Alternative scores
Here, two types of alternative scores are presented; sketch scores and collage scores.
Sketch scores
The idea behind ‘sketch scores’ was that the new notation model could work as a type of sketch representation of the music, where the improvisers would have to supply the missing information of the score and/or expand on certain building blocks using improvisation. The name might evoke associations to something like a draft from a composer’s desk that isn’t yet fully developed in all its compositional details (e.g. form, instrumentation, development) – still open, in a sense. That's the feeling I wanted to achieve; that there was still an unrealized potential in the score, where the musical ideas hadn't yet been cemented into the rigid form of Western notation.
The use of this name was, in a way, a kind of thought experiment; “what might a more rudimentary representation of this music look like?” The way I created this kind of score was through a sort of reverse-engineering, to get into how composers had – as I perceived it – explored certain ideas and building blocks in the composition, but to write them out in a more stripped-down way that would allow improvisers to play with these elements in a different way. To liberate musical ideas from their cemented shapes of the traditional score, in a sense.
In a way, it felt like I was getting into the "skeleton" of the piece, or in a way that I was writing something that – when interpreted by improvisers – could lead up to something reminiscent of the original composition, but also something completely different. (Audio journal, 2022-03-03)
My initial attempts with this way of working led to some musical results that weren't entirely convincing, mainly because A) the improvisational space was very limited, and, as a consequence, B) the improvised interpretations didn’t seem to add much to what was already in the piece. What happened was that the results ended up sounding like poor approximations of the original that they were based on.
However, these experiences were valuable as preparation for the work with adapting Debussy’s La mer in different versions for me, Tuva Halse and Amund Åse. As opposed to the rest of the repertoire, this took on the form of a recomposed work, where I picked out some of the main elements from La mer, movements 1 & 2, as a departure point for creating a sketch-like score. The first recreated version had the working name Variations on La Mer. Although the title might evoke associations to the composition model known as themes and variations, the variations part of the name shouldn’t be taken too literally; the main idea was simply to lay out some of the main building blocks – including themes – that we as improvisers had at our disposal. This could, of course, also result in improvised variations of the thematic material. In this score, boxed notation was used to present building blocks that we could develop freely for different sections.
When discussing this approach after our first performance, we agreed that the boxed notation helped with getting an overview of the musical building blocks, and that it provided us with supplying rewarding material to expand on when improvising:
The ‘call & response’ that Åse mentions is an idea I put in the score, based on the original; that one improviser could choose to play a ‘call’ phrase that would elicit a response from the other players. However, after doing two performances of the music we felt that there were certain things that seemed to lock us in too much, partly related to how the score was written. Halse suggested that the notated boxes could be challenged, both in terms of their character and their place in the timeline:
This led me to think more about how to create a score that would give more flexibility from a performer perspective, particularly related to chronology – how the layout of the score still seemed to force the musical events to take place in a certain order.
Collage scores
In the continued work with improvisational frameworks based on La mer, I turned to a more open score format, to provide more flexibility for the performers. Inspiration for this was found in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956) and its open form – sometimes referred to as mobile form – where performers freely choose the order of musical passages.
Besides wanting to break free from the chronology of traditional scores, I also wanted to create more space for the improvisers by minimizing the amount of notated material. This led me to focus even more on the main themes and building blocks. Instead of creating a new score in the computer, I realized that all the material was already there, in the sketch score from earlier, if I could prioritize certain elements. So, I physically cut the score into pieces, with a pair of scissors:
Figure 8.17. Building blocks from La mer placed on an A3 paper.
This provided us with a set of musical ideas and building blocks that we could use, pieces of paper to place on a larger paper. These pieces of paper were then arranged together with Halse and Åse to form a new version of the composition.
As we put together the new score, we agreed on omitting certain elements that had been emphasized in earlier versions, such as the building blocks related to wave movements in the beginning. This process was very rewarding, as it allowed us to actively shape the reimagined composition in a collaborative way. As we tried it the first time, we were positively surprised of how well it worked as a departure point for trio improvisation. Despite the differences from previous versions, the fact that we had played the music so much meant that minimal information was needed to trigger musical passages, even long passages. It also turned out that memory would fail us sometimes, and that we would play deviate from the original. But this just contributed to a transformation of the material into something else.
A particularly rewarding aspect with the collage approach was the high degree of ‘combinationality’ with different elements, that there seemed to be infinite ways for how the building blocks could be used together over the course of time; this is a feature that distinguished it from other score-based approaches, where the chronology of events was more controlled by the layout of the score. The open form also invited a deeper form of listening, as we had to play close attention to each other’s intentions to see what might be triggered from our new palette of musical ideas, something that seemed frutful from a perspective of musical interplay.