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Told by you

open score for three string ensembles, three soloists, narrator and audience narrative participation

Told by you

open score for three string ensembles, three soloists, narrator and audience narrative participation

This composition is the outcome of a collaboration between composer Simone Spagnolo, conductor Nicholas Pendlebury, director Helen Eastman and Trinity Laban String Ensemble. It was part of CoLab, a collaborative workshop organised and based at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and it was held between the 15th and 20th of February 2013.

Told by you was premiered at Trinity Laban Conservatoire’s Studio Theatre on the 20th of February 2013.

Introduction, instructions and content

This open score is composed of several musical fragments assigned to three string ensembles (listed below) and three graphic scores to be played by three soloists (as specified below). The parts of each ensemble are scored as trios and quartet: there are no individual parts for the members of the ensembles. Therefore, musician belonging to the same ensemble share the same part. On the other hand, the conductor score comprises the musical material of all three ensemble, but it does not include the soloists’ graphic scores (which he does not need to read during the performance).

The conductor has the task of selecting the musical fragments to be played, the order in which they are played, and eventually the structure of the piece. His choices have to be performed live, in real time, as the piece happens: the conductor’s performance has to be an improvisation. Such an improvisation, however, has to be inspired by the words of the narrator, who has to read one or more stories (sentences, ideas, etc.) provided by audience. These stories have to be gathered from the audience prior to the performance (they can be gathered in any way, for example by interviewing the audience, or making them writing some lines, or reading their tweeter messages, etc.; any modality of gathering the audience’s words can be applied: what is important is that the texts are generated by the spectators). The narrator should read (and possibly act) the stories in real time, without necessarily ordering or arranging them.

Hence, the performance is constituted by the narrator reading the audience’s stories while the conductor decides on-the-spot what, how and when musical fragments have to be played (and what superimposition of fragments has to happen). Also, the conductor has to decide when the soloists have to play or not. However, he always has to make his improvisatory choices according to the read texts. Similarly, the soloists have to feel inspired by and play according to the read texts; also, they should use their respective graphic scores as references for musical material. - The soloists may want to discuss and workshop with the narrator the relationship between their instrumental improvisations and the texts. This should help establishing a musical and narrative empathy.

The three ensembles are structured as follows: Ensemble 1: 2 violins and 1 violoncello Ensemble 2: 1 violin, 1 viola and 1 violoncello Ensemble 3: 2 violins, 1 viola and 1 violoncello

The soloists are 2 violins and 1 violoncello. Each of them has to act as the soloist of an ensemble: they do not have to lead the ensembles, but be physically placed in their proximity (in front, behind or within them: anywhere the conductor likes). The soloists-ensembles allocation is as follows:

Ensemble 1 ↔ 1 violin Ensemble 2 ↔ 1 violoncello Ensemble 3 ↔ 1 violin

The position of the ensembles is also a decision of the conductor, who should consider the nature of both the performance and venue (e.g. they can be placed next to each other or spread within the venue).

Each ensemble is given three pitched fragments - respectively numbered 1, 2 and 3 (numbers in circles) - and three extended technique effects - marked 4-1, 4-2 and 4-3. These effects (which were generated by the musicians themselves during the composition/collaboration process) intend to represent the feelings indicated on their left. I (the composer) notated these effects as accurate as I could. However, as they are executed through extended techniques, it is important that the conductor agrees with the players an optimal way to perform them. - The emotions marked as wild and fear present two extended technique fragments: these have to be distributed between players and executed simultaneously.

Once the performers begin to play any fragment (the pitched ones or extended technique effects), this has to be endlessly repeated until the conductor indicates to stop. The marks x2 and x3 above fragments 1 and 2 indicate the number of repetitions for each bar.

Differently, the graphic scores are open to the soloists’ interpretations: the aleatoric musical material has to be played as such, whilst the precisely indicated pitches must not be altered.

