I was at the MoMA, again, and there was a work that deeply enraptured me.
When I think of Marcel Duchamp, immediately I conjure an image of Fountain, an upside down sanitary glazed china urinal marked with “R. Mutt” in black paint.
Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, mixed-media
Duchamp was known for breaking the boundaries of what art is. Although his urinal was rejected by the Society of Independent Artists on an unhurried show, his work influenced many modern and contemporary artists such as Shigeko Kubota, Pépon Osorio, and Tracey Emin who all use ready made objects as part of their work.
Niagara Fall, Shigeko Kubota, video installation
No Crying in the Barbershop, Pépon Osorio, installation
My Bed, Tracey Emin, installation
But walking into MoMA’s Dada art exhibition room, I discovered something different from Duchamp: there were faint “wooo”s amongst the whispers and mumbles of wandering visitors. These “woo”s and “ooh”s were from Marcel Duchamp’s 1913 musical composition Erratum Musical.
The cries were short vocalizations, and each seems to represent a certain musical note, yet together, the singing does not amalgamate into an unified melody. Although the rhythm maintained the same throughout the 8 minute composition, there was a lack of harmony and tonality. In a serious and sophisticated institution such as this MoMA exhibition room, these howls seem out of place, playful, almost silly. The composition, if it can be called that, challenges the traditional idea of a musical composition where it has tonality, range, rhythm, melody, and structure. It seems to be defying what music is: can random sounds be music?
Randomness is an overall theme in the composition. To create this musical, Duchamp broke the English translation of imprimer into 25 syllables. He then created three sets of 25 cards, each assigned with a musical note, for each of the three singers. These cards were then placed into a hat and drawn at random. The selected musical notes were then coupled with one of the 25 syllables. The score for each singer was written separately, so whether the singing was simultaneous or individual were at chance as well. This unplanned procedure once again defies the traditional creative process where the artist plans and executes the artwork in steps.
Seemingly out of place in the midst of a museum, Erratum Musical questions music’s social function and the creative process it takes to compose. At the same time, it challenges the crippling capitalist society pre-World War I that dictates people’s lives by losing control over the way with which the music is made. Duchamp is no longer making art: he is letting art happen.
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