"Sound Image Deconstruction in Gyula Csapó’s Krapp’s Last Tape – After Samuel Beckett"
Composed in 1975 for violin, tape recorder, sine tone generator, and spotlights, Gyula Csapó’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” depends on the possibility that sound may function as an image. By this I mean not only that sound may evoke impressions of visible phenomena – as a recording of a train whistle may bring us to a “mental image” of a train – but also that sonic compositions may assume characteristics normally attributed to images. If we take “image” to mean a visual rendering of some kind, such characteristics may include apparent consistency over time, as in a still image, or the apparent layering of flat “planes,” as in the foreground and background of a picture. However, an “image” may also be a “mental image,” in which case it is one’s understanding or memory of some phenomenon or concept. The “image” of a phenomenon could therefore refer to the popular understanding of the phenomenon. One of Csapó’s intentions in “Krapp’s Last Tape” is to engage the “image” of classical music by foregrounding the constraining, stifling aspects of concert etiquette.
“Krapp’s” also invokes other kinds of images. In a manner similar to that described above, one may also speak of one’s “self-image”: one’s understanding of oneself, which may not always coincide with that which one conveys to others. In a similar sense, philosophers often define “images” as “simulacra”: imitations or representations of reality which are nonetheless unreal, non-actual (Plato, Zizek, Baudelaire). In many instances, what our eyes seem to perceive are in fact representations, hence to varying degrees distortions of the truth. I will argue that in “Krapp’s Last Tape,” the sounds produced by the tape recorder and sine tone generator in fact represent the “self-image” of the violinist on stage – the truth of his thoughts. By contrast, what he plays “live” before our eyes is but a simulacrum of his true feelings. Thus Csapó effectively invokes the philosophical mind/body problem: is the mind separate from the body, and to what extent (Descartes)? Does the “mind’s eye” even exist? Are “mental images” actually possible? (Wittgenstein argues in the negative.) Overall it is my contention that Csapó’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” calls to our attention the various meanings of “image,” explores the image as a concept and the implications thereof. This paper draws on the work of Michel Chion, suggesting that whether we experience “Krapp’s” as a performance or via an audio recording, we must see/hear the piece, in the sense of Chion’s “audio-vision.” I further suggest that in “Krapp’s” attempt to spatialize time, Csapó was influenced by his dissertation advisor, Morton Feldman. I draw on those essays of Feldman’s in which he insists that music ought to deal with time rather than “timing,” that it ought to approach time as an image.
Link to the paper. And a "map" of significant events in "Krapp's Last Tape."