All pitched fragments distributed between ensembles and soloists are in a major tonality and all twelve tonalities are included among the fragments: each ensemble respectively plays three tonalities (a total of nine) and the other three are distributed within the soloists’ scores. As fragments superimpose, such a harmonic organisation generates a polytonal harmony that constantly modulates as fragments are introduced or interrupted. This aspect is relevant for the conductor, who, as pointed out below in Notes for the conductor, has to make sure all tonalities are heard.

In order to communicate with the musicians, the conductor can use the following gestures: -to indicate who has to play, point at the ensemble or soloist;

-to indicate which fragment has to be played, look at the ensemble and number the desired fragment with the fingers;

These gestures simply are suggestions: the conductor is free to use any gesture he likes and, if necessary, he can invent new gestures (he may even use signalling disks). What is important is that he communicates through gestures, not spoken words.

The score and parts do not indicate any tempo or dynamics: these musical parameters have to be chosen by the conductor and should be an extemporary response to the narrator’s words/acting. Therefore, the conductor also has to set some gestures to communicate to the players the desired tempos and dynamics.

Although the pitched fragments are very similar to each other and can easily be superimposed in tempo, they do not have to be performed at the same tempo nor their down-beats have to coincide: the conductor can choose to play them at any different tempo and starting at any moment.

There is no set duration for this composition: it can last how long the conductor, narrator and performers want.

Notes for the conductor

1. The conductor has to make sure that the piece travels through all twelve tonalities: he has to perform all pitched fragments at least once and let each soloist play through their respective tonalities at least once. 2. As the extended techniques represent emotions, the conductor has to make use of them according to the moods expressed by the narrator or texts - this can be done diageticly or non.

Notes for the soloists

1. The soloists should consider all graphical aspects of their parts very freely, letting the curves, lines, arrows, and so on, inspire them: they should, for instance, interpret the lines’ rises and falls as dynamics marks, or the curves as levels of intensity, or the arrows as paths towards other musical materials, or the distance between elements as tempo indications, and so on. All musical informations that are not given on the graphic scores should be inspired by those elements that are not conventionally musical.

2. The pitched musical material in the graphic scores, as explained above, is representative of three tonalities, and soloists must carefully perform it as such. The non-pitched material comes from the ensembles’ extended techniques, and soloists should execute it (as much as possible) in the manner ensembles do.

Notes for the narrator

1. The narrator has to clearly state, at the beginning of his/her narration, that the story(ies) s/he is going to read are drawn from the audience. His/her opening sentence can for instance be “This story was told me today by a member of the audience” or “One of you has told me this story”. The stories can be anonymous, or the narrator can mention the name(s) of the audience member(s) who told them.

2. The narrator is free to move and/or act as s/he likes: s/he can perform in a specific place or walk within musicians and audience. However, it is important that his words clearly reach the conductor and musicians, as they have to affect the performers’ improvisatory choices.

3. The narrator can read the texts from anywhere s/he likes: they can be written on paper, or read from a screen, or memorised prior to the performance, etc.

Notes for gathering stories

As explained, there can be one or many stories, and these have to be gathered from the audience prior to the performance. Here is a description of how we gathered them for the premier performance and how we guided the audience to give us the kind of stories we wanted to have. These are not instructions for gathering stories, but an example of how the mechanism could be organised:

We decided to have two stories, of about five lines each, and many short sentences, of about one line. The two stories were gathered by the narrator in the foyer, before the performance. To gather the shorter sentences, we placed on each audience seat three pieces of papers, respectively saying: 1) name... age... I hope that... ; 2) name... age... I fear that... ; 3) my secret is... The audience had to fill the empty spaces and then hand the three papers to the narrator, who eventually read them during the performance. As the messages were naturally divided into themes (hopes, fears and secrets), we used such themes, together with the other two stories, to arrange a narrative structure for the performance: each theme generated a musical and dramatic section.

Ensemble 1 Ensemble 2 Ensemble 3 1 4-1 2 3 4-2 4-3 1 2 3 4-1 4-2 4-3 4-1 4-2 4-3

Conductor Score