Devices and means used for creating a crossdisciplinary work based on the musical score, historical data, and personal perception
Looking to explore inner sensations as part of the artistic research involves readiness to observe these sensations, to follow them, and to attempt to preserve them in one’s own memory as the first step, in addition to documenting, in order to be able to analyze, develop, and if the need be, [re-]dis-cover them at a later stage, for revisiting the first-hand artistic experience to a certain extent. The collaborative work process consists of frequent discussions, demonstration, and willingness to change and adapt to each other quickly. Finding parallels between characters, themes, dynamics, and harmonies in the music with the bodily and gestural responses in dance creates the connection between the disciplines that in turn, strengthens the ambience of the piece. It is necessary to state that the movement response, however, may either absorb the pattern played by the instrument, or create a counterpoint to it, i.e. by using a different tempo, movement scale, or a spacial range contrasting to what the musician might initially have had in mind while interpreting the piece on their own. Working with dance improvisation allows for exploration of juxtaposition versus imitation of the musical line.
Georgios Papageorgiou writes in “Hearing through the Body: Expression and Movement in Music”:
Transcribing characters of a musical piece into the movement requires a high flexibility and an ability to make decisions in regard to the space, gestures, the scale of the movement, among others. Musical sounds, spatial features, words, and personal associations may be used as anchor points to depict the character. While working on the project "Vers le Mystère” the dancer Lea Orož talks about finding the words the she can focus on and transfer the character into her body, as we are both looking at how much can we extract from the score and the musical ambience of “Caresse dansée”, Op.57 No.2. I also do admit during the same session I am [finally] more convinced by my own tempo choices after having tried the piece together several times. This shows the process of looking for a mutual rendition of a work that would bring us both artistic satisfaction — character- or movement-wise.
In “Nuances" Op.56 No.2 Lea and I have worked at a very close distance and, as Papageorgiou states “[...] the analytical object is [...] not only the score but also the performance itself, whose expressive meaning can be studied through detailed dynamic, timing and articulation information extracted from the performed music”, it can be observed that Lea’s hand and finger movement does influence my pianistic decisions — both, temporal and timbral, thus, she is co-creating the piece:
[Experienced] Space and [Lived] Silence
Without relating to the space as part of the [acoustical] work, as well as without relating to the silence as part of the movement and not only vice versa, we have realized that it would not be possible to share a genuine collaboration between us, to co-create, to discuss, to feel each other, to embody the characters of the piece, and to realize an intermedial dialogue in the process.
Fragilité, Op.51 No.1
My personal crossmodal associations were largely influenced by the name of the piece: I perceived very small crystal ornaments at a distance in the air, similar to what some chandeliers have: shimmering, reflecting the sunlight. Each chord would represent a different crystal. My initial idea of the interpretation was to unite the melody as much as possible with the help of the pedal and phrasing. However my collaborator’s perception was nearly the opposite, since for her fragility would mean “constantly breaking”. Therefore her movements during this piece were rapid and consciously interrupted by the frequent stops. This difference in perception and, respectively, in the artistic interpretation of the material has given us two possibilities: either one of us makes a decision to try to consciously adapt to the other one’s point of view in order to establish a mutual agreement, or the two of us would be performing different pieces (two different “Fragilities”) simultaneously, since in this case each of us would be perceiving the imagery, the music, and the movement in a substantially contrasting manner from the other person. I have decided to experiment with my collaborator’s idea and have not concentrated on the melodic unity as much. Thus, I embraced Lea’s intake and stopped attempting to play legato in the right hand. Instead I let the melody ‘break’ occasionally, which was the opposite approach to what I initially had in mind. As a result of this opportunity I learned to become more flexible with my own artistic views when it directly concerns my practice, instead of following my own [relatively rigid] pianistic directions, as I used to do prior to this case study. Her gestural mode has given the piece (or rather, my interpretation of the piece) a new quality, which I now have in my interpretational depository for this work, as a version that might have never crossed my mind otherwise.
This piece has also unlocked interplay between the rhythm and movement: they might or might not necessarily have to directly relate to each other: for example, my collaborator might make a decision to move slowly to a flow in a fast[er] tempo and vice versa, if she senses the necessity for this in order to depict the character.
Differences in Perception that lead to unexpected turns – addressing particular works from the repertoire
My collaborator and I discussed main ideas, characters, and messages of the pieces, based on the historical sources (i.e. Scriabin’s own remarks, or those of his contemporaries), as well as our own perception of the musical imagery. The latter has oftentimes uncovered surprising results, since for particular pieces we could have different, if not opposite, ideas, however experimenting with the opposite approach during the tryouts in order to explore the material from another artist’s point of view has allowed for an extended approach and examining a variety of interpretational choices. I am providing several examples in regard to either the content or pianistic decisions for particular pieces of the project that I was able to either extract from historical sources or derive from my own work process while preparing the repertoire.
