Catalogues Research

Developing SKINS:

We often look at ourselves as one unity: one personality, one character, one avatar to the world, considering our obsession with developing a “niche”, a usp. We stay true to that image and get panic attacks when we see it shattering.

Several years ago I developed an interest for inclusive logic - coexistence. This logic is most seeable in environments which are not controlled by willpower. Our Aristotelian-like exclusive-operating reflexes are usually at work when composing: I am building section a which is different from section b, which in linear time are mutually exclusive. By which criteria do we decide that a is like this and b is like that? How would other composers do that and how would another performer play it?

Trying to make the mental exercise of how to turn this around and imagine a composition world when one could create USING this inability of taking decisions, I noticed that this idea connects back to the ethnic tradition of heterophony: co-existence of various forms at the same time and interaction between the similar and the different. It is particularly this dialectic between "the same" and "the other" that intrigued me, since this lies at the base of any artistic experience.*

Of course the most significant conflict here would be the translation in linear time: the multitude of variants would create a multidimensional space which is non-directional. The level where the composer can intervene is particularly the mapping of this multidimensional space. The interaction between these processes is an inner contradiction of the process which may create a dialectic on its own (if you ask me, well it IS the contradiction in which we live - at a societal and anthropological level).

This is how I arrived at the idea of composing with catalogues. Specifically, catalogues gathering the problem I was most confronted with: level of information in notation, definable by two bipolar axes:

-result-oriented vs. process-oriented

-level of abstraction of language: technical-musical vs. metaphorical.

After ten years of oscillating between exactly notated scores, packed with details and game pieces/graphic scores, I realized that they can be all integrated and used according to what I wanted to obtain and with which type of performers I was working.

Thus, content of my catalogue would be variations on notations of the same piece. This allowed exactly a liberation from material- a possibility to focus on and consider the validity of a composition without being "corrupted" by taste, style, material. Of course, material generates mechanisms - and mechanisms generate materials. Important is to test the flexibility of the parameters independently.

These are some of the results. The recordings below are from the first presentation of a catalogue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtdT_viFIO4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcFirezzCWA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R6b3gt9y-g

“I have started to work on catalogues for degrees of control over information for performers. Basically I was writing short fragments of the same piece in different ways, from Ferneyhough like notation to game pieces, graphic scores, etc. and trying to order them. It is lots of fun to do it on the paper, but I could already foresee the difficulties with it because I don't feel that I have someone to really help me here with advice at an intentional level, and of course the best would be if I could also test out to see what the performers would do.
Right now the catalog I am working on is for a piece based on chords progressions from a moment of "Deus refugium" by Gesualdo. I don't know yet what I can do with this in real performance situation, the initial piece is a Passacaglia but if I could order somehow the different versions of notation I could make a Passacaglia out of these languages instead - which will result in variations in the performance”

From the first experimentation resulted the following issues:

-performative difficulty in switching between the different psychological settings and relation to score.

-composing of the form (building macrorhetorics - for this, inside: rhetorics of linearity; interaction/correspondents of elements).

-relevant selection of variants;

-improving precision and control over the various notation systems employed/developed;

-testing different paths for acquiring objectivity: reduction of self; reduction of cliches; reduction of personal tastes;

-finding efficient (perceptual-wise) ways of "figurating" 3d system to linear time.

Overall what I found after the first experiment was that I had more control over the general feeling, atmosphere, energy of the performance than if I had written a very detailed score. I found the notation catalogues could mean the opening towards the space "in between".

Furthermore, this approach to notating which can generate its own composition forms could represent a space for experimentation. After first performance, many possibilities can be analyzed and tested:

-with same performers, further notations

-with different performers, same instrumentation

-with same performers, different instrumentaiton

-with different performers, different instrumentaiton

-with groups outside of classical music paradygm

-with other art forms

-with interactive audience

An important parameter is the source of the catalogue. In this regards, I have already made some tests which resulted in pieces I am quite happy with:

OWN MATERIAL

-older piece (written)

-new piece (half game)

-specially composed

-fully game

FOREIGN MATERIAL

-piece of contemporary composer (from certain parameters)

-piece of classical composer

-game piece of composer

-rhetoric of performance (artistic)

-rhetoric of performance (non-artistic).

Further possibilities for composing with catalogue forms:

Catalogues of shapes:

Catalogues as videoscores:

Other variables for experimentation:

The performers can be given the awareness of whether or not they are performing (variants of) the same piece, and to which degree: from free improvisation on the score as “graphic” score, to arrangements of same materials, to interpretations of the same piece.

Transferability:

-teaching - mechanisms, processes, psychological knowledge

-improvising for rehearsing repertoire - using translations of mechanisms for improving performance of already studied pieces

-improvising - improving group dynamics and communication techniques, developing new cognitive tools and instruments

-analyzing**

-composing - developing knowledge and control for using notation as a powerful tool for clarity and for creative processes at the same time

-interdisciplinary collaboration

-interactivity of performance

-audience outreach

Importance:

Flexibility as vision and practice is what we often miss from composers’ education when it comes to development of their own language and technique. We are stimulated towards language-specific approaches of craft development, which may more create a "standard" of methodology to get rid of in the end in order to develop one’s own, personal approach. The problem of efficiency in notation and working methods is in the best cases tangential to the education system. I want to develop a methodology for that. Just to have one more "skin" to change in the end :)

*in these regards I find very interesting for our case the work of the phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas.

** analyzing music by "re-writing" it in different notation