Since the audio quality of the "scraps" was poor and disparate from the piece's tape, we ended up resorting more to the transcription of these sounds to the accoustic realm. I made some experimentation on the piano and later transcribed the choosen excerpts with the aid of a music notation software. In the transcription process I tried to stay close to the timbric, rythmic and expressive qualities of the original audios. Per example: 

• when transcribing the marimba parts I muffled the piano strings in order to get a more percussive sound
• we decided to perform the music box on a toy piano so that the sound had a similar quality 
• I experimented strocking the piano strings while playing a cuckoo's whistle to emulate a cuckoo's clock striking the hours

We spent the first meetings discussing and analysing all the materials we had. Later we decided to work with the "scraps/effects (Picasso)" on our recreation. We first selected the materials we found more engagins from a creative point of view. These included: 

• one of the marimba improvisations
• the dance like motives
• the music box
• the cuckoo's clock
• the birds singing
• chimes

Afterwards we discussed how these audios could work as compositional material in our recreation. We considered:

• transcribing the selected audios and adapt it in order to be able to be played on a piano or in small percussion or toy instruments
• modify the piece's tape and add some of the "scraps" to it
• instead of applying these materials in a literal way, extract concepts from it and then alter the form of the piece or the way the sections are connected to each other

Since the audio quality of the "scraps" was poor and disparate from the piece's tape, we ended up resorting more to the transcription of these sounds to the acoustic realm. I made some experimentation on the piano and later transcribed the chosen excerpts with the aid of a music notation software. In the transcription process I tried to stay close to the timbrical, rhythmic and expressive qualities of the original audios. Per exemple: 

• when transcribing the marimba parts I muffled the piano strings in order to get a more percussive sound
• we decided to perform the music box on a toy piano so that the sound had a similar quality 
• I experimented stroking the piano strings while playing a cuckoo's whistle to emulate a cuckoo's clock striking the hours

The next step was to argue how could we employ these materials in our recreation. We contemplated as options:

• adding new "cubes" to the piece
• replacing the material of the already existing cubes 
• adding newly recorded sounds (base on our transcriptions to the tape)

My collaboration with Mónica began as I was searching for the tape, lightning scheme, and the scene’s script of “Avec Picasso, ce matin…” for my research project. Mónica had, at the time, found all the materials related to this piece and was interested in working with it. We ended up forming a collaboration aiming to recreate together "Avec Picasso, ce matin..." and later reflect on the importance of the collaboration between performers and musicologists when working in poorly documented and unedited transdisciplinary pieces from the second half of the 20^th century where part or the materials are lost. Our work was to be presented on a conference in Portugal (ENIM - 10th Meeting on Research in Music) in November of 2021. 

Our collaboration developed from May to November of 2021 with some interruptions. We first had online meetings through the Zoom platform and later, in November, before the conference, we met in person in order to finish our presentation.

This preludium starts off stage in similarity to other Constança's pieces. The music box theme and its distortion start then sounding on the loudspeakers. Later the performer, now on stage and with her/his back facing the audience, plays the theme getting slower and slower, in a toy piano, emulating a music box dying out. All this three stages are intended to represent absence in the sense of Heiner Goebbels' aesthetics of absence. The idea of absence was inspired by the piece's original light scheme and theatrical scene and by the fact that in the venue and context we were going to present the piece we wouldn't have a light technician to work with us. It's interesting to reflect on how the lack of technical means lead to artistic decisions, matching this way the basic principle Constaça resorted to when composing "Avec Picasso, ce matin...": "... Se forcer à utiliser des moyens limités est une constrainte que libère l'invention...". 

The relation between the original light scheme and Goebbles' asthetic of absence came from our interpretation of certain moments of the scene together with the light (or absence of it). For instance, the piece starts with a black out during which the performer places a chair next to the piano. After the performer leaves the stage, two lights light up: one over the chair and the other over the piano. This idea of starting a piece without the performer, or without the performer being the center of attention, led us to the idea of absence.

To better explain our representation of absence in the context of our recreation, I must first describe the prelude we created for the piece:

As I mentioned before, the piece starts off stage where the performer is playing the music box theme and its distortions. On stage there's a chair with a clay bird on top next to the piano and a toy piano on the floor in front of this chair. The audience can't see neither of these elements because all the stage lights are off.  While this is happening, a tape with the music box theme and its distortion (the same the performer is playing off stage) starts playing in the loudspeakers. The performer stops playing and enters on stage with a flashlight. The performer stands next to the chair, points the flashlight to the toy piano and the chair and then turns the flashlight on, starring at the audience while the tape continues playing the music box theme distorted. When the tape shifts from the toy piano to the original tape (the surrealist manifesto) the performer places the flashlight (still on) on the chair, with its light facing the audience, and sits on the floor in front of the toy piano keyboard, with his/her back facing the audience. The performer now plays the music box theme slower and slower emulating a music box dying off. After the performer hears the sentence "... le lion qui se déguise en torero..." on the tape, he stands up and sits on the chair, playing now the clay bird and pointing the flashlight to the empty piano. After the tape's cue "...sur le dos retenant son haleine..." the performer stands up, places the flashlight (now off) and the clay bird on the chair and moves to the piano where he starts playing the recitativo once he hears the words "...dans le baiser une punaise de soleil si la...".

We decided to represent absence without resorting to stage lights. Starting the piece off stage can be understood as "(...) the disappearance of the (...) performer from the center of attention (or even from the stage altogether)" (Goebbles, 2010);