“O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”: Anthony Braxton's Speculative Musics

Abstract

Anthony Braxton's opera Trillium R (1991): Shala Fears for the Poor is examined macroscopically, microscopically, and theoretically for its resonances with both spoken and written language. The latter is posited as an ur-technology spawning six more specialized technologies/ tropes, through which the macroscopic survey unfolds. Braxton's music is conflated with the academic discourse of "speculative musicology" and the genre of "speculative fiction," the literary arena of most fertile explorations of technological potential. The microscopic study examines the relationship between Braxton's libretto and music in the score, and that between the determinate and indeterminate in both, as the technē (tool) of its effectiveness. Finally, the article explains Braxton's work through its European, African, Asian, and Native American influences.Anthony Braxton is one of my favorite authors of speculative fiction. 1 For me, he's right up there with the writers of The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Rig Veda, for his invention of myths and mythical characters; with the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra, for his esoteric-cum-poetic fast tracks to enlightenment; with Homer, Lucian of Samosata, and Aristophanes, for the elements of improvisation, irony, and drollery, and dubious heroisms added to the mythic-esoteric mix. Braxton is a torchbearer for Plato, Sir Thomas More, and Jonathan Swift for his utopian/dystopian themes and an heir apparent to H. G. Wells, and to Ralph Ellison's unique treatment of invisibility. Braxton's vision of sentient artificial intelligence keeps company with the geniuses behind the second Battlestar Galactica television series. Braxton's work, with its theological/philosophical concerns, couched in childlike fun and wildness, sits companionably on my shelf next to that of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. In listening to Braxton's music, I often ponder the subaltern themes and visions of Franz Kafka, Doris Lessing, and Samuel R. Delany.But I don't mean to make the case for Braxton's written texts alone as comparable to those of world literature and its genres. Rather, I hear and read his employment 1 The term "speculative fiction" has come to subsume "science fiction" as the better descriptor of that genre as it evolved from narrowly hard-scientific "what-if " premises to the soft-scientific ones (spec-fic also encompasses "soft science fiction") that engage with the humanities. The notion of speculative fiction marks a transition from a literature of technology to a literature of ideas, both of which depart from reliance on strategies of realism and character. In tagging Braxton's music as speculative, I'm using the term as Joscelyn Godwin does, by referring to music as a speculum, a reflection of cosmic and natural order. I will use the words speculate and spectacle here in the light of that nuance of reflection.