist I would say: when the sound level is below a certain limit that I have fixed beforehand with a certain purpose, then there is silence._
> 
> _Cage "revolution", instead of "freeding[sic] music from taste and traditions", re-restricted it again to the fences of the same old Western paradigm of formalism and proceduralism._​
> (Sorry if I am helping anti-Cageans. )


I think that's a very insightful essay.

But I don't think there's any very significant criticism of Cage there. Cage was a man of his time, but López is a man of his time!

In our discussions of Cage, it's easy to forget that many of his compositions are half a century old: _4'33"_ is from 1952. The Korean War was happening, Ike was getting elected, _The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet_ was in its first season, Percy Faith's _Delicado_ was the #1 hit song. (I didn't have some of those things memorized.) Point is, a long time ago. "Rock and roll" was still a euphemism for sex. That long ago.

Some things changed in the course of the '50s, a few more changed in the '60s, and in the '70s, and though it's hard to believe things continued to change in the '80s, and '90s (the site says the article is from 1996).

The main part of López's ideas that mark him as a man of our time is the quote, "...I don't believe in the need of change by definition nor in the crusades against the traditional by themselves...." No clearer rejection of modernism could be stated! In the same line, he shares the postmodern turn toward tradition as a valuable thing rather than something to be rejected: "Let's cope with the traditions face to face instead of exaggerating what we want to change from them in a convulsory movement of negation." (His idea that attention to method is a distraction from the art itself might also be a postmodernist idea, but I'm not sure. Of course some of this comes down to definitions/semantics and is still very actively debated by people who know more about it than I do. But if I were forced to guess, I'd guess that's a postmodern tenet.)

Since "blaming" Cage for having modernist ideas in an age when modernist ideas were essentially ubiquitous doesn't make much sense (like blaming Wagner for not writing 12-tone music wouldn't make sense), the best way to (I'd argue) to think of these things is to allow Cage to have been a man of his time - as we can all only be of our time - while López realizes that he's living in a different time, with different values.

All in all, a very interesting little read and I'm grateful for the link! However, if we want to talk about these ideas we should probably start a new thread: I'm sure López would want us to discuss his music in this thread rather than his ideas about Cage - and I suspect Cage would want the same thing! (Let's give him one when Cage has ten thousand.)


----------



## Albert7

Lopez, you are fabulous. Keep up the wonderful work.


----------



## tortkis

The essay is interesting to me not only because it is a critique of Cagean philosophy but also because I think it is a good statement of López's aesthetics. I like Cage, but López's points are mostly reasonable to me. I agree that focusing on the procedure too much is "a misleading distraction for music." I sometimes feel Cage's aleatory pieces and works of new-complexity composers sound similar, both are good, and wonder how much the philosophy or ideology behind the actual pieces of music matter. I believe Carter said any repeat is bad or something like that. Minimalists think if the effect is good, using minimal means to make music is fine. (I don't think minimalists have strong principles such as "music must repeat!") In that sense, I feel more sympathy with minimalists and López, while I like the musics of Carter, Ferneyhough, Boulez, and Cage, too.


----------



## tortkis

science said:


> However, if we want to talk about these ideas we should probably start a new thread: I'm sure López would want us to discuss his music in this thread rather than his ideas about Cage - and I suspect Cage would want the same thing! (Let's give him one when Cage has ten thousand.)


I think López's thinking on other composers is relevant here, because it reveals his view of music, but if you want to limit the topic only to his music, that's fine. (Of course, I don't want to turn this to a thread about modern music in general or conflicts of musical philosophies. )


----------



## science

tortkis said:


> I think López's thinking on other composers is relevant here, because it reveals his view of music, but if you want to limit the topic only to his music, that's fine. (*Of course, I don't want to turn this to a thread about modern music in general or conflicts of musical philosophies.* )


Yes, I was afraid of that happening.


----------



## Albert7

Sheer genius. I love video art and contemporary sound art but your music moved me as a Zen Buddhist to think of the power of nature.


----------



## SilverSurfer

From BBC3 Hear and now:

Robert Worby presents a live broadcast of a performance by the Spanish electronic composer and sound artist Francisco Lopez. Appearing at London's Café Oto for the first time, Lopez will perform two forty-minute pieces, specially created for Hear and Now, mixed and diffused in quadraphonic sound through speakers placed in the four corners of the room. Lopez is recognized as one of the foremost artists working with sound today, and has developed a highly original and uncompromising sonic language that utilizes his own recordings made in some of the harshest natural and industrial environments around the world. This broadcast will be made available as 4.0 surround sound, both live and for 30 days after transmission:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05202hw


----------

