Edited volumes by Emily Payne
Material Cultures of Music Notation brings together a collection of essays that explore a fundame... more Material Cultures of Music Notation brings together a collection of essays that explore a fundamental question in the current landscape of musicology: how can writing and reading music be understood as concrete, material practices in a wider cultural context? Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from musicology, media studies, performance studies, and more, the chapters in this volume offer a wide array of new perspectives that foreground the materiality of music notation. From digital scores to the transmission of manuscripts in the Middle Ages, the volume deliberately disrupts boundaries of discipline, historical period, genre, and tradition, by approaching notation's materiality through four key interrelated themes: knowledge, the body, social relations, and technology. Together, the chapters capture vital new work in an essential emerging area of scholarship.
As the art that calls most attention to temporality, music provides us with profound insight into... more As the art that calls most attention to temporality, music provides us with profound insight into the nature of time, and time equally offers us one of the richest lenses through which to interrogate musical practice and thought. In this volume, musical time, arrayed across a spectrum of genres and performance/compositional contexts is explored from a multiplicity of perspectives. The contributions to the volume all register the centrality of time to our understanding of music and music-making and offer perspectives on time in music, particularly though not exclusively attending to contemporary forms of musical work. In sharing insights drawn from philosophy, music theory, ethnomusicology, psychology of performance and cultural studies, the book articulates a range of understandings on the metrics, politics and socialities woven into musical time.
Journal articles by Emily Payne
Contemporary Music Review, 2022
This article examines the dynamic nature of instrumental interaction in indeterminate music, usin... more This article examines the dynamic nature of instrumental interaction in indeterminate music, using John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58) as a case study. Performing the Concert requires instruments to be dismantled, detuned, and destabilised, and within the parts themselves techniques are often stretched or combined to the point of complete breakdown. Drawing on interviews and observational studies undertaken with the experimental music ensemble Apartment House, I explore how the indeterminacies of the instrumental parts are enacted and negotiated in performance. The article suggests the ways in which indeterminacy is not an abstract compositional device, but is distributed across musicians, their instruments, and their environments. More broadly, it shows how a reading of indeterminacy through performance both underlines and complicates the relationships between individuals, objects, and the kinds of agency that are enacted and animated in creative work.
Circuit: Musiques contemporaines, 2020
This article explores the ways in which the music of experimental composer Christian Wolff engend... more This article explores the ways in which the music of experimental composer Christian Wolff engenders surprise through processes of disruption and provocation. The contexts under examination are: scores which employ cueing strategies; improvisatory pieces; ensemble pieces; pieces for solo piano; and Wolff’s practice as an improvising musician. These case studies show how Wolff’s music occupies a particular position between improvisation and composition. In examining the space that Wolff’s music opens up for contingency and play, and in adopting a view of indeterminacy as understood through performance rather than limited by its notation, the article puts forward a view of indeterminacy grounded in sociality. More broadly, in its contribution to the body of literature investigating the role of notation in improvisation practices, the article invites a reconsideration of the ontological understandings of composition, improvisation, and performance.
Music + Practice, 2019
The premiere of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58) is notorious for being disr... more The premiere of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58) is notorious for being disrupted by the behaviour of the orchestral musicians, decried by Cage as ‘foolish and unprofessional’. The interpretative options available to performers of the Concert are, however, many and baffling, the instrumental techniques required are arcane, and the response of the early performers, if apparently juvenile, is hardly surprising. This article considers the challenges of performing the Concert, first by examining historical evidence for the early performances, analysing existing recorded performances and considering the performance choices Cage himself made, as conductor. It then draws on material from a major data-collection event with musicians from the ensemble Apartment House, as illustrated through films and discussion at cageconcert.org. The creative possibilities of Cage’s notations, and the ways in which musicians respond to their complexities and ambiguities, are explored, and the authors consider how these perspectives might contribute to a developing performance practice surrounding the work and informing the performance of indeterminate music more widely.
Musicology's performative turn was formulated in opposition to the disciplinary dominance of musi... more Musicology's performative turn was formulated in opposition to the disciplinary dominance of music notation in favour of a focus on the creativity of performers. However, scores are a central part of many musicians' creative work, and a complete conception of creativity in performance should take this centrality into account. This article investigates performers' uses of notation, particularly annotation, in both composed and improvised musical practices. Through ethnographic methods, we examine how performers engage with their notations and how this engagement resonates in their further creative processes. By approaching the score as a concrete material object rather than a representation of an abstract structure, we move beyond a paradigm that opposes notated permanence to performed and/or improvised transience. Drawing on anthropological work on artistic production, creativity, and improvisation, we propose an understanding of (an)notation as integral to the forms of imagination, creativity, knowledge, interaction, and even improvisation that occur in music-making. One of the most important developments in current musicology has been a disciplinary turn towards performance as the defining element of music. There is a growing body of research investigating the multi-layered forms of social and distributed creativity inherent in the
Music & Letters, 2017
Musicology’s performative turn was formulated in opposition to the disciplinary dominance of musi... more Musicology’s performative turn was formulated in opposition to the disciplinary dominance of music notation in favour of a focus on the creativity of performers. However, scores are a central part of many musicians’ creative work, and a complete conception of creativity in performance should take this centrality into account. This article investigates performers’ uses of notation, particularly annotation, in both composed and improvised musical practices. Using observational methods, we examine how performers engage with their notations and how this engagement resonates in their creative processes. By approaching the score as a concrete material object rather than a representation of an abstract structure, we move beyond a paradigm that opposes notated permanence to performed and/or improvised transience. Drawing on anthropological work on artistic production, creativity, and improvisation, we propose an understanding of (an)notation as integral to the forms of imagination, creativity, knowledge, interaction, and even improvisation that occur in music-making.
