Review: Sound and Score (de Assis/Brooks/Coessens, eds.)

Cross-posted at Rebecca's Reading Rants and Raves

As with any anthology of essays, a particular reader will find some contributions more useful than others. Admittedly there were essays that I skimmed, as I was looking for specific writings that would interact with discussions for my graphic notation seminar. I appreciate the multitude of perspectives and styles, although I found the essays that were well-grounded in theory to be more useful. Both Virginia Anderson's "The Beginning of Happiness: Approaching Scores in Graphic and Text Notation" as well as Jeremy Cox's "What I Say and What I Do: The Role of Composers' own performances of their scores..." were particularly enlightening in their examination of score/performance relationships. Cox adapts Krenek's 1966 theory of process of musical thought to reveal a composer's performances as a "triangulation tool" (p. 21) between the score and Gestalt/musical thought. The only real quarrel I have with his investigation of Stravinsky's tempi in two different recordings (1946 and 1961) of the Symphony in Three Movements is that it is predicated on an assumption of "logic" when it comes to tempo choices--an assumption that isn't clearly delineated by the author.

Anne Douglas's "Drawing and the Score" is one of the strongest essays as she offers a succinct summary of the relationships that can be established when "an artist transposes concepts of drawing and notation across the borders of art forms" (p. 207). In just under ten pages, Douglas convincingly concludes that the tension between musical score and drawing is essential to all stages of the musical work, and in effect "loops" the components of a performed musical work "between author/audience." (p. 215).

The editing is good, for the most part, although there is a significant error in the captioning of Fig. 4 of Cox's essay (p. 24) and certain essays could have used a stronger editorial hand in order to keep expositional consistency. The book's division into four parts seemed somewhat unnecessary, particularly given the holistic interpretation that underscores the entire book. That said, the parts (I: Score and Idea; II: Mapping the Interface; III: Extending the Boundaries; IV: Choreographies of Sound) do provide interesting inroads to the larger discussion.

This is a very worthwhile collection and has readings that are provocative and useful for a whole host of different types of research and teaching, especially in contemporary music. Some essays are more accessible than others, but it is a valuable compendium for anyone who teaches composition, contemporary music performance, and/or music history.

Indeterminacy in the Classroom

 As much as I might like to post about indeterminate processes in pedagogy, this piece is quite literally about John Cage's Indeterminacy in the classroom. I find that this is a wonderful opportunity to explore Cage's indeterminate methods in a very hands-on way. We took liberties, certainly, but liberties that align with Cage's own thinking (at least that is my hope).

For this year's Cage seminar, we used the Peters performance edition of the work, and selected the cards to be used by chance procedures (outlined below). We "rehearsed" once, and established a better flow the second time through. While some might argue that rehearsal nullifies the spontaneity of the piece via chance procedures, I would say that it honors the integrity of the work as a performance piece. Rather than compromise the work, using 12 people instead of one--all of whom are reading someone else's story--renders an "arrangement" of the piece that I think is most effective.

We chose 12 cards (from the "score")--partially due to time constraints--so that we could focus on the process rather than the content. The 90 score cards were kept in order per the instructions/suggestions of the score. The first student used score card #1, and then picked an additional card from a deck of cards. The number on the playing card determined how many score cards would be skipped in order to select one for the next student. That student then picked a playing card, and the process continued until we had 12 cards.

We opted for accompaniment in the form of two to three iPhones on shuffle. Each student had an iPhone or other smart phone with a stop watch function to monitor the time. Only one of the selected score cards was a so-called "attacca" card (meaning its story was a continuation from another card), so Carolyn chose to adjust her card's opening text for clarification by changing "we" to "David Tudor and I". Other performance aspects were followed as closely as possible, most notably trying to keep each card to a minute and to interpret brackets as ten seconds worth of text. Cage's own pronunciation keys proved useful (e.g. "Gnostic" with a hard g).

While we did videotape the realization, the audio by itself is much more effective. Many thanks go to my student Ryan Fossier for extracting the audio and putting it on Soundcloud. We were not able to provide amplification, but strove to "avoid audible strain." I've included the link below for your enjoyment.

MU 552: John Cage Seminar at The Boston Conservatory performs John Cage's Indeterminacy

Many thanks to the students of my Spring 2015 Cage seminar at The Boston Conservatory for their fine work on this project: Michael Bennett, Christina Cheon, Daniel DeSimone, Ryan Fossier, Eri Isomura, Carolyn McCrone, Aaron Newell, Lucian Nicolescu, David Vess, NianShee Yon, Lin Zhang, and Hanhan Zhu.