tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71552157190230456632024-02-18T19:21:41.060-08:00Without BarlinesTaking a non-partitioned look at musical lifeAdam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-73844514036435261882014-09-07T07:18:00.000-07:002014-09-07T07:18:20.825-07:00Audiences and Openness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Now here’s a contentious topic: the relationship between music and audiences. Cue all kinds of stereotyping, wild generalisations, radical rejections, stalwart traditionalism and utter confusion. I mentioned in my <a href="http://adamfergler.eu/opening-up-to-openness-in-music/" title="Opening-up to Openness in Music">introductory post on openness</a> that three things come to mind instantly at the mention of openness: open notation, open instrumentation and open form. Okay, that’s true for me and lots of people I know. However, open notation, open instrumentation and open form are mostly the concern of composers, performers and analysts. The majority of audiences probably couldn’t give a damn about these things. Audiences do, generally speaking, care about what it is they’re doing with their evening, what they’ve paid for and the experience they’re having. Musicians should be thoroughly concerned with this, too. After all, art is nothing without its audience.<br />
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It goes without saying that there are lots of different types of audience. Some are made up of specialists (in whatever area), some are loaded with sets of expectations, some are made up of a random cross-section of the general public, and so on. Each type of audience will react to the same performance in a different way. Much more crucially, <em>every person </em>will react to the same performance in their own way. One of the music industry’s worst sins is forgetting individual listeners and focussing instead on statistical masses of consumers. Commercially speaking this is basically unavoidable – it’s the way our economic system is set-up – but we don’t have to think only in commercial terms.<br />
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I’m going to pose lots of questions – implicitly if not explicitly. I’m not sure I have answers to them and, if I do, I’m not sure how long they’ll remain relevant. An audience (and an audience member) is a living breathing thing that’s not just connected to contemporary society but <em>is </em>contemporary society. Audiences and their needs change… constantly.<br />
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The Industry and its Institutions</h2>
It’s interesting to compare new music for acoustic instruments (mainly associated with ‘classical music’) and new music for electronic media. The relationship of each with its audiences, modes of presentation and relative openness is remarkable. They’re not treated at all equally. There are far more installations and interesting modes of presentation for electronic music than there are for instrumental music. We could be forgiven for thinking that’s down to practicality – electronic music comes ‘pre-packaged’ and doesn’t mean paying for lots of musicians. But that’s a narrow view of both formats. For starters, acoustic pieces don’t have to use lots of musicians; electronic music’s technicians and diffusers are musicians who need paying, too; every kind of musician needs rehearsal and/or set-up time; while electronic music can be ‘piped’ into a space in a way that acoustic instruments can’t replicate, acoustic pieces can be played in far more places (i.e. where there’s no electricity supply). They’re not the same, but neither format is obviously more cost effective or more practical than the other, speaking in general terms. Specific pieces and performances will, of course, have their own practical and financial issues.<br />
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I’d argue that what really causes this distinction between electronic and acoustic new music is the institutions they’re associated with. To me the links between new electronic music and various forms of dance, electronica, ambient, glitch and so on, is healthier and less culturally obstructive than acoustic new music’s links with the preservationist classical industry. As the classical music business slowly implodes (dwindling audiences, bankrupt institutions, desperate record labels and increasing irrelevant publishing houses) I wonder whether new music would be better off as an industry in itself without the political and financial ties to all things ‘classical’. That question perhaps seems most relevant to acoustic works, but the electronic medium isn’t free from the same classical association – just look at some of the names in the electronic music hall of fame (Stockhausen, Xenakis, Schaeffer, etc.) and notable institutions whose perceived allegiance has always been with high-art and therefore the classical industry (IRCAM, Experimentalstudio Frieberg, etc.).<br />
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I’m not here to critique the whole music business – as fascinating and cathartic as that is – I’m here to talk about openness and audiences. However, there’s a point to be made before I move on; it might seem like an obvious point, but it’s so frequently taken for granted that it suffers from neglect: new music is new and in being new occupies a unique position in our culture long-since lost by older music. That unique position is down to it being contemporary and therefore holding a special kind of relevance, not to mention a potential connection with its audiences that older music cannot achieve. Older music achieves something else entirely, which has its own worth. Nevertheless, the institutionalised connection between classical music and new music is potentially very damaging. The damaging thing is not the older music itself, which is basically a harmless artefact of times past, but the accepted codes for performing and experiencing that music, which are extremely limited. In fact, people interested in performing old music today could do with thinking more openly about their relationship with their audiences, rather than blindly adopting the industry’s dictums.<br />
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There’s also a point to be made about ‘style’ in new music: a lot of contemporary composers are infatuated with the classical set-up, whether they admit it or not. There are lots of pieces around (including some of my own) that rely on the classical industry’s assumptions and behavioural codes – some even glorify it. Of course, people are free to write what they want. Nevertheless, I’d ask whether or not it’s worth tying oneself to a sinking ship. Experimental music is all too often maligned for being difficult, pretentious, unpopular and even irrelevant. But experimental new music constantly regenerates itself, tries new things, rejects itself and looks for ways of being relevant that the classical industry has failed to do for decades. Experimentalism, in one form or another, has always existed. On the other hand, infatuation with the 18<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> centuries hasn’t. If the classical industry is the sinking Titanic, experimentalism is a one of those not-so-irrelevant and ever-so-precious lifeboats. Tragically, the classical industry needn’t sink at all, but those in a position to save it are too preoccupied with largely irrelevant etiquette.
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The Experience of Music (and Sitting in Rows)</h2>
Okay, so it’s about time I was more upbeat. The experience of music is a great thing. Arguably, music is the artform most cherished in western society (perhaps in others too but I’m in no position to comment on that). It’s everywhere, it’s powerful, we love it! We’re happy to experience music in lots of ways, both passively and actively. When we use mp3 players to music-up our commute, dance around like demented idiots at nightclubs, embarrass relatives with renditions of <em>Happy Birthday</em>, sing around a campfire, whistle to ourselves in the street, cry at a movie, make political protests and a thousand other things, we let music occupy a special place in our lives. Crucially, we’re extremely <em>open</em> to music and to lots of ways of experiencing music. All art is about the experience. Music, however, is perhaps the one artform we’re most open to in terms of the diversity of that experience.<br />
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Experiencing music by sitting in rows and obeying stringent behavioural and interpretative codes baffles me. Not in itself – it’s as valid an experience as any other – but we seem obsessed with it as a default position, particularly if there’s the slightest perceived connection with the ‘high arts’. It reminds me of two things: strict religious ceremonies and school assemblies. Both are fine, but they’re structured around reverence. Is it any wonder that lots of people – people who enjoy classical music when they hear it – don’t go to classical concerts, don’t read pages and pages of programme notes and are generally put-off by a culture of veneration? Why revere something and idolise someone you know nothing about – something and someone apparently disconnected from your own life?<br />
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There’s a saying about experiencing music: ‘close your eyes and let it wash over you’. Sitting in rows and being on your best behaviour certainly plays into that particular method of listening. But that’s just listening. A live performance is an amazing thing full of sights, sounds, smells and intangible things like interactions, human connections, and so on. Sitting at the back of your local town hall watching a bored orchestra play Mozart’s Symphony No 40 (again!) precludes lots of those extra experiences, however nice the sounds might be. Give me a good installation over a Prom any day.
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Performers, Composers and being Open with an Audience</h2>
On the face of it the problem of opening-up the live performance experience lies with those staging the performance. That’s not entirely true, although event organisers obviously play an important part. Performers and composers can do a lot, too. There’s a really obvious example here: almost every rock band I’ve ever come across has, at live events, invited their audience to scream, shout, enter into whatever personal rituals help them to enjoy the performance and join in the chorus of the biggest hits. Simplistic? Maybe. Effective? Definitely. I’m not suggesting for a moment that every performance of every kind of music works to the same template, but it goes to show how the slightest and simplest of changes can make huge differences. You occasionally see the same thing in the classical world – the last night of the BBC Proms for example – but you have to admit it usually seems awkward, jarring with the codes of the concert hall. Proof that one size really does <em>not</em> fit all. But at least it shows a bit of effort.<br />
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People all over the world are trying lots of new ideas, lots of new performance strategies and trying to reach audiences in new ways, which is absolutely brilliant. We could do with hearing more about them! Immediately I’m thinking of last year’s collaboration between ensembles hand werk and chronophonie in the Unter Vier Ohren project. Handily, <a href="http://heatherroche.net/2013/07/07/approaches-to-the-performer-audience-relationship/" title="Heather Roche on Unter Vier Ohren ">Heather Roche has provided an overview of the project and its benefits so I don’t have to!</a> Basically, the performances were one-on-one - one performer and one audience member. Fascinating.
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What I’ve Learned from My Own Practice</h2>
I’ve written a few pieces already that deal with different kinds of openness in different ways and I’ll continue to do so. When I talk to people about the openness in these pieces I tend to find the discussion leaning towards notation or performance practice and less towards the audience’s relationship with the performance or with the music itself.<br />
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I’ve learned a lot from two pieces in particular: <em>for solo piano</em> and <em>Personal Space</em>. I’ve talked about both pieces before in various places so I won’t ramble on and on about them. Instead I’ll try to distill exactly what it was I learned in each case.