Contemporary Music Review, Mar 1, 2016
In this article I examine the role of the instrument in Evan Johnson and Carl Rosman’s collaborat... more In this article I examine the role of the instrument in Evan Johnson and Carl Rosman’s collaboration on a new work for eighteenth-century basset clarinet, ‘indolentiae ars’, a medium to be kept (2015). Drawing on material collected over 30 months—including interviews; audio–visual footage; and correspondence containing sketches, fingering charts, and recordings—I consider the latent practices that lie within the instrument, and their role in the creative process. From the aesthetic discourses that pervaded the musicians’ discussions, to the transitional and sometimes ‘accidental’ moments of instrumental interaction during workshops, I trace the micro-processes within the broader creative trajectory, in order to understand how the instrument’s historical, social, and ergonomic affordances were enmeshed within the here-and-now of the collaboration. The article illustrates the dynamic character of collaborative work, shaped not solely by the knowledge of individuals, but through a close reciprocity between perception, action, and the discursive and material conditions of their surroundings.
cultural geographies, 2018
This article examines the nature of skilled practice within two settings of musical performance, ... more This article examines the nature of skilled practice within two settings of musical performance, the rehearsal and the compositional workshop. Drawing primarily on the work of Richard Sennett and Tim Ingold, I suggest that a characterisation of musical performance as a craft practice attends to the development of skill and expertise through the performer’s physical and everyday encounters with the world and provokes a reconsideration of the dimensions of performance that might otherwise be taken for granted. The first case study addresses rhythmic coordination during a rehearsal of Four Duets for clarinet and piano (2012), composed by Edmund Finnis for Mark Simpson and Víkingur Ólafsson, and the second traces the development of instrumental techniques by composer Evan Johnson and performer Carl Rosman as they collaborate on a new work for historical basset clarinet, ‘indolentiae ars’, a medium to be kept (2015). The article makes the case for skilled practice as an improvisatory interplay between performers and the meshwork of people, objects, histories and processes which they inhabit.
Musicae Scientiae, Sep 2016
While creativity has been defined in a multiplicity of ways across disciplines, scholars generall... more While creativity has been defined in a multiplicity of ways across disciplines, scholars generally agree that it involves the generation of ideas or products that are novel, of value, and appropriate to the field. Yet by too readily connecting creativity in musical performance to innovation, does this model neglect the more inconspicuous and unrecognised, but no less valuable, dimensions of creativity in score-based performance? This article offers a characterisation of musical performance situated within a framework of craft, by tracing rehearsal strategies employed in two new performance projects: the rehearsals for, and first performance of Four Duets for clarinet and piano (2012) by Edmund Finnis, written for Mark Simpson and Víkingur Ólafsson; and a recording made by Antony Pay of Alexander Goehr’s Paraphrase for solo clarinet Op. 28 (1969). My argument draws attention to “everyday” aspects of music-making, in which musicians make decisions in engaging with their work which are less explicit than the conventional “moments of revelation” that are prevalent in the literature, but which are nonetheless significant. Acknowledging these attributes of musicians’ performance practices can serve to develop a more nuanced understanding of creativity based on processes rather than outcomes, in order to move beyond a paradigm that opposes notated permanence to improvised transience.
Book chapters by Emily Payne
Together in Music: Coordination, expression, participation, 2021
Examining ensemble interaction in the music of experimental composer Christian Wolff, this chapte... more Examining ensemble interaction in the music of experimental composer Christian Wolff, this chapter uses as a case study a professional recording session undertaken by the ensemble Apartment House of Exercises (1973–2013), a series of pieces for (mostly) unspecified instrumentation and numbers of players. Wolff’s skeletal notation is deliberately under-determined, acting like something of a puzzle to be solved. Consequently, the players must negotiate a way of working with the notation and with each other, making decisions prior to, and during, the moment of performance. Drawing on interviews and observational studies, the chapter identifies three different forms of interaction in the musicians’ playing as they engaged with Wolff’s notation: working responsively, independently, and emergently. The chapter offers a view of ensemble interaction that is characterized by cooperation, but also uncertainty, surprise, or even complete breakdown.
