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notation from Craig Pedersen; reviews
A Year of Deep Listening concluded May 30, 2023, celebrating what would have been Pauline Oliveros’ ninetieth year by publishing a text score from numerous contributors daily, all of which remain browseable at the archive.
Over at MUSEXPLAT Maxi Mas talked with Malala Lekander, presented in Spanish-language audio.
Over at Foxy Digitalis Jim Haynes talked with Cheryl Leonard and Wobbly about their recent release, Multiple Park.
$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.95 to $5.19 for April and $6.04 to $8.05 for May. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.
annotations
annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.
Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll.
All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.
Craig Pedersen - [text scores] (2019-)
Craig Pedersen is a trumpeter, improviser, interpreter, and composer. Some recurring collaborators include: Elizabeth Millar as Sound of the Mountain; Thierry Amar, Bennett Bedoukian, and Mark Molnar in the current iteration of The Craig Pedersen Quartet; and Ensemble SuperMusique, a new music ensemble created and directed by Joane Hétu and Danielle Palardy Roger and dedicated to performance of graphic and conceptual scores. Some recent releases as performer include Charm Point with Millar and Tim Olive and amplified clarinet and trumpet, guitars, nimb with Tetuzi Akiyama, Millar, and Toshimaru Nakamura though most recent releases feature others performing selections from these text scores, including Zhu Wenbo on the concert document of miji 66 and Plays Craig & Noah and Julián Galay on Eine Stadt, Ein Haus. Pedersen also recently directed, composed, arranged, and conducted music for strings and voices in the production of Creation Destruction for dance and music. Pedersen operates the Mystery & Wonder label with Millar.
These text scores are an iterative process initiated in 2019 and, though paused since January 2023, continuing to the present for various durations, often undefined instrumentation, and a flexible number of players. Originally a loop of expression, reflection, and revision for personal development, Pedersen asked seven friends, including Gudinni Cortina, Galay, Shakoor Hakeem, Millar, Molnar, Heather Roche, Zhao Cong, and Zhu, with mentorship from Ryoko Akama and Manfred Werder, to realize and record nine selections so far as well as attach words, images, or videos they felt relevant to their realization. Some of these realizations, additional context, and more scores can be browsed on Pedersen’s webpage for this project. Each score is handwritten on a notecard housed in a recipe box with the others and shared through photos and handwritten copies. Many feature location, duration, and a gossamer kind of prescriptive and descriptive direction in language and structure but the aspects common to all are the date of writing and a text which may or may not fit into these other categories and can appear only obliquely related to sound.
Whatever other context, such as a composer sharing with other musicians for performance, perhaps the texts most tenuously tied to sound still feel like scores because they are placed in time by way of: dating in series, tethering one to others with more musical qualities of structure and language and reflecting the iterative revision associated with creative development; duration, delineating an attention towards performance and thus listening somewhat similarly to 4’33”; and sometimes time markers in the text, such as “Autumn” in October 24, 2022, often loaded with sensory recall, including sound. From an understanding that sound physically is a function of time and inescapably intertwined with it from rhythm to the uncountable contingent events converging to make a moment in a silent piece and that plastic and semantic arts aren’t necessarily bound to it in the same ways. Though some scores are vague in what should occur in the duration, the undercurrent of intimacy in creation, construction, archiving, and sharing with just a few friends chosen for a great trust fosters a special care in their realization. Indeed the overarching shift from some specific listening observations to more generalized writing seems to indicate an openness was found to be a more fertile foundation for creation, or at least for sharing the creative vision. And through the development towards less determined aspects and the multi-faceted perspectives interpreting and sharing themselves, this process seems to find a path towards a personal relationship with sound, what it carries and what someone could carry through it.
reviews
Antoine Beuger/Anastassis Philippakopoulos - floating by (Erstwhile Records, 2023)
Antoine Beuger and Anastassis Philippakopoulos arrange one 74’ environment for voice and breath on floating by.
Eight three-minute melodies hummed among intimate breath windy in its modulating sustain whooshing channeled through the changing landscape of the mouth with intermittent dental clicks and purrs. The way of humming, more heet than hmmm, seems distinctive enough to want a reason. Maybe physiologically it’s easier to modulate the resonant low tones of the voice a bit further back in the throat. Maybe it mirrors the discrete clink of piano keys as best voice can. Though the duration begins and ends with sung piano pieces and wind sounds occur continuously the brevity of melody in relation to breath creates a sense of separation between the two that can feel like a kind of call and response. And while the body does not sustain the same as wood would to conjure the characteristic polyphony from the monophony the long duration of breath between brief melodies verticalizes them in relation for a proximate feeling. Contextually and intuitively there is something of Greece in these songs. I have only ever visited the Cyclades but one of my more deeply rooted memories from it is that the growers on Thera planted their tomatoes some depth below surface level to shield them from the coastal winds that whip the ear as they shear across the island. I imagine this is a commonly shared impression in a nation of so many islands and coasts. I like to think that click like the piano key clink from both breath and voice is as if the melody crystallized out of and in response to the wind, both in practice and here poetically, the vibrations of the cords in the throat converging on the note like the roots are the reverse of the rich harmony branching out from the tree of a piano key.
