![Sample our Arts journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110799/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Arts.jpg"})
Abstract
The practices of collaborating composers and performers have been receiving increasing attention within academic discourse. Such collaborations are often presented from two complementary perspectives: pre-compositional joint invention and post-compositional negotiations in the realisation of a score and its notation. This article attempts to bridge the gap between the two perspectives through a discussion on the emergence of ‘voice’ that pervades the artistic practice, and binds the pre- and post-compositional phases together. Two compositions by David Gorton, written in collaboration with guitar player Stefan Östersjö, will be examined: Forlorn Hope for 11-string alto guitar and optional live electronics and Austerity Measures I for 10-string guitar. Both pieces are the result of an extended pre-composition experimental phase, and both pieces attempt to recreate something of those experiments in the contexts of their performance, establishing the conditions for the emergence of a ‘discursive voice’ of both composer and performer.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the following: Catherine Laws, principal investigator of the Performance, Subjectivity and Experimentation research cluster at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, of which this study is a part; Dirk Moelants and Esther Coorevits at the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music, University of Ghent; Eric Clarke and Mark Doffman, and the Creative Practice in Contemporary Concert Music Project, University of Oxford, part of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
David Gorton http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9282-0975
Stefan Östersjö http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4704-5420
Notes
1 That is, contemporary classical art music, and other fields of music making that those trained in the former may branch into. In other genres, collaboration between musicians is a given and is normally not much discussed. Although, the academic study of collaboration has now also moved into contemporary jazz and non-western music.
2 For attempts at more nuanced definitions see John-Steiner (Citation2006) and Östersjö (Citation2008).
3 Fitch and Heyde (Citation2007) cite examples of Brahms–Joachim, Elgar–Kreisler, and Chopin–Franchomme manuscripts as evidence of collaboration, even if the process itself remains inaccessible.
4 The very existence of this journal edition is evidence of this interest.
5 More advanced computer skills, such as html coding, have to wait until year four.
6 John Croft’s (Citation2015) article ‘Composition is not research’ caused rather a stir when it was published. Whether you agree with its arguments or not, the article is useful in laying out the scope of the battleground.
7 See for example Stefan Östersjö’s work with composer Henrik Frisk on Repetition Repeats all other Repetitions (Coessens, Frisk, & Östersjö, Citation2014).
8 Both pieces were composed by David Gorton for, and with, Stefan Östersjö as part of an on-going collaboration. Forlorn Hope was first performed by Stefan Östersjö and Juan Parra Cancino (electronics), ORCiM Research Festival, Orpheus Institute, Ghent, 5 October 2012. Austerity Measures I was first performed by Stefan Östersjö, ORCiM Research Festival, Orpheus Institute, Ghent, 2 October 2014. Austerity Measures I is the first in an on-going series of similarly titled pieces.
9 Clarke et al. (Citation2013) comment on the potential problems and benefits of recording rehearsals on video. Both Gorton and Östersjö were used to working with a camera in the room.
10 Gorton has run a practical class about composer–performer collaboration at the Royal Academy of Music for the past decade. Almost all of the student collaborations begin with this kind of demonstrative interaction, what Fitch and Heyde describe as a ‘performer giving the composer access to his “box of tricks”’ (Citation2007, p. 73).
11 The duration of playing time was calculated with reference to the video footage of the sessions.
12 Examples from the video documentation can be found in the online material accompanying Clarke, Doffman, Gorton, and Österjsö (Citationin press). There are also additional extracts from the videos available online.
13 Further discussion of these three methods and other kinds of interaction between composer and performer in the Malmö sessions can be found in Clarke et al. (Citationin press).
14 This is of course an oversimplification, but Östersjö is a classically trained guitarist who has specialised in contemporary classical music performance. As a performer he has established long-term collaborative projects with a number of composers across the world. But he is also active in the field of free improvisation and has a strong presence on the South East Asian music scene through extensive cross-cultural work. Hence, a number of different musical traditions are embodied by the same musician in this situation.
15 Choose Your Own Adventure books were a popular series of children’s books originally published from the end of the 1970s through to the 1990s. The Choose Your Own Adventure website (www.cyoa.com) describes them thus: ‘Each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions in response to the plot and its outcome’.
16 Fraser recognises the differences between time as understood by classical physics, quantum mechanics, and human experience, by identifying a number of inclusive yet distinct evolutionary temporalities. The level of human temporality achieves uniqueness through its triadic form of past–present–future, as opposed to the diodic before/after of preceding levels.
17 Any evaluation of music described in terms of experiential temporality must take into account its own subjectivity. The ways in which music affects a listener are dependent on personal experience and must be set within the context of an individual listener who is influenced by personal experience, pre-knowledge of a work or genre, and an ability and inclination to listen.
18 In tonal music the dominant characteristic in the formation of this kind of structure is the functional harmonic syntax itself, and it need hardly be stated that the evaluation of structure in terms of harmonic stability and instability, themselves a being/becoming pair, is common currency.
19 The compositional work from 2004 to 2006 was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.
20 See for example Sonnentode for soprano and ensemble (2005), Erinnerungsspiel for oboe and optional electronics (2006), 2nd Sonata for Cello (2007), and Schmetterlingsspiel for oboe and ensemble (2013).
21 See for example String Quartet: Trajectories (2006) and Melting Forms for piano trio (2005).
22 Sonata for Solo Cello was first performed by Neil Heyde at the Tate Gallery, St Ives, 11 September 2005.
23 Following Dowland’s example the dance sections are named after prominent, although not necessarily popular, members of public life.
24 An additional layer of complexity is added when the piece is performed with electronics. The preparation of the electronics part with Juan Parra Cancino for the first performance in 2012 was itself a collaborative activity, not dissimilar in character to the 2010 Malmö sessions.
25 This model is assuming a composer who is not simultaneously a performer.
26 While inner hearing draws on analytical thinking and inner imagination, concrete listening emerges from the ecological system of human perception. (For a further discussion see Östersjö, Citation2008, pp. 79–80).
27 This concept will be explored further below.
28 See Clarke et al. (Citationin press) for details of this transferal process.
29 There is also a version of the piece in which the score is played through three times; here the score is marked up with the numbers 1–3 rather than 1–4.
30 The on-going study of four performances of Austerity Measures I given by Östersjö at the 2014 Orpheus Research Festival draws on quantitative timing and movement data and qualitative analysis of audio and video. Preliminary method development and results are published in Coorevits, Moelants, Östersjö, Gorton, and Leman (Citation2016).