Erica - Photographer

Joelle - Clarinet

It has taken me a while to think through the process that was our performance. First it was terrifying. I decided not to practice the piece a lot. I did not want to feel like I was locked into a certain way of performing the piece. It felt like it should be flexible from performance to performance. We were not able to do more performances this semester but I hope that we will be able to continue to explore the possibilities of the piece in the future. The performance itself was exciting but also very scary to open up myself to the possibility of critique on what I created. There were no notes to hide behind, no one else's ideas to blame if someone didn’t like it. It was scary but great. It is a feeling in performance that is always there but this is just an extreme situation.

I really enjoyed watching all of the other performances. It was interesting to see how an artist handled the challenge of drawing a piece from a graphic score. But more than that is was interesting to watch the discomfort of the performer during the performance. It was clear, in a way that is not with musicians, that they were feeling weird having people watch them drawing. They don't usually have people watching them draw, but I am not used to having people watch and listen to me when I play. Usually I am in a practice room all by myself. Though I aspire to have people listen to me play it is not what happens every day. I thought that it was very telling to see someone who is not a stage performer be on the stage and experience the discomfort.

Lizzee - Artist

Post Performance -

The experience I had was an interesting one. I did not receive a copy of the score beforehand, so I had no idea how I was going to perform it, nor what the score was. I actually thought the score would be a traditional musical score. Needless to say, I was surprised by what I saw. To me, it looked like a mixture of Kandinsky's paintings and Federico Garcia Lorca's drawings.

It was awkward to draw in front of a group of people in complete silence while being videotaped. In hindsight, I wish I had thought of something more original to do instead of drawing with pen on paper. I feel that creating two-dimensional art is a solitary activity in which artist and material and art are intimately related. When placed in the front of a strange classroom and exposed to a score I had never before seen, I panicked. I felt frustrated and dumb, for lack of better words.

However, I enjoyed watching other people's performances immensely. I felt uncomfortable during Soojin's performance, just because she was another artist, and the room was completely silent as she sat drawing. I also appreciated being able to discuss the performance afterward with the group. I felt that Kate and the performers were very understanding of the discomfort and confusion that I felt at the time. The discussion was also was a great way to organize everyone's thoughts
and to provoke new thoughts and considerations about experimental, cross-disciplinary collaborations. Overall, the BAR project was a unique and thought-provoking experience.

Ian - Actor

Marcus - Percussion

I approached the graphic score in an improvisatory fashion based on the number six that seemed to be significant in the number of circles and triangles in the center-right area of the score. I chose woodblocks and kick-drum to represent the circular objects on the page, and cymbals to represent the more angular lines present on the page. I chose to start the piece with the center-right cluster of circles and triangles as a rhythmic tightly structured improvisation. Gradually, the piece becomes more ambient and pointillist as I attempt to interpret the objects surrounding the center-right figure and ending wth the peripheral objects. In several instances I chose to interpret the score in as literal a fashion as possible. (e.g. A bowed cymbal punctuated by a woodblock at the end to represent a line with a spot at the end of it. Also, the small cluster of very small dots I represent with paperclips cascading off the edge of a cymbal and onto woodblocks.)

Soojin - Visual Art

Pre Performance -

The first interpretation of the score I had only remained literal. Images of scattering insects or flower petals came to mind. Fire work is another depiction of the score that I had. I thought about what kind of music or noises each of the instruments would play or sound like. It was hard to imagine how anybody could read this score.

Even though the performance is done as one, everybody partaking in the project will most likely produce works with extreme individuality. Some unity might be visible within the instruments because of the difference in the mediums as opposed to art students. Because of the way a score is 'supposed' to be read might be imprinted, a lot of staccato beats or sounds could be guessed to be heard. For those using visual arts as the medium, they might not have as much to relate with each other as opposed to using music as the medium. In the overall picture however, the performance will definitely seem rather bizzare because of the unique individualism added by each person.

Post Performance -

The BAR Project turned out to be how I imagined it would be. The musicians generally focused on busy and staccato notes whereas the artists produced drawings "broken" drawings. It was interesting to see how everyone read the score literally and interpreted it literally. It was weird but intriguing at the same time to hear music according to the score that was given to me to interpret into a drawing. The idea of either coming together into a perfect form or brokeness was depicted in the drawings as well as the music and drama. Again, this probably happened because of the way everyone was reading the score since rather than an actual music score, it was closer to a diagram with symbols and shapes. I think it would be interesting to try it over and over to see how broad the interpretation of each medium gets as it gets further and further away from the literal translation of the score.

