Wednesday 8 March, 12-4pm, CM108
In Lab 6 we investigate interdisciplinary approaches to scoring, considering uses of different media and modes of realisation. Caitlin Rowley explores the hidden space of the rehearsal as a site for performance, and Vassilis Chatzimakris looks at interfacial scores. Our visitor is Peter Ablinger, one of the most consistently inventive and challenging composers active today. He will talk about scoring and time in relation to his recent work.
12-2pm: Caitlin Rowley / Vassilis Chatzimakris
Caitlin Rowley: Scoring rehearsal, not performance
In this session, I will be presenting a work in progress which I have been developing over the last few months. “dot drip line line” investigates the private space of the rehearsal period by providing detailed instructions for an extended process of “getting to the heart of the piece” to be undertaken before devising a performance. As to the nature of the performance itself, the score has little to say, focusing instead on the preliminary process which demands the creation of multiple interpretations of the text score, preferably in multiple media.
Vassilis Chatzimakris: Interfacial Scores – Exploring Indeterminacy of Performing Means
Interfacial scores are open scores that allow for alternative interpretations using substantially different performing means. The same score can stimulate alternative realisations that use sound, movement, visuals, poetry, photography, etc. These scores represent thus an interface between different media. In the context of this presentation I will examine what makes an interfacial score being one and the different categories of interfacial scores. Using tools and terminology from modern performance theory, I will attempt to define what makes us perceive performance as performance, and use these tools to analyse different interfacial scoring approaches. I will also demonstrate how this research has informed my own compositional practice presenting performances of three recent compositions: Grammar Study III (2015-2017), We are on the same page (2016) and We are on the same music page and it comes from Henry Cowell’s Seven Paragraphs (2016).
2-4pm: Peter Ablinger / Score and Time
Peter Ablinger was born in Schwanenstadt, Austria in 1959. He began studying graphic arts and was enthused by free jazz, but completed his studies in composition with Gösta Neuwirth and Roman Haubenstock-Ramati in Graz and Vienna. Since 1982 he has lived in Berlin, where he has initiated and conducted numerous festivals and concerts. In 1988 he founded the Ensemble Zwischentöne. He has been guest conductor of Klangforum Wien, United Berlin and the Insel Musik Ensemble. Since 1990 Peter Ablinger has worked as a freelance musician. Since 2012 he is member of the Academy of Arts Berlin and research professor at the University of Huddersfield. “Peter Ablinger is one of the few artists today who uses noise without any kind of symbolism – not as a signifier for chaos, energy, entropy, disorder, or uproar; not for opposing something, or being disobedient or destructive; not for everything, for eternity, or for what-have-you. As in all these cases of music deliberately involving noise, noise is the case, but for Ablinger: this alone. Peter Ablinger has also come a long way in questioning the nature of sound, time, and space (the components usually thought central to music), and his findings have jeopardized and made dubious conventions usually thought irrefutable. These insights pertain to repetition and monotony, reduction and redundancy, density and entropy.” (Christian Scheib, edited by Bill Dietz)