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<em>for solo piano</em></h3>
This is a piece I knew would be performed in a traditional concert setting. At the time I wasn’t really aware of my interest in openness – I was dealing with research into narrative instead (see <a href="http://adamfergler.eu/opening-up-to-openness-in-music/" title="Opening-up to Openness in Music">introductory post</a>). However, faced with the concert setting and having to write for pianist alone, something I find very awkward, I came up with an idea that stands apart from most of the music I’d written previously. I decided to make the ‘contract’ between performer and audience the focal point of the performance experience. The notes the pianist plays are more or less immaterial in terms of ‘musical language’ – I could’ve picked any others and the basic premise of the piece would remain the same. I opted for notes that were interesting to my ears, not immediately ‘offensive’, not completely familiar and stripped of any linear harmonic continuity (it was only later I would discover the music of <a href="https://soundcloud.com/laurence-crane" title="Laurence Crane on SoundCloud">Laurence Crane</a>, who does this much better than I did here). The plan was to make the sounds intriguing but to focus on individual moments rather than functional phrases, transformative cells or any of the other mechanisms for spinning-out streams of music. In essence, the piece works because the pianist performs very very quietly, which introduces a high level of risk – will the notes even sound?<br />
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I wish I’d taken official survey of audience reactions, not that they can be trusted, because the responses I’ve received essentially catalysed my belief in the value of openness. Those responses have come from some very unexpected quarters, including people I know are resistant to new music. People described the piece as ‘tense’, ‘dramatic’ and ‘engaging’, speaking with zeal and fiery excitement in their eyes. The same people in the same conversations would describe other pieces more reservedly, calling them beautiful, lyrical or ugly. Both kinds of response are utterly subjective, of course, but the second feigns objectivity: ‘on reflection my view of the piece is this’. The responses to <em>for solo piano </em>continue to be more impulsive and, crucially, triggered by an experience. It really does seem to be the experience rather than the notes that excites people. I hadn’t set out to be this ‘exciting’ at all – I simply thought the idea was interesting! – but the very fact that so many people have reacted so favourably and diversely made me look again at the piece, my practice and performance generally. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without <em>for solo piano</em>, which is not something I can say for every piece I’ve written!<br />
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You can listen to a performance of the piece here, although it’s nowhere near as effective on a recording as it is in live performance.<br />
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<em>Personal Space</em></h3>
At the end of last year I decided to launch headlong into a new piece that would deal directly with openness and the relationship between the performance and the audience. The idea fitted together quite nicely for many reasons, chief among which was the context under which the work was created. I blogged about this <a href="http://adamfergler.eu/space-for-music/" title="Space for Music">at the time</a> and again <a href="http://adamfergler.eu/some-thoughts-on-open-notation-and-late-stage-collaboration/" title="Some thoughts on open notation and late-stage collaboration">shortly afterwards</a>. To summarise: this wasn’t a straightforward commission, but a part of a commissioning block under a wider scheme that would become part of a daylong festival. The project had to involve collaboration and had to run to an extremely strict timetable. The matter wasn’t helped by changing jobs, moving house and going through personal crises at the same time! Composers, performers and installation designers were all very separate entities until quite late in the whole process. The temptation is for the composer to do ‘their bit’, pass this onto the performer to learn and for the designers to react to the performance. This is not true collaboration, but a series of reactions. With my newfound interest in openness, I decided to enter into every stage of the process with an open attitude and to build a truly collaborative work around that experience.<br />
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The piece in its final form uses a set of ‘instructions’ for the performer(s), who react specifically to the position of the audience and the apparent attitude of individual audience members. It’s a piece that really can’t be performed with the audience sitting in rows! The installation was in situ for a whole day with eight performances across the day. Every performance was effective in its own way, but some stood out as particularly exciting. After each one the performer, the designers and I would have a brief chat about how well things had gone. By the third performance we were talking in terms of engagement, of atmosphere, mentioning the reactions of individuals (the kid that got really excited, the bloke that took a page of the score away with him). This was not conversation about how seriously people took the music, whether they ‘understood’ or anything like that. As the day went on we managed to get more responses from audience members, including those who had seen earlier performances. The feedback was not only positive, but people were discussing their interpretations and feelings in much the same way we were doing. Every one of us, audience members included, was reacting to the performance on our own terms but in relation to a shared performance experience that we felt was equally open to all involved.<br />
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Regrettably we were unable to record the premiere performance due to contractual issues (which have financial implications). We do have these nice pictures, though:<br />
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[<a href="http://adamfergler.eu/?p=1625">click here to see the gallery</a>]<br />
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On reflection I think I should have put more thought into the relationship between the performer and the score (in the end time was just too scarce). The piece works in performance very well, but the notation is definitely the most clunky part. We developed a ‘prompt score’ to accompany the instructions, which certainly helped, but I learned how much more important the role of the score becomes in these circumstances. I don’t really want to revise the notation; I think it will end up transforming the piece into something else entirely. It is what it is, warts and all. It would certainly be interesting to see it done again with different collaborators – I can’t imagine the result being anything like the same. And that’s what’s exciting about it: knowing this potential exists and that its openness is part of its success.</div>
Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-24077391063769983442014-08-17T10:46:00.003-07:002014-08-17T10:47:42.614-07:00Opening-up to Openness in Music<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Since putting the word ‘openness’ in my Twitter bio I’ve been asked on numerous occasions, online and in person, what I mean by this. In fairness, the idea’s been gathering steam in my compositional practice over the last couple of years, so I’ve been discussing the matter on the back of other mentions, too.</div>
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It turns out there’s a lot to say about openness, and it’s really not a new topic. As I sit here now Eco’s 50-year old tome <em>The Open Work</em> stares down at me from a high shelf – a book I really ought to re-read. I’m not going to squeeze all my thoughts on the subject into one blog post – that’d be silly. I’ll write a few of them over the coming months, probably years, especially in relation to individual projects as they take form. There are several in the offing that ought to generate some activity fairly promptly, so watch this space!</div>
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This post is a kind of personal introduction/contextualisation for the things I’ll post in future. There are lots of little bits-and-bobs I feel I ought to say that I can’t see fitting easily into posts of a more specific nature. So I’ll post them here, comfortable in the knowledge I’ll always be able to refer back to them at a later date!<br />
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Research ‘Errors’</h2>
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In one of those glorious, slightly bitter moments when hindsight teaches you a lesson, I discovered that I really should’ve spent my years as a postgraduate researcher investigating openness. Instead I opted to look at narrative, trying to re-position it and subvert its structuralist foundation. Yes, it <em>was</em> rather like banging my head against a brick wall, thanks for asking! While the whole escapade was informative and interesting, I think I let my compositional practice suffer in an attempt to tie everything together – a worrying fact when you consider my PhD was in composition! I’m not saying my work was awful, my time ill-spent or my PhD undeserved – not in the slightest – but having stepped away from the field of research and the whole business of academia I see now that the ideas I really wanted to grapple with were in the domain of openness and not, as it turns out, in the domain of narrative.</div>
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A lot of music I was beginning to listen to at the time really got me thinking about ideas that later fed my interest in openness. Particularly memorable is my sudden foray into glitch music. Glitch’s use of the ‘error’ as a source of material, and in some cases a mode of action, has obvious ties with Lachenmann and the <em>musique concrète instrumentale </em>acolytes. Indeed, some of the most commercial glitch music (Christian Fennesz, for example) clings to tried-and-tested modes of presentation in much the same way that Lachenmann’s music clings to traditional western notation (albeit extended) and a very conventional concert set-up. But for some artists – Derek Bailey, Phil Corner, Christian Marclay and a long list of others – making use of the ‘error’ has been about opening new worlds and, perhaps more importantly, being open as a performer and a listener right from the get-go. (Incidentally, I happen to like the music of Lachenmann and Fennesz a lot, but I think a distinction between them and the others is an important one to make).</div>
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Around the same time I began a concentrated period of reading about noise, glitch and their supposed historical root in mid-century experimentalism. Now, I’m no big fan of histories (truth told I really despise them), but looking at mid-century experimentalism from <em>this</em> perspective, rather than seeing it tacked onto the history of the ‘great’ western tradition, was very interesting.</div>
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As I recall, everybody seemed to be reading Heggarty’s <em>Noise/Music </em>at the time, and plenty of people were talking about Kahn’s <em>Noise Water Meat</em>. I still have these books and they’re certainly worth reading. Two other publications have really stuck with me: Kim-Cohen’s <em>In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art</em> and Kelly’s <em>Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction</em>.</div>
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Kim-Cohen opens with something of a disclaimer:</div>
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<em>In the Blink of an Ear</em> is not a survey. Nor is it, properly speaking, a history of the sonic arts. Its primary concerns are not chronology, comprehensiveness, or connecting the dots.</blockquote>
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What struck me about this book was its focus on <em>the experience</em> as a thing in itself and not something utterly dependent on a pre-existing frame of reference. He looks at models in other art-forms where a similar respect of ‘the experience’ is paramount. There’s also an interesting, even moving account of Stephen Vitellio’s <em>World Trade Centre Recordings</em>. Going back to his opening disclaimer, Kim-Cohen presents a series of ideas very openly and does so in a way that lets his readers make connections themselves rather than having canonical lineage rammed down their throats.</div>
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Kelly’s <em>Cracked Media</em> does this even better and is particularly notable for its accessibility. Now, accessibility is a horribly abused word and one I don’t like to use much. Nevertheless, I can’t think of a better one. There’s no doubting the author’s intention to provide a critical overview of glitch music, but he manages to go about this in a way that requires very little knowledge of the subject. Put another way: he enthusiastically makes the field interesting without undermining objectivity or expecting his readers to bring a lot of information to the table. There’s something very open about the way it’s written. And it smells good – it’s got that coffee table book scent. So that’s nice.</div>
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The performative aspect of these books I found very engaging – they’re interesting manifestations of the open, experience-first subject they cover. I became hooked on the idea that experiencing something from within, on my own terms, was far more stimulating than observing something from a distance on terms inherited from elsewhere. This also meant acknowledging that ‘the experience’ is very fluid. The relationship between sound/music, the experience of art and people – all people – is one that’s become very important to me. There’s also a wonderful disconnect between glitch/noise/ experimentalism and the rhetoric upholding histories, styles, genres and other things that I personally have little time for.</div>
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Open and Closed</h2>
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How is this different from older ways of performing and listening to music? Surely people are free to experience any music in any way they like? Well yes they are – this lack of control is one of the great things about all art. But I firmly believe that the usual methods of making music are geared towards something else entirely. Blame the cult of the virtuoso, blame celebrity, blame commercialism, or blame the culture of pseudo-nostalgia promoting a 'proper canonical order of things' always to be honoured, understood and adulated. Blame whatever you like. The fact is that the normal concert experience is, in most cases, a pre-written contract.</div>
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This brings me to an important point. In lots of the conversations I’ve had about openness I've been struck by the sense of binarism it seems to engender, which is not something I’m keen on. A few people have even become defensive, apparently on the basis that music not branded ‘open’ must therefore be ‘closed’, which would be a negative thing. Am I being accused of dismissing older music and traditional performance formats? For that matter, do I dismiss older music and traditional performance formats? No I don’t. Certainly I think they’re steeped in a culture that makes open experiences harder, but I don’t dismiss them out-of-hand. Old music and the whole notion of staring at a stage aren’t automatically ‘closed’, even if that’s the way we normally treat them.</div>
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This is a huge subject and something of a hot-topic as performing institutions search desperately for new ways to engage audiences. I’ll definitely deal with this in due course. In the mean time I’d say the biggest enemy to openness is reverence, which is intimately intertwined with the position composers are seen to occupy within the traditional institution.</div>
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What is Openness?</h2>
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Talk about music and openness and a few things spring to mind instantly:</div>
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<li>Open notation</li>
<li>Open instrumentation</li>
<li>Open form</li>
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Certainly, the first two are important to me and my practice. I’m less keen on the idea of open form, simply because I’m not keen on the idea of form, which I think runs contrary to the idea of openness.</div>
