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Abstract
An interwoven reading of Hans Joachim Hespos’ Weiβschatten and Jacques Derrida’s ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ (Writing and Difference, 1967). I examine the impact that improvisation has on performance and consider how an information overload creates shifting layers of reference. I explore the ways in which Hespos combines information systems, and infinite, or ‘overabundant’, chains of signifiers, which allow the space for collaboration and performer agency, thereby keeping the performer/composer/audience interface in constant movement.
Keywords:
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 I had previous experience of performing Hespos’ Bing (2010) for solo soprano. Hespos composed Shut Ups! (2019) and YAPA (2020) for me also.
2 I was curious to learn if Hespos had supplied this glossary with all scores from the outset, and he confirmed that this was indeed the case (email communication, 1 June 2019). All of Hespos’ scores (including his earliest works) come with the glossary, demonstrating an extremely consistent compositional usage, somewhat similar to Derrida’s philosophical undertakings. Singers also receive additional phonetic information, as do instrumentalists who are required to utilise phonetic material in whatever form.
3 From ‘laughing’ further questions could arise: how should the laughter be accomplished? Should the performer take the laugh from ‘life’, almost entirely erasing the pitch content of the motif, or maybe instead cackle on a pitched f sharp? Should they base the laughter on an earlier performative-musical model, for example Mein Herr Marquis (The Laughing Song) from Johan Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus (1874), or the Sherman Brothers’ I Love to Laugh (Mary Poppins, 1964), or Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969)?
4 See also Mieko Kanno’s use of the terms ‘prescriptive’ and ‘descriptive’ for similar concerns regarding the notation in John Cage’s Freeman Etudes (Kanno Citation2009, 52–54).
5 Examples can be found in Canzone (2002), and Bing (2010), for solo soprano, and Weiβschatten (Citation2017), Shut Ups! (2018) and Yapa (2020) for soprano and piano.
6 See also Deleuze and Guattari (Citation1987) and Bogue (Citation2014) in reference to Sylvano Bussotti’s Piano Pieces for David Tudor, No. 4.
7 The preceding two paragraphs, with the accompanying examples, are taken from ‘The Rehearsal Process: Finnissy, Hespos and Pragmatic Approaches to Indeterminacy’ (Lesser Citation2021, 107–10)
8 There were, however, places where Hespos knew exactly what he wanted. Hespos does not encourage a totally rule-less, free-for-all approach to interpretation.
9 This extends also to Hespos’ avoidance of conductors. Although perfectly normal practice in standard chamber works, it is most unusual for orchestral scores of great complexity to dispense with the services of the conductor entirely, instead having all the players work from full scores. Is this a kind of utopia or a rejection of the author, the director, the centre, or all three?
10 Canvas is particularly interesting in relation to Hespos, since Johns plays with the binary opposition of recto/verso, overturning and absorbing the back of the frame and superimposing it onto the front of the picture, all the while covering the ‘surface’ with a swirling mass of differentiated greys, so the paints, the signifiers (in artistic terms) mediate between the flat plane of the canvas and the three-dimensional angle created by the superimposition of the smaller recto frame. ‘Once the canvas can be taken to have any kind of spatial meaning, then an object can be taken to have that meaning within the canvas’ (Rondeau Citation2012, 34–35).
12 Similar preoccupations occur in the work of Luciano Berio, e.g., Allelujah II (1957–58) and Sinfonia (1968–69).
13 Hespos frequently referred to his love of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925) and its importance in his work during the rehearsal period in January 2018 prior to the world premiere in April 2018.
14 There are many similar examples: the Stable Gallery, New York showcased pages from ‘scores’ by John Cage during 1958’s twenty-five-year retrospective of his work (Nicholls Citation2011, 19), and Stockhausen’s ‘scores’ and visual sketching material have featured in a significant number of exhibitions (Oelschlägel Citation2018, 126–27).
15 The other two key publications from 1967, dealing with phenomenology and structuralism, are Speech and Phenomena and Of Grammatology.
16 Eight of the eleven essays in Writing and Difference employ this method.
17 Derrida deconstructs passages from the Introduction to the Works of Marcel Mauss (Citation1950), The Savage Mind (trans. 1966), The Raw and the Cooked (trans. Citation1969a), and The Elementary Structures of Kinship (trans. Citation1969b).
18 We can take this further if we consider the physical impact any musical technique leaves on the body after a period of time. Muscles are trained in certain ways, and develop their own ‘memory’ of musical functions. Muscles, tendons, etc., can also be abused, leaving a permanent mark on the body. Even if after surgery the damage is repaired, the mark of the change and its overturning will still be there—considerations that Derrida discusses in some detail in Archive Fever (Citation1998).
19 Or it could be mimesis (or not) of a ‘natural’ sound: I could just be imitating my cat, imitating clearing my throat, actually clearing my throat, etc., but all within the performance of the culturally loaded ‘modern Lied’.
20 ‘Trace’ challenges the opposition between presence and absence (and the Saussurean sign) by thinking instead of undecidability at the origin of meaning. See also Derrida, Of Grammatology (Citation1976) and Margins of Philosophy (Citation1984).
21 This raises some interesting questions regarding both technique and authenticity. If we allow the play of the trace to carry us with it, it not only refers to the past but also projects forwards into the future (see Derrida’s Specters of Marx, Citation1994, for a very detailed discussion of the forward projection of ontology). Performance technique thus becomes both relevant and able to move freely backwards and forwards throughout the historical flow of repertoire, further problematising the idea of an ‘authentic’, and therefore ‘fixed’, historical performance.
22 Found in the Elementary Structures of Kinship (Lévi-Strauss, Citation1969b; Derrida Citation2001, 357).
23 Ibid.
24 Rather than depending on a system of performative practice traditions to create an exact model of performance, as in, for example, medieval notation.
25 I would include the ‘performer’ in this category, both in the learning stages—such as when the performer is ‘reading’ the work—and in the actual performance.
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Notes on contributors
Clare Lesser
Clare Lesser is a performer, musicologist and composer. She completed a PhD in 2020 at the University of York on deconstructive approaches to indeterminacy. She has given over 75 world premieres, including works by Michael Finnissy and Hans Joachim Hespos, and is recorded on the Métier label. Recent publications focus on the work of John Cage; Michael Finnissy; Hans Joachim Hespos; and pragmatic approaches to the rehearsal process. Her research interests include deconstruction, indeterminate and improvised music, graphic notation and sound art. She is program head of music at NYUAD.