140 spectacles for clarinet, piano and silent orchestra [score+essay]

8/10/2019 140 Spectacles for clarinet, piano and silent orchestra [SCORE+ESSAY]

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140 Spectaclesfor clarinet, piano and silent orchestra

Matthew Lee Knowles

2012-2014


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An orchestra is present with the two soloists. Their role is simply beingand they

should behave not much differently from any other performance, the only

difference being that they will not make any intentional instrumental sounds.

The size of the orchestra is unimportant but the presence of instruments, music

stands and familiar performance attire is. The manifestation of a conductor might

be a projection, a model or a real person.

The composition consists of one-hundred and forty spectacles, lasting around five-

and-a-half hours and must be performed in full and in order, with preferably little

time between the spectacles. The audience should be free to come and go as long

as the performance is not disturbed.

Clarinet phrasing is merely indicative of musical trajectory, and does not have to be

adhered to literally. The clarinettist may stand near the piano but should not direct

sound directly into it. All items of musical interest, dynamics, articulation etc.!

should come from a consideration of the tempo and short instruction at the

beginning of each movement. "t should also arise from a contemplation that the

music should always sound like someone is speaking, however fantastical and

outlandish the notations dictate# the properties of the human voice should be

deeply established in the soundscape. The part is transposed and will thus sound a

major second lower than written.

The pianist should hold down the sustain pedal at the beginning of each movement

and release at the end, regardless of whether they play or not. This is $%T shown in

the score, nor is the continuation of the sound apparent over the empty bars & much

depends on the attack of the notes, which may be spontaneous, planned in advance,

or taken from the instigation of the clarinettist.


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The very idea of utilising a silent orchestra will inevitably be a politically loaded one, so let's

not ignore that. "t's also a comment on the concerto, on a voyeuristic society, it's a

happening, a psychological e(periment, it's a representation of futility and pointlessness,

war, genocide and political prisoners, it's an endurance piece of avant-garde performance

art, it's a surrealistically ponderous good look at ourselves, and thirty-seven other things &let's just keep an awareness of all this potential and be glad the piece doesn't suffer the

sinful double-pun title of )C%$certo *or %rchestra' $%$certo has been done!. "t is also

+uite shit as well & it's un+uestionably important to remember that almost everything falls

into this category so again, let's try to be as open as possible and not deceive ourselves.

hilst that is true, it is also parado(ically the case that there's no such thing as bad art or

music & our minds are far too receptive# the physical impossibility of bad Art in the mind of

someone living /ack to the silent orchestra, do you think the idea is highfalutin To be

honest, " just wanted to use that word & can we all start to use it more Anyway, it is also

conceptually misleading, as we shall see in this little digression. Taking apart the titleseemingly e+ual roles are given to each player the clarinettist, the pianist and the

orchestral performers. That the first two play lots of meticulously notated notes and the

latter plays none is actually of little conse+uence. 0ilence isn't golden, it's ununpentiumen -

pretty unmanageable and if you're reading this, you probably know your Cage Anybody

who knows me knows this story. I am constantly telling it. Indeterminacy!, so let's leave

that alone for now. "t's worth pointing out that a photograph of an orchestra is technically

silent unless your listening apparatuses are tuned to the pizzazz of cellular and atomic

intensities! but even here thepotentialfor sound is still a noteworthy ho ho1! element. "f a

person stares at a silent orchestra for long enough, with enough desire, she will hear

timbres, te(tures and structures more rewarding than the Turangalila 0ymphony. "n a

concerto when the soloist is involved in their inevitable cadenza, the orchestral players are

silent and we don't think it abnormal. e could think of these spectacles as a surreally

inflated version of that situation.

The score itself shows no sign of the orchestra & it could have been marked out with dense

empty bars and instrument names, but " trust the decision is conceptually apt. An orchestra

can be taken to mean the obvious, an organisation combining brass, percussion, strings andwoodwind, often with a conductor, or it can be interpreted as the space where the

orchestra plays, or the 2reek chorus choruses. This isn't a history of the orchestra or an

etymological escapade, so let's just recall that orchestras have continually evolved over the

last thousand years, significantly so in the last four hundred or so. At each time many

factors have played a part# the availability of materials and technology for instrument

production, evolution of notation, want of players, financial readiness, social intermingling,

sagacity of composers etc. but generally, they've got bigger and players have got better,

e(tensions have been added, instruments have had glittery makeovers what was once a

single creation now has a vast range of brothers and sisters, from the contrabass-double-

ground-shakers to the sopranino-piccolo-octava-heaven-seekers. Calls for headline