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If open music and open performance are about the experience then we really have to think about whose experience that is and how different experiences can interact in the same space. For that matter, we have to think about who we are treating openly. Again, one of the great things about art is that interpretation of an artwork is always an open thing at its most basic level (i.e. before domineering cultural factors intervene). But what about the other relationships that make a performance a performance? I’m not just concerned with the relationship between an audience member and their interpretation of the performance. What about the relationships between composer, performer and audience? What role does the score play (if there is one)? What’s the relationship between a performer and their instrument? How do performers interact? And when does an identifiably open experience turn into an unhelpful free-for-all?</div>
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I’d say one of the most crucial aspects of openness in music is avoiding exclusivity. I don’t want to use the word ‘inclusive’, which has suffered the same terrible fate as ‘accessible’, but there’s a lot to be said for dropping some of the pretenses associated with new music and with the institution of ‘classical music’ as a whole. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging people to think, but there’s something horrendously exclusive about requiring your audience/performers to know the work of ‘writer-x’ in intimate detail (if I see another programme note droning on and on about Deleuze I think I’ll scream*). Denying the value of amateur music-making is equally exclusive – while I don’t see many people sidelining amateurs publically, the industry’s value system is really quite clear in this regard. Being truly open means dropping these kinds of expectations and conventions. In doing so we can (potentially) open the world of new music to more people, not to mention reinvigorate the interest of stalwarts.</div>
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Tentatively, I’ll say that openness in music is about:</div>
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<li>Adaptability</li>
<li>Constant re-connection</li>
<li>Invitation</li>
<li>The overall artistic and human experience</li>
</ul>
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I’m still working on that list, which is being thoroughly informed by my musical practice. I certainly wasn’t thinking on these terms when I wrote my first open instrumentation work, <em>"… I want to know about the lull in the storm"</em> in 2009 [<a data-mce-href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_i_want_to_know_about/0" href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_i_want_to_know_about/0">score</a> | <a data-mce-href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/i-want-to-know-about-the-lull-in-the-storm-open-instrumentation/" href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/i-want-to-know-about-the-lull-in-the-storm-open-instrumentation/" title="“…I want to know about the lull in the storm” (open instrumentation)">details</a>]. That was a completely practical decision – I wanted to write two pieces for two different workshops but didn’t have time! The idea resurfaced in 2011 when I wrote <em>Image, Music, Text</em> [<a data-mce-href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_image__music__text_f/1" href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_image__music__text_f/1">score</a> | <a data-mce-href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/image-music-text-open-instrumentation/" href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/image-music-text-open-instrumentation/" title="Image, Music, Text (open instrumentation)">details</a>]. But it wasn’t until relatively recently that openness as a holistic approach has really taken flight with me. There was very definitely a period of struggle with subconscious concerns about openness and my habit of writing fairly run-of-the-mill concert music throughout between 2009 and 2013. For sure, there were some notable pieces in that period, particularly <em>for solo piano</em> [<a data-mce-href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_for_solo_piano__2010/1" href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_for_solo_piano__2010/1">score</a> | <a data-mce-href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/for-solo-piano-piano/" href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/for-solo-piano-piano/" title="for solo piano (piano)">details</a>] and <em>At this point add the extra ingredients </em>[<a data-mce-href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_at_this_point_add_th/1" href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_-_at_this_point_add_th/1">score</a> | <a data-mce-href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/at-this-point-add-the-extra-ingredients-3-voices/" href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/at-this-point-add-the-extra-ingredients-3-voices/" title="At this point add the extra ingredients (3 voices)">details</a>], as well as those already mentioned. The real breakout came last year with <em>Personal Space</em>, which perhaps forced the relationship between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ a little, but worked extremely well nonetheless [<a data-mce-href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_personal_space/1" href="http://issuu.com/adamfergler/docs/adam_fergler_personal_space/1">score </a>| <a data-mce-href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/personal-space-2013/" href="http://adamfergler.eu/portfolio/personal-space-2013/" title="Personal Space (double bass)">details</a>].</div>
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Let’s see what the future brings…</div>
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If anyone’s interested in any of the books mentioned, here are the references:</div>
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<li>Eco, Umberto, <em>The Open Work</em>, trans. by Anna Cancogni (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).</li>
<li>Hegarty, Paul,<em>Noise/Music: A History</em> (New York & London: Continuum, 2009).</li>
<li>Kahn, Douglas, <em>Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts</em> (Cambridge & London: MIT Press, 1999).</li>
<li>Kelly, Caleb, <em>Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction</em> (Cambridge & London: MIT Press, 2009).</li>
<li>Kim–Cohen, Seth, <em>In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non–Cochlear Sonic Art</em> (New York & London: Continuum, 2009).</li>
</ul>
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I’d also recommend these:</div>
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<li>Cox, Christoph & Daniel Warner, eds., <em>Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music </em>(New York & London: Continuum, 2008).</li>
<li>Szendy, Peter, <em>Listen: A History of Our Ears</em>, trans. by Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).</li>
<li>Young, Rob, ed., <em>Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music</em> (New York: Continuum, 2002).</li>
</ul>
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*Disclaimer: I’ve got no problem with Deleuze, with people reading Deleuze, with music written with Deleuzian ideas in mind. I do have a problem with the (often poorly hashed) readings of Deleuze forced on audiences for no good reason. If I wanted to think on those terms I’d be reading the books, not a programme note. I’m not innocent in this regard – I’ve done it myself (not with Deleuze, but using the same principle). It’s embarrassing. Everyone should stop. Now!</div>
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Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-79802085564381488162014-04-15T04:00:00.000-07:002014-04-15T04:00:13.181-07:00Notation and Scoring Ideas (or: Dealing with One-‘Note’ Music)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My compositional approach has shifted in recent years. I use increasing amounts of open notation, open instrumentation and other such things now, which has given me cause to question what certain facets of music-making mean to me; chiefly the score, notation in general, approaches to performance, my relationship with performers, the whole business of rendering ideas, and so on. A short while ago I noticed a call for works with an unusual slant: the music had to be short and for one note only. The idea captivated me (in spite of my personal resolution not to write new works for open calls and competitions any more… ah well). On one hand the idea of music for one note is extremely limiting, but on the other it draws attention to the sheer potential within the concept of a single ‘note’. Undoubtedly, this has a lot to do with ‘note’ being so poorly defined; is a note a pitch, a dot on a page, a sound, a particular kind of tone… what? Most significantly the call made me think carefully about developing features of my work that I simply haven’t got round to scrutinising in any particularly useful way. What follows is, roughly speaking, the mental journey I’ve subsequently taken and, I hasten to add, not finished.<br />
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What is a musical idea? Is it:<br />
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<li>A sound or series of sounds (what often gets called ‘material’)?</li>
<li>An expression?</li>
<li>A basis for further action (compositional, interpretative, etc.), i.e. part of an ongoing process?</li>
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What is musical notation? Is it:<br />
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<li>Communication of an idea? (To trigger a circuitous nightmare: see above)</li>
<li>An expression? By which I mean is it more than just codification for codification’s sake, but also a site of graphical expression?</li>
<li>A means of liberation by making tangible previously abstract ideas held in the mind?</li>
<li>A form of limitation? How can the complexity of an artistic idea be reduced to a graphic code?</li>
<li>A process during which compositional ideas are committed and solidified in archivable form?</li>
</ul>
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In many senses they’re all of these things and, I’m sure, more besides. What strikes me most is how similar idea and notation seem to be.<br />
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I’ve heard the following question two or three times recently and in surprisingly different contexts (surprising given how subject-specific the question is): ‘when you come up with a musical idea do you imagine the way it’ll be notated or does that come later?’. The more I think about this question the more I’m convinced that ideas and notation are part of the same process, for me at least. Although admittedly that does depend on the kind of music I’m writing. That said, I distinctly remember visualising standard staff notation when coming up with thematic material for media music. Perhaps I’m just peculiar!<br />
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Certainly, though, when I’m coming up with more abstract, experimental ideas I’ve always got half my mind working on what those ideas will look like on the page – much more so than I do when dealing with more traditional musical forms. As any designer (of almost anything) will tell you the way something looks is hugely important because visual appearance influences the way users relate to… well, whatever it is – a score in this case. But it’s not just about visuals. I also think about how my ideas and their graphical organisation will function (again, designers will tell you how important function is). And that’s one of the hardest thing sto achieve: a proper sense of function in notation strongly related to the way it looks and ‘feels’. In essence, I’m always asking myself what a score and any one of its notational elements is for. And I don’t think I always get the balance right.<br />
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I don’t want to suggest I’m so utterly preoccupied with notation that I lose sight of my ideas; I very much see the notation aspect as secondary to the idea. But I can’t help myself from considering notation during the early stages of composition. I think this helps in a big way. If I approached the process the other way round I think I’d struggle a lot more; codifying a complex idea once it’s more or less complete is a daunting task. By developing the idea and the notation together the two can feed off each other, essentially becoming part of the same thing. And, to me, that’s important. Good notation should be all of the things I mentioned above: an expression, a liberating coming to life of an idea, a circumscription separating (at least partly) this idea from others, a part of the compositional process, a part of the interpretative process and, of course, a communication between composer and performer. It’s the point at which the idea gets shared, like passing on the baton in a relay race. The baton, of course, has to be fit for purpose.<br />
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So back to this call for works, which forms the backbone of the <i><a href="http://www.juanmariasolare.com/what_is_a_note_in_music.html" target="_blank">"One-note music" for pianist Juan María Solare</a></i> project. How to deal with notation (note + ation) when the ‘note’ element has been singled out, reduced and potentially exploded? I find the prospect exciting! There are lots of pieces of music where a single note or a set of related notes (e.g. the harmonic series) forms the central feature. I thought instantly of Scelsi’s output (particularly <i>Quattro Pezzi su una nota sola</i>), Lucier’s <i>Music on a Long Thin Wire</i>, the general sound worlds of Luigi Nono and Charlemagne Palestine, Tenney’s <i>Swell Pieces</i> (perhaps most famously including <i>Having Never Written a Note for Percussion</i>) and a few others besides. Obviously I didn’t want to duplicate any of these styles or pieces, even if I do find them all captivating. What strikes me most about the American composers mentioned is where their music takes place – very much on/in the sounding bodies and not so much on the page. You could easily hear Scelsi’s music in your mind’s ear just by reading the score; Lucier, Palestine and Tenney have all written pieces that don’t make any sense until they’re experienced.<br />
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This brings me to another recent preoccupation of mine: actions (and sites of action). I’ll discuss this another time. But, in the present context, it made me think about the piano as a site and, as an extension of that, it made me think about <i>the note as a site</i>. This is perhaps easier to understand on the piano because every note has its own string(s). Singling out one pitch-note from the many available is therefore quite easy. To me, though, the pitch is not the important thing. I’m developing my ideas based on a limited site of action. In terms of piano-string classification this means one pitch (read: one note). But I want the piece to be performable on any freely vibrating string. This brings things right down to basics – the freely vibrating string being one of the fundamental examples in acoustics. It also brings me back to open instrumentation (and to Lucier’s <i>Music on a Long Thin Wire</i> I suppose!).<br />
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So what’s the idea? I want the performer’s hands to perform a kind of ballet on the string. I use the word ballet very deliberately because of its associations with actions rather than sound. Of course, ballets are accompanied by music (mostly). But the music comes first. I want the actions to come first and I want them to take place on a tightrope of a stage. From that comes sound. This isn’t about special effects inside a piano; again, this is a piece for any freely vibrating string. This is very much about actions as action and the balletic properties of our hands as they perform the tasks we set them.<br />
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So what about notation? Well, I’ve done away with the traditional stave, certainly. I’ll probably also do away with rhythmic notation and opt instead for rendering duration spatially. But what do I actually notate? The shape of the hands? The actual movement of fingers? I considered these options, but I think it’s more interesting to leave them up to the performer(s). Instead I’ll notate the points of contact with the string and the type of contact in each case – in other words: the sites of action. I’ve devised a basic scheme of symbols to use:<br />
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From these I want to create page-long gestures. I’ve no idea how many pages I’ll provide, but I definitely want each gesture to be separate. And we’re back to openness again: a major feature of the work will be its ‘open form’, to use the common(ish) phrase. But that’s a different story.</div>
Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-66648898253830703242013-12-04T14:09:00.001-08:002013-12-04T14:09:48.769-08:00Some thoughts on open notation and late-stage collaboration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Anyone who’s followed this blog (or anyone in the wake of my
tirade of shameless self-promotion over the last couple of weeks) will probably
be aware that my newest work, <i>Personal
Space</i>, receives its premiere this weekend. As you might imagine, the gears
have been stepping-up as ‘the big day’ approaches and now we’re in the full
throws of final preparations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Two important things have come out of the final leg of this particular
journey – things I will almost certainly have cause to expand on in the future.