First reaction from Monday's performance

I wrote this on Monday night but because it's the last week of classes and my life is moving a little too fast right now, I didn't get my act together until just now to type it and post. We will be posting journal entries from all of the performers in the near future as well as photos and videos from the evening.

In my opinion, this project was a huge success. HUGE. I can't believe how geeked out I was on Monday night during the performance, how into it I got, just as an audience member. It is always wonderful as a composer to see your ideas come to life, even if the mediums are different and well... they really weren't your ideas anymore. It's like I built the fire and then gave someone the match. (Bad metaphor. I'll work on that.)

Regardless, here was my immediate response to the evening:

Tonight we had a performance of our Independent Study project that Joelle and I have been working on, the BAR Project. I had created a graphic score and given it to a percussionist, two artists, a clarinet player, an actor and a photographer for interpretation. While I could go into extensive detail about the process for me or the performance theory that I discussed with my advisor, the important part of the reflection comes from the actual performance, which was attended by me, our advisor Richard Randall, and another friend if a performer, a writer. We had invited Noel Zahler, Stephen Neely, and a few graduate composers who I thought would be interested in attending. Unfortunately, schedules at the end of the semester are hard to get around. Regardless, the performance was in a classroom on Monday night and I don’t think I could have been happier with it; we had initially proposed two public performances, one on campus and one out in the community, but the project evolved in a manner that a smaller private performance was the most effective way to go.

When everyone was gathered in the room, I tried very hard to stay out of the performance process. The artists decided amongst themselves the order of performance. Marcus went first, performing for about five minutes on six cymbals and six woodblocks. He used drumsticks, mallets, and paperclips to strike his instruments. His performance was impeccable, controlled, and creative. When we talked about his choices, he mentioned that the paperclips corresponded with the concentrations of small dots throughout the score.

Lizzee, a sophomore art major was next to perform. She sat in front of us and drew on a piece of paper for about four or so minutes. I thought that I knew what she was drawing, just by looking at the orientation of her hands and how they were moving in relation to the paper. She spoke afterward about how awkward it was to have people watching her draw; she felt as though she needed to produce a certain level of finished work as well as to do it with a bit of flair; “after Marcus’ performance, I thought that maybe I should draw with two pens in each hand.” Her creation was a kind of creature, based on the orientation of the dots I had drawn on the score.

Ian delivered his monologue next. He expertly toed the line between performance and reality; both with the words that he had chosen as well as the topic he delivered. The intimacy of the performance based on environment and our proximity to the actor provided for an experience that I as the composer was looking for; I wanted the audience to feel as though they were pushed into a performance space only to be pulled out immediately, put in the theatre and then had the house lights turned on. Ian essentially performed his process of interpretation, going through the score and struggling with what exactly he should be saying. Ian spoke after the performances about his process; he had come up with multiple good ideas weeks before the performance, and then decided the night before that what he wanted to do something different, that his previous ideas hadn’t worked at all. His final portrayal was a combination of his previous ideas and his Sunday-night experience of his nerves having the potential to get the best of him. He used phrases like “broken” and “shattered”, talking about broken pieces coming together to a whole only to fall apart again in a different way. It was emotionally intense, and very well performed.

Soojin was next to go. She is a freshman art major who was the second person to draw. As a non-drawer, I don’t know how influenced one can be by another visual artist, but if the tables were shifted to musicians, if I as a pianist saw another pianist improvise a piece, it would most definitely influence me. Soojin said however, that Lizzee’s drawing did not influence her. She had come in with her own inspiration and influence and her product was very contrasting from Lizzee’s. Soojin focused on the angular nature of the score and created a three-dimensional, jagged interpretation.

Joelle, a second year masters student in clarinet performance, and my partner in crime, was the penultimate performer. Her interpretation of the score was musically creative and as a musician, what I was looking for. The three-note motives she played were strong in their portrayal of the triangles and their orientations on the page, and the registral motives she implemented were effective and creative. Interestingly, Joelle interpreted the high point or the focal point of the piece to be something other than what I had put on paper. There is a large black dot to the left of my intended focal point that Joelle focused on as the apex of her performance. I was surprised to hear her say this; I thought that my focal point was clear beyond a doubt. I was not disappointed by her interpretation, in fact it was quite the opposite, I was excited by the fact that my score had created a wide array of methods of reading.

