Writings
A selection of published articles and translations.
“Christian Wolff: 3 String Quartets”, Bozzini Quartet plays Christian Wolff, New World Records 80830 (2021)
“D’Arcy Thompson, James Tenney and the Modeling of Musical Form” in stem flower root, Tisser Tissu Editions 002 (2021)
“The World Not the World” (poem), Wrocław Contemporary Museum (2021)
"New Adventures on the Plane of Harmonic Consistency”, Works by Jordan Dykstra, New World Records 80823 (2020)
“Rubies Reddened by Rubies Reddening” in Writing the Field, (Will Montgomery, ed., University of Edinburgh Press) (2017)
“Event, Concept, Material” in Perspectives for Contemporary Music in the 21st Century, Wolke Verlag, Hofheim am Taunus, Germany (2016)
“Membrane – Window – Mirror (The folded worlds of Toshiya Tsunoda)” surround, (2015)
“A Guide for the Screaming Citizen”, in Gerhard Stäbler’s Graphic Music (Pfau Verlag, 2015)
“Ten Encounters (A Personal Text Score History)” in Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation (John Lely and James Saunders, eds., Continuum, New York, 2012) pp. 315-327.
“nicht alles, nicht nichts: etwas: The opposing tensions of John Cage’s 0’00” and Roaratorio” Revue TACET (Paris), pp. 110–125 (2011)
“Ten framing considerations of the field”, The Experimental Music Yearbook (2010)
“Wandelweiser” erstwords (2009)
“On Difficulty” in Best Music Writing 2009 (Greil Marcus, editor, DaCapo Press, New York, 2009), pp. 174-179.
“Writing, Music” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (James Saunders, editor, Ashgate Publications, Surrey, England, 2009), pp. 27-76.
“James Tenney: The Complete String Quartets and Quintets” on Arbor Vitae (Quatour Bozzini), actuelleCD, (2008)
“Hit or Miss”, “Elf Thesen zum Stand der Neuen Musik”, “Harmony Series” in MusikDenken (Eva-Maria Houben, Burkhard Schlothauer, editors, Edition Howeg, Zürich, 2008), pp. 53-60, pp. 98-115, pp. 139-141
“James Benning, musician” in James Benning (Barbara Pichler, Claudia Slanar, editors, Österrreichisches Filmmuseum/SYNEMA, Vienna, Austria, 2008), pp. 232-237
Room of Rumor: Tunings (book-length translation from German to English, of poetry by Oswald Egger, with an Afterword written by Pisaro), Green Integer, Los Angeles, 2004, 100 p.
“Ein Instrument mit vier Faltungen” Positionen (34), pp. 3-4, February, 1998, Berlin, Germany (an article on my two string quartets, here (4/1) and distance (II))
Monadology
There are seven transparent bubbles floating above the landscape. In each one there is a simple soft tone, which resonates inside the thin casing of the bubble, and is heard slightly less clearly outside. Inside each of these bubbles there are six smaller bubbles that also each have a tone inside of them. (Now there are 49 different tones.) Inside each of the six smaller bubbles there are eight even smaller bubbles, again each with a different tone. (385 tones.) Inside each of the eight bubbles, there are five very small bubbles, each with their own unique tone. (2065 tones.) Inside each of the five very small bubbles, there are four tiny bubbles, each of which has another unique tone. (8785 tones.) Finally, within each of the tiny bubbles there are eleven very tiny bubbles, each with a tone distinct from all the others. (There are now a total of 96,635 tones.) The entire landscape shimmers with the collective sound of this multitude of distinct pitches. Although quiet, the mass crowds the audible frequency range. It is a nearly infinite harmony, in which individual chords are perceivable when one approaches any of the bubbles more closely. Bubbles sometimes pop and disappear and the whole mass adjusts by crowding slightly closer together or by some of the bubbles getting slightly larger. Bubbles at times subdivide into groups of two or three, with each new bubble receiving a new tone. The entire mass is nearly weightless and despite the density, diaphanous, like an effect of the light.
Michael Pisaro (September, 2017)