More than that, these are things I knew from the start would be significant,
just not in the way they turned out to be. And I feel much richer for the
experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What am I talking about? First, the very structure of the
commission itself. Owing to the number of people involved, timetabling issues
and matters of space, there was always a persistent threat of a ‘hand-me-down’
process of collaboration. The project involves me as composer, Elena Hull as
performer and a team of four designers from Central Saint Martins (Elisa Nader,
Rose Elliot-Dancs, Andrew Chaplin and Rosemary Millbank). I live nowhere near
Elena and it took a while for us to be put together to start with (finding solo
bassists who are free when you need them can’t be easy). That would make a ‘normal’
composer-performer collaboration awkward enough. Then consider that the design
students didn’t begin their university year until a couple of months after I
was awarded the commission. It doesn’t stop there. This is the first time the
students have worked on a project of this kind… and there are loads of students
involved (in the overall 'Hidden' scheme). So, the London Sinfonietta and Central Saint Martins helpfully ran
introductory sessions, trial projects, etc. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago
that teams of designers were assigned to composers and performers. The new
music was supposed to be completed by then. Interspersed among all this was the
job of trying to find the right space for the performance to take place, which
involved trips to the Southbank Centre and numerous conversations about
acoustics and the like. In short, there was a real risk of a particular type of
non-collaborative collaboration: I write whatever I feel like, pass it on to a
performer who simply has to learn what I’ve scribbled down, the outcome of
which is then given to a design team who append whatever they feel like in a
rushed response to music completely new to them. I didn’t really want to work
like this, and I’m sure the Sinfonietta wouldn’t be keen on the result if that’s
what it had all boiled down to.</div>
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What to do?</h2>
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I resolved to go about composing a piece that would remain
receptive to change and adaptation throughout the process of staging the
premiere<i> and </i>in subsequent performances. I wanted something interactive. This
way – so I reasoned – everyone involved in the initial outing could easily
access the core performance idea and bring their own skills and motivations to
the table once their turn to be involved came around. For me this meant dealing
with a big notational problem right from the beginning: how could I write
something so open but maintain an idea clear enough that it could unify the
process we would all end up going through? In hindsight, I didn’t do this too
well to start with.</div>
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Fast forward to the end of last week. I received an email
telling me the venue for the performance had changed and that the designers
were thinking of using lots of different kinds of organic matter as part of
their installation design. I began to worry at this point. Was the process
about to spin out of control? Was the idea of collaboration going to be lost?
Immediately I wondered how the acoustic was going to be affected, how the new
venue’s low ceiling would come into play and so on. I was due to see the work
the following Tuesday (yesterday) – only five days before the performance. I
may have panicked a little. I needn’t have worried.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What I’ve learned about open notation</h2>
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When our team of six was first thrown together I discovered
two things: that the notational process I'd settled on was not the most
suitable and that not everyone treats open notation in the same way. I’m lucky
to have been surrounded by people in the past who are <i>very</i> familiar with open
notation and who take an extremely dynamic approach to working with it. Elena
is a fantastic bass player, but it became apparent that I hadn't communicated
my ideas well enough for her to grasp them properly. By her own admission Elena
is used to more traditional forms of notation. Don’t get me wrong, this is not
a weakness of hers in any way. Quite the opposite – the huge questions left by
the notation (questions that <i>weren’t supposed
to be there</i>) were a weakness of the notation itself. Elena, however, saw it
quite differently to the way I saw it. She suggested that the score I'd
provided made for an excellent instruction manual – a guide to another score that
could be much more graphic and much less constrained by detail. This
was a fantastic point. And so I came up with my first two-score work. The final
version now has the initial ‘instruction’ score and a graphic prompt score.
Either can be used for performance depending on the needs and desires of the
performer. The ‘instruction’ score is essentially an elaborate series of
performance directions, albeit one that could be used as a performance score in
its own right if that’s what the performer prefers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The idea of providing two scores, each open in their own
way, and each able to act on each other in the interpretative process, is not
one I had ever considered before. And here I am, considering how many places I
could take this in the future. I think the idea has huge potential.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What I’ve learned about late-stage collaboration</h2>
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Perhaps my greatest concern with the whole project was the
involvement of the designers. They were due to arrive so late in the process,
they had no experience working with this kind of performance (or with contemporary
music) and their work would be assessed as part of their degrees. That’s a lot of
pressure. They also get to work much more intensively on their contribution –
they’re all in the same place and surrounded by the facilities they need every
day! I, sadly, have to go to work and think about other things a lot of the
time (moving to a new town, finding a new home, starting a new job and going through a break-up in this time didn't help matters for me either). Fitting the design part of the puzzle into the overall project was always
going to be relatively last-minute and the thing most likely to ‘break’ the
process of collaboration.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I couldn't have ended up working with a lovelier group
of people. They’re very receptive to other people's ideas and very willing to explore their
own openly. They don’t vie for dominance among themselves, and they're very
sensitive to the musical component of the performance (rather than just
slapping whatever they want on the top of mine and Elena’s work). My concerns
about the use of organic matter and the acoustic ramifications turned out to be
right on the money, but also completely unfounded.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I won’t spoil the surprise for anyone coming to Sunday’s
performance (there are some clues in the photo above!). Let’s just say that the
design process involves tailoring, caramelising, litter-picking, visits to pet shops, scientific equipment, countless
visits to London’s parks and a lot of mess. The upshot is that the installation
is potentially quite noisy. This is not something I'd envisaged at all.
However, the noisiness adds a dimension to the performance I'd never even
considered. The designers took on board the ideas I’ve tried to foster as the
heart of the performance: intimacy, exploration and human interaction. What
they’ve done is added a sound component to the audience side of the
performer-audience relationship. There's now a new kind of interaction in the
performance, one that both threatens and entices. This is a development I’d
never even thought of. And I dare say it wouldn't have materialised in quite
the magical way it has if we’d all been collaborating fully from the outset. It
turns out that late-stage collaboration can be as exciting and productive as it
can be frightening.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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All we need to do now is bring together all that we’ve
developed and discovered to produce a unique experience. The Waterloo Sunset Pavilion
will never have seen a sunset quite like this one.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><b>Personal Space</b> will be
premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on Sunday 8 December 2013. It
has been commissioned by the London Sinfonietta as part of Writing the Future,
which is generously supported by The Boltini Trust Anthony Mackintosh and
Michael & Patricia MacLaren-Turner. Tickets are available <b><a href="http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/london-sinfonietta-72246?dt=2013-12-06">here</a></b>.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-3099995176014500382013-11-12T15:05:00.004-08:002013-11-13T14:12:46.373-08:00Review: Workers Union Ensemble at LSO St Lukes and Michael Bonaventure's Automatronic Concert at St Laurence's, Catford<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">I
had the chance this last weekend to see two very stimulating concerts of new
music. Being closer to London these days certainly has its advantages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">On
Saturday, the <a href="http://www.workersunionensemble.co.uk/">Workers Union Ensemble</a> presented the culmination of their Constructing
a Repertoire initiative. The ensemble is an unusual one: oboe, sax, piano,
double bass and two percussionists. Not a lot of repertoire exists for that
line-up, so the need to find new works is really quite pressing! The <a href="http://lsosoundhub.co.uk/">LSO Soundhub</a> scheme together with support from the <a href="http://www.prsformusicfoundation.com/">PRS Foundation</a> has provided the backing needed for the Workers Union Ensemble to do just that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">I’d
been looking forward to this concert for a while. I was eager to see how other
composers had approached the ensemble; <a href="http://adamfergler.eu/workers-union-performing-night-walking-on-youtube/">having worked with the group in the past</a>,
I know how challenging yet invigorating writing for such a motley collection of
sounds can be. And here’s where the Workers’ real talent lies: in collectivity.