The titles of the pieces provide an initial direction for the piano interpretation and require a nuanced thorough work in order to be able to execute each miniature in a way that it transfers the character as precisely as possible, by using the performer’s personal musical judgement and technical abilities. Therefore certain decisions in regard to the voicing, pedaling, fingering, chord rolling, and temporal as well as timbral variety must be made before any collaboration starts, in order to establish a base, onto which the crossdisciplinary work would be added as a next interpretational layer – including potential changes in the abovementioned aspects.
Studying, analyzing, and ‘sharpening' artistic interpretation in crossdisciplinary circumstances
In addition to the active artistic research sessions, the method of Stimulated Recall was used to revisit, analyze, and observe the process of the recorded material. Perceiving, how flexible can pianistic and musical qualities be (i.e. the use of rubato, pedal, articulation, tempo choices), when exposed to another artistic medium, unlocks understanding of the vast potential variety of the interpretational decisions. The space may add another layer to the perception of the material en masse. The visual and acoustical conditions in various spaces may uncover new qualities and ways of interpersonal artistic communication: the distance, the light, the reverberation, and even the temperature in the room are all decisive factors on the intermedial interpretation, in addition to the core aspects: the instrument, the technical equipment, and the floor.
Listening to each other beyond the ears, catching transient micro-sensations and using them in performance, observing how the space affects the relation between artists, and exploring how a combination of artistic media performed live has an ability to create and release tension in the space requires practice and experience to be able to extract usable data from all the above-mentioned factors. Considering the subjectivity of the interpretational analysis, aspects of this methodology may or may not be useful to any other artist, however, they have proven necessary in my personal crossdisciplinary work. While Papageorgiou states that “analysis through performance” can also be understood as “analysis as performance”, I add that absorbing multi-sensorial responses during the artistic process also enables performance itself to serve as the analysis of the process. Below Lea and I are discussing crossmodal relations of our work process and transcribing imagery into movement:
Challenges: visual obstacles and possible solutions
It is evident that for a [classical] pianist there is no possibility to move in space during a performance. Therefore pianists are not able to perceive visual or movement components from all the angles. Mirrors may be used as one of the potential solutions of this issue, however it is not always technically achievable to install these in certain spaces. Therefore pianists must learn how to activate other senses, e.g. hearing the dancer and their movement through the space and let the sound aid them in executing interpretational decisions at the piano: i.e. hearing slides versus leaps of a dancer can already provide substantially different musical outcomes, as well as hearing beginnings and endings of a movement, in case it involves any friction with or landing onto the floor.
One of the most peculiar aspects of crossdisciplinary artistic work is communicating without communication: this is what I call a mode of active presence; willingness and readiness to immediately react, without using any sensory triggers. This cannot be predicted or programmed in a non-choreographed setting, but may prove useful when a dancer can neither be seen nor heard, or nearly so:
Vers la Flamme, Op.72
The final piece of the project is written in E Major. According to Scriabin’s color-tone system, the E is Blue and the Blue to Scriabin is the color of the Spirit: “a clear sign of the metaphysical connotation of the ‘flame’, as opposed to the pictoral.” This data has provided us with an image of a non-destructive, but rather the mystical and ritualistic qualities of the fire. I personally perceive this piece as a hymn to the spirit, the immortal essence that remains powerful throughout the time. While working on his late pieces Scriabin was convinced that the form must be like a sphere, perfect, like a crystal. The compound triple time signature that he chose for this work (9/8) clearly indicates that the absence of the weak beat encourages to maintain the sound temporally without any extra accents and the texture must be very continuous and audibly even until the final sections of the work, at the least: very round, without ‘corners’, exactly like a sphere. I associate such a temporal continuity throughout the piece, including a very gradual animé and other [character] indications, with a constant everlasting motion, the sense of the time, going from the past into the future. My collaborator chose to concentrate in the center of the space for the final piece, bringing all the previous experiments, characters, and notions back to the core in order to artistically celebrate the power of the spirit.
The most important discussion for both of us in this piece was the ending: while Lea has perceived the flame disappearing down into nothing and structured her movement accordingly, for me the fire clearly rises up and ‘dissolves’, perhaps in the form of the ashes, symbolizing weightlessness. This time neither of us made a decision to adopt another's viewpoint and each of us has remained convinced by their own version of the ending.