Erika, a photographer was last to perform. She had posted progressions of images all focused on potholes around Pittsburgh. The presentations were following cracks in roads, chalk outlines around manhole covers, and large potholes in the area. It is difficult for me to describe the images, but it was interesting to see her interpretations of the score. The photographic “phrases” seemed to follow trajectories similar to ones that could have been mapped out from the score.

It was fascinating to me to experience the realizations of my graphic score in a form other than music. Because of my background in music it was easy to imagine what the musicians’ performances could resemble, even if their performances weren’t exactly what I had imagined. What was more fascinating to me is what happened with Ian who had to bring words and plot into the score with no verbal or vocabulary cues in the piece to guide him. I was additionally excited by Lizzee and Soojin who talked about how they’ve never been asked to create an image from an image. Occasionally they will recreate an apple that is sitting on a desk, or look at the human form and draw it on a piece of paper, but this request is something that has not been asked of them yet. For Lizzee, this was something that she had always wanted to do, and so she was very excited to experience it. I was additionally intrigued by the fact that the two interpretations within the same medium were so contrasting. Erika’s photos seemed to me to be a combination between Ian’s acting and Lizzee and Soojin’s drawings; she was combining real life with the visual “abstract” into the composition of her photography.

Each artist got to experience what it was like to be a composer for this project, a role that they are rarely put in. Additionally, I really feel as though the artists got a chance to experience what it was like to be a performer, a role they don’t necessarily play in the same context that they did on Monday night. There was a certain amount of anxiety involved for all, sometimes it showed through to the audience and other times it did not, but it was important to me that the artists explored aspects of their creation and their medium that they had not previously explored whether it was because they did not have the opportunity or because they simply chose to avoid it.

In my opinion, it was a highly successful performance, one I could discuss for hours on end; it opened my eyes to different forms of art, interpretation, and definitely caused me to stretch my compositional boundaries.

New Blood

Yesterday and today I met with two more people who will be participating in our performances. Both are art students. Lizzee is going to paint and Soojin is not sure yet what to do. They are both really excited about the project and so am I. I can't wait to see what kinds of representations they will create. So I think now we have all our performers for the piece. I am really excited to get to the next stage of the project, which is actually performing the piece. We don’t really want to rehearse at all because we are inevitably going to be influenced by each other's interpretations. We want to be as fresh as possible when we get together to perform so that we can create an authentic individual performance every time. To ensure this we will be performing the piece in a different way each time we perform. For example, the first time we perform may have a particular order of performers, this would need to be different the second time to prevent any similar influences in the performance.

The next step is to get together and talk about our ideas for the performance and how much time each of will need or want. And find time when we are all available to perform!

-Joelle

Check this out!

Draft 1.

I will meet with Richard at the end of this week to discuss what I have...


-KP

Hokey Pokey

Today in Eurhythmics class I performed the third movement of a solo clarinet piece, Genzmer's Fantasie. The piece is very rubato and marked 'quasi parlando'. The point of the exercise was to see how the students would react to the piece. They used their bodies to show what they were hearing and feeling as I played the movement. I played the piece several times and watched as much as I could.

As we talked about our reactions, they, as listeners, and me, as the performer experiencing their reactions visually in front of me, I commented that it was interesting that from the very beginning their actions were exactly how I felt the piece. Was I controlling them or where they controlling me? This is a question that I, as a performer, am very interested in. Is what I am trying to communicate really transferring that well to my audience? Do I have control over how they hear the piece? I will be playing this piece for the class again when we have more time and I will try playing around with my musical message and see how that changes the reactions of the audience.

This is an issue that I believe has great relevance in our classical community as well as for all the arts. We are constantly striving to increase our audiences and support. If we can understand how our communication is translated to the audience I think that we can continue to build a strong audience and gain more support.

This is a question that is also relevant in my personal growth as a musician. The sensitivity of expression is something that takes great care and control. This is something that I have been working on this year in my lessons. As I can gain more understanding of how the audience reacts to my expression I will gain more sensitivity and control. And understand more about communication through music.

And that's what it's all about.

-Joelle

Moments are tiny experiences. Small. Instant.

So, again, I was that kid on the plane, except this time I was flying back to “the burgh” as I so lovingly have grown to call it.

So here’s my moment;

From the work that I did during the week, I decided that even the gesture I had created was too much. It was still made up of fragments that were joined together to create a bigger idea. I threw around the idea of just using the circle or just the triangle to define as my moment, but part of the intrigue is that I want to see what happens when these artists have to deal with the manipulation of these two parts fused together and read as one.