In amateur hands the sound-palette of such a disparate ensemble could easily
sound permanently disjointed. I can equally well imagine a professional
ensemble making so much effort to achieve homogony that the character of individual
instruments (and instrumentalists) would be lost. What each of the Workers has
is a real command of their sound and a true sensitivity to the sounds of their
colleagues. But this isn’t just the product of excellent musical training; it’s
the product of a collective mentality – a sense of shared ownership over the
ensemble, the pieces and the sound they present at any given moment. In the
very best way, there’s no real sense of leadership. This allows the ensemble to
access and to explore fully every sound and every nuance at their disposal, from
the most unrefined, tatty grunts (and I honestly mean that with the utmost
affection) to the highly polished sheen you’d expect of a class-act. This was real
music-making in all its glory. Plus, it was nice to share a few beers with them
again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">Perhaps
the real highlight of the performance was the competition. Out of the eighty-plus
entries submitted to their call for works, the ensemble played four in this
concert. The audience was asked to vote on their favourite, which won the Heidi
Cupp Award and a secure place in the ensemble’s permanent repertoire. All four
pieces were exciting and extremely well composed. <a href="http://www.georgechristofi.com/">George Christofi</a>’s <i>Dancing Shadows</i> was extremely well
orchestrated and unusually brief. The length didn’t bother me – in fact I
consider it a strength – but I do wonder whether the piece was too active. This
is quite a difficult problem to pin-down in that I’m not sure it’s a problem at
all. Christofi’s intention was to ‘re-shape and re-size’ musical ideas, taking
his cue from the way in which shadows ‘do not correspond to the real figure and
size of the object blocking the light’. For me, the level of activity stopped
me from appreciating these re-castings as much as I would’ve liked. Mind you,
it’s possible to argue this was his intention – to shift everything so quickly
that you never get a true sense of shape. Certainly, listening again and again would
yield great rewards by revealing more and more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amberpriestley.com/" style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Amber Priestley</a><span style="font-family: Open Sans Light, sans-serif;">, a composer I’ve come to know through our involvement in <a href="http://www.londonsinfonietta.org.uk/writing-future">Writing the Future</a>, produced </span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">but walk softly as you
do</i><span style="font-family: Open Sans Light, sans-serif;">. One thing I like about Priestley’s music is its unmistakable fingerprint. This is doubtless a result of her interest in open forms and
varying degrees of open notation, which she approaches in a very individual way.
The sounding results can be extremely coarse, at other times extremely refined,
but always unmistakably the work of Amber. I’d anticipated a piece that made
full use of the enormous sound range the ensemble affords. I was wrong. The
piece focuses on interpretative temperament – the emotion, expression and
attitude of performance. The technique is simple: get the performers to play
through the score several times, each time differently. If you’re tempted to think this is a cheap approach I urge you to experience the
piece. And I use the word 'experience' quite deliberately. This is more than just listening - it’s
watching and feeling. And yet there’s no sense of Romantic (capital R) indulgence.
</span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">but walk softly as you do</i><span style="font-family: Open Sans Light, sans-serif;"> has
remarkable poise; it’s like a cross between Haydn, Feldman and the kind of
sound you get when you doodle musically at a piano, half daydreaming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";"><a href="http://www.davidkirklandgarner.com/">David Kirkland Garner</a>’s <i>Ritual </i>made full
use of the rhythmic, earthy quality of the ensemble. I’d describe the piece as
a kind of upbeat, chamber-music <i>Rite of
Spring</i> with a sprinkle of Xenakis-like gall. Indeed, the programme note was
littered with words like ‘barbaric’ and ‘heavy-handed’… good descriptions. A
great deal was made of the primitive, binding nature of basic repeated rhythms.
This is music that relies fully on gesture. Personally I would’ve liked a
little more exploration of some of the piece’s ideas. The risk with this kind
of composition is that the effect becomes more memorable than the affect, if
you catch my drift. Nevertheless, this was a strong composition with a striking
sound.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">I
had the great pleasure of being introduced to <a href="http://www.jaycapperauld.com/">Jay Capperauld</a> just before the
concert started. Discovering that he’d come down to London for the first time I
felt slightly paternal, I must say. As if the excitement of having a premiere
in a major international city wasn’t enough, he’d been trying to ‘do London’
(in the most practical sense) for the first time and on his own! Brave man. And
what a nice fellow he is. His piece, <i>Dehumanised
Shock Absorbers</i>, had caught my attention previously on account of its
programme note. In essence, this was music based on the phenomenon of the shock
absorbing mechanism on portable CD players – a phenomenon because the darn
things never seemed to work. I’m a huge fan of glitch music and I was born in
1984 (portable CD players all-round), so there was a lot here that appealed. I
was also terrified. This piece could so easily have been gimmicky – a few beats
missing here, a weird noise there. And then there’s the awful problem of trying
to balance something ‘normal’ with something ‘disruptive’. Would the ‘normal’
be tonal, generally pleasant and familiar for the sake of being comfortable
(read: was this going to be banal for the sake of being liked)? Would the disruptions
be placed in direct opposition generating a really tedious, over-done binary?
There was so much promise in this piece and yet a real danger of plunging into
the realm of the worst kind of cliché. The piece started. The ‘normal’ music was
indeed quite pleasant with some tonal leanings. And then came the ‘CD skips’.
Remarkably, Capperauld managed to sail his piece straight into the most
dangerous waters and come out the other side completely unscathed. The ‘dehumanised’
element of the title helps explain why. This wasn’t a battle between ‘normal’
and ‘other’ – not an age-old narrative in which normality emerges victorious, nor
a tired example of ‘anti-normal’ beating down the familiar in an ‘up yours
tradition’ sort of way. The outlook was more balanced. In one moment the ‘CD’
works as it should; in another it does something different. <i>Both sounds are interesting</i>. This was
the philosophy I took from the piece. And the dehumanised performance
instruction added another layer of performance interest. This was music that so
utterly needed to be devoid of sentimentality to work, and the Workers Union
Ensemble pulled it off perfectly. My only criticism was the work’s final tutti
gesture. As the piece progresses the ‘failures’ become more frequent until the ‘CD’
finally gives up. To me, having a held sound at the end was reminiscent of a
Classical/Romantic symphony; it gave too much emphasis to the failure aspect
(which came dangerously close to feeling victorious). I also think it gave the
work a closed, linear trajectory that it didn’t really need. For me, I would
rather the piece either broke-up into a thousand pieces or simply cut-out (or
something along those lines). That said, I enjoyed <i>Dehumanised Shock Absorbers </i>very much. It was approachable without
being twee, it was very well managed and it surprised me in a way I didn’t
expect to surprised (you might say the surprise was surprising). I wasn’t at
all surprised to discover that it won the Heidi Cupp. And I was pleased – I voted
for it (not that the decision was easy).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">There
were seven (!) other pieces in the concert, too! I shan’t go through all of
them. Needless to say the standard of playing was extremely fine. Particular
highlights for me were the Workers’ rendition of Laurence Crane’s <i>Old Life Was Rubbish</i> for double bass and
three people bowing one vibraphone, and the endings of Matthew Kaner’s <i>Organum sextuplum (cum tintinnabulis) </i>and
Ryan Latimer’s <i>The Primate Horrific or
Jumpity Jim Hath Little Intelligence</i>, both of which cast new light on
everything that went before them in really special ways. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">And
so, after the applause subsided, there was beer. Much beer. Which felt quite
natural. Leaving aside the fact that most contemporary musicians have semi-alcoholic
tendencies, the Workers’ attitude to performance and to themselves as an
ensemble/collective makes for a very relaxed concert experience. Watching the
Workers Union is not like being at your average concert. There we were in the
multi-million pound surroundings of </span><a href="http://lso.co.uk/lso-st-luke-s" style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">LSO St Lukes</a><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">, but I felt like I was at a
friend’s house enjoying my time with good company. Going to the pub just felt
right. So much so I missed my train. Ah well, the great thing about the south
east is that there’s always another.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">On
Sunday I made my way to <a href="http://www.stlaurencecatford.org.uk/">St Laurence’s</a> in Catford for a very different kind of
concert. It was the final instalment of this year’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/automatronicorgan">Automatronic</a> series – a celebration
of music for organ and electronics. Unfortunately, due to a minor (*cough*)
transport issue I missed the beginning of the first piece (<a href="http://www.huwmorgantheorgan.co.uk/">Huw Morgan</a>’s <i>Sarsen</i>), although I got to hear a bit
through the door. It makes little sense to talk about individual pieces in this
concert, it was more of an overall experience. There was no clapping between
pieces, there were no announcements and no interval sliced the concert in two.
This was one continuous performance experience. <a href="https://soundcloud.com/michael-bonaventure">Michael Bonaventure</a>’s playing
was sensitive and dynamic, yet always somehow in keeping with the highly meditative
surrounding of St Laurence’s. I say this as a distinctly non-religious person.
The inside of St Laurence’s in Catford is an amazing space – acoustically fascinating,
architecturally striking and beautifully lit. In there you can concentrate on
whatever you like; the space seems to offer itself with open arms to whatever
your contemplative needs, be they religious or otherwise. And Bonaventure’s
playing, however animated, never threatened the serenity of the room. Likewise,
Stuart Russell’s command of the electronics meant that, even when window panes
rattled, you never felt that your concentration was undermined.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Alongside
Huw, the composers were Michael Bonaventure himself (</span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Barrow</i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Rearmost Odd</i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">),
</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avril_Anderson" style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Avril Anderson</a><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;"> (</span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Rest Assured</i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">), </span><a href="https://soundcloud.com/rbhuysmans" style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">René Baptist Huysmans</a><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;"> (</span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Glough</i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">) and </span><a href="https://soundcloud.com/luiz-henri" style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Luiz Henrique Yudo</a><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;"> (</span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Deux Voies</i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">). There
were a few particular highlights for me. The concluding performance of </span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Rearmost Odd</i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;"> was made extremely powerful
by reducing the lighting to the glow from the large wall-mounted halo above the altar
– a significant architectural feature of the room. Rarely have I felt that
physical, sonic and mental space have been so well balanced. A truly remarkable
eight minutes. I also greatly enjoyed the second half of </span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">Glough </i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">by René Baptist Huysmans. The ‘beast’ established at the
beginning and soon captured is left to die slowly. But this was not staged
spectacle, not a hunter lauding it over his defeated prey. Instead this was (to
me at least) a shared experience. I didn’t just hear the sound die, I felt it
die, I shared the time and space in which that death took place. The ‘death’
is, of course, purely metaphorical. But the experience of sharing a space with
a sound as it evolves, and really feeling like you </span><i style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;">are</i><span style="font-family: 'Open Sans Light', sans-serif;"> sharing that space, is something that doesn’t happen often
enough in performance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">The
rest of the music was great, too. And I quite enjoyed the free wine
afterwards as well. Like I said… new music and alcoholism go hand-in-hand.
