Non-Hierarchical Collaboration
Between Concept and Sound
Or between the Composer and the Music

Composers create music. 

Music is composed of time, sound, and their interrelation. Compositions explore not only the tangible but also the extremely speculative.

Interrelation encompasses not only the various relationships among musical sounds, but also the relationship between the piece itself and musical conventions. John Cage’s 4’33” (1952) introduces aleatory noise as new sound material, which subverts the conventional definitions of music, its composition, performance, and appreciation. Sound includes not only the sounds physically produced, but also the sounds imagined in the mind. During the first rehearsal of a new piece that has never been performed before, the conductor guides the orchestra in actualizing the sounds from the very beginning. This is only possible if the conductor has already heard these sounds before the rehearsal—perhaps in their mind from studying the score. Time comprises not only the time conceptually prescribed by the composer, and the time phenomenologically realized by the performer, but also the time psychologically reconstructed by the listener. When the listener is bored with music, time passes slowly; when intrigued, time passes quickly; and when distracted, time disappears.

According to these expansive definitions, even an imagined sound occurring for zero seconds in someone’s mind can be considered music. However, even if this is theoretically agreed upon, it is uncertain whether people would want to hear or keep listening to this music.

How do you set the aesthetic distance between the concept and its actual sounds? How do you define both concept and sound in music? What role does the concept play among conventional sounds, novel sounds, audible sounds, imperceptible sounds, contemporary sounds, and sounds people want to hear?

Non-Hierarchical Collaboration 
Between Instruction and Interpretation
Or between the Composer and the Performer

Performers also create music. 

Music is actualized through sounds produced by performers. However, the completeness of this actualization is often questionable.

I recall feeling insecure when stepping on stage, sensing that I hadn’t yet achieved perfection. Whenever this happened, I would joke that I was practicing on stage. However, perfection might, after all, be a mirage that no one can truly attain. Interestingly, there is a musical genre that superposes rehearsal and performance. Études refer to short pieces originally composed to hone a specific technique for performing; however, since Chopin, they have evolved into popular concert pieces. When an étude is performed on stage, it theoretically enacts both practice and performance, manifesting that the essence of performance could be fundamentally about ‘becoming.’

In 2018, I staged Julia Wolfe’s Lick as Act 1 of my then-new performance piece. As I was exploring the notion of ‘process as result,’ I asked the publisher who manages the copyright of Lick whether it was permissible to ‘perform its rehearsal’ on stage. Naturally, the publisher prohibited this, stating that the music must be “performed in the way the composer intended, as represented in the sheet music.” Although I had anticipated they would not allow practicing on stage, hearing this prohibition prompted a cascade of questions. Is it possible to rehearse a piece while disregarding the written intentions of the composer anyway? Don’t performers at any stage of rehearsal strive to perform as intended by the score? What determines a performance’s fulfillment of the intention of the composer? What clearly distinguishes rehearsal from performance? What is the composer’s intention?

The intention of a composer is usually written into the score. However, even if the ideal sound to be performed is carefully predetermined and the score meticulously clarifies the instructions, interpretation is always open. When I write scores for performance-accompanied works, I am reminded of Didi-Huberman’s citation of German historian Aby Warburg and debate whether I am seeking a “Kantian victory of (axiomatic) schematism vs. Nietzschean pain of (heuristic) erraticism.”

How much can a music piece close or open itself to the performer? To what extent does (performative) variation retain the (composed) essence? On the other hand, do performers truly wish to become a quasi-co-composer through open-ended interpretation?

Non-Hierarchical Collaboration
Between Confusion and Context
Or between the Composer and the Audience

Listeners create music as well.

Music cannot truly exist without a listener. Whether noticed or not, listening involves technique. The technique of listening encompasses recognizing and memorizing what is heard, which corporealizes music: When you recognize the pulse, you can engage with the rhythm and immerse your body in it; when you recall a thematic melody, you can sing or hum it. Listening involves transforming the abstract into the bodily. 

While dance embraces its ephemeral nature, asserting that “dance disappears as soon as it is seen,” music has sought to overcome its transient quality by developing a conceptual and universal language and a standardized system of notation. Musical language has formalized regular pulses, discernible melody, and reappearing motifs; perceiving these facilitates listening. However, following the collapse of tonality and the shift to individual languages by each composer rather than a universal system, listening, perceiving, or remembering has become increasingly challenging. Recognizing and memorizing depend on familiarity. Familiarity relies on understanding previous conventions. Accepting conventions often means conforming to what is given.

“Not taking anything for granted” is an essential attitude in contemporary artistic experiments that actively critique conventions. However, moving away from conventions may produce sounds that are difficult to remember or even perceive. How, then, can anti-conventional experimental music be physically perceived and retained in memory? How can music that opposes conventions induce ‘structural listening?’ Or, is it possible for music to exist independently in the absence of the listener?