So I just tried to think of as many ideas as I could to manipulate this moment that I had created. I altered orientation, the size of the dot, whether it was an outline or filled in, the dimensions of the triangle (expanded one way but remaining consistent in the other direction), etc. Here’s what some of my sketches look like.


Notable; just under the asterisk statement (yes, I did spell “realize” with an “s”, it is a habit I picked up from a year of study in the UK), I knocked the figure on its side. It looks so musical! I immediately read it and realiZed the image musically. Up until then, I had teetered around through a number of different realizations in different media, comfortable flowing around all of the performance options. Directly to the right, I manipulated the image in order to see if distorting it in some way would effectively move my brain away from the musical gesture. I still see a musical gesture, but I can also imagine extensive ideas in other media.
Additional sketches more focused on patterns, shapes, and connection more than one image with itself.

These images came from still thinking about this cell multiplication idea. I had done some basic research as well as some more in –depth basic research and figured that this might be a fun idea. How is it that one cell can divide into two which can split into four and nine months later there is a baby? It’s kind of a big idea to wrap your head around; that these tiny abstract pieces all form together and bond and grow and multiply and develop and then somehow there you are, standing there as a human, not what looks like 18 billion of these.

I took my cell division train and ran with it; this is the progression I came up with;


What I ended up writing on the page (mind you, still on the airplane. It was a long flight.) was the following;
“the fractal idea isn’t going to work. It looks too much like an image. Needs to be more abstract. More random? Be/Look formulaic without looking calculated.”

Oh hey, another can of worms. I think I’ll open it. Might as well. However, I’ll open it this week. This is where I am now, ready to open the can of worms of how precisely this all goes together. I think I understand how it’s going to go, I know what I want to put together to get to, where that point of arrival is, and how it should be orientated on paper. It makes sense on multiple smaller pieces of paper, but I need to brave the storm and just put it all together now. Take the big leap.

Before we get to that (it will be another post, another day), I wanted to let you know what I DID decide to do with my moment. I took that image and broke it down even further. I got frustrated with the fractal/cell division process because it looked too much like an image. There were too many parts creating this giant whole and the message got lost in the process. It’s like I was trying to make a statement in an argument and all I was doing was repeating the same thing over and over but louder and with different inflection. It wasn’t communicating the whole idea, the triangle/dot image.

So, I did this. And THIS I am pretty sure, is what I am going to stick with.

I have made it a point to keep most of this sketching process to myself, not showing any of the artists involved. Joelle has been very explicit about not wanting to see what I’m doing ahead of any other performer. I did however, show her this image today and she said that as a performer, the fragments that I had drawn, all working together to form a whole image were much more inspiring and “feasible” than that crazy sun-dial/tower I had drawn up above.

There you have it. I hope the next blog is an image of the score. Or at least a nice half way point of this score.

And a title. Ideas?

-Kate

Just Keep Swimming

So.
I keep using the word “gesture.” It seems to be the most effective way to communicate the parts of the score that I am trying to create. It’s not really a phrase or a measure, a note or a line, it’s a bit more abstract.
What does Merriam-Webster say it is?:

ges·ture
Pronunciation:
\ˈjes-chər, ˈjesh-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin gestura mode of action, from Latin gestus, past participle of gerere
Date:
15th century

1archaic : carriage , bearing
2: a movement usually of the body or limbs that expresses or emphasizes an idea, sentiment, or attitude
3: the use of motions of the limbs or body as a means of expression
4: something said or done by way of formality or courtesy, as a symbol or token, or for its effect on the attitudes of others

I like all of these, but mostly entries 2 and 3 seem to capture what I am trying to put onto paper. Let’s hold on to number 2; “… that expresses or emphasizes an idea, sentiment, or attitude.”

