apr. ’24 - plasticity in writing.
everything can be whittled into small semantic categories that provide convenient points of analysis based on our recognition of ____.
for example, if i state that (in a blind test simulation) a beethoven piece i hear is a sonata form, this judgment comes based on the mental database of pieces i have heard in my life that were classified to me as sonata form. to achieve recognizing something means i have measured the difference between what i’m hearing and what i’ve heard. my willingness to label something comes from the distance i’ve approximated between the object i’m perceiving and its ideal form (consider plato’s theory of forms in this instance).
When sound is conceived as a horizontal series of events all its proper ties must be extracted in order to make it pliable to horizontal thinking. How one extracts these properties now has become for many the compositional process. In order to articulate a complexity of such close temporal ordering one might say differentiation has become here the prime emphasis of the composition. In a way, the work resulting from this approach can be said not to have a “sound.” What we hear is rather a replica of sound…
morton feldman, Give my Regards to Eighth Street.
the issue with a differential assessment of artistic outputs is the outright disregard to the immutability of sound. sound, although easily categorized by relations, obeys no system in its output, nor belongs to any individual (instead belonging only to the space through which it oscillates).
similarly, when a player approaches a piece in a solo setting vs. an ensemble setting, the differences between themself, the piece, and the rest of the oeuvre of the world slightly disappears into the background as the player has the ability to create an inner sense of time and interpretation.
music is invariably plastic. the plasticity (malleability, measured in the difference) at the beginning is the only reason music is ever performed twice. time exists in senses beyond linearity, rather demanding an issue of the present that brings ideas to the surface. repetition in style begins at the premise that repetition is impossible absolutely.
…there is not a single situation in life which is exactly the same as the previous one. The moment today, the 7 o'clock today is not the same as 7 o'clock yesterday. There is not a single idea, if it's really an authentic idea, which is exactly the same from a previous one… What pitch system do I use? What's the manner in which I represent my idea? You could have a single idea and the idea is interpreted by many people.
vykintas baltakas, personal interview.
a usual way to arouse plasticity in performance is to make the notation reflect this, by abandoning certain traditions and obscuring the surface in order to make the product malleable. a composer with no intention with a gesture will receive the most plastic product (though obviously low-effort), while the most strict intention will produce a rigid surface incapable of allowing the idea to breathe.
three interruptions, interruption 1
the use of graphics does not automatically imply freedom for the performer, as they are required to interpret them within the constraints of their experience. not unknown to most, a player unexperienced in graphic notation will feel reticent at the point of revealing something personal to them in the performance that doesn’t originate from the score.
in three interruptions, i used two different staves for one performer to create two different characters… each characters abide by the principles i follow of emphasis. a de-emphasis in one aspect of form, pitch, or rhythm will necessitate a hyper-emphasis of another aspect.
the two staves each represent indeterminacy (pitch de-emphasized, timbre emphasized) and determinacy (pitch & rhythm emphasized, freedom de-emphasized).
the score however deviates from a standard practice in solo piece writing (at least in the contemporary tradition that i am so fond of..) of abandoning time signatures and barlines de-emphasizing form/rhythm in favor of indeterminate gesture) for the ease of reading and interpretability. in my head, the idea of having the performer choose the narrative in this instance would likely clash abruptly with the separation of characters, that was so dependent on time/rhythm (here emphasized).
interruption 1, first page.
the use of stricter signatures and irrational signatures belies the actual interpretation of the performer in this instance. the score acts as almost a trojan horse of sorts, superficially demanding precision of time but inward actually asking the performer to forego precision and calculate an inner sense of form and progression based on the ratios they create in the moment.
the piece as a whole should not be perceived as a finished/fixed message but a springboard for improvisation for the player (despite how meticulous it may look to read). gesture/color is always prioritized over exact pitches/rhythms. the player is enabled to change any aspect of the piece, whether it be timing, pitch, rhythm, etc...
three interruptions, program notes.
for example, a transition from the 8th bar to the 10th reads as 4/4, 3/8, 4/4… the 3/8 can be interpreted as a pure three eighths duration of silence, or an indeterminate, asymmetrical pause.
third interruption.
determinacy better purports itself as the interruption to a gesticology favored by entropy, allowing faithfully for the player to assemble their experiences and sublate them into actual-time experience.
the definition of plasticity implies an ease of being molded. although the notation supports the ease of molding a sound, it takes a great deal of self-introspection to forget oneself and play what the moment demands. a performer must forget 1000 years of traditional and academic baggage and search inward to realize themself.
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it takes much effort to learn, but it takes even more to ignore.