In the 1930s the French composer Edgard Varèse said: “To stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all what is music but organized noises?” Does organized sound define music or are we organizing something else to create music? Some composers compose actions in time and you can ask: are we expected to listen to the sound of the actions or follow and understand the music visually? Sometimes music has no sound and nothing to look at, it consists of a social situation, it is a composed social situation. The social parameters might be found in the ensemble or orchestral structure or between the audience and the musicians or between one audience member and another. During the compositional process the composer might discover that the concept will communicate better if the music only consists of a series of non sounding actions instead of sound, and sometimes the concept can best be translated through sound, or through sound only, without any visual input. The composer makes the decisions to communicate the concept best. If a decision has not been thought through with enough care, the musical material may not communicate, may communicate poorly, have many distractions or communicate something else entirely. There will always be communication when something is presented to others, even when the composer does not intend to communicate something specific. It is the composer’s choice to have some control over the communication and to choose the right tools for this. However, complete control is not possible; there are always many external parameters affecting the resulting experience.

Going to concerts is full of etiquette: we enter a concert hall, we sit or stand, experience the music and clap our hands when the experience is finished. These social situations might provide inspiration for the composer. The composer is one little part of the social situation. The commissioner frames the social situation and the composer reacts to the framing of the situation by analyzing it, reflecting upon it, finally establishing a source of inspiration; and that is only the beginning of it. The composer is now guided by the inspiration and develops a concept from this inspiration. The concept is essential to further frame the possibilities the composer has within the situation. The concept helps to develop the musical material and since the concept was developed from analyzing the social situation, the musical material can now no longer be separated anymore from the specific situation. Musical material can be sound, but, depending upon the things the composer has analysed, it can also be something else. Perhaps the concept focusses on the audience for that specific social situation and organises parameters in direct relationship with the audience and their actions; or perhaps the composer has found inspiration from analyzing the relationship between the musicians and then created musical material that underlines that relationship. Or perhaps the composer has analysed their own personal relationship with the situation and developed musical material to share this relationship in such a way that not only the musicians, but also the audience receives insight into the subject.

The performers are one part of the social situation. The commissioner might have chosen specific performers to encourage, limit or inspire the composer. Or alternatively the performers might be the commissioners and have selected a specific composer to work with. Some composers might forget about the instrumentalists being human and only see musical instruments to work with. However the composer will be reminded of the social situation when they see and or hear the composition during the first rehearsal. The performers are interpreters and also humans with different backgrounds. If the composition is written for the Logos Foundation robot orchestra in Belgium then the human part doesn’t matter, but even each robot has a character which the composer should know about. 

If performers can inspire the composer then why not embrace this? The composer might even choose to invite the performers into the compositional process. In this way the composer can share insight into the process, which leads to better-informed performers. The performers will understand each decision such as the ways in which the musical material was developed and their own place within the organised social situation. The composer can benefit from the established communicative relationship and develop new notational methods and techniques for the performers to learn. The performers have complete insight to the work and can therefore also contribute to the process. At that point, the performers are no longer just performers but close collaborators, and even co-composers themselves! When the composer finalizes the work, they will carefully write instructions that can be understood by everyone. The universal instructions can then be given to someone at the other side of the world and can be re-interpreted. Because of the close collaboration between the first (group) of performers and the composer, the composer will have taken account of all the interpretational possibilities and will have written clear instructions about the concept of the piece. The new performers will realise that they need to establish a ‘researcher’ attitude in order to rehearse the work. They will have to take responsibility and analyze how a new performance context relates to the written music. The performers might become curators to make sure the written music translates correctly in a different context. The performers will only know what the correct interpretation is when they have done sufficient research. This means that some performers might take up the role of commissioner, performer, composer, researcher and curator.

Maybe this monologue is music and you and I are engaged in a critical reflection about composing music today. This critical reflection is specifically composed for this social situation and you are part of this situation and therefore also part of this music. This is not music without you. Perhaps you don’t recognize this performance as music and maybe I’m simply confusing you. Maybe I like to confuse you because I believe that if I confuse you, you will start thinking about what I’m talking about. If I told you something you already knew, you might close off your ears and turn off your brain, because you already know the “tune”. I hope to do the opposite with this performance and make you think critically. You might ask yourself, is it the role of music to do this? I think music can do many things at the same time: it can share creativity with the audience; it can share an analysis; an opinion; an emotion; or even create friendships. Composing, performing and sharing music builds social situations that cannot be found anywhere else. Maybe I love composing music so much because I also build the social situations around me. It gives a sense of control without being fully responsible for the end result because it is the audience that makes the end result. If a composer wants to know what the audience (or performers) experiences, they can ask them and initiate a conversation. I feel I grow every time I have such conversations. I don’t take the conversations as advice for my compositional processes, but rather as an invitation to see things from other perspectives. This gives me fuel to grow as a human being, and as a composer. 

I believe a composer should not be scared to view subjects from different perspectives and that they should always take the time to step out of any established comfort zone. If not, the composer might risk making work that is meaningless, a tune that the audience hears but doesn’t listen to, and that would be my worst nightmare. The performance of such a work wouldn’t compose a social situation of critical thinkers and nobody would receive any fuel to grow, not me and not you. I hope that this music we are performing together has composed a social situation of critical thinkers and I hope you enjoy being the music, the composer, the performers and audience.

15 September 2024
Maya Verlaak