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Book of Throws

By thisisuser on November 18, 2013

for 2 flutes/piccolos, clarinet in Bb, horn in F, trumpet in C, piano, percussion I & II, violin, viola, cello and double-bass and improvising piano soloist
composed 2013; duration 14 minutes
world premiere November 25 2013 at Frederick Loewe Theater, Manhattan, USA
David Wesley Meder – piano
NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble, Jonathan Haas – conductor
commissioned by NYU Steinhardt
commission supported by the Danish Arts Foundation

Book of Throws is the third composition where I fuse score writing and improvisation, the others being Book of Motion (1998) and Book of Changes (2001/02). My interest is not so much in combining styles or the possibilities of graphical notation, which is a well-established way to guide performers’ semi-improvisatory efforts in a notated environment. Instead, my interest is in the qualitative differences between a fully structured and pre-conceived musical composition on the one side and an intuitive, immediate, unbiased and unprepared playing on the other, and how these two approaches may be combined to provide the best of their very different offerings. The result can, given the right skill combination with the players, give surprisingly convincing results that do not betray the essence of either.

The reason for my interest is that I had already noted a certain quality in score music, where the composition process under determined circumstances had given the work an improbable quality at the moment of performance of ‘discovery’ of the musical ongoings. That is, that even when playing from a fully written-out score with no open-form elements, the performance would give the listener the impression that the piece to a significant degree was being instantly composed. It is of course an aspect of the music’s discourse, but it seems to happen when the composition process is sufficiently spontaneous to allow for those irregularities that makes the music refer to itself as it balances for ambiguities or even imperfections as they play out in performance. Just as if the music is its own emergent quality.

When combining an improvising soloist and a structured ensemble performance you have a similar combination of two states of mind, with the difference that they now overtly must integrate structural and emergent qualities. A score structures time and intensities, and the musical fabric and its progress can be graduated very precisely. Recurrence, displacement and transformation can be completely controlled and inner connections between distant sections can be had. The improvised and spontaneous gives the surprise of discovery and the ensuing rush of a non-verbal insight or awareness. When these two paths converge in a common musical language through the performers’ skill and willingness, they begin to influence each other and transpose their features into each other’s realm. It requires that the score proposes the musical ambience of the underlying structure while leaving sufficient space for the soloist to explore and exert an effect on the sum total. Book of Throws is about this meeting and an invitation for its symbiotic outcome.

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