Output details

Intervolve

Intervolve (2009-10) was written for Eva Zöllner (accordion) and John Eckhardt (double bass), and premiered by them in Leeds; and featured on Radio FSK Hamburg. The piece is original in its problematizing of both the composer/performer relationship and the performer/score relationship through the application of a framework derived from Foucault’s discussion of Bentham’s panopticon. The structure of composer exercising power over performers via the score is undermined through the use of multiple notation types, altering the mode of interpretation. This is original outside the context of (post-Cagean) experimental music, and significant as an example of bridging open/experimental and closed/controlled notational aesthetics. In the first section, detailed metrical notation is contrasted with blocks of senza misura material, while the second section replaces musical notation entirely with prose notation; itself a mix of determinate and indeterminate musical instructions. The three notation types offer different possibilities for interpretation, and place the composer at varying, possibly orthogonal relations to the performance outcome and the interpretation of the players.

Considering this in light of the panopticon model, the players moderate their performance according to the notation type within the same piece. This is further complicated (and made more rigorous) by the recursive nature of the material, where the prose notation refers players back to the musical notation, and text descriptions supporting the musical notation may be read differently in light of the prose notation. Rigour is also addressed in the depth of contrast in notational types as depth of the application of the model.