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grabbing super orchestras, and even pairs and threesomes of orchestras, sometimes with

added choirs have e+ualled and dwarfed audiences. 0o, having established that orchestras

have constantly changed the dimensions, there is room for fle(ibility & a cosy 3ully orchestra

or one of agnerian proportions, it isn't particularly important to me & that they are real

orchestral musicians with their instruments out for all to see "0. They are still performing,just not in a conventional manner. " picture a standard setup of orchestra surrounding the

clarinet and piano and then the audience, but there is scope for e(perimentation. The

audience could sit with the instrumentalists, perhaps one-to-one. "n a way, the audience

and orchestra share the similarity of having their minutiae observed & it's almost inevitable

that the orchestral players will watch the audience. The clarinettist and pianist could be

situated behind the orchestra, although they would probably need amplification. The role

of a conductor is a mysterious, seemingly superfluous one, which unfairly becomes the face

of the players through which power and gratitude is conveyed. They are jesters, fools on

the stage which is not to diminish their role & try naming a 0hakespeare play without afool %kay, so there's several, but the majority do have them1 " don't particularly like the

notion of a conductor, though of course " understand the occasional importance of their

role. 4y idea is to hide them from the audience, put a bo( around them, so that they can

be seen only by the players.

The act of artistic voyeurism, of looking at people and watching them & you could stare for

hours at a person and get completely the wrong idea of what they are. ho are the

audience, who are the performers " know it's becoming an archaic +uestion, but it still hassome validity. " know "'m not alone in concentrating, during performances, on the resting

players, or those that probably think they cannot be seen & in fact " often take more

pleasure in watching the audience & they are my silent film, receiving an improvised

backing. "t's impossible to tell the difference between composed and improvised music and

the distinction is not a truly significant one for a listener. The bodies and instruments of the

orchestra will act as resonance buffers and bouncers, they will heat the surrounding air,

they will cough and sneeze, swallow and smile & they may faint during performance or leave

the area before doing so, they could fall asleep, they could fall off their chair, they could fall

into 5ades, they may need to use the bathroom, they may catch another person's eye andshare a smile, or even, Thor forbid, a giggle They are there to look at, so there is more

happening than just the instruments & " don't think there's anything wrong with that in fact,

when looked at from that angle it worries me slightly, that "'ve added something that might

make the music easier to digest.

The use of the word )spectacle' in the title is a reference to the prodigious organism that

was 0tuart 0herman, whose concentrated dramatic productions, usually performed on a

small portable table, he named 0pectacles. At this point, it's worth saying that there will bepeople, whom upon reading the title, have no problem with it whatsoever & 6what a sweet


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gimmick17 they may say, but my intention is anything but. The idea came over a year ago,

like a button being pressed, and as is my custom, " forgot about it - if a good idea is worth its

8ercy 8epper, it would return, a sort of natural selection if you will. "t did come back and "

have spent ample time worrying over it trying to visualise the impact, physically and

philosophically. 8erhaps two things came to your mind about this the e(isting 0ilent%rchestra, who provide backing for silent films and of course, that little devil, 4`33``. 8utting

aside the first Cage's influential understatement! creation is perhaps one of the least

understood pieces ever written and unfortunately will never, " suspect, be anything else &

the time has gone. Again, as this is not a history of the orchestra, it is also not an analysis of

that )silent' piece. 0o what the hell is this then 8erhaps it is a sort of rationalisation or a

pre-emptive defensive justification or maybe it's just a bunch of writing to make things

seem like things have been e(plained & anything that has an accompanying essay must be

taken with an erudite seriousness, 9"25T hen " have mentioned this to my people, the

main response is usually one of currency & who's gonna pay for that This reminds me of ".". 9abi's response upon the discovery of the mu meson# 6who ordered that7 And now "'m

on a tangent 4ichael *innissy writes notationally intricate music and once said 6" don't sit

down in the morning and think )how can " write the most comple( thing that's ever been

written' :;< can you imagine anything more stupid7 " had no idea that this piece would be

five and a half hours long until way after " had begun & it started as a sweet little innocent

little piece for a little clarinet and little piano with the idea that the clarinet notes would be

translated from te(ts & it was so long ago that " don't even remember what the te(ts were,

but there must have been =>? of them. :4ay " +uickly clear something up about )chance'

music "t's a little misleading, but the following analogy should clear things up@increase

needless comple(ity# volution by Barwinian $atural 0election begins with an initially

random catalyst a mutation by cosmic ray for e(ample! which then gets )worked on' by

non-random0election. The only thing " leave to chance is my personal hygiene. Thank you

for indulging me.< " +uite like the concentrated-withering way of composing, 0tephen ing

does the same thing with his novels & he doesn't do a great deal of planning, but simply lets

the characters talk and see what theywant to do. A 3ouis 8asteur +uotation would fit nicely

here you know the one " mean. $o, not the bottle of wine one, the chance favouring the

prepared mind one. 4oving Donathanly on, these lines of music would reflect idiosyncrasies

of the written word, attempting to notate speech as " understand and adore it & something

that is floating, swimming, fucking and drowning in music - " love palindromes, word games

and anagrams, anything that teases a little something out of the words. *or e(ample, " think

this is neat# Tough-Though-Through-Thorough!. Certain words get used more often than

others, take the word A$B, that's a pretty well used word, so when translated to music

becomes an A followed by a B which is half as long, because it contains three letters and the

$ is contained within the A. That word could also be A"B. /ut if the word 5A$B comes

along, then a rest lasting a +uarter of a bar followed by the notation for A$B. "f 5A$BE

pops up, then as above, but the final B will last F@G of the bar. 05A$BE The initial rest

now lasts for =@H of the bar, etc. These words and composites resemble leitmotifs.