Carnegie Mellon is one of a handful of universities (maybe two handfuls) in the United States that offers training in Dalcroze Eurhythmics. At CMU, it is required for all undergraduates for four semesters, but I have been taking it for seven semesters now(adding a semester in my senior year as well as both semesters this ear). Joelle has also taken two semesters of the course. I can’t really explain to you in fewer than six paragraphs what Eurhythmics is, and even then it will really only be my definition. However, one of the best partial definitions I can offer is that it involves the physical realization of the body and mind’s internalization of music. How’s that for abstract. We take music, something completely fleeting and intangible, internalize it, and then recycle back out through physical expression and abstract gesture. I’m hoping that once we get into rehearsals, Joelle will comment on her process of analyzing/reading the score and if Eurhythmics plays a role in that at all(I’m guessing it does.) In those classes, it is all about the gesture. What is it that the music is trying to communicate, is there a way to communicate that to yourself and others with your physical body as well? (Side note: there are extensive additional applications of Eurhythmics training to one’s development as a musician, but the one that most predominately affects this process is the idea of gesture.) Even in writing this piece, I am constantly moving around, physically gesturing in ways that another person might, looking at the shapes I have created. I even go so far as to think of what might happen if someone was given a loaded paintbrush and a canvas as well, and asked to dictate or trace their gesture onto paper. Just food for thought, I suppose.

In our meeting last week, Richard and I also talked about the process of reading from a part and playing in an orchestra. In this type of ensemble setting, you only have your information, and you assume everyone is also playing what is asked of them in their different set of instructions.
How does reading from a score change things? This allows you to understand visually what is going on with the other members of the ensemble without necessarily aurally engaging as much as you would with just your own part to read from. It also has the potential to enhance the musical experience as the performers each see how they fit into the overall gesture(there’s that word again) of the work.
What if everyone has the same part but they play it on their own instrument (their own form of media?) This was more of a hypothetical question. In the discussion of altering the abstract proposal to include a score that everyone reads from, I emphasized the importance of everyone having the same information to interpret. I am not going to write four or five or ten different scores to cater to the needs of each artist; the goal is to find a method which caters to the needs of all the artists in a similar fashion. While the interpretation of the elements may be different by each performer, each individual element is intelligible and useful for each person.

I’ve been working more with this idea of fractals, too. I’m not sure I can get it to work mathematically, but I do think that I will be able to draw connections between the smaller and bigger elements of the piece in a somewhat fractal-like reference. It will be interesting to see as an end result what might happen.

Audience experience: what’s it all about? Apologies, guys, but I haven’t really given any conscious thought to you yet. My first audience is my performers. Roger Sessions talks about some of this thought process in his book, “The Musical Experience of Composer, Perfomer, and Listener.” Who is most important? Who comes first? Is a Performer also a composer? Does a Composer need to be a Listener as well?

As a composer, I go through a process of recycling. Step 1: Get an idea in your head. Step 2: Get thought from brain to paper (there is potential here to lose the essence of what you’re trying to say). Step 3: Give paper to performer. Step 4: Allow performer to read and interpret what you are trying to say (potential for transformation here both in the player’s interpretation and the restrictions of their physical skills and capabilities). Step 5: Rehearse, sometimes with other people who will have their own comments. Step 6: Perform. This can go any number of ways depending on the day, time, what the player ate for dinner, if it’s raining out, etc. Additionally, the audience experience changes based on where in the hall they are, what time they woke up that morning, if they’ve heard the piece before, if they know anything about the composer, if they want to be there or not, etc. The list goes on. From the point of the creation of the idea to the performance for an audience, the piece has the potential to retain little of what I initially imagined. Most of the time, this is okay with me, even welcomed. I think the opportunity to really see what someone else gets out of my music when I hand it over to them is a gift. At Carnegie Mellon we are rarely allowed to perform our own music; we are strongly encouraged to find other players to perform what we write. This is to test our skills of composition as much as it is an opportunity for the performer to play new music.

Being in the academic bubble, I know 99% of the time who will be performing my music so I have the luxury of writing for a specific performer. I get to work with them and highlight their talents and perhaps brush past their less desirable skills(or lack thereof). The performer is the first person that sees my music; they are my first audience, so my thoughts usually go immediately to them.

Richard asked me in my meeting with him what I thought about the audience experience. What do I want the audience to experience? What do I want them to go through? Are they just viewing the performance or are they a part of the performance? Today, concertgoers attend performers with a certain apathy, rarely are they truly involved and engaged, something that is both the fault of the performer/composer and the audience member. How do we engage the audience? How can I engage the audience with my score? Are there directions I can provide that would involve the audience more directly?
Probably.

Any ideas? What if I place the performers in the audience space or place the audience on the stage between the performers? What if the audience is allowed to dictate certain parameters of performance upon their entrance into the space? All of these have potential, but I’m not sure how involved I should get with it. The direction that I would like to provide is to allow the audience to move freely around the performers, look at their scores and move around the stage to view the performance from different angles. As for other involvement in regards to the actual outcome of the score, I am inclined to leave the audience out of it. At some point, there is a line that could get crossed that renders me as the composer useless. I wouldn’t want the title; if all I did was provide directions but left the majority of the decisions up to performer and audience, then maybe I am just winding up the clock and letting it go. When does the piece fall out of my hands as a composer? How far does it go?