The Oxford Handbook of Time in Music, 2021
The work of this introductory chapter is twofold; first, to provide a brief historical overview o... more The work of this introductory chapter is twofold; first, to provide a brief historical overview of the changing nature and conception of musical time over the last 2,000 years, and second, to set out the arc of the volume through detailing the central points of each chapter. While the individual pieces of writing bring vital and varied perspectives from musicology, ethnomusicology, philosophy, psychology, and sociocultural work, what unites them is their attention to music of the modern period, with a strong focus on the multiplicities of contemporary practice, while also pointing to their nineteenth-century antecedents. In introducing the main themes of the book, the introduction calls attention to the burgeoning scholarship on time in music, ranging between the immediate feelings and socialities of being in time with others and the broader imaginings of the cultural politics of time in music.
The Oxford Handbook of Time in Music, 2021
This chapter examines ensemble dynamics and time consciousness in indeterminate music, using John... more This chapter examines ensemble dynamics and time consciousness in indeterminate music, using John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-8) as a case study. Drawing on interviews and observational studies undertaken with the experimental music ensemble Apartment House, I examine the role of temporal indeterminacy in the socio-musical interactions that characterize performance, and its implications for the musicians' experiences. In doing so, the chapter makes a broader contribution in its consideration of the ways in which issues of authorship and authority are negotiated in such temporal interactions, and how the dynamics of these negotiations present a sociality based on a 'separate togetherness', whereby performers play together (out of time) with one another.
Finding Democracy in Music, 2020
In 1973 American experimentalist Christian Wolff embarked upon a series of pieces titled Exercise... more In 1973 American experimentalist Christian Wolff embarked upon a series of pieces titled Exercises for (mostly) unspecified instrumentation and numbers of players. This paper examines the ways in which the music is worked out in performance, through playing and other forms of ensemble exchange. The ways in which the indeterminacies of the score and the skeletal notation function in relation to a more or less democratic praxis are explored. The shift in Wolff’s compositional practice at around the time of the Exercises’ composition, the result of a conscious effort to foreground political thinking – specifically a tendency toward democratic socialism – in and through his music, is explored. The chapter draws upon documentation of a recent recording session featuring the ensemble Apartment House, in which a selection of the Exercises was rehearsed and recorded, as well as an interview with Wolff about the Exercises, conducted specially for this project. Analysis from the sessions draws on both personal involvement and reflection and ethnographic observation to isolate and analyse individual and collective behaviours; and to explore how decisions are prioritised, arrived at, and implemented.
Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music, 2017
Collaboration is usually associated with the co-presence of those involved; but in this Intervent... more Collaboration is usually associated with the co-presence of those involved; but in this Intervention Emily Payne discusses a more complex and convoluted process extending over forty years, and involving different performers. Payne’s account of Antony Pay’s 2013 recording of Alexander Goehr’s Paraphrase for solo clarinet, premiered by Alan Hacker in 1969, reveals a ‘back story’ that casts new light on the network of distributed relationships that lies behind this unusual collaborative project.
Conference papers / Seminars by Emily Payne
Cornelius Cardew proposed that notation was ‘a way of making people move’ (Cardew, 1963, p. iii) ... more Cornelius Cardew proposed that notation was ‘a way of making people move’ (Cardew, 1963, p. iii) and two decades later his friend Christian Wolff wrote: ‘Notation is before the fact; incentives and suggestions for action’ (Wolff, 2017 [1984], p. 85). Since the late 1950s, from his cueing procedures, to a myriad of other notational innovations and performance directions up until to the present day, Wolff has developed a musical practice which foregrounds performance processes and multiplicity over sounding result and fixity. Some notations are deliberately opaque with little by way of instructions for performance; others are accompanied by lengthy explanations of rules, possibilities, and ideas of how musicians might work, both with the material in the score and (in the case of ensemble music) with one another. Rather than the score functioning as a fixed representation of action that assumes a unified performance intention, in Wolff’s music the notation can be a source of disorientation, instability, and sometimes even complete breakdown.
Drawing on case studies of Wolff’s solo and ensemble music, this paper approaches Wolff’s notations as objects of ambiguity and disruption, and investigates their consequences for the performers’ embodied relationships to their instruments, and their socio-musical interactions with one another. First we focus upon a selection of Wolff’s solo piano music, in which indeterminate notations are not necessarily concerned with a sounding result, but with physicality: inviting the pianist to make decisions about pitch and continuity in relation to finger placements and hand coordination. We then discuss one of Wolff’s most recent works–Resistance, for eleven or more players (2017), composed for and premiered by Philip Thomas and Apartment House–, which, the composer has suggested, is an assemblage of notational strategies employed in earlier works. Drawing on observational studies undertaken of the rehearsal, concert, and studio performances, we examine the choreographies, interactions, and sounding results of the many varied notations employed in both the solo and ensemble pieces–from rhythmicised sections, to open durations, cueing, text-based and other indeterminate forms. In addition, interviews with the musicians explore how the particular challenges and ambiguities presented by the notations are experienced and negotiated in the actual circumstances of music-making. By investigating how the indeterminate notation of Wolff’s music both mediates and unsettles (collective) musical experience, our paper sheds new light on the function of notation in performance.
