ACTOS ILEGALES Y ARBITRARIOS:

9.1.2.1 The Emergence of Screen-scores

The desire to further develop my notation recently guided me towards the notion of screen-score. What I find most interesting about this tool is its ability to provide the performer with different possibilities of realisation each time. The exploration of most unconventional notational practises is, in my own experience, closely linked with the open works of the fifties. During my piano studies as a teenager I became interested in the music of André Boucourechliev, playing his piece Archipel IV (1970), which comes from this open work tradition.

Archipel IV displays an archipelago on a very large piece of paper with different

musical structures or modules, in which the player freely finds his path. The free journey that was allowed between the different modules was particularly stimulating to me, playing them in a different order, with a different duration each time.

Figure 84: André Boucourechliev, Archipel IV, score extract

(© 1971 by Alphonse Leduc Éditions musicales, reproduced by kind permission of the editor)

This experience, together with the concept of ‘real-time’ (very influential at IRCAM), inspired for my cursus piece the idea of an interactive score that could display on a screen the pages of an open work in a different order in each

performance, thus adding an element of surprise, and proposing an original approach to form.

Most successful open works of the 1950s were often solo pieces.45 Xenakis nevertheless intended to realise mobile forms with larger forces in Duel (Xenakis, 1959) and Stratégie (Xenakis, 1962), for 56 and 82 musicians respectively, but the performance of these works is still problematic today, since in both pieces, the two conductors have to chose in real-time which section of the piece to play, and then convey this information to the players. Mikhaïl Malt and Benny Sluchin proposed a form of computer-aided performance in which a screen-score for each musician would make the performance of these works more realisable (Sluchin & Malt, 2014a). An interesting property of screen-scores therefore lies in their potential ability to co-ordinate a large group of players performing an open work: I will consequently investigate further this formal aspect in my IRCAM post-cursus project in 2016, where the sections of the piece should be presented to a vocal ensemble in a slightly different order each time.

Considering how paper is progressively replaced by screens, it is, in my view, almost a necessity for a composer today to investigate the realm of screen- scores or animated notation. These new tools present a radical turn in the way music is conveyed to the performer, moving towards different forms of representation, with of course various advantages and drawbacks. This shift from paper music sheet towards animated or interactive screen-based notation has only been particularly noticeable in the last few years.46 Several symposiums and reviews can attest of this very recent tendency. To name a few:

• In 2013, a symposium entitled ‘Notation in Contemporary Music: Composition, Performance, Improvisation’ (Goldsmiths, University of London) presented a great variety of approaches available through technology in the field of musical notation.

• The review Organised Sound (Wyse and Whaley, 2014) dedicated a special issue on ‘mediation: notation and communication in electro-

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Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke XI (Stockhausen [1956], 2002) and Boulez’s Third Sonata (1957) are for instance the major musical references in Umberto Eco’s Opera Aperta (Eco, [1962] 1989).

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However, Prima Vista (1962-64), by Mauricio Kagel, can be considered as a pioneering

acoustic music’, showing again in great details different forms of animated screen-based notation.

• The event ‘Tenor 2015’, held in Paris, entitled ‘First International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation’, addressed similar issues. The second edition will take place in Cambridge in May 2016.

9.1.2.2 Archipel (2015) 47

This effervescence in the realm of new notational practices has strongly influenced my wish to experiment with screen-scores. Archipel, the harp piece I composed for my first year cursus at IRCAM, is an open work where the computer decides in real-time the order in which the ten sections of the piece are to be played. The screen-score is necessary in this piece for two reasons: a) it displays to the performer which section has been chosen by the machine, b) it helps the performer synchronise precisely with the tape and live-electronics.48 The material is identical in each performance, but the order in which the sections are presented, and the transitions between them are different each time; thus, the dress rehearsal and the concert did not start or finish in the same way.

Most of the score was edited inside Bach.score objects within Max/MSP49, in proportional notation, without bars and beats. A visual cursor moving across the stave (displayed in green in the example below) indicated to the harpist at which speed and when to play each fragment. This visual cue allowed great temporal precision without requiring a click track or a MIDI pedal, as is normally the case in pieces involving live electronics.

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A recording of the piece is available on DVD 3 track 3.

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The link ‘http://jonathanbell.eu/archipel’ provides a film of the performance, as well as the screen-scores of the dress rehearsal and concert.

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Figure 85: Archipel (2015), score extract.

The principal difficulties encountered with this approach lie in the fact that the performer cannot annotate the score as he/she would normally do with paper; in addition, page turns on a screen need to be meticulously prepared, in order to allow enough preview.

In spite of the few above-mentioned limitations, many advantages strongly encourage me to further investigate new forms of screen-based notation. These include:

• The possibility to send any kind of visual information to the player during the performance, and the particular type of stimulus provoked by dynamic visual elements.

• The temporal precision that screen-scores allow: this kind of representation is more suitable to durations than rhythm, and is therefore well suited to non-pulsed music, when the performer needs to keep in time with the electronics.

• The possibility to present the sections of the piece in a different order each time. This changes the traditional relationship between material and form in a piece of music. It adds an interesting element of surprise, and gives a striking impression of a work behaving like a living organism.

Conclusion: It is beyond the scope of the present submission to fully explore the complex issues raised by animated or screen-based notation. Nevertheless the

use of a screen-score was a very important discovery for me, and provided interesting answers regarding the notation of time in my compositional research:

• This method unveiled an original form of precise rhythmic notation, which does not rely on traditional concepts of bars, beats, or prolation. • Each version of the form of the piece was different but equally valid in

my view. This observation confirms the idea that the relationship between material and form in my music can be understood as non-

teleological.

9.2 Ongoing research on audio-scores