UN PROJECTE TRANSFORMADOR

Following masters like the 14th century master Machaut (in his Rondeau Dix et sept), Tallis and Schoenberg (see Harvey 1999: 133), many of my pieces have an underlying numerology. It is remarkable that Doe, in his short study of Tallis, omits any mention of these conceits in his notes (1976: 41) on the astonishing Spem in Alium (c. 1570) or the

Miserere Nostri (from the Cantiones Sacrae 1575), which contains a uniquely glorious

dissonance at the golden section point. In this same 1575 collection, (containing 34 motets published by Tallis and Byrd in 1575), Tallis includes two settings of Salvator Mundi (placed no. 1 and no. 21) thereby re-starting the set at the golden section, and Byrd's Diliges

Dominum (related to the religious exhortation to 'follow the Lord') has a part to be read

both backwards and upside down. There is also a sense in which memory acts as a type of predictive text: in Brahms's Geistliches Lied (1856), the ingenious double canon (at the ninth) projects into the future what the sound must be. The realisation (in canons) that the future is mapped out in the present is a curious memory that makes one re-consider the time- frame of music. Rosen points out (1996: 10) that in the Abegg Variations (1830), Schumann 'plays' the theme by successively withdrawing each note, making the audience map their memory onto the supplied sonic information: here, it is the non-sounding of the notes which exposes the theme. Of course, music is not alone in employing number consciously as part of the design. Shakespeare's Sonnets are a good example from outwith the musical realm, with both XII and LX being concerned overtly with the concept of time (see Bate 1997: 38). While one can see an almost paranoiac dimension with a theological slant in

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Bullinger's work, this does not invalidate the notion that what might be seen to be extra- musical aspects of the design (other than the sound of the notes) may well affect the production, understanding and projection of a particular score.

Some might call such matters extra-musical, but music's inability not to be in a context means that charges of irrelevancy or unmusicality become problematic. Mediaeval music theory, such as Zamora's Ars musica of around 1300 AD (see Cattin 1984: 186-9), is clear that the significant ratios we notice in the world is proof of the rationality of the universe. We do not need to concur with this opinion to appreciate that interconnectedness can have a real presence. In The Interpretation of Drams, the topic is clearly a ceilidh, but (aside from the Oulipo-style omission of an E in the first bar) there is a performance note quoting Freud, playing on what humans do (in dreams) and the band is doing (on drams). In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Freud says that "in dreams all reality becomes one and we lose all sense of memory, and live in an ever-continuous present". On the surface, the piece is far from being an exploration of our unconscious, as it pretends to negate any anxieties by aiming for simplicity, complete with crude progressions and shifts in harmonic rhythm. Yet that the Bach Prelude is hidden underneath it amplifies the notion that the carefree inebriated merriment is a mask. While the music may well sound pleasant or convincing to someone who does not (care to) know about such matters, the additional layers create different experiential orbits, which is an integral part of the multivalency of

Op. 48. I explore Oulipo in related works such as Onata for Piano (in which the 'S' is

missing, since every movement—each in a different key—attempts to avoid Eb), and

Chansons sans chant (which is a song-cycle where the soprano does not get to sing).

Derrida posits that certain structuralist views, which concentrated on a single centre, were designed to "limit what we might call the play of the structure" (1978: 278). His telling use of italics shows that he sees this aspect as crucial to opening up a text's inherent dynamism. However, I see his notion of supplement (1997: 144-5), functioning as a 'place-taker' which hijacks concepts, as more aggressive than it needs to be. If music is an interactive, collegial and malleable process, then 'souplement' is richer in blending ideas of suppleness, supplanting and even 'soup' where elements mix randomly. Discovering how pieces are

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forged to make their effect(s) requires a detailed study of their building materials. For instance, my birthyear of 1970 is watermarked by the 258 Cs in the pedal part of the final movement of my 1712 Overture. While Alexander Goehr (1998: 63) considers that a

difference exists between "spontaneous invention" and "calculated choice" in relation to musical material, the two concepts could be rather more intertwined. Virgil Thomson may be right in saying that composers need to develop "the discipline of spontaneity" (quoted by Holloway, in relation to Ravel, in an interview with Nichols, in Mawer ed. 2000: 249).

If memory is not just about how much we remember, but the vast resource of human history, then it might perhaps overwhelm the performing tradition. Indeed, before Stepanov developed ways of transcribing dance, ballet was (and arguably still is) an art of memory (Homans 2010: xix) with the stories passed down bodily in a quasi-oral tradition. Art forms which involve extensive re-performance (as opposed to those demanding ready improvisation) will at some stage have a 'storage' problem. Yet far from the idea that the crisis in modern music was caused by a musical "depletion of supply" (Adorno 1987: 182 n. 35), there is actually too much for composers to deal with. As Hermann Melville wrote in 1850: "It is not so much paucity, as superabundance of material that seems to incapacitate modern authors" (1972: 23). While it would be unreasonable to declare that every idea contains equal potential, some composers manage to make something out of what are unpromising seeds. They cope, though, not by enlisting some rather vague sense of inspiration but by a considered and rigorous application of originality.

This chapter developed how memory is personal, collective and cultural. It outlined how prior experience comes alive in the fresh experiences of listeners, performers and composers. This sort of renewal links with the organic metaphors explored in the opening sections, and while this does not make a composer's job easy, it suggests that the situation is not hopeless.

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Section IV Research Context

Chapter 2

Originality

This chapter explores how composers respond to the given. While imagination plays a part in this, I highlight how re-contextualising sounds and re-configuring their context is an undervalued aspect of the composer's art.

The origins of