Luckily I managed to catch my train this time. It’s the little victories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Open Sans Light","sans-serif";">All
in all I had a fantastic weekend (until I got home on Sunday night, but that’s
a different story). I heard some fantastic and very varied music and I met some
lovely people. Mission accomplished. Thanks to all those that made it happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-67044960957863950872013-10-15T15:39:00.000-07:002013-10-19T04:30:04.271-07:00Space for Music<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The ever-decreasing space
I’ve had for music</h2>
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Lately I’ve been both fortunate and unfortunate in equal
measure. I’ve taken up a new job – an exciting and stimulating job that has me
working in the music industry full-time; I’ve managed to find myself a new home;
I’m working on a <a href="http://www.londonsinfonietta.org.uk/writing-future">commission from the London Sinfonietta</a> for a solo double bass
piece to be premiered at the <a href="http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/london-sinfonietta-72249">Southbank Centre in December</a>; and – the cherry on
the cake – my partner will be over from Brazil for Christmas. Good times. On
the other hand, the mayhem of moving across the country, having to buy white
goods that have since spectacularly failed, and finding the people I need to contact
aren’t available at useful times has devoured a significant portion of my life recently.
Now I’m happy but exhausted, bereft of mental space, and fast approaching my
commission deadline with very little to show for the time I’m supposed to have
spent working on it. First world problems, I know. Nevertheless, this evening has
been the first real opportunity in a month or so that I’ve had to collate my
thoughts on the commission, to challenge myself, and to steer myself clear of writing
something well-crafted-but-generic with only a couple of weeks to go.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve decided to blog about the process for two reasons.
First, I think more composers (and all creative artists) should be open about
their creative processes, partly to share ideas and partly to undermine the
idea of the genius-composer working secretively in their ivory tower – a view
held by too many people (including composers). Secondly, I’ve been able to draw
on a number of creative catalysts from a host of sources, almost none of which
are related to dots-on-page musical matters.<o:p></o:p></div>
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An invitation to find
new musical space</h2>
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The nature of my commission is perhaps peculiar but, to my
mind, more stimulating than the usual call for staged concert works. The brief is
to produce a five-minute solo piece to be played in an unusual space within the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_Hall">Queen Elisabeth Hall building</a>. The space will be transformed in collaboration
with a team of designers from <a href="http://www.arts.ac.uk/csm/">Central Saint Martin’s (UAL)</a>. I like to think of this
as producing an installation-like experience that offers more interesting and
immersive opportunities for audience engagement than the ‘everyday’ concert
format. There are five composers producing such solo pieces, each in a
different space, writing for a different instrument, and working with a
different team of designers. So far we’ve met the designers as a massed group, but
we’ve yet to be assigned our final working partnerships. The spaces our pieces
will occupy are to be decided after a site visit next week.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So what am I writing? First, I want to dispense with the
word ‘writing’. Admittedly I’ll be the recognised author of the ‘musical work’,
which ordinarily equates to a composer having <i>written</i> some dots for someone else to interpret. And this is
obviously a part of what I’m doing, but only to a limited extent. My aim is to
craft an ‘experiential space’. I admit that sounds horrendously pretentious! It’s
not a label I like, but it’s probably the best approximation I can produce with
the words language has to offer. There are plenty of quotes and sentiments that
roughly equate to “music expresses what language can’t”. However hard to pin
down that idea might be, I have to say I agree that music has such potential (this
raises the question: how much music tries to express something language can
also express perfectly well, if not better?).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sharing space</h2>
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The central ideas I’m working with are intimacy, expressions
of connection, openness (or lack thereof), and the potentially dangerous notion
of tenderness. Why is tenderness so dangerous? Because it sidles-up alongside
nostalgic views of Romanticism (with a capital R). I’ve nothing against
Romanticism per-se – I like a lot of the music, certainly – but there’s something
of a sepia-tinted fetish for it, which frequently operates as a yardstick
against which many people measure the worth of ‘contemporary classical music’. Perhaps
this (along with ideological differences) is why a lot of contemporary
composers avoid associations with Romanticism like the plague. I don’t avoid it
so fervently, but I agree that association with 19<sup>th</sup> century is,
depressingly, like interpretative quicksand.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Musical nostalgia aside, tenderness is, in a more general
sense, a kind of connection, openness, and often a form of intimacy; it can be associated
with romanticism (little r) alongside other expressions of compassion. This
brings me back to my central themes, which I chose in response to the performer
I’m working with, <a href="http://www.chromaensemble.co.uk/biogs/elenahull.html">Elena Hull</a>. Elena is an incredibly expressive bassist. I’m
sure those people that are fond of the rhetoric surrounding 19<sup>th</sup>-Century
nostalgia would say she’s able to project with the sensitivity, expressivity,
and clear, searing tone commonly associated with the cello. I’d say she’s damn
good! For some reason the double bass is still seen as a grumbly, dry
instrument, which Elena proves it needn’t be. What’s more, she specifically
expressed an interest in exploring the ‘romantic’ (not Romantic) side of the
instrument in this project.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What I’m aiming to produce is a space in which the audience’s
relationship with the performer and the music they hear is not subject to the
boundaries and spectatorship of the concert hall. I want to work on something
the audience can <i>feel</i>. I mean that
literally; the double bass is capable of producing sounds that go right through
you – a connection with sound and the musical experience I want to promote. To
a certain extent I also want the audience to <i>feel</i> something in the psychological, emotional sense. I don’t want
to create an emotional narrative or a programmatic tale (that would be big R
territory again). I want the experience of sharing the space with Elena and the
sound she produces to tap-into other areas of the audience’s repository of
experiences – specifically their experiences with intimacy, expressions of
connection, openness, and tenderness.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Organising a new
musical space</h2>
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What impact does this have on how I compose? How do I
organise my ‘material’? For that matter, what is my ‘material’? As far as I’m
concerned everything within the performance space is a vital kind of ‘material’.
In order for me to promote the idea of openness and some very human kinds of
connection I want to get rid of the boundaries that ordinarily classify and separate
people in a performance environment (performers versus audience). In my new
work everybody’s an agent of activity. Elena will respond to the actions of the
people around her according to sets of instructions. These instructions – the score
– will focus on her physical actions and will draw on my experiences with open
notation and open instrumentation (even though the instrumentation here is
fixed). I want the gesture of her performance, which I see as another vital tool
for exploring my central themes, to be as important as the sounds she makes. The
challenge will be to create shifts of openness in her performance and to produce
a situation whereby the audience feel able to ‘connect’ with Elena and her
sound such that they willingly explore the space and the experience they have
within it. Getting this right will be difficult and I’m still in the planning
stages. To give you some idea of the processes I’m going through here are some
of the questions I’ve posed to myself:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>What is the initial impression projected when the audience
enters the space?</li>
<li>How does the performance begin and end?</li>
<li>How does Elena produced ‘closed’ and ‘open’ sounds and
gestures?</li>
<li>How exactly does the audience’s interaction impact the
performance space and how does this impact Elena’s actions?</li>
</ul>
<o:p></o:p><br />
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I’ve also written these pointers:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Avoid binaries! This is not intimacy versus non-intimacy (or
whatever)</li>
<li>Exploration of contact… with music, with people, with bodies
(no groping!)</li>
<li>Shades of ‘warmth’ – soft glow; intense, personal; playful
warmth</li>
<li>Familiar intertwined with (and most certainly not opposed to)
the unknown – tantalising</li>
<li>Performer’s <i>actions </i>respond
to audience’s <i>actions</i></li>
</ul>
<o:p></o:p><br />
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It’ll be interesting to see where these ideas go and how
much I can make craft them into a relatable experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Thinking about Music
and People’s Relationship with Space</h2>
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Before I sign-off I want to say a few words about what it
was that set me off down this route. Perhaps most obviously my own romantic relationship
is challenged by vast geographical distances – a small personal space set
against a huge physical one. While not in the slightest bit ideal (or
enjoyable) the situation has caused me to assess the value of intimacy,
closeness, and connection in their non-tangible forms. The need for my partner and
me to find ways of exploring and coming to terms with the ‘space’ our
relationship occupies has directly motivated my work on this commission.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On a less self-centred note, I’ve had cause to consider the
use of music in closed, ‘non-standard’ spaces on a number of occasions recently.
I’ve been approached about the idea of writing music to work alongside an
audio-described tactile art exhibition for the blind. Flooding a blind person’s
aural space with sound, however subtle or quiet, is an act that comes with a
phenomenal amount of responsibility, not least because it can disrupt that
person’s relationship with the world around them. Unsurprisingly, this has got
me thinking a lot about our relationship between music and space – something I
want to explore a lot more. I’ve also recently started working with <a href="http://evelyn.co.uk/">Dame Evelyn Glennie</a>, who’s profoundly deaf and also one of the world’s foremost concert percussionists.
Learning about Evelyn’s relationship with sound and how she crafts musical
spaces for herself has led me to think seriously about the physiological aspect
of music-making, about our very real <i>contact</i>
with sound. All in all, circumstances have encouraged me not to take musical
spaces and our methods of engagement with music for granted.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>My new (currently
untitled) solo double bass piece will be premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall,
London, on Sunday 8 December 2013. It has been commissioned by the London
Sinfonietta as part of Writing the Future, which is generously supported by The
Boltini Trust Anthony Mackintosh and Michael & Patricia MacLaren-Turner.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</div>
Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-5409202819965116792013-08-06T12:39:00.003-07:002013-10-15T23:41:27.734-07:00Review: 'A Whispered Shout' (or Beer, Sandwiches & Experimental Music)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last weekend (3 August) I had the pleasure of experiencing <i>A Whispered Shout</i>, described by its
organiser as ‘an afternoon of contemporary and experimental music featuring a
wide variety of different sounds and approaches’. Indeed! Part of my motivation
for going was to catch-up with old friends and, I hoped, to meet some musicians
in the flesh that I’d only had the chance to meet online in the past.
Thankfully the whole day was a huge success on all fronts, especially when it
came to the musical stimulation it offered, both aurally and… well, orally.<br />
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A B(l)ack Room in South London</h2>
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I should begin by saying something about the venue. <a href="http://www.matthewsyard.com/">Matthew’sYard</a> is a calm, airy, café-type space in the heart of Croydon built in the
converted lower floor of a conference centre (at least that’s what I think it is).
Away from the main area there’s a smaller, windowless room painted in black
with a low stage running across the width of the space. There are a few stage lights
scattered about, there’s a pokey sound engineer’s box and the leaning-post-of-choice
was a wooden counter obviously designed to function as a bar should the need
arise. It felt like the kind of place you’d go to watch your friend’s band
play. You certainly wouldn’t pick it out as somewhere to hear anything ‘classical’.