-Kate

"It's about the journey."

I had a meeting with our adviser before we left for Spring Break; that interaction left me mostly hopeless but also timidly inspired. Granted, I didn’t have much to bring him, and what I did bring him I thought would be sufficient; in my frustrations of trying to put this score together, I figured I should do what I know, which is write pieces for my standard-notated, classically-trained bubble of academia. I started with a big picture drawing, over three or four 8/5 x 11 sheets of paper. I had come up with the structure of the piece, and even how I wanted this little cell I had conceived of in my brain to develop. No such luck. Richard wanted to know what was in the cell. (Beats me, that’s why I left them blank.) We did discuss the process of how the piece was going together, but it was stressed to me that I needed to be thinking about this cell and what I wanted to say with it. It’s all about the moment. So, I had to work on what I wanted my moment to be; what was the minute gesture that was going to make up the entire piece? (Sidenote: this meeting became hugely ironic to me when, the next day I had a lesson with my composition teacher. I am just beginning to write miniatures in my studio lessons, and so the pieces are all about how you take just ONE idea and manipulate it in many different ways. I’m happy that these projects are currently paralleling each other in some way.)

I also expressed my fears, fears which run through my studio composition as well; I worry that what I want to say won’t get translated onto paper properly(my fault), what I want to say won’t get interpreted the same way by the performers(again, partially my fault), or the audience won’t get the same interpretation through a combination of my composing and the peformer’s interpretation. Richard wrote the word “Duck” on a piece of paper and asked me what I would do if I was given that set of instructions. I told him that if I was the dancer in the project, I’d physically duck, if I was the actor, I might quack, and if I was the musician I would most likely imitate a duck sound in some way. Exactly. One word, one image, one cell, is going to create three (or more) different interpretations, depending on the kind of skills you have and limitations your art provides you with. So it’s not so much about what I specifically can convey, but the big picture that I can inspire within the manipulation of these tiny cells that I have created.
It’s spring break this week and so amidst my skiing in Montana I am working on this piece. On my flights out West, I was “that kid” on the plane, drawing all sorts of silly images and making notational notes, scribbling on half a sheet of bright yellow paper. In thinking about my moment, I imagined a gesture that I would want to see created by many different people. I started off with what I knew, what was most comfortable; a musical gesture:


I knew that I wanted it to have a definitive shape, and hit a “high point” in a low register/space. I then tried to create the same idea in a more abstract gesture. (Interestingly, what is more abstract than music notation? Or, even further, what about written language? Many languages use arbitrary symbols to create reference to words or letters; the letter “a” does not look like the shape we make with our mouths to produce the sound. Who decided that this shape was going to produce that specific sound and that, depending on which other symbols it was placed next to, the sound would change? It’s all abstract. So I suppose finding a more abstract gesture is not the right turn of phrase. Perhaps it is finding a different abstract gesture, or a more musically abstract gesture.)

Regardless, this was the first thing I came up with:

1.










Which became:
2.



Which I also tried to create as:
3.


None of these gestures seemed to be portraying what it was I wanted them to. #1 looked too much like a duck, which was ironic because of my conversation with my advisor earlier in the week. #3 looked too much like a blob and didn’t have any direction to it. #2 was perhaps the most accurate, but the gradual process of either pitch or volume could have been lost with that initial right angle.
I drew this:

This was essentially a way to indicate the gesture I wanted in my initial musical example without the constraints of pitch. I thought about what I might do as a dancer or artist if I were to see this and decided that the similarity between projected responses was much more appealing than either of the three gestures created above.

While I had not in any way really come up with my “cell” yet, I had gotten my brain over a few initial hurdles.

Next problem: what is my moment? In this process, I had created a gesture, but this existed over a span of time; in my mind, somewhere along the lines of five to ten seconds, but perhaps in the minds of other performers, this could happen over a minute or be the gesture of an entire section or even the whole piece. Hence another word written on this airplane paper: “fractals.” I had always been amazed by fractals when I was a kid, and thought that perhaps I could create my moment out of the bigger gesture I had imagined in the outline of my piece. More on that later; I only wrote the word down to remind myself what to look at next after I had figured out my moment.

