Session 2 Liquid Fields to Session 3 turning point
As we only had a short play-through rehearsal on the same afternoon as the concert, the Score map for Session 2 concert, Liquid Fields was somehow a continuation of the Session 1 score. It was more complex with more elements, more combined MODES, as well as clarifications.
Listening to the recording, there were several great moments and places but also a number of things, I wanted to change/work on.
Critical reflections on Liquid Fields concert (notebook):
Some transitions still a bit stiff.Glad we did the long silences- I got caught in free jazz though..
the entry after second long pause is way too loud (I had written f - that was a mistake). I am actually not looking for a chock/drama effect here.
The score can lead to a too linear time/horizontal reading and thus a too ‘reading/doing’ way of playing, that is counterproductive to immersing, listening and open transitions. Some parts could have been much longer. The proportions! I am questioning the pre-planned duo/trios… looking for more micromovement, irregularities and individual freedom inside the MODE and more bleeding together in SUSTAIN. The concept behind a couple of MODES is too clear.
Liquid Fields was still too much MODULE (i.e. juxtaposed 'boxes') as had also been the issue with the Session 1 concert score: Chyma, and which was, what I wanted to avoid.
For Session 3 I decided to open up the MODES and have fewer of them in the Score map. Session 3 rehearsals focused mainly on DRONE/SUSTAIN and LAYERED PULSE. The 'opening up' meant: more independence for the individual musician- more improvising freedom i.e. leaving the MODE from time to time, but still with the MODE principle as a (sometimes inaudible) underlying structure. Playing SUSTAIN and LAYERED PULSE with this more open approach and for a longer amount of time, became an exploratory immersion that both generated some of the changing timbral surfaces, bleeding together etc., which I had been looking for and transcended the 'we are playing a MODE' feeling.
Session 3 concert score: House of Night is much more simple in terms of form structure: fewer MODES but more can happen inside the MODE, no predefined duos/trios except in the start.
Playing House of Night in Koncertkirken and listening to the recording, I think, I/we discovered a lot of valuable stuff.
Critical reflections on House of Night concert (notebook):
Adapting to and using the long reverberation in Koncertkirken. Happy about the opening up and more individual freedom. Getting rid of too many MODES: good! Music got more spatial. Happy about the individual interventions and more freedom. The individual interventions reflects and relates to MODE concepts. Texturalization? Interesting to experience how the MODES behaved: plastic, fluent textures ‘naturally’ transforming and suggesting the following texture. Layers balancing better temporally and spatially, reducing possible material and ‘not getting in the way’ consciousness (both from my side as composer and from the way we played), nice when a new layer is brought in inaudibly and emerges out of the sound mass. Inaudible structures are still doing something. Surprises. Room for the unpredictable (we slipped into a non-MODE area collectively at one point: that was good). We move in and out of each other. Sculpting spaces in space.
I see Sessions 1 to 3 as a process of reducing and zooming in, but at the same time opening up for more outbreaks and interventions inside a MODE. It is taking apart and giving more freedom to the individuals. A process of blurring or stirring up the defined MODES. MODES are still there as a reference, but sometimes hidden/not audible. Perhaps a 'texturalization' of the MODES? The form went from juxtapositions to more organic development. A soft destabilizing of the structures that makes room for transitions and surprises. Emergent forms. A continuum of emergent forms within the large form.
In all circumstances it is much closer to what I was/am looking for - and what I didn't know I was looking for.
On Emergence and emergent forms:
Matthias Haenisch writes: The term generally refers to the resulting of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, a whole that is unforeseen coming-into-being of something ‘new’ …. To talk about an emergence of social orders in social practice in this sense means that these arise neither from subjective plans, intentions, or actions, nor solely from supra-individual norms or recourse of previously existing structures, but that it is a dynamic of the interaction itself that brings these orders. (Haenisch/Echtzeitmusik, page 187).
From an improviser perspective, this also refers to the magical experience of surprise and transcendence in group improvisation: the experience of the music and collective energy - the whole - taking over and transforming the individual intentions or expectations. In this project, having predetermined MODES and form structure as a reference, an extra element enters into the interaction dynamics. One can say that in Session 3, the reduction of the number and the simultaneous opening of MODES (together with the immersion in material at the rehearsals) made possible interaction processes, leading to emergence and emergent forms, to a greater extent than in Sessions 1 & 2.
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