Which brings me to the first major success of the event: artistic neutrality. I
mean that in the best way possible. So many experimental music concerts take
place in non-standard spaces, or else take their cue from the traditional
classical set-up hoping, I imagine, that the audience is more likely to revere
the experimentalism if they’re coerced into watching it like a Beethoven
performance. <i>A Whispered Shout</i> had no
such baggage. Individual seats were set-out across the room, in vague rows but
easily moved. There were no programmes or other such formalities. The room was
spacious enough for a decent sound, but intimate enough to feel like you were
really involved in every performance. And the space wasn’t so obviously wacky
that it screamed ‘EXPERIMENTALISM’ like an obnoxious market seller desperately
trying to flog his wares. Granted, it’s certainly the kind of space in which you
might expect to hear laptop performances, and four artists on the billing were
using laptops. That said, two of them sat to one side of the room, away from
the stage entirely. In a really non-obvious way, everyone involved managed to
subvert the loaded connotations of the most common performance set-ups, which
(to my mind at least) helped the audience to relax and enter a neutral
interpretative space. By being so comfortable – beers in-hand and sandwiches appearing
from all directions – we were able to properly appreciate the artistic statements
that were being shared. In short, I can’t think of a more perfect setting.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The Music</h2>
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First to play was the event’s organiser, <a href="http://samgrinsell.com/">Sam Grinsell</a>. I’ve
had the pleasure of working with Sam before (I used <a href="http://adamfergler.eu/?p=307">a poem of his in some of my music</a>), but I’ve never heard him play live. He presented a
composed piece and a live improvisation, both on slide guitar. It was nice to
get to hear a solo slide guitar set – it’s really not often that you see one!
Sam’s music was calming and unfussy but certainly not short on detail. There
were inflections and devices apparently derived from all kinds of sources. I
heard elements of western classical and popular musics (thankfully not much in
the way of blues, which would’ve been a horrendous cliché) as well as pitch
treatments drawn from traditional eastern musics (I’m not enough of an expert
to say which or how many!). The fluidity and technical assuredness of Sam’s
playing, as well as his highly attentive ear, made for a great start. What
could’ve seemed like a genteel afternoon strum (much louder and more aggressive
things were still to come) was, in fact a perfect mood-setter and musically
intriguing. In fact, I was stimulated enough by what I heard to invite Sam to
work with me on an upcoming theatre music project. Watch this space for more
info!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Next up was <a href="http://weblog.laurenredhead.eu/">Lauren Redhead</a> who, uniquely, only performed
music by other composers. She finished her set with a work for solo voice,
building up to it with two pieces for voice and electronics. How do you build
up to something more basic, you might wonder. I’ll explain in a moment. Lauren
opened with <i>Gudrun</i> by <a href="http://www.tinakrekels.com/TinaKrekels1.index.html">Tina Krekels</a>. A
lot of technical expertise had obviously gone into the crafting of <i>Gudrun</i>, which involves live scoring
elements. This means that the computer decides the order of events, presenting
the performer with bits of score in a random order. Lauren was certainly kept
on her toes and performed marvellously. Sadly, the computer decided not to have
her sing for very much of the piece at all; that’s just the way the cookie
crumbled on this occasion! Although the performance was very enjoyable and the
craftsmanship of the composer clearly evident I must confess I didn’t really ‘get
it’. At times I felt like I was watching a Max patch unfold, a fact perhaps compounded
by the randomly determined lack of singing. At any rate, I found it difficult
to arrive at any interpretative conclusion. I didn't feel as though I was being even encouraged to go away
and think about what I’d heard either. Nice though it was, I couldn’t help feeling ‘was
that it?’. Perhaps a programme note would’ve helped in this case. I'm sure there's a statement there that I'm just not grasping. I’d
like to hear the piece again, perhaps in a different setting, before I make any
firm judgements.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The second piece from Lauren was <i>l’okki ppi kianciri</i> by Sicilian composer <a href="http://www.marcellomessina.net/p/home">Marcello Messina</a>. I’ve
known Marcello’s music for some time and it was great to hear more of it. The
one thing you can guarantee with a piece of Messina is that you really have no
idea what’s about to happen! I put him on a par with <a href="http://larrygoves.com/">Larry Goves</a> in that
respect, though the outcome is very different stylistically. <i>l’okki ppi kianciri </i>should, by rights,
have been too simple to work. The vocal and electronic elements are heard in
alternation and never together. What might’ve been a banal binarism was, in
fact, a highly versatile juggling act. Again, there was a live scoring element
so Lauren had to be super-alert to ensure a successful performance. There’s a
big difference between Marcello’s use of live scoring and that of Tina Krekels
in <i>Gudrun</i>. This difference was very
basic: the way each encourages the performer to react within the context
created. In Marcello’s piece Lauren’s actions always felt spontaneous and
energetic (matching the electronic interjections perfectly), which became a
vital part of the performance itself. If I hadn’t known that both pieces used
the same scoring technique I wouldn’t have guessed there was any similarity
between them at all. Again, I don’t want to belittle Tina’s work – I need to
spend more time with it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lauren’s set culminated with <i>solo speaking</i> by <a href="http://www.alistair-zaldua.de/">Alistair Zaldua</a>. Having chatted with Alistair
about this work (and knowing some of his music already) I can tell you it’s certainly
a foray in a new direction for him, but no worse for it. I had a glance at
the score before the event and, I must admit, I was sceptical. I saw lines of
fragmented text – unrelated words and syllables either juxtaposed or running
into one another. I wasn’t sceptical about the approach in itself; that kind of
disruption of language, communication and understanding is potentially very powerful.
But it’s so easy to do it badly. And I’ve seen it loads of times before. Perhaps
now you can see why this piece needed working up to; despite using fewer
resources (in almost all senses of the word) Alistair’s <i>solo speaking </i>had the potential to be the most focussed and
powerful in terms of audience engagement. This doesn’t mean I thought it was
the best piece. It was a very different piece, and one that demanded a certain
kind of immediacy in performance. It would be easy to perform <i>solo speaking</i> badly. And, as a world
premiere of a new kind of composition for Zaldua, it could equally easily have
turned out to be a bit of a dud all-round. But the risks paid off. I was lucky
enough to see the rehearsal, which allowed me to compare two versions of Lauren’s
interpretation. Okay, rehearsals are never quite the same as performances, but,
my God, did Lauren turn things around. <i>solo
speaking</i> went from a decent work to an absolutely captivating one almost,
it seemed, at the flick of a switch.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What made Alistair’s piece work so well was, I think,
something that helped to distinguish Lauren’s vocal performance from so many
others. Ordinarily, highly-trained singers from an operatic or a chamber music
background are the people we find performing vocal works. Lauren, while definitely
a singer, comes more from a choral background (as a chorister, organist and
experimental musician). This has a huge impact on the kind of delivery she uses,
which is very naturalistic. I could feel the benefit of her approach across the three
works she performed, especially in Alistair’s, which relied heavily on the kind
of immediacy that highly-trained singers often lose in the name of ‘good’ projection.
Don’t get me wrong, I like both types of performance a lot, but it’s harder to
find the kind that Lauren provided last weekend.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the interval (more beer and sandwiches) came two back-to-back
sets of laptop pieces. The first was from <a href="http://caryaamara.com/">Carya Amara</a>, a project of <a href="http://kevinbusby.wordpress.com/">Kevin Busby’s</a>.
I became cynical quite quickly. We were told that the performance would be accompanied by images projected onto a wall that was awkward to see but that seeing them
wasn’t very important anyway. My cynicism was compounded by curt ‘that was <i>that</i> one’ announcements made<i> the very second
</i>each piece finished. That's before I get to the beguiling array of dissociated images
that seemed to bear no relation whatsoever to the music we were hearing. I don’t
want to sound too negative about the music. I’ll admit that it’s not exactly my
thing, but I could certainly see an audience for it and the value of it. The
way it was presented did it a disservice, though. So much so that my notes
on the performance read like a list of bugbears: begins like opening of <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7TmbIRJ0R0">Sanctus</a> </i>from Britten’s <i>War Requiem</i>, bebop <a href="http://www.drukqs.net/">Aphex Twin</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTsMx1DGfNk"><i>Joe 90</i> sound effects</a>, changing textures
casually overlayed on rhythmic pulses, etc. These observations are a little
harsh, I must say. I heard shades of <a href="http://www.fennesz.com/">Christian Fennesz</a>, an artist that I
greatly admire. And, actually, some of my apparent bugbears would’ve felt right
in a slightly different context.</div>
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How odd, then, that I earlier described the
setting of the gig as ‘perfect’. Surely this proves otherwise? Well no. I
thought that there was plenty of potential for the Carya Amara aesthetic to
take an interesting direction, sitting alongside music that does similar things
in very different ways. But, as it turned out, it was made to sound isolated
and, consequently, out of place. I’m still not convinced by the slideshow of
passport photos, wartime posters and pigeons. A comment on urban life perhaps?
Or identity? Surveillance? I simply don’t know. This set had so much room to breathe, but Busby didn't seem to want to take it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Next was <a href="http://norahlorway.com/">Norah Lorway</a> with more laptop music. Norah’s
contribution, described as ‘live-coding with beats’, was, in essence, similar
to what we’d just heard. However, the music sounded more organic, wasn’t framed
by baffling comments (or pictures of pigeons) and, in my humble opinion,
generally fitted the context better. Both Carya Amara’s and Lorway’s music can
be seen to fit in that most slippery of musical genres: the one that straddles
glitch, electronica and ambient. Of course, all three of those labels have, at
different times and in different places, referred to specific things. But these
days the intersection between all three seems to be where the most interesting
(and sometimes least interesting) things happen. If Carya Amara began with music that
had shades of Fennesz about it, Norah followed-up with shades of <a href="http://oval.bandcamp.com/">Oval</a> and the better
parts of <a href="http://www.boardsofcanada.com/">Boards of Canada</a> (I say this without irony – she is, after all, Canadian). One of the most
remarkable sections of her performance I find difficult to describe in straight-up
musical terms. The best description I can think of is this: Tarantino in sound.
Tarantino movies are famous for those moments where the director’s
choice of music comes blazing to the fore with a powerful unsettling feeling.
Norah achieved this not with music and dramatic cinema, but with music and
music. Absolutely remarkable.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We then left the domain of laptops, albeit briefly, and entered
the world of <a href="http://chrissieviolin.info/">Chrissie Caulfield</a>. Chrissie has a powerful stage presence which makes no use of physical drama or laid-on theatrics. Why point this out? Well, her
set-up might make you think otherwise. It’s obvious from the very beginning
that Chrissie is coming at her music from a rock (or more specifically
post-rock) background. I know a lot of good, diverse electric guitarists. Some
of them have many pedals. Many many pedals. <a href="http://chrissieviolin.info/chrissie-about.html">Next to Chrissie</a>, though, they have
none. But Chrissie’s instrument is not the guitar, it’s the electric violin.
