That's Comish Music! Mutant SoundsAuthor(s): Frieder ButzmannSource: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 12, Pleasure (2002), p. 41Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513348 .

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That's Comish Music!

Mutant Sounds

Frieder Butzmann

D on't look in any dictionary for "comish." It's my idiolectic verbal bastard derived from the German word komisch. This essay's German title would be "Das ist Komische Musik!" And here the trouble begins. A German native speaker, if asked, could not tell you what "komisch" means, only that it means "strange" and it means "funny," but that it does not mean exactly one or the other, but both at the same time. If you look in a German music dictionary such as The Riemann Musiklexikon [ 1 ] or Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart [2], nowhere will you find an entry for "Komische Musik." So you may start to think this Butzmann describes something that does not exist.

Here is a sign of something being "comish" or "not comish": you laugh or are very close to laughing-this means some- thing's comish! Or: you don't laugh-this means something

Fig. 1. This man is playing a guitar. He's a musician. What's funny here? You can find the answer at: <http://www.friederbutzmann. de/comish.html>. (Photo ? Rainer Butzmann)

is not comish! At least, it is comish or not comish for you. An example of something that is not comish for you: you arrange to play the Moon- light Sonata at night beneath the

moonlight on a Hawaiian beach, you fix the date, the audience ar- rives ... and there is a lunar eclipse. You cannot see the moon-all are

laughing but are unhappy and you do not laugh!

But nothing in the world is comish by birth. Things become comish through adverse circum- stances, accidents, wrong tones on the right note of a tune, obstacles

ABSTRACT

The author reflects on the uneasy relations among plea- sure, humor and music by way of a German word meaning both "strange" and "funny." Such music arises out of mutation from the sounds that their creators attempt to get "right."

on the way to the grand piano and so on. First, there must be something, which might be great, admirable and not comish at all. You may change one feature of a sound or a music and this changes the character of the whole totally. Bach's famous Toccata in D Major for organ sung by a bunch of dogs loses its smell of eternity. Nobody comes knocking on the door when Beethoven's Fifth is played on a mistuned honky-tonk piano.

So-for me-the "comish sounds" are mutants of "right sounds." I love them. These mutants have ancestors and par- ents. Becoming "comish" is a musical transformation from "right sound" to "wrong sound."

But what is a wrong sound? Something that was right before. But what is a right sound? What does a wrong tone sound like?

You know what: I will stop writing my article here, because there is a German proverb: Lange Rede, kurzerSinn, which means "long speech, short sense." You may find examples of all I wrote and answers to questions you never before conceived of but that may arise after reading this article at this very simple ad- dress: <http://www.friederbutzmann.de/comish.html>.

References

1. Hugo Riemann, The Riemann Musiklexikon (Mainz: Carl Dahlhaus, 1972).

2. Friedrich Blume, ed., Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Enzyklopadie der Musik in 17 Banden (Kassel, 1989).

FriederButzmann, now of Berlin, collects sounds, music and anything about sounds and music. Then he transposes, cuts or stretches these sounds and music and creates songs, film music, radio plays and whole operas.

Frieder Butzmann (composer, niusician), Yorckstr. 81, D-10965 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: <comish@'friederbutzmann.dIe>.

LEONARDO MUSICJOURNAL, Vol. 12, p. 41, 2002 41 ? 2002 ISAST

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