By Henrik Hellstenius

What is a possible material for musical composition and performance, and how can light, movement, language, objects and space be musical parameters ? This question is frequently asked and answered within the contemporary art music scene, where a multitude of projects and works with “non-musical” material are emerging at the music festival scenes around the world. When the limits for musical composition and performance are stretched beyond traditional material of organized sound, questions arise. How does musical composition and performance change when new material is included? In what way does it change what music is and can be? Are the fundamental principles that define something as music or having «musicality», still present when performed by light, movement, language or objects, and not musical sounds?

Reflections formulated in the project:

• What new strategies for composition and performance will have to be developed to master the multitude of new possibilities emerging from music’s expanded material?
• What new significance is emerging from the layers in an extended composition of sound, language and movements. To put it simply: does this change what “music” is, and can mean?
• How do we evaluate it, discuss it, and understand it?
• When opening up the process of composition and performance to material and practices that are outside of the musical/sound domain, not only do the aesthetic and content of the works change radically. For composers and musicians new skills are practiced, that in turn open up for new working methods, both for composers and performers, and more time is needed for the process than in standard musical life.
• Interdisciplinary collaborations challenge notions and standards of ‘quality’, ‘virtuosity’, and skills. We have to consider how to deal with these concepts in the practice.
• Composition, fundamentally, is a dealing with the rhythm between different forms and material.

What is extended?

The composer Jennifer Walshe's term The New Disicipline, as well as the terms Music+ and, the more general, Interdisciplinary Composition are all used, together with others, to try to put names on this strong and fast growing branch of contemporary art music. Our term Extended Composition, and the concept of extension, are obviously connected to Marko Ciciliani's article Music in the Expanded Field – On Recent Approaches to Interdisciplinary Composition, which itself refers to Rosalinda E. Krauss famous article Sculptures in the Expanded Field from 1978, open up the discussion into how the concept of sculptures had developed into covering items such as TV monitors, large pictures, mirrors and land art.

Ciciliani’s article shows how different composers have expanded the thoughts of what are considered to be “instruments” and music, to include electronics, video, movements, language, objects etc. He explores the term expanded on a new practice among composers using a multitude of material and means of expression as part of their music making. Rather than creating a totally new term on this practice, Ciciliani echoes Jennifer Walshe, insisting that this expanded material of expression in no way changes the fact that it is still music that is made, and not something else.

In the given context, however, I would like to focus on music as a practice that allows the inclusion of non-sonic elements, rather than music as an object that has to be defined, in order to describe something that I consider a relatively young development and which I will take the liberty of calling “Music in the Expanded Field”.
(Ciciliani p.24)

Our project is reflecting in the same terms as Ciciliani, arguing that everything we do in this project, working with an expanded practice as composers, musicians, actors, dancers and video artists, is based on musical composition and performance. But since the material of musical composition is more than sounds, we wanted to investigate the concept of extension. By enlarging the means, material and expressions as composers and performers, we challenged ourselves to extend what musical composition and performances could be.

The ideas, tradition and practices of musical composition are very much a basis for how we in this project deal with both movements, lights, language and other means of expression. It is a practice of composing on different levels, and with different methods. But the material and the expressions are extended compared to a traditional practice. This goes as well for the performance of the new works. So the title of our project could well have been “Extended Composition and Performance”, since all of the extended compositions in this projects, as well as in all the other works in this field, are questioning the traditional practice of musical performance. Extended compositions are based on extended performance practices, not only by musicians, but also by other performers included in these projects.

In the Extended Composition project, we defined the term as a starting point for our exploration into new material for composition and performance. The artistic outcome of the project, the workshops, the tryouts, the seminars and our discussions, as well as this presentation, are all part of an exploration of what extended material for composition and performance might be, and how we deal with it as composers, musicians and performers.

History

The Extended Composition project (2018–2022) was initiated and led by Henrik Hellstenius, composer and professor at The Norwegian Academy of Music. The original project group consisted of the composers Carola Bauckholt, Matthew Shlomowitz, Christian Blom, Kristine Tjøgersen, Tanja Orning, Henrik Hellstenius and the performers Håkon Stene, Anders Førisdal and Ellen Ugelvik. Dramaturge Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk and dancer/performer Shila Anarak were originally connected to the projects through their competencies and skills in theatre, text, space and movements.

Extended Composition started out with an idea of being a platform for experimenting and creating smaller works in a collective work form, with collaboration between the composers and the musicians, in dialogue with the skills of the dramaturge and the performer/dancer on theatre, dance, text and space. The first workshops of the project addressed the issues of new skills needing to be learned by musicians and composers, such as movement training and basic acting methods. The original plan and work method showed itself to be difficult to manage and organize with the people involved. So by 2019 the project was scaled down to three sub projects where the artistic development and organization was mainly done by composers and performers inside the three groups. The common workshops, which we organized four to five times a year, focused on showing the material to the other groups and discussing the works and issues connected to the interdisciplinary nature of the works. All of the three final artistic works were developed in an intimate cooperation between composers and performers between 2019 and 2021, trying out relationships between movement, space, image, objects, language and sound in very different ways. The creative process during these years,the experimenting with extended material and artistic practices, as well as the discussions emerging from our common meetings, feels to be as important in the project as the final artistic results.

Project group

The project group and main participants in the project were Tanja Orning, Ellen Ugelvik, Christian Blom, Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk and Henrik Hellstenius.