When you see a solo guitarist with an arsenal of pedals you expect the ensuing
performance to be loud and brimming with loops, delays, distortions and
probably a little bit of feedback every now and again. If I say Chrissie takes
much the same approach I’m not really suggesting similitude at all. The difference in string instrument has profound results. There’s no need for strumming or
repeated tapping. There’s no need to employ a bottleneck to get round the pitch
divisions caused by frets. There’s a phenomenal amount of dynamic and timbral
control you can get from the bow alone. All those differences are then
magnified many times by the various pedal-triggered effects at Chrissie’s
disposal. The poise of a violinist’s stance combined with that kind of raw,
diverse and often abrasive sonic power is something to behold. And, as I said,
Chrissie lets that sound speak for itself. There’s no rock-influenced leaping
about or exaggerated arm movements. It’s all wonderfully noisy violin. It’s fantastic. </div>
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Chrissie gave us two pieces. The first was a solo piece called <i>Wrong Way Home</i>, which she describes as “a
pretty intense ‘ambient’ piece, if those two adjectives can be combined, with
humongous amounts of reverb and some samples of boats and planes”. I can’t
really top that description other than to say how very enjoyable it was. The
second piece was a solo version of a piece by her band, <a href="http://helicopterquartet.bandcamp.com/">Helicopter Quartet</a> (interestingly
enough a combination of her electric violin with electric guitars). I don’t
think this worked quite as effectively in the context of the gig, but that
might’ve been due to it being overshadowed somewhat by <i>Wrong Way Home</i>. Nevertheless, it was all extremely good fun.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, <a href="http://stuart-russell.co.uk/">Stuart Russell</a>, who’d been beavering away as sound
engineer up until this point, rounded-off proceedings with a few more laptop
pieces. The first of these crafted a
bizarre kind of continuity out of disparate sound sources. To give you an
example, I heard what I can only describe as the electronic version of woodwind
multiphonics combined and sometimes juxtaposed with insistent beats and the
sound of rain. If I’ve given the impression of something slightly hippyish
there I apologise unreservedly; that’s really not what Stuart produced. I doubt a hippy
would revel in the sound of apocalyptic triangle (my label, but one that I
think really deserves to be common parlance). I was initially concerned that
the sounds used were too disconnected, like isolated thoughts falsely consolidated.
I was wrong. I’ll say that the opening of the first piece was its weakest part,
but what followed made up for it.</div>
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The second piece continued the general
aesthetic Stuart had established. The source material here was the sound of various different trains.
My only complaint was that the ending would’ve been more effective if it
came as soon as the mainline train hurtled past our ears (I think you’d
have to experience the piece for that to make sense). As it was, Stuart played a short
organ-like coda. I don’t think added very much, nice though it was. The
last piece of the event was Stuart’s romping take on blind panic. Apparently, the piece is a response to having a tyre blow-out at high speed. Perhaps not his best piece, but certainly a stomping number to
end with. And so we retired for more sandwiches and beer… but mainly beer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Final Impressions</h2>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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As you may be able to gather I was a big fan of <i>A Whispered Shout</i>. That kind of
mixed-media format in an informal setting takes a lot of the perceived pretence
out of experimental music. In this instance it allowed the distinctive voices
of artists from diverse backgrounds to speak clearly and effectively. I’m not
going to trump-it-up and say that everything was golden. There was the
occasional bleeding of excessive noise from next door, for example. I don’t think all the pieces
realised their full potential and/or made the best use of the space they were
given to speak either. Nevertheless, they all had <i>something</i>
to say, which is oddly rare. I just wish I
had a better idea of what that <i>something</i>
was in the case of Carya Amara’s set and Krekels’ <i>Gudrun</i>. My lack of understanding may be my problem. I don’t know. I’d like to
hear the music again, perhaps in another context, just to see what else it can do.
But I’m glad I heard everything I heard in <i>A Whispered Shout</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All in all, the event was, I think, a success and testament
to the artistry of the people involved in it. I’d like to thank Sam for staging
it in the first place and all the performers and composers for providing such a
stimulating experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
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Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155215719023045663.post-37981936538013762902013-07-05T05:29:00.000-07:002013-10-15T23:41:59.558-07:00An Introduction: Doing Music & Being a Musician<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Welcome to my new blog, <i>Without
Barlines</i> – a space where my professional experiences and creative motivations
can be shared openly and publicly. In line with my working philosophy, I’ll be
treating musical practice and culture as a diverse field of interaction whose often-encountered
partitions, which are many and varied, I see as serving only the most
superficial functions. On a personal
level, I hope to be able explore and understand my own ideas more deeply by going
through the process of preparing them for public consumption. I also hope
(perhaps fancifully) that discussing and analysing my experiences in the
musical field will provide musicians and those that care about music with new
insights or perhaps simply alternative viewpoints to counterpoint their own
experiences and ideas.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The context for starting this blog is colourful and varied. I’m
generally classed as a composer. Indeed, this is perhaps my greatest strength
as a musician and it’s certainly the area in which I’ve invested the most time
and effort undertaking training. But I class myself as a musician – a more
general term certainly, but one that more accurately portrays my professional activities
and one that tallies with my firm belief that greater things can be achieved in
the arts by embracing the diversity of the field. So, as a composer, I can talk
about upcoming projects and work that I’d like to complete if only for the fact
that I think it will make great music. I can talk about my processes and
methods, the abandoned ideas and the surprising revelations. I can also talk
about my disenchantment with parts of my back-catalogue and the various things
that cause me to have identity crises as a composer.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This is all well and good, but I doubt it would be much use
to me (or anybody else) to consider any of this in isolation. I’ve recently
started working as a copyist for composer <a href="http://nigel-morgan.co.uk/">Nigel Morgan</a>, whose working methods
and music are very different from my own. This has required learning how to use
new software, getting to grips with a new house style, and applying my existing
skills to a type of music that I’ve had little contact with before. This has profoundly
affected me as a composer (for one) and as a musician in the more general sense
(and the far more important sense as I see it). Working with Nigel has allowed
me to develop previously germinal thoughts on scoring and the presentation of
music, not to mention given me cause to question my own relationship with the
idea of ‘process’ in the compositional and analytical acts. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m also in the midst of a longstanding relationship with
Leeds Haydn Players. I never saw myself as someone who would conduct a
significant number of Haydn symphonies (truth be told, I didn’t rate Haydn too
highly before I started working with LHP!). Yet, here I am, preparing for a
pair of concerts in the coming weeks and beginning to think about another in
December. Not only that but I continue to produce orchestrations of Haydn
chamber works – orchestrations that have all kinds of requirements and unexpected
technical demands. But I couldn’t be happier doing it. As well as broadening my
musical horizons my work with LHP has reaffirmed my belief in the immeasurable
value of working with amateur and community groups.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Speaking of orchestration and conducting, I’ve had some
wonderful experiences with the band <a href="http://www.starlingband.co.uk/">Starling</a> on their first two albums. Producing string arrangements and going through the
process of recording these with both student and professional musicians has
taught me a lot that the ‘classical’ music world (which is where I’ve received my
formal training) couldn’t hope to teach me. While all is quiet on this front at
the moment (we’re currently awaiting details of the second album’s release),
the things I’ve learned here have helped me enormously with film and theatre
music.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I could go on to talk about my previous teaching or my plans
to move to the other side of the world. There’s so much diversity in my musical
life (not to mention my wider existence!) that I can no longer see the
divisions that supposedly separate this genre from that, or this activity from
another. Consequently I will happily make the following assertion:<o:p></o:p></div>
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I am a musician. I <i>do</i>
music. And, crucially, I believe that music <i>does</i>.
It’s not that music <i>is</i> – it’s not
simply a product or a learned set of parameters, however important these things
may be – music acts upon the people who come into contact with it, the places
where it’s heard and the culture that surrounds it.</blockquote>
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The importance of all this has recently come crashing home.
I worked for the best part of two years in the hospitality industry. The whys
and wherefores are not really important. Suffice it to say that working in an
industry that demands long working hours, mainly at weekends and in the evenings,
caused havoc in my life and work as a musician. I managed to hold onto a few
contacts and undertake a few projects, but I basically found myself adrift. I’ve
since left hospitality to return to the field for which I have the greatest
passion: music (and the arts more generally). This has entailed all kinds of
job interviews, declarations of self-employment and other such dull things. But
it also made me take stock and think very hard. I returned to the field having
lost contact with a great number of people, not being able to get to events and
gatherings. At first I found myself going into a sort of default work-mode,
which was heavily coloured by my time as a composer in academia. Not having
access to research materials and not having a job in an academic institution basically
rendered this approach useless. And so here I am, trying to find myself again
as a person and as a musician. While this has been extremely difficult at times
(largely due to intervening catastrophes in my personal life) I’m now at a
point where I’m able assess what is and has been most important to me, to determine
exactly what skills I have and how these can be used to the benefit of others, to
find new avenues to explore creatively and in life more generally. While clearly
of enormous personal importance (which is not something I wish to dwell on
here), I see this process of exploration and questioning as one of wider
significance. In musical terms this has unearthed a number of areas that I
think are worth exploring and, indeed, areas that I’ll explore here in due
course. My thoughts are not yet fully gathered, but I can give you a taster
of what they will include: the methods, purpose and future of scoring; the
importance of community music, working with amateur groups and engaging audiences;
the issue of music and space in the concert hall, installations and music for
the visually impaired; and overcoming musical separations (historical,
stylistic and activity-based).<o:p></o:p></div>
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This blog, then, is an outlet for me – someone who does
music – to explore and share what doing music really means and how it can help
us understand music’s impact as an active, lived cultural and societal
experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I hope to be able to provide something both helpful and
entertaining. If not then at least it will help me organise my own thoughts,
which is no bad thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You can find out more about me on my <a href="http://www.adamfergler.eu/">website</a>.</div>
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Comments and criticisms are always welcome.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Adam Fergler</div>
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(<s>composer</s>, <s>conductor</s>, <s>arranger</s>,
<s>copyist</s>, <s>editor</s>, <s>child</s>, <s>lover</s>, <s>waiter</s>,
<s>geek</s>, <s>drinker</s>, musician)<br />
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Adam Ferglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037666629766521121noreply@blogger.com