Cardew, C. (1963). Treatise Handbook. London: Edition Peters.
Wolff, C. (2017 [1984]). On Notation. In C. Wolff, Occasional Pieces: Writings and Interviews, 1952–2013 (pp. 85–86). New York: Oxford University Press.
Panel speakers: Joanne Armitage, Jez Matthews, Nicole Raymond, Kathryn Williams.
This roundtable... more Panel speakers: Joanne Armitage, Jez Matthews, Nicole Raymond, Kathryn Williams.
This roundtable discussion aims to explore musicians’ perceptions of their audiences. Recent research has demonstrated the extent to which audiences can be seen to be active participants in live performances (Burland & Pitts, 2005), identifying a range of strategies for enhancing and encouraging audience engagement (O’Neill & Sloboda, 2017). At the same time, there is a wealth of literature which highlights the ways in which performers aim, and plan, to communicate with their audiences, primarily through the interpretative, expressive and creative aspects of their craft (Payne, 2016). Drawing on the expertise of a panel of practitioners from different performance traditions (i.e. live coding, experimental music, dance music, Jazz), the session aims to capture insights about the value of the audience for performers within different musical traditions. In doing so, we aim to explore: the ways in which audiences can influence the creative process during the performance (as well as in its preparation and evaluation); the extent to which different performance traditions engage and communicate with audiences; and the contexts in which the performer-audience dynamic is most/least meaningful. The discussion aims as much to provoke questions about what we don’t know about the artist-audience dynamic, as what we do know, and to consider questions of why (and if) this is important and what the applications of such insights might be for the range of stakeholders involved in curating live musical performances.
Ensemble performance and the wide range of phenomena with which it is entangled have been studied... more Ensemble performance and the wide range of phenomena with which it is entangled have been studied and understood across a variety of disciplines. Yet, with some more recent exceptions (see, e.g., Bayley, 2010, 2011; Clarke, Doffman & Lim, 2013; Clarke, Doffman & Timmers, 2016), research into scored-based ensemble performance has focused largely on musics of the common practice period, which rely on a linear relationship between score and sound, and in which more tangible relationships between performers are assumed. This assumption is challenged by indeterminate ensemble musics, through their use of notations that elicit contingency in performance, and in their concern to interrogate the ideologies and hierarchies that traditionally pervade group music-making.
The exploration of social organisation through the use of indeterminate notation has been a recurring concern of the music of experimental composer Christian Wolff since the 1950s. In 1973 he embarked upon a series of pieces titled Exercises for (mostly) unspecified instrumentation and numbers of players. Since then he has returned to the title to extend the number of works to, at present, 33; they are amongst his most frequently-performed works. The notation Wolff employs in these pieces is skeletal, with little by way of instructions and indications for performance. Consequently, players negotiate a way of working with the score and with each other, making decisions prior to, and during, the moment of performance. Orchestration, tempo, dynamics, sequence, coordination and much else are all ‘up for grabs’, and can differ radically from performance to performance. All the Exercises afford negotiation on a number of levels: individually and collectively negotiating with the notation, through the music, and with the ensemble members. As such, there is considerable potential for navigating approaches to ensemble interaction, and for exploration and investigation of performance possibilities. Exactly how these possibilities are exercised in practice is the focus of this paper.
The paper draws on documentation of a recent recording session featuring the ensemble Apartment House, in which a selection of the Exercises was rehearsed and recorded. Analysis from the sessions draws on both personal involvement and reflection (Philip Thomas is pianist with the ensemble), and ethnographic observation (Emily Payne observed the sessions). Both Thomas and Payne make use of video documentation from the sessions to isolate and analyse individual and collective behaviours; and to explore how decisions are prioritised, arrived at, and implemented. Finally, an interview with Wolff about the Exercises, conducted specially for this project, acts as a further contextual frame. The paper offers a view of ensemble interaction and group dynamics that is grounded in both the momentary interactions between musicians, and the cultural knowledge and conduct (Doffman, 2011) that are animated by Wolff’s notation.
