SHARPENING
THE PROCESS. ON MUSICAL COMPOSITION -
INTERACTION, COMMUNICATION, METHODS (2003).
Some personal reflections by Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, composer and improvisor.
The
text to follow was conceived of as some notes for my own purposes while
reflecting on my own work over the years, but I also realised it would be
exciting to speak out and discuss these matters with colleagues outside of the
norms of scientific papers. It deals with composition as a way of sharpening
the playing process and of intensifying communication between players, rather
than prescribing details. It is presupposed that motivated and adaequately trained players are available. If this is not
the case, a less radical but maybe still very useful form of composition is
possible, which for pragmatic and educational reasons employ a larger amount of
things written out, without departing from the basic principles.
The
article was sent out, but only very few comments came back. I guess it might be
too theoretical and long for most composer colleagues, but do surprise me with
a comment if you feel
like!
INSPIRATIONS
Vinko Globokar spoke about the
composer who "manipulates people in the way he used to manipulate
notes" (Man improvisiert... Bitte,
improvisieren Sie!...Komm, lasst
uns improvisieren!..."
Another
very important inspiration for me is the pieces by Chr.
Wolff with cues, like Duet II (1961) or For 1, 2 or 3 people (1964). Here, it
seems that the composer does away with sequentiality.
It's a play, a game with rules, and players' reactions, also within very short
spans of time, can determine what comes next. Music has been lifted out of the millenium-old notion of "movement writing"
(German: "Satz"). These ideas also inspired
John Zorn to his so-called "game pieces" which became a cult
phenomenon during the eighties - the number of CDs out with
unabridged versions of "Cobra" still testify to this.
METHODS
Composition abandoning "movement writing" for something
depending much more on interaction is of course a wide field. We are still at
the stage in which it is highly needed to discover that this is really the case
and highly needed to work out practical examples.
I'd like
here to outline some important working fields of mine right now. The wildly
intriguing thing about them for me is that I can pursue things which happened
during free (or other) improvisation - make compositional designs highlighting
what seems to be the syntax of free playing. It is exciting because it seems to
stimulate our playing and allows me and fellow players to go deeper into
similar, but new experiences - both within my usual group and for/with others. It's
a formalising that allows for a sharpening of the processes. - Both the
categories and the descriptions here should of course just be seen as examples,
not as exhaustive in any way, and of course also mixed forms exist.
GENERAL FEEDBACK PROCESSES
Some of
my pieces deal with the individual players' critical awareness to the total
sound, and various reaction possibilities towards it are prescribed. This is
the case for instance with this (even if the "centre" can be
interpreted subjectively):
|
TOWARDS
A CENTRE (1977) Imagine a geometrical centre in the total sound, regardless of what is
played. Concentrate from time to time all your energy on aiming directly at
this centre, for shorter or longer periods of time. |
- and in a concrete way with many of my IF-THEN pieces, for
instance:
|
IF
- THEN IX (1991) To Intuitive Music Group. If that which you hear is acceptable interesting inviting you to participate THEN participate and make
a suitable amount of pause. If not THEN take a pause for a while or (alternate freely) comment the
others' playing by means of what you play (for instance, it is allowed to
make fun of others' playing, be agressive, insist
on having an answer). |
Some of
my IF-THEN pieces deal rather with the awareness fluctuation process going on
inside the individual. This is crucial to playing - something must come from
"inside", that is, imagination feeling, motivation, and there must
also be an attention towards the other players' contributions and the total
sound. These tasks demand very different forms of awareness. Awareness cannot
focus at more than one thing at a time - so it's nescessarily
a fluctuation. (As was stated in a "flight lesson"
in a computer flight simulator: "scan instruments regularily".
That's really how we function
inside!)
|
IF
- THEN IV (1979) If you think the music is complicated concentrate on the feeling with your instrument If you think the music is simple concentrate on
listening into all possible details. |
|
IF
- THEN VII (1988) Start: IF for the present you have become satisfied from listening, THEN
express your emotions right now. IF you have expressed yourself - THEN take a pause and contemplate an
idea about how you would like to play and afterwards put the idea into
practise. IF your idea have been put into practise -
THEN take a pause listening to the sounds right now (minimum fifteen
seconds). (go to start again, etc.) |
IF-THEN
VII was directly inspired by awareness categories from gestalt therapy.
COLLECTIVE DECISIONS
It seems
that in order that a decision can be made, there must be alternatives to choose
from. This is eminently a composer's task.
Some
pieces of mine employ the "picnic principle", and it is widely used
in the form of composition taught by me at
.jpg)
Players are to interpret the little signs and move slowly from the first kind to the next etc. Someone will be the first to begin with the new section with a new sign, and it will take some time before everyone has passed on. The "picnic principle" working here is often slow, not only because there is a certain reaction time, but also because it might take a little time to adapt for the individual player in order to make it musically meaningful.
It it interesting also to provoke fast
decisions. Frameworks 6 attempts to do so, by letting the kind of last
element depend on the first musician beginning. It will be nescessary to be well aware what's happening and to
adjust.
To
demand players to "end with" some specific material might entail a
slow process with testing out, waiting for each other, waiting till the
moment seems right. On the other hand, as can be experienced in improvised
playing, the right moment to stop can present itself very suddenly, and
reacting on this has to be fast (Frameworks 3, 2000/01, excerpt):
.jpg)
"SPONTANEOUS AGREEMENT"
This
phenomenon, coming from a collective association process, is well known from
everyday life. During conversation themes brought up may liven up memories
and thoughts in us which we would then like to subsequently throw into the
conversation. This is a relative slow-working process. Telling jokes often
illustrates well the intensification of feeling and memory connected to the
process. A much faster version of this is in play during exchange of
non-verbal expressions: think of laughter, for instance, how it can spread
explosively within a group like fire. Or a congregation's comments to
something proposed from a speaker.
