situation-specific concert intervention (variable instrumentation)

existing versions:

3-3-041021-ks1 (cl. / hp. / vc.)
3-3-051221-rs (cl. / hp. / vc.)

2021—


introductory remarks:

Just as a piece of music is not just existing independently of its context, the concert is not a sequence of them where they would be separate and autonomous. When we experience a concert, we are, I believe, dealing with a unified sensual and intellectual complex. The presented works, through different possible relationships in their combined presentations, become a unified experience that cannot be separated from the concrete way it is implemented in reality.
The aim of this work is to make manifest this concrete unity through the explicit performance of actions at moments when the implicit and non-musical performance of the concert, in some way pertaining to some sort of ritual, should take place.
For this purpose, musicians play "music" during the normally non-musical parts of an event. This music is not however given to be heard alone as a piece of music but as a parasitic intervention allowing the accomplishment of all the actions necessary to the unfolding of the concert (installation, discussions, applause, pauses, etc...)
The sonic actions played by the performers come from an automatic transcription of the silence of the very room they are in. The transcription, made with a sophisticated program allowing to choose all the techniques now standard in the contemporary music canon, reflects the complexity of the setting: The more pieces appear in the program, that is, the more heterogeneous the situation, the more so will be the transcription (via the number of instrumental techniques) given to the musicians.
The score, with a (over)abundant number of pages, also differs from that of a standard musical work in the way it is read. The idea of contingency of the sounds in the source recording has to be preserved in some way. This implies that the recording and therefore its transcription must not be "mystified" by being made fixed and unchangeable in the course of the concert. Thus, the transcription, to avoid the crystallization of a sonic action at a specific moment, must be read non-linearly and in fragments freely chosen by the performer. It should be a map on which the performer must choose itineraries, without necessarily covering all those available on it.
Of course, silence is not really silence and neither is its transcription. The program used, developed for imitative purposes (i.e., the reorchestration of a target sound, in the tradition of spectral music), is diverted in order to create a material that is both impersonal and adaptable to any location. In this sense, it does not matter if the transcription is faithful to the "source silence". Anyone can generate the material necessary for this intervention.
It should be noted here, however, that the notion of non-musicality has not been conflated with that of silence. The existence of musical silence is moreover implied in the work, notably through the inclusion of a duration of silence before and after the works of the composers which they consider as still being part of their music.
Besides, the work can however be more than an interference in the device of the concert since it can be used in a standalone way, as a "work-document" by transferring in another time and another place the "negative musical time" present during each concert.
Finally, this work is not without reminding the works of Daniel Buren, which is not a matter of chance given that its creation coincided with an extensive reading of his writings. The transfer of the work from the museum to the concert does not however seem to imply redundancies in relation to his work, seeing for example the (experienced) difficulty of setting up the work and making its content understood in the "contemporary music" curatorial milieu for which it was conceived. Moreover, the temporal implication of the concert-goers, their nature of collective member, their participation (notably thanks to the applause) and the phenomena and watchwords (or "watchsignals") specific to the concert seem to imply other specificities than those dealt with by Buren in spite of a strong conceptual proximity — one could even say, a kind of appropriation by translation from a medium to the other. One can nevertheless hope for certain emerging qualities from this transfer as it has historically been the case in a number cases. (The white paintings and 4’33’’ for instance).


proposition:

Before, during and after a concert, its usually non-musical moments (speech, setup, tuning, intervals between pieces, applauses) are highlighted by coexisting with the performance of impersonal and "pseudo-"musical material drawn from the circumstances in which the concert takes place.


material generation:

The score given to musicians is a computer generated "re-orchestration" of a recording of the concert hall’s room tone made readable by the use of a notation program. This step is not necessarily carried out by the composer.
The recording should be between twenty and forty minutes long.
The automatic "transcription" is imagined to be made using the Orchidea standalone app developed by IRCAM. Any other software able to extract a score from a recording with the options to select the duration of notes, the instrumental techniques used and the dynamic of the instruments. The transcription must not necessarily be a faithful imitation of the initial sound. It is however necessary that the score be drawn from this specific recording.
The number of technique used per instrument is deduced from the number of pieces performed during the concert without this intervention. All techniques should be feasible at low and medium dynamics. A new proposition of orchestration of the room tone must appear more or less regularly each two seconds.


scores:

In addition to this text, two other scores are necessary to perform the work. One is the generated score (in traditional notation) and the other one is formed from the event’s program with the parcitipation of the involved parties.


dynamic:

In the context of a concert with other pieces sounding, the score should be played at very low volumes. If it is used as suggested in the second point of the "further occurrences of the work" paragraph, the piece should be played at a moderate level.


title variability:

the title of the work changes for every concert in which it is actualized.

[number of instruments]-[number of pieces]-[date (DDMMYY)]-[any un/official abbreviation of the concert hall’s name]


further occurences of the work:

The same score can be reused if an ensemble with the same instrumentation plays the same number of pieces in the same hall.
The same score can also be used as a piece / installation in which the performers use the same program than for the original occurence and leave blanks during the moments in which there should have been the other pieces. In this case, new starting points should be decided.
Following the indications above, anyone can realize this work.