Empirical research on orchestral performance has focused almost exclusively on tonally mediated, ... more Empirical research on orchestral performance has focused almost exclusively on tonally mediated, notated music of the common practice period. Consequently, the experiences of performers have been viewed through a lens focused primarily on principles of coordination, one that assumes the existence of unified performance practices. But what happens when that unity does not exist? Indeterminate music challenges the conventional relationships between musicians, instruments, and scores through techniques that elicit contingency in performance, interrogating the mechanisms and hierarchies that traditionally pervade classical music-making. This paper examines the role of the conductor in indeterminate music, using as a case study John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58). The orchestra plays from separate parts, and, working within a predetermined duration, each performer can choose to play any number of pages of the part. The conductor works from a performance part too, using both arms to imitate the hands of a clock, to, in Cage’s words, change ‘clock time to effective time’. Drawing on interviews and observational studies undertaken with the ensemble Apartment House, the paper examines the conceptual, aesthetic, and practical questions that the Concert raises for performance, and their implications for analysis.
The graphic notations of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58) are among the most... more The graphic notations of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58) are among the most intricate and abstract that he ever wrote; and the piece’s formal instructions (that the thirteen instrumental parts can be played in any combination, including with other pieces) offer seemingly endless performance possibilities. Yet, while the premiere of the Concert is notorious for being disrupted by the behaviour of the orchestral musicians, who, in Cage’s words ‘introduced in the actual performance sounds of a nature not found in my notations, characterized for the most part by their intentions which had become foolish and unprofessional’ (Cage, 1968, pp. 135–36), surprisingly little scholarly attention has been given to the instrumental parts—how they function, and their implications for performance.
This paper considers the questions that the instrumental parts of the Concert raise for performance and what they might bring to a discussion of creativity. We explore the creative possibilities that are afforded by the notations and how musicians respond to their complexities and ambiguities, and consider how these perspectives might contribute to a developing performance practice surrounding the work and to the performance of indeterminate music more widely. We present material from a major data collection event with musicians from the ensemble Apartment House, which documents performances of the thirteen solo parts, the conductor part, and the piano part (both as separate works and as a whole), and includes a recording of the culminating tutti performance. Audio recordings of the separate performance parts will be embedded in an interactive website, which will allow the user to ‘play’ with the recordings to create infinitely variable versions of the piece. In addition, the website will present audio-visual footage of performance activities and semi-structured interviews with the participants, enabling current and future performers to draw upon the ideas and practices of other musicians and thus to inform future performances.
Conceptually and methodologically, our research builds on previous studies that document the creative processes of performance in ‘contemporary’ musics, (see, e.g., Bayley, 2010, 2011; Clarke, Doffman, & Lim, 2013; Clarke, Doffman, & Timmers, 2016) but it develops this work further in two significant ways: by grounding the research historically in detailed analysis of various archival sources relating to Cage’s work and the premiere and subsequent performances of the Concert, alongside interviews with musicians who have performed the piece in the years since its premiere; and by developing innovative methods to disseminate data and findings in an accessible manner through the website, a unique tool for performative and musicological understanding. Moreover, since the process of embedding the performance materials in the interactive element of website itself represents an act of creative decision-making, the research raises broader methodological questions about the nature of creativity in digital musicology.
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Edited volumes by Emily Payne
Journal articles by Emily Payne
Book chapters by Emily Payne
Conference papers / Seminars by Emily Payne
Drawing on case studies of Wolff’s solo and ensemble music, this paper approaches Wolff’s notations as objects of ambiguity and disruption, and investigates their consequences for the performers’ embodied relationships to their instruments, and their socio-musical interactions with one another. First we focus upon a selection of Wolff’s solo piano music, in which indeterminate notations are not necessarily concerned with a sounding result, but with physicality: inviting the pianist to make decisions about pitch and continuity in relation to finger placements and hand coordination. We then discuss one of Wolff’s most recent works–Resistance, for eleven or more players (2017), composed for and premiered by Philip Thomas and Apartment House–, which, the composer has suggested, is an assemblage of notational strategies employed in earlier works. Drawing on observational studies undertaken of the rehearsal, concert, and studio performances, we examine the choreographies, interactions, and sounding results of the many varied notations employed in both the solo and ensemble pieces–from rhythmicised sections, to open durations, cueing, text-based and other indeterminate forms. In addition, interviews with the musicians explore how the particular challenges and ambiguities presented by the notations are experienced and negotiated in the actual circumstances of music-making. By investigating how the indeterminate notation of Wolff’s music both mediates and unsettles (collective) musical experience, our paper sheds new light on the function of notation in performance.
Cardew, C. (1963). Treatise Handbook. London: Edition Peters.
Wolff, C. (2017 [1984]). On Notation. In C. Wolff, Occasional Pieces: Writings and Interviews, 1952–2013 (pp. 85–86). New York: Oxford University Press.