Looking at the “no notes” gesture, I isolated the last portion of the gesture to call it my “moment” and do some exploration. This is what I came up with:




I imagined what would happen if any number of artists were to interpret this symbol, my version of the word “duck” if you will. The possibilities seemed much more endless than what would happen with my standard-notation musical gesture, as well as any of the more shape-like images I had created. Had I found my moment? Not definitively, but I will be using this as the inspiration for what my cell turns out to be.

-Kate

If A Tree Falls in the Forest…

Is it a Performance?

We had our first official meeting with our advisor (Richard Randall) this past week. Joelle and I came in with a paper full of questions and left with all of them answered; mostly with more questions.
We explained our project in greater detail, and then went through a list of questions that we had, including;
How long should the performance be?
How many people is too many?
Should we have a pianist play?
Can we blindfold the actor?

The list goes on and on. Our advisor mainly just said things like “sure” “you decide” and “go for it”. It became very clear to us that this project really was completely in our hands; he is there to make sure we don’t break any laws or cause anyone permanent damage. It’s like our own little cheering team in a game that’s impossible to lose. This project is all about discovery, observation, and learning. There is no final exam at the end, no note taking or cramming that we can do. It’s all about the process.

So here I am, stuck in the process. I’ve been slowly picking away at this score, a little more intimidated than I had planned on being. I have been looking at graphic scores (ones like Robert Moran's or Earle Brown’s December 1952). Scores like George Crumb’s are so artistically created that I am finding myself hugely intimidated by what I have to live up to. I am not an artist(in the visual sense), so creating a graphic score seems to highlight my lacking artistic prowess. I am also curious as to how I’m going to pull off a score of this magnitude solely by the skill of my not-so-artistic hand. Does anyone know of any computer software that I might be able to make this graphic score in? I’d love to have a digital version I can manipulate. It will make edits a much more bearable experience.
I think I’ve decided (gosh that sounds real convincing) that I need to go about this project just like I would any other composition in my studio time. I need to figure out what I want to say and then how to say it in a way that people (performers, audience) would understand. However, what happens when I give the score to the artists and they aren’t even close to what I wanted? Perhaps that’s where this process differs from my studio composition time; it’s in the afterthought, the performer to audience process that things leave my hands. That’s the point of the independent study anyway.
So what is it that I want to say? I want to explore the idea of taking a small motive/image/cell, and watching it expand into something much larger in an ordered, almost formulaic manner. After the high point of the piece (where the cell reaches maximum capacity), I will offer two methods of deconstruction, formulaic again, or a more random, aggressive, breakdown of the larger image.
Joelle had suggested doing something with a circle broken into four parts; pages that you could turn and perform in any orientation and order that you wanted. I am still toying with that idea, seeing if there is a way to work it into the piece I am currently conceiving of. It could be interesting, and allow for a much more varied performance, but I think that at this stage, with the huge array of performers that we are using, varying the orientation of their score might make things more unconnected than is necessary. Plus, I would like to see what happens if everyone has the exact same set of information. (Another project for another day, perhaps.)

-Kate

The partner in crime

Joelle La Rue
Clarinet

I am also a Masters student at Carnegie Mellon, currently studying Clarinet performance with Mike Rusinek. I received my Bachelor's in Music, Clarinet Performance from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2005. After taking a couple of years off from school and a year off from playing I came to CMU with a new appreciation for my studies. I hope to one day play in an orchestra.

With graduation coming up I was looking at my requirements and found that I needed a theory class so I enrolled in Postmodernism not really knowing what that was or who the prof would be. It sounded interesting but mainly it was the only theory class offered in the fall. It has turned out to be one of my favourite classes that I have ever taken. As Kate mentioned we were a stubborn class, and I was one of the worst. But it made for some great conversations and arguments. One of which ended up with Prof Randall telling me that my term paper had to be to define music.

This paper was the bane of my existence through December. There are a lot of papers written of the subject but not one that could answer my question. I refused to believe that any random noise could be defined as music, there had to be more. But what? After many long nights of reading and contemplating I came up with an answer, for now. It seemed to me that anything could be considered music as long as there was intention from either the performer/composer or the listener. I cannot tell someone that the sound of the highway as they drive is not music if they choose to believe it is music insomuch as they cannot tell me that it is music if I choose not to believe it is music. This is one of the reasons that I wanted to explore the performance of non traditional music.