- Keith Prosk
Charles Curtis - Éliane Radigue: Naldjorlak (Saltern, 2023)
Two hourlong performances of Éliane Radigue’s composition for Charles Curtis and solo cello, the composer’s first for an acoustic instrument, separated by fifteen years.
A kind of analytical approach to the faces of a particular harmonic interaction through distinct movements. Textural arcs of sonorous bowings, a buzzing fly cresting into and out of audibility, bouncing transverse to a rotational surface, bellowing distortions that I imagine are the classic expression of the wolf tone, ululating spirits, beeping beatings, low oms from a vacuum, and subway rail squeal mark the movements but within them the rhythm is consistently mercurial in the depth and lively instability of the harmony. The presentation of two performances separated by some time showcases the variability of time and place and an appropriate response to them but also the continuing work of the interpreter, who has a reputation to sit with things for some time - such as releasing a realization of Terry Jenning’s Piece for Cello and Saxophone after a quarter decade of performing it - and so draws particular attention to the progression of performance. After minute differences in the duration of movements and moment to moment decisions, the most recent set generally carries a clarity that might suggest a greater intimacy and ability in dancing with this instability native to the tone that for example reveals itself in accentuating the yawning maw of the rousing howl. And compared to the younger performance or older recording, textures cluster tighter together so that while movements remains clear a subtle homogeneity in that area emphasizes the heterogeneity of behavior within the harmonic interactions to truly celebrate the subject.
- Keith Prosk
Ben Roidl-Ward and Ben Llewellyn - Moonhead (Records to Burn, 2023)
Ben Roidl-Ward performs nine songs for solo bassoon developmentally intertwined with visuals from Ben Llewellyn on the 30’ Moonhead.
Songs are short and varied. Flying whorls of triadic spirals brimming with skronking harmonics clip to two tones tossed to and fro to coax out odd harmonics between them and then intermittently slowed to splay the tone with slower tempos in a way that could be confused for saxophone. Sonorous long tones distort, discretize, and disintegrate in train horn hollers that draw the ear to the illusion of line for its many points. To be smoothed and resume again elsewhere in knotty and energetic melodies. Shifts in pressure act like areas of greater color intensity. Hear the breath behind hoot owl beats, purrs, and raspberries, the performer always present in key clicks and saliva sounds too. Difficult to tell how the sounds relate to the visuals when connections like line and color could be generalizations but in just the suggestion it illuminates the cycle of abstraction and relation that draws the ear to the plastic qualities of sound and the eye to the time-based qualities of visuals, their performance, aura, and movement.
- Keith Prosk
Tongue Depressor and John McCowen - Blame Tuning (Full Spectrum Records, 2023)
Henry Birdsey, John McCowen, and Zach Rowden play two tracks for pedal steel and lap steel, contrabass clarinet, and contrabass on the 46’ Blame Tuning.
Each environment a substrate of sustain to cultivate the consistent movement of chaotic harmonics, a stable scape of instability. Crosscutting relationships of distortions from the stuttering friction of strings or the stridulating calls of clarinet like flickering light from the depth of the low end cycles with the relatively smoothed swells of sinister purrs, snarling growls, and dinosaur roars. But it’s all dark and stormy, turning motor chugs and cracked ship masts tossed into the maelstrom to drown in a pool of infinitely mirrored reverb out of a raga twang from radiating steel, harsh hooting birdsong and saran wrap slashes. An everpresent beat of wub wub bass resonance and the violence of movement feel aggressive and visceral, a crucible of harmonics in the throws.
- Keith Prosk
Dafne Vicente-Sandoval - Minos Circuit (Portraits GRM, 2023)
Dafne Vicente-Sandoval sounds an environment for feedback, voice, and bassoon on the 22’ Minos Circuit.
Whether the bassoon is played, held, or even assembled is ambiguous and while corporeal rumbles recall the register of it the texture here is mostly feedback whether mediated through the instrument or not. Feedback in a relatively stable dynamic ebb and flow of troughs and crests that reflect, refract, and amplify towards a dynamic equilibrium for subtle interventions like humming, tapping, and probably other anonymous movement to just offset the system into transitory strata of myriad waveforms in alien interaction like a kind of cascading morning birdsong in biomorphic coos and then begin again towards equilibrium.
- Keith Prosk
Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series.
$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.95 to $5.19 for April and $6.04 to $8.05 for May. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.