This roundtable discussion aims to explore musicians’ perceptions of their audiences. Recent research has demonstrated the extent to which audiences can be seen to be active participants in live performances (Burland & Pitts, 2005), identifying a range of strategies for enhancing and encouraging audience engagement (O’Neill & Sloboda, 2017). At the same time, there is a wealth of literature which highlights the ways in which performers aim, and plan, to communicate with their audiences, primarily through the interpretative, expressive and creative aspects of their craft (Payne, 2016). Drawing on the expertise of a panel of practitioners from different performance traditions (i.e. live coding, experimental music, dance music, Jazz), the session aims to capture insights about the value of the audience for performers within different musical traditions. In doing so, we aim to explore: the ways in which audiences can influence the creative process during the performance (as well as in its preparation and evaluation); the extent to which different performance traditions engage and communicate with audiences; and the contexts in which the performer-audience dynamic is most/least meaningful. The discussion aims as much to provoke questions about what we don’t know about the artist-audience dynamic, as what we do know, and to consider questions of why (and if) this is important and what the applications of such insights might be for the range of stakeholders involved in curating live musical performances.
The exploration of social organisation through the use of indeterminate notation has been a recurring concern of the music of experimental composer Christian Wolff since the 1950s. In 1973 he embarked upon a series of pieces titled Exercises for (mostly) unspecified instrumentation and numbers of players. Since then he has returned to the title to extend the number of works to, at present, 33; they are amongst his most frequently-performed works. The notation Wolff employs in these pieces is skeletal, with little by way of instructions and indications for performance. Consequently, players negotiate a way of working with the score and with each other, making decisions prior to, and during, the moment of performance. Orchestration, tempo, dynamics, sequence, coordination and much else are all ‘up for grabs’, and can differ radically from performance to performance. All the Exercises afford negotiation on a number of levels: individually and collectively negotiating with the notation, through the music, and with the ensemble members. As such, there is considerable potential for navigating approaches to ensemble interaction, and for exploration and investigation of performance possibilities. Exactly how these possibilities are exercised in practice is the focus of this paper.
The paper draws on documentation of a recent recording session featuring the ensemble Apartment House, in which a selection of the Exercises was rehearsed and recorded. Analysis from the sessions draws on both personal involvement and reflection (Philip Thomas is pianist with the ensemble), and ethnographic observation (Emily Payne observed the sessions). Both Thomas and Payne make use of video documentation from the sessions to isolate and analyse individual and collective behaviours; and to explore how decisions are prioritised, arrived at, and implemented. Finally, an interview with Wolff about the Exercises, conducted specially for this project, acts as a further contextual frame. The paper offers a view of ensemble interaction and group dynamics that is grounded in both the momentary interactions between musicians, and the cultural knowledge and conduct (Doffman, 2011) that are animated by Wolff’s notation.
This paper considers the questions that the instrumental parts of the Concert raise for performance and what they might bring to a discussion of creativity. We explore the creative possibilities that are afforded by the notations and how musicians respond to their complexities and ambiguities, and consider how these perspectives might contribute to a developing performance practice surrounding the work and to the performance of indeterminate music more widely. We present material from a major data collection event with musicians from the ensemble Apartment House, which documents performances of the thirteen solo parts, the conductor part, and the piano part (both as separate works and as a whole), and includes a recording of the culminating tutti performance. Audio recordings of the separate performance parts will be embedded in an interactive website, which will allow the user to ‘play’ with the recordings to create infinitely variable versions of the piece. In addition, the website will present audio-visual footage of performance activities and semi-structured interviews with the participants, enabling current and future performers to draw upon the ideas and practices of other musicians and thus to inform future performances.
Conceptually and methodologically, our research builds on previous studies that document the creative processes of performance in ‘contemporary’ musics, (see, e.g., Bayley, 2010, 2011; Clarke, Doffman, & Lim, 2013; Clarke, Doffman, & Timmers, 2016) but it develops this work further in two significant ways: by grounding the research historically in detailed analysis of various archival sources relating to Cage’s work and the premiere and subsequent performances of the Concert, alongside interviews with musicians who have performed the piece in the years since its premiere; and by developing innovative methods to disseminate data and findings in an accessible manner through the website, a unique tool for performative and musicological understanding. Moreover, since the process of embedding the performance materials in the interactive element of website itself represents an act of creative decision-making, the research raises broader methodological questions about the nature of creativity in digital musicology.
Drawing on case studies of Wolff’s solo and ensemble music, this paper approaches Wolff’s notations as objects of ambiguity and disruption, and investigates their consequences for the performers’ embodied relationships to their instruments, and their socio-musical interactions with one another. First we focus upon a selection of Wolff’s solo piano music, in which indeterminate notations are not necessarily concerned with a sounding result, but with physicality: inviting the pianist to make decisions about pitch and continuity in relation to finger placements and hand coordination. We then discuss one of Wolff’s most recent works–Resistance, for eleven or more players (2017), composed for and premiered by Philip Thomas and Apartment House–, which, the composer has suggested, is an assemblage of notational strategies employed in earlier works. Drawing on observational studies undertaken of the rehearsal, concert, and studio performances, we examine the choreographies, interactions, and sounding results of the many varied notations employed in both the solo and ensemble pieces–from rhythmicised sections, to open durations, cueing, text-based and other indeterminate forms. In addition, interviews with the musicians explore how the particular challenges and ambiguities presented by the notations are experienced and negotiated in the actual circumstances of music-making. By investigating how the indeterminate notation of Wolff’s music both mediates and unsettles (collective) musical experience, our paper sheds new light on the function of notation in performance.