These
are also situations emininently connected to
improvised music, in my view. To provoke them, I have prescribed many and
clear shifts in the piece SHIFTS (2001) as an indirect strategy. A more
direct one (and till now the most successful) used in OPPORTUNITIES (2000)
.jpg)
has been to prescribe a choice between 4 different,
clear-cut categories, like major triadic figures, curled melodies and more,
and encouraging shifts between them as well as the awareness of maybe doing
it collectively. "Maybe" is important - collective agreement
because one has to do it is not the point here, but to be open to
possibilities for it to happen. Even if it just takes place partially, it
could be good, and polyphonic dealing with contrasting elements could be OK
in itself.
OVERVIEW SO FAR
|
METHOD |
MAIN LINE OF COMMUNICATION |
CO-ORDINATION |
SPEED |
TIME SPAN |
|
GENERAL FEEDBACK PROCESSES |
BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND MUSIC |
NO |
INDIVIDUAL |
THE WHOLE PROCESS |
|
COLLECTIVE DECISIONS |
BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND MUSIC |
YES |
FAST TO SLOW |
SHORT TO MEDIUM |
|
SPONTANEOUS AGREEMENT |
BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS |
YES |
VERY FAST TO MODERATE |
VERY SHORT TO ..... |
And
with a graphical sketch...
.jpg)
TO BE DISCUSSED
Who of you is also working on
similar things and how ?
Comments...
THE GLORIES OF MUSICAL NOTATION VIEWED AS A TOOL FOR MUSIC CREATION
AND SHARING
The eye can overview large entities of graphic symbols,
whereas the ear is bound to real time. Exactly by abstracting from real time
it becomes possible to highlight structures, to test out different ones, to
see them in perspective.
Notation
also permits to memorise what happened (it's faster to look at a sketch than
listen to a recording), and it permits interchange between musicians' ideas. It
allows for a reflection process which can build up structures that can reach
high levels of meaning and artistic value. And it allows for building up
shared knowledge much beyond the individual group of players. Individual
ideas can be put into clearer forms and be part of a larger world, of a
common culture.
THE DRAWBACKS OF MUSICAL NOTATION VIEWED AS TEXT
The
world is full of composers with individual visions. We need something else than
isolated visions, something more collaborative and a new understanding of
this. Most of those visionaries would content that their visions certainly
are there to be shared. Almost any composer feels dependent on good
performances and would also think that "good performance" depends
on motivation and engagement from the performers. Composers thus depend
crucially on communication and co-creation even when they do not analyse what
makes the communication. However, this dimension can and should indeed be analysed
- and definitely not least from a compositional viewpoint.
Imagine
a big, relevant insight suddenly being communicated to you when being very open, motivated and maybe even searching for it. While
life certainly contains such moments, it is also true that in turn many or
all of us might communicate good ideas to each other in different fields,
usually having no surprise in mind, but just revealing our thoughts. Also,
insights might take a long time to become ripe, and this ripening process
involves other people, be it in practical experience or conversation or both.
In short, life is full of mutual exchange and sharing, and this could
indicate for the composer that fixing him or herself to a guru role and
performers to being assistants might not be the only possible way to
creatively practise music, maybe it is not the most appropriate either and it
may perhaps not be the best and most effective way to push ideas and visions
forward in the last end.
A big
practical obstacle for letting such natural flow processes unfold in the
artistic field of music creating is the notion of music as a text. Please
note that by this I do NOT mean music as written formulas or frames to which
I attribute an important role. I'm certainly for, not against conceptualising
and writing some of the time. The alternative to rigid composition is not
only free improvisation, it is also a new form of
non-rigid composition. What I am against is the assumption that the most
important form of music-making consists in one person writing it down like a
speech and then having it reproduced note by note. A certain neutrality and
monotony in performance is bound to result in most cases, like in the reading
of TV News, even if the performer tries to do his or her best and understand
the composer's idea. If this is not so apparent with classical works, it
could be due to their highly repeated practise which lends the performance a
more organic character.
Let me
take attention to some philosophers who certainly did not seem to believe
truth was to be found in text but in dialogue: Socrate
believed in ongoing questioning and dialogue. Hegel, while putting up the
nice formula of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, made truth relative exactly by
this, a thing to be found in the process. Danish Grundtvig
coined the concept of the "living word" by which he meant the way
in which concepts are reflected upon and passed on in everyday life, and he
was highly influential as a pioneer of our free high school system.
The
"text" mode of composition must be dissolved into something else: formulas is the concept first coming to me. Clear like
mathematics and beautyful like the solution to a
problem. Another comparison could be made: getting detailed instructions
about each task to do as an employee is like performing a text. Being
responsible on your own to do the task in your own way could be like
performing an open composition. Most of us prefer this way in our working
life, I suspect.
Clearly,
sociological aspects of the rigidity problem also exist and should be addressed,
too. But that's another matter. Practical efforts from the composers are
important and this is the issue here.
***
A Discussion with
composer and improvisor Carl Ludwig Hübsch (2008) - putting the role
of traditional notation into perspective!
A Discussion with
composer and improvisor Hans Fjellestad
(USA) on this text (2006)
Back to CBNs
Favourite Literature ...