Present:
AW: Alan Williams (Reader in music)
JD: Joe Duddell (Reader in Music)
MW: Mick Wilson (Head of Composition)
Questions arising from CJA
1. Form - why random/ generative
1.1 the wholeness of the forensic ontology and its library is the composition, the random process allows an unlimited progression through this material. Furthermore, my 21st century life (social, cultural) is not based on a predictable sonata or ternary form, as such surely my music should be influenced by this. AW mentioned Umberto Eco's poetics of the open composition -
1.2 "The addressee is bound to enter into an interplay of stimulus and response which depends on his unique capacity for sensitive reception of the piece. In this sense the author presents a finished product with the intension that this particular composition should be appreciated and received in the same form as he devised it. As he reacts to the play of stimuli and his own response to their patterning, the individual addressee is bound to supply his own existential credentials, the sense conditioning which is peculiarly his own, a defined culture, a set of tastes, personal inclinations, and prejudices. Thus his own comprehension of the original artefact is always modified by his particular and individual perspective. In fact, the form of the work of art gains its aesthetic validity precisely in proportion to the number of different perspectives from which it can be viewed and understood. These give it a wealth of different resonances and echoes without impairing its original essence; a traffic sign, on the other hand, can only be viewed in one sense."
1.3 "The multiple polarity of a serial composition in music, where the listener is not faced by an absolute conditioning centre of reference, requires him to constitute his own system of auditory relationships. He must allow such a centre to emerge from the sound continuum. Here are no privileged points of view, and all available perspectives are equally valid and rich in potential... The possibilities which his work’s openness make available always work within a given field of relationships. As in the Einsteinian universe, in the “work in movement” we may well deny that there is a single prescribed point of view. But this does not mean complete chaos in the internal relationships. What it does imply is an organising rule which governs these relationships. Therefore, to sum up, we can say that the work in movement is the possibility of numerous different personal interventions, but it is an amorphous invitation to the indiscriminate participation... In other words, the author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee a work to be completed. He does not know the exact fashion in which his work will be concluded, but he is aware that once completed the work in question will still be his own. It will not be a different work, and, at the end of the interpretation dialogue, a form which is his form, will have been organised, even though it may have been assembled by an outside party in a particular way that he could not have foreseen. The author is the one who proposed a number of possibilities which had already been rationally organised, oriented, and endowed with specifications for proper development."
Umberto Eco (1959), The Poetics of the Open Work
1.4 "When a composer feels a responsibility to make, rather than accept, he eliminates from the area of possibility all those events that do not suggest this at that point in time vogue for profundity. For he takes himself seriously, wishes to be considered great, and he thereby diminishes his love and increases his fear and concern about what people will think. There are many serious problems confronting such an individual. He must do it better, more impressively, more beautifully, etc. than anybody else. And what, precisely, does this, this beautiful profound object, this masterpiece, have to do with Life? It has this to do with Life: that it is separate from it. Now we see it and now we don’t. When we see it we feel better, and when we are away from it, we don’t feel so good."
John Cage (pub 1959, written 1952)
2. Narrative
2.1 CV mentioned that, without meaning to, I appear to have surfaced in a musical territory that could be described as experimental music theatre. However, the theatre occurs in a place within the mind between the extrinsic (senses) and the intrinsic (memory, imagination). As such, the internal dialogue that occurs in this dimension of each listener will be individualized, therefore the purpose of the composition is to elicit a dramaturgical flow without out a prescribed narrative direction.
3. What distinguishes it from electroacoustic composition, contemporary composition, or installation?
3.1 The intention from inception of ideation through conceptual development, etc, has always been about creating a seeing through sound and music. Furthermore, the piece is performed in a theatre environment, it has a definite start and a finish.
4. JD Does the audience need to have read the book/ report prior to the performance?
4.1 No: however, the programme notes become vital - they need to clearly establish a horizon for the minds ears to wonder and to set up a mode of phenomenological listening that can achieve this. However, it is not a problem if the audience decide to listen using their preferred mode (casual, semantic, reduced (Chion)) although it must be stressed that the composition was created to be completed by the audinece using the phenomenological listening mode.
5. AW did not get the differentiation between "about, with and inbetween"
AW proposed a explanation for his interpretation of my differentiation where a Hungarian composer has auralised the data of moon transits with the result that something from the character of the movements of the moon where captured within the music. CV negated this analogy but in retrospect AW was closer than I understood at the time for 2 reasons:
1) embeddeness - something of my report is embedded within the music
2) we should have explored the score and had tangeble and not intellectual reference.
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