Cardew, C. (1963). Treatise Handbook. London: Edition Peters.
Wolff, C. (2017 [1984]). On Notation. In C. Wolff, Occasional Pieces: Writings and Interviews, 1952–2013 (pp. 85–86). New York: Oxford University Press.
This roundtable discussion aims to explore musicians’ perceptions of their audiences. Recent research has demonstrated the extent to which audiences can be seen to be active participants in live performances (Burland & Pitts, 2005), identifying a range of strategies for enhancing and encouraging audience engagement (O’Neill & Sloboda, 2017). At the same time, there is a wealth of literature which highlights the ways in which performers aim, and plan, to communicate with their audiences, primarily through the interpretative, expressive and creative aspects of their craft (Payne, 2016). Drawing on the expertise of a panel of practitioners from different performance traditions (i.e. live coding, experimental music, dance music, Jazz), the session aims to capture insights about the value of the audience for performers within different musical traditions. In doing so, we aim to explore: the ways in which audiences can influence the creative process during the performance (as well as in its preparation and evaluation); the extent to which different performance traditions engage and communicate with audiences; and the contexts in which the performer-audience dynamic is most/least meaningful. The discussion aims as much to provoke questions about what we don’t know about the artist-audience dynamic, as what we do know, and to consider questions of why (and if) this is important and what the applications of such insights might be for the range of stakeholders involved in curating live musical performances.
The exploration of social organisation through the use of indeterminate notation has been a recurring concern of the music of experimental composer Christian Wolff since the 1950s. In 1973 he embarked upon a series of pieces titled Exercises for (mostly) unspecified instrumentation and numbers of players. Since then he has returned to the title to extend the number of works to, at present, 33; they are amongst his most frequently-performed works. The notation Wolff employs in these pieces is skeletal, with little by way of instructions and indications for performance. Consequently, players negotiate a way of working with the score and with each other, making decisions prior to, and during, the moment of performance. Orchestration, tempo, dynamics, sequence, coordination and much else are all ‘up for grabs’, and can differ radically from performance to performance. All the Exercises afford negotiation on a number of levels: individually and collectively negotiating with the notation, through the music, and with the ensemble members. As such, there is considerable potential for navigating approaches to ensemble interaction, and for exploration and investigation of performance possibilities. Exactly how these possibilities are exercised in practice is the focus of this paper.
The paper draws on documentation of a recent recording session featuring the ensemble Apartment House, in which a selection of the Exercises was rehearsed and recorded. Analysis from the sessions draws on both personal involvement and reflection (Philip Thomas is pianist with the ensemble), and ethnographic observation (Emily Payne observed the sessions). Both Thomas and Payne make use of video documentation from the sessions to isolate and analyse individual and collective behaviours; and to explore how decisions are prioritised, arrived at, and implemented. Finally, an interview with Wolff about the Exercises, conducted specially for this project, acts as a further contextual frame. The paper offers a view of ensemble interaction and group dynamics that is grounded in both the momentary interactions between musicians, and the cultural knowledge and conduct (Doffman, 2011) that are animated by Wolff’s notation.
This paper considers the questions that the instrumental parts of the Concert raise for performance and what they might bring to a discussion of creativity. We explore the creative possibilities that are afforded by the notations and how musicians respond to their complexities and ambiguities, and consider how these perspectives might contribute to a developing performance practice surrounding the work and to the performance of indeterminate music more widely. We present material from a major data collection event with musicians from the ensemble Apartment House, which documents performances of the thirteen solo parts, the conductor part, and the piano part (both as separate works and as a whole), and includes a recording of the culminating tutti performance. Audio recordings of the separate performance parts will be embedded in an interactive website, which will allow the user to ‘play’ with the recordings to create infinitely variable versions of the piece. In addition, the website will present audio-visual footage of performance activities and semi-structured interviews with the participants, enabling current and future performers to draw upon the ideas and practices of other musicians and thus to inform future performances.
Conceptually and methodologically, our research builds on previous studies that document the creative processes of performance in ‘contemporary’ musics, (see, e.g., Bayley, 2010, 2011; Clarke, Doffman, & Lim, 2013; Clarke, Doffman, & Timmers, 2016) but it develops this work further in two significant ways: by grounding the research historically in detailed analysis of various archival sources relating to Cage’s work and the premiere and subsequent performances of the Concert, alongside interviews with musicians who have performed the piece in the years since its premiere; and by developing innovative methods to disseminate data and findings in an accessible manner through the website, a unique tool for performative and musicological understanding. Moreover, since the process of embedding the performance materials in the interactive element of website itself represents an act of creative decision-making, the research raises broader methodological questions about the nature of creativity in digital musicology.
