In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded

sound object In musique concrete and electronic music theory the term sound object (originally ''l'objet sonore'') is used to refer to a primary unit of sonic material and often specifically refers to recorded sound rather than written music using manuscript o ...

s or

compositions Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature * Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...

, including songs, are created from

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

, also known as

montage Montage may refer to: Arts and entertainment Filmmaking and films * Montage (filmmaking), a technique in film editing * ''Montage'' (2013 film), a South Korean film Music * Montage (music), or sound collage * ''Montage'' (Block B EP), 2017 ...

. This is often done through the use of sampling, while some playable sound collages were produced by gluing together sectors of different

vinyl records A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog signal, analog sound Recording medium, storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove ...

. In any case, it may be achieved through the use of previous sound recordings or musical scores. Like its visual cousin, the collage work may have a completely different effect than that of the component parts, even if the original parts are completely recognizable or from only one source.

History

The origin of sound collage can be traced back to the works of Biber's programmatic sonata ''Battalia'' (1673) and Mozart's ''

Don Giovanni ''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanis ...

'' (1789), and some critics have described certain passages in

Mahler Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...

symphonies as collage, but the first fully developed collages occur in a few works by

Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...

, whose piece ''

Central Park in the Dark ''Central Park in the Dark'' is a musical composition by Charles Ives for chamber orchestra. It was composed in 1906 and has been paired with '' The Unanswered Question'' as part of "Two Contemplations" and with ''Hallowe'en'' and ''The Pond'' i ...

'', composed in 1906, creates the feeling of a walk in the city by layering several distinct melodies and quotations on top of each other. Thus, the use of collage in music actually predates its use in painting by artists like

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

and

Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

, who are generally credited with creating the first collage paintings around 1912. Earlier traditional forms and procedures such as the

quodlibet A quodlibet (; Latin for "whatever you wish" from ''quod'', "what" and '' libet'', "pleases") is a musical composition that combines several different melodies—usually popular tunes—in counterpoint, and often in a light-hearted, humorous man ...

, medley,

potpourri Potpourri ( ) is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant materials used to provide a gentle natural scent, commonly in residential settings. It is often placed in a decorative bowl. The word "potpourri" comes into English from the French ...

, and

centonization In music centonization (from Latin ''cento'' or patchwork) is a theory about the composition of a melody, melodies, or piece based on pre-existing melodic figures and formulas. A piece created using centonization is known as a "centonate". The con ...

differ from collage in that the various elements in them are made to fit smoothly together, whereas in a collage clashes of key, timbre, texture, meter, tempo, or other discrepancies are important in helping to preserve the individuality of the constituent elements and to convey the impression of a heterogeneous assemblage. What made their technique true collage, however, was the juxtaposition of quotations and unrelated melodies, either by layering them or by moving between them in quick succession, as in a film montage sequence. The first documented instance of sound collage created by electronic means is the piece "Wochenende" (in English, "Weekend"), a collage of words, music and sounds created by film-maker and media artist

Walter Ruttmann Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German cinematographer and film director, an important German abstract experimental film maker, along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger. He is best known for direc ...

in 1928. Later, in 1948,

Pierre Schaeffer Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innov ...

used the techniques of sound collage to create the first piece of

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, ...

, "Étude aux chemins de fer", which was assembled from recordings of trains. Schaeffer created this piece by recording sounds of trains onto several vinyl records, some of which had lock grooves allowing them to play in a continuous loop. He then set up multiple turntables in his studio, allowing him to trigger and mix together the various train sounds as needed. Today audio collage may be thought of as

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

and a form of

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names ...

George Rochberg George Rochberg (July 5, 1918May 29, 2005) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. Long a serial composer, Rochberg abandoned the practice following the death of his teenage son in 1964; he claimed this compositional technique ...

is a composer well-known for his use of collage in pieces including ''Contra Mortem et Tempus'' and Symphony No. 3. According to music theorist Cristina Losada, the third movement of

Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...

's ''

Sinfonia Sinfonia (; plural ''sinfonie'') is the Italian word for symphony, from the Latin ''symphonia'', in turn derived from Ancient Greek συμφωνία ''symphōnia'' (agreement or concord of sound), from the prefix σύν (together) and ϕωνή (sou ...

'' is often considered "the prototype of a musical collage."Losada, Cristina Catherine. “A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Collage in Music Derived from Selected Works by Berio, Zimmermann, and Rochberg.” PhD diss., City University of New York, 2004. p. 55.

Micromontage

Micromontage is the use of montage on the time scale of

microsound Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale. It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are split into small pieces of around 1 to 100 ms in duration. These small pieces ar ...

s. Its primary proponent is composer

Horacio Vaggione Horacio Vaggione (born 21 January 1943) is an Argentinian composer of electroacoustic and instrumental music who specializes in micromontage, granular synthesis, and microsound and whose pieces are often scored for performers and computers (mixed ...

in works such as ''Octuor'' (1982), ''Thema'' (1985, Wergo 2026-2), and ''Schall'' (1995, Mnémosyne Musique Média LDC 278–1102). The technique may include the extraction and arrangement of sound particles from a sample or the creation and exact placement of each particle to create complex sound patterns or singular particles (

transients Transience or transient may refer to: Music * ''Transient'' (album), a 2004 album by Gaelle * ''Transience'' (Steven Wilson album), 2015 * Transience (Wreckless Eric album) Science and engineering * Transient state, when a process variable or ...

). It may be accomplished through graphic editing, a script, or automated through a computer program.Curtis Roads, ''Microsound'' (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001): 182–87. . Regardless, digital micromontage requires: *creation or compilation of a library of sound files on several different time scales *importation into the library of the editing and mixing program *use of the cursor, script, or algorithm to position each sound at a specific

time-point In music a time point or ''timepoint'' (point in time) is "an instant, analogous to a geometrical point in space". Because it has no duration, it literally cannot be heard, but it may be used to represent "the point of initiation of a single pitch ...

or time-points *editing of the

duration Duration may refer to: * The amount of time elapsed between two events * Duration (music) – an amount of time or a particular time interval, often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music * Duration (philosophy) – a theory of time and ...

amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of amplit ...

, and spatial positions of all sounds (possibly done by a script or algorithm)

Granular synthesis Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale. It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are split into small pieces of around 1 to 100 ms in duration. These small pieces ar ...

incorporates many of the techniques of micromontage, though granular synthesis is inevitably automated while micromontage may be realized directly, point by point. "It therefore demands unusual patience" and may be compared to the

pointillistic Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...

paintings of

Georges Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...

History

Micromontage

See also

Sources

Further reading