Questions and reflections

Already in the first common workshops in 2018, and all through the project period, there were formulated questions and reflections according to our different interests and ambitions in the project. Among the reflections, expectations and thoughts were these statements:

• Gain flexibility and new skills as a performer
• Develop consciousness about movements
• Address performance practices.
• Go to more extremes as performers and composers
• Share reflections with artists involved
• Explore the role of the composer and performer/ shared ownership
• Focus on the process rather than the artistic result
• Try out different working methods
• Try to articulate the process of making art
• Explore embodiment and stage presence
• Explore collaborative practices
• Increase knowledge on movement, music, text and space
• Working with uncertainty
• Look into what skills are needed in an extended practice
• To learn about compositional methods
• Transfer strategies from one field of art to another

The experiences coming out of the artistic work, as well as the ongoing discussions and common sharing, gave us some answers to the initial questions and expectations. These are all shared in the individual texts written as reflections on the three artistic projects; Ensemble Studies, BLY and The Hands. The Double.

The three projects

The Hands. The Double, was developed as a choreographic piano work where Ellen Ugelvik performed as a pianist and a physical performer, with Henrik Hellstenius on electronics. The work was developed, composed and created by Henrik Hellstenius, Ellen Ugelvik and dancer/choreographer Kristin Ryg Helgebostad.

BLY was developed by Christian Blom, together with three performers Ellen Ugelvik, Ali Djabbary, and Cecilie Lindemann Steen.

Ensemble studies was composed and developed by Tanja Orning, together with violinist Helga Myhr, dancer Gry Kipperberg, cellist/composerTanja Orning, and dramaturg Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk.

Material and skills

Music history is all about the extension of the material used for composition and performance, extending what possible sounds can be used, the performance techniques, spaces for performance, relationships to audiences etc. Through this composers and performers have constantly looked for new possibilities and new material. However, by searching and finding new material comes the challenge of controlling this extended material. Material and the control of the material is part of artistic processes. To control new material, new skills are needed. Sometimes the skills that are needed are inside the framework of an existing practice, like playing an instrument. But in most cases it involves a new training. We search not only for new material, but also the ability to control the material. Making it a part of the composed and performed artwork.

This leads to the topic of skills. The need to master new skills in order to control the new material. In all our projects there has been an issue around training new skills when needing to control new material. In the case of Ensemble Studies the dancer, violinist and dramaturge had to play cello, a new instrument for all of them. In The Hands. The Double we had both to find ways of creating and assessing movements to be used in the piece, as well as skills connecting the performer to space, the body, and the surrounding objects.

The music theorist Paul Craenen talks about the “Kagel problem”, referring to the composer Maurizio Kagel who invented the form instrumental theater in the 1950's and 60's. When composing pieces that involved theatrical elements for the musicians, Craenen hints to the fact that in many of these pieces it is required that the performer has acting skills that might not be accessible for most musicians. In our project, the matter of skills had been discussed at lengths. Being professional performers in one disciplinewhile being amateurs in another was common to all three projects. This has risen consciously through the questions around the axis amateur <–> professional and the subjective body. A musicians body is not a dancers body, so when creating movements in the pieces The Hands. The Double, and Ensemble Studies, we had to take into consideration that the bodies of the non-dancers are not trained to do movements on stage. The movements had to be developed through the more subjective bodies of Ellen Ugelvik, Tanja Orning, Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk and Helga Myhr in order for them to be able to control the extended material for composition and performance; the movements. This goes as well for the quartet of cellos in Ensemble Studies, where only one of the performers, Tanja Orning is in fact a cellist.

Reception and signs

The project does not in any way try to conclude unanimous on any of the research questions presented above. In the reflections following the presentations of the three different works one will find answers based on the individual experiences of the three different processes. But there have been some common questions formulated by the group, based on our common discussion following the development of the works:

• What new significance is emerging from the layers in an extended composition of sound, language and movements. To put it simple: does this change what “music” is and can mean?
• How do we evaluate it, discuss it, and understand it?

The question about the signs emerging from an interdisciplinary composition are extremely complex. The group had in different meetings discussed the experience that how we read the signs and patterns in interdisciplinary art projects are not only personal, butalso linked to background. We noted that when talking to professional artists about our artistic work, dancers and actors read signs from the three works very differently than musicians and composers. Dancers and actors are more used to reading information and signs from movements, text and space, whereas composers and musicians have a higher degree of awareness of the signs and structures of sound. The general audience we have had the possibility to communicate with, following the presentation of the final artistic results, also read the several works very differently. Differing on the weight they gave to the visual or auditive signs emerging from the works. One member of the general audience reacted to The Hands. The Double, by insisting it was a piece about a frustrated middle-aged women. Obviously reading psychological signs out of the material of movements and sounds.

It seems that the extension of materials for composition and performance challenges the complexity of perception for most audiences. This makes it demanding for the artists involved to predict how a piece will be read and understood. After the premier of The Hands. The Double at the Ultima festival September 2021, Henrik Hellstenius received an private email from a friend and colleague, the composer Edvin Østergaard, who had been present at the premier. In a very precise and simple way, he addresses and sums up with a question the possible gap between the creation and the perception of an interdisciplinary art work:

If the goal of your project is to create “a composition where sound and movements are equal parts of a polyphony”, I ask myself how this multi-layered composition – sound and movements is perceived. It is maybe not so that an «extended» composition process automatically create an extended aesthetic experience?

References:

Ciciliani, M: Music in the Expanded Field – On Recent Approaches to Interdisciplinary Composision, Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, Band 24, Mainz; Schott Verlag