Although the first set of Exercises was composed around the time that Wolff was especially energised by leftist political ideologies, and indeed was originally conceived to partner with a set of songs (unpublished) with explicitly political texts, these are not necessarily political pieces. The title 'Exercises' is, however, suggestive of both preparatory work toward a future act, putting into action, of being active, and of having effect. All the Exercises afford democratic negotiation on a number of levels: individually and collectively negotiating with the notation, through the music, and with the ensemble members. As such, there is considerable potential for navigating approaches to ensemble interaction, and for exploration and investigation of performance possibilities. Exactly how these possibilities are exercised in practice is the focus of this paper.
This paper draws upon documentation of a recent recording session featuring the ensemble Apartment House, in which a selection of the Exercises were rehearsed and recorded. Analysis from the sessions draws on both personal involvement and reflection (Philip Thomas is pianist with the ensemble), and ethnographic observation (Emily Payne observed the sessions). Both Thomas and Payne make use of video documentation from the sessions to isolate and analyse individual and collective behaviours; and to explore how decisions are prioritised, arrived at, and implemented. Finally, an interview with Wolff about the Exercises, conducted specially for this project, acts as a further contextual frame.
Despite the apparent performative liberties suggested by the Concert, some of the notations’ complexities conceal ‘a comparatively straightforward method of realization’ (Thomas 2013: 102), necessitating a rigorous and ocularcentric response from the performer. Moreover, Cage’s indeterminate works were accompanied by a tightly defined performance aesthetic of 1950s experimentalism (Lochhead 1994, 2001), influenced in part by David Tudor, whose practices have shaped understandings of Cage’s music almost as much as the composer himself. Given these contextual circumstances and the apparent adherence required from the performer, the Concert poses something of a conundrum.
This paper untangles some of these problems and contradictions, exploring the creative negotiations that the notations afford, and thus drawing out the tacit assumptions of freedom and constraint in indeterminate performance. I consider whether the Concert offers an example of where notational ‘discipline’ is a crucial aspect of the creative process. My discussion draws on outline findings of the AHRC project, ‘John Cage and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra’, including analysis of notations, performer realisations, and recordings.
Drawing on ecological theories of distributed cognition (Hutchins 1995, 2010; Ingold 2000, 2011) I consider the ways in which the conditions of this collaboration demonstrate a distinctive way of sharing knowledge and expertise. A broadly ethnographic approach is employed, drawing on material gathered over a two-year period: semi-structured interviews with the performer and composer; audio-visual footage of three workshops; email correspondence in which the musicians shared score fragments, sketches, fingering charts, and recordings of techniques and passages; and documentation of rehearsals and the premiere itself.
The formation of compositional material is examined from three angles: the wider historical and cultural dimensions of the creative ecology; the development of techniques through various categories of engaged interaction; and the performer’s embodied relationship to his instrument. The structure of the discussion moves from the broad to the specific, from the wider aesthetic discourses that pervade the musicians’ interactions to the momentary and in some cases ‘accidental’ outcomes that occur as a result of a specific interplay between body and instrument. The paper aims to understand how the particular affordances of the instrument are enmeshed into the ‘here and now’ of the present collaboration; ultimately, how are performance practices distributed across musicians and the complex ‘musical ecosystems’ (Clarke et al. 2013) which they inhabit? The findings suggest that instrumental practices are shaped not solely by the static knowledge and actions of individual practitioners, but through a close reciprocity between perception, action, and the discursive and material conditions of their environments.
This paper aims to create some conceptual room for a positive function of notation within the creative process; not as the representation of an abstract structure but as a concrete material object, in order to move beyond a paradigm that opposes notated permanence to performed and/or improvised transience. We compare two different ethnographic case studies undertaken in the areas of contemporary composed music and improvised music. Concentrating on the scarcely studied practice of annotation, we propose an ontological shift from the work to the score. Annotation is an intimate practice, a way of negotiating one’s agency and ownership of the music, distributing creativity over a network of human and non-human actants. As a prime example of the active role of the score as a fluid quasi-object collaborating in music’s creative process, we hope that a study of such annotations will allow a consideration of notation in its textility rather than its textuality, with the performer reimagined as a weaver, situated ‘in amongst a world of materials, which he literally draws out in bringing forth the work.’ (Ingold 2011: 10).
This paper aims to reconsider the perceived identities of performer and composer across various collaborations. I present case studies from my research, in which I document clarinettists and composers working together towards the realisation of new music across different contexts. Using material from interviews, rehearsals and performances, I assess the impact of creative collaboration on the participants’ sense of identity, and the implications of this for the traditional composer-performer-work paradigm.