I hope to be able to understand the realm of non traditional performance in non traditional spaces as well as traditional spaces. We are planning on performing this work in many locations from a formal recital hall to outside to art galleries. I want to experience how the different spaces change my performance as well as observe how the audiences will react. By involving different media I will hopefully be able to get an idea of how we can perform a piece of music through art. The main question for me is; If a piece of art is created from the score is it music?

I will leave you with that question.

A Little Bit About Me

Kate Pukinskis

Professional Student. (Probably for the rest of my life.)

I am a Masters student in Music Composition at the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University. I got my BFA in Composition at Carnegie Mellon as well, graduating in May 2008 and heading straight in to the MM. As an undergrad, I studied composition with Nancy Galbraith for the three years I was here and Geoff Poole at the University of Bristol in England during my junior year. Currently, I study composition with the head of the school, Dr. Zahler.

This independent study idea came mostly out of my experience in our advisor's graduate theory seminar class last semester. He came in as a new teacher in the fall and I needed a theory course to take; why not Postmodernism from the New Guy? The class was fantastic; I actually looked forward to "geeking out" every Thursday afternoon for two hours. The class was small enough and the students just stubborn enough that we had some pretty fantastic discussion, including the infamous "what is art?"/"what is music?" topic. (I still don't know.) Either way, I was hooked on all of it and got a kick out of thinking about performances that were attended underwater, pieces of music that begin with tiger purrs, and what happens when you give a percussionist an impossible line to play.

As a final project, I wrote a piece for two voices and instrument(yes, I was that specific) called "PostSecret." It is based on twenty secrets posted either in the PostSecret books or at PostSecret.com, and it features the type of organization that Stockhausen or Xenakis would be proud of. I had only ever written "standard notation" scores before, so drawing shapes and staves with only two lines, or allowing the players to order their pages in any way they wanted(except #7 which had to be in the 7th place) was new for me. I had a blast.

With that said, my partner in crime Joelle wrote a paper on the question "What is Music." (you'll have to ask her if she knows now.) We both were hugely inspired by the topics brought up in that fall grad theory seminar and wanted to pursue it further. In need of filling out our course schedules, an independent study was just what we needed and obviously the New Guy was the one to be our advisor.

And that's why we're here. With the blog. And the graphic score. (More on that later.)

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the BAR Project 09 Blog.

We are graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA and are working on an independent study this semester, inspired by a seminar in Postmodernism we both took in the fall. Coming from different musical backgrounds (Joelle is a Clarinet player, I am a composer), we thought it would be interesting to work on a collaborative performance that tested our musical, artistic, and academic boundaries.

I have included our abstract so you can get a better idea of what we're getting at with this project. Joelle and I will also be posting here to describe the process of the project, including pictures, videos, sketches, etc. And of course, we will be publicizing our performances which will most likely run in the last couple of weeks of April through the beginning of May, both on the Carnegie Mellon Campus and in the greater community.

Goal: To create a collaborative performance using the media of music, visual art, and theatre in order to explore potential interpretation and challenge the performance tradition.

Abstract: This independent study seeks to find a better understanding of the interpretation and performance of a score in multiple forms of media. Through a series of meetings, research, and rehearsal, up to four artists will work with a composer in order to create a collaborative performance inspired by interpretations of a single score. Our society’s view of performance is confined to a small space of accessibility and exposure, and the participants will seek new venues and methods of performance in order to reach communities and expose audiences to experiences outside their preconceived realms of performance. The process will take place in three parts; first, the artists will meet with one another to share their own processes of creation as well as their interpretive procedure. Through research of existing performance art as well as common practice performance, the group will develop a series of criteria required for a successful performance and score. The second part is done independently by the composer, creating a score to be interpreted by performers. Upon completion of the score, all participants will meet to discuss, interpret and rehearse, also allowing for significant time to explore the score individually. Performances of this piece will take place both in standard venues such as concert halls as well as atypical spaces like bus stops and hallways of academic buildings, hoping to reach an audience that extends well beyond the confines of the “art culture” and reach as many people as possible, regardless of their age, education, or personal taste in art.


Right now, our timeline is being thrown to me; as the composer, I need to make sure the performers have a score to read! The ("first") final draft of the score will be completed 16 March and the performers and I will then get together for meetings and rehearsals. Before that, Joelle and I will be brainstorming performance issues and ideas, as well as looking for venues and outlining parameters of the project.

If you have any questions please email us at: theBARProject09@gmail.com

-Kate