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08CTAC3 would be transcribed as a rest lasting F@I of a bar, a single , a C lasting F@I of a

bar, a single A, another C lasting F@I and a final single !. Therefore, familiarities arise & the

language is nglish and it has a barn full of rules. The clarinettist is 08A"$2 to us. " could

have devised a cipher to translate every letter, which " have done in many other pieces, but "

was keen to retain clarity & when we listen to words we break down mainly into syllablesanyway, so my method continues this impression. "'m not going to e(plain all of the rules "

have used, needless to say, the above is only the tip of the iceberg subtle reference to the

0econd Jiennese 0chool there & see if you can find the sentence which cryptically mentions

the *irst Jiennese it's playing hide-)n'-seek though, so you'll have to search hard1!. "f you

don't want to know about the piano part, then please remove the cassette and play 0"B /

go to the ne(t paragraph! now. The pianist never plays directly at the same time as the

clarinettist, only when there is an empty space, which e+uates to about eleven-hundred

bars and arises from translating a word without the letters A-2, like 95ET540 also the

longest nglish word without vowels!, creating a gap in the clarinet part filled in by thepiano. The material for the piano part comes from an array of thirteen chords, each of

si(teen notes. These chords were then divided, bottom to top into sets of three to eleven-

note chords which results in ==KL the >Mth

triangular number! chords, the closest to the

number " desired. "magine the set =,F,H,>,G,L! which when divided into smaller sets of

three becomes =-F-H. F-H->. H->-G. >-G-L.!. "f this is done with thirteen chords of si(teen

notes =MF three-note chords are created, =LI four-note chords etc., all the way to KM

eleven-note chords. hen " was in my second year of suffering undergraduatism " started

to write down all the vertical combinations that could be contained within one octave,

starting with the seventy-two dyads and going up to the one thirteen-note cluster. "n

passing, " mentioned this to 4alcolm 0inger and he informed me that this has already been

done, in the year of my birth, in the form of The Chord Catalogue by Tom Dohnson who " was

lucky to meet a few years later. /ack to my chords & they are placed within the allocated

bars, eleven-note chords first, almost two years after having finished the clarinet line!, with

a freedom which depended on my fancy at the time, but without any attempt to formulate

any continuous self-referential landscape, to diverge from the calculated clarinetting.

4etronome marks are a direct conse+uence of the length of each spectacle the number of

bars was multiplied by two in all but roughly the final third of the piece where the

multiplication is by three to create an increasingly animated tempo marking.

"t's sometimes assumed that "'m tryingto be an enfant terrible. 6hat is thepoint Eou're

just trying to be different17 they shout at me through my bathroom window as "'m

scrubbing my toothies. Ees, this is the history of creativity. vidently, it's unhelpful to ask

this )point' +uestion & what was the point of investigating electromagnetism, or gravity or

radioactivity e do not know the impact of a thing until afterwards & we cannot predict

which way this impact will go - the world would be a boring place if we routinely did so.

Anyone could put a urinal in a gallery, make a silent piece of music, make their dirty bed into

an e(hibit or throw paint at a canvas, but it's the people that wanted to do those things that


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did them and only afterwards did the comment arise regarding its ease. This view isn't new,

but god-dammit, it needs constantly repeating. Eou may be thinking that " am under the

impression that this piece is ground-breakingly revolutionary & " am not and it is not.

Anyway, precious verbomaniac " am not trying to be anything other than myself, which,

even though you only have my lemon curd for it, " can assure you the case is none otherthan " describe. 3emon curd is rhyming slang for word andturd, so, yes - you be the judge!.

6"t's just +uite funny isn't it Eou know, having all those people there, not doing anything,

it's almost naughty, isn't it, isn't it naughty 4atthew7 they say, impressing their face onto

mine. "'ll let you in on a secret & " dislike the way that people often find humour in music

that doesn't have a shred of comedy in it. 0travinsky, in his autobiography wrote# 6*or "

consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to e(press anything at all.7

That titter at a particularly placed solo timpani hit, or two clarinets playing a semitone apart

or a suggestive trombone slide & /NT " like to see this as a strength "'m not trying to make

people do anything and actually, if someone does laugh, then "'ll just stare at them,wondering how " failed, even though " have an inkling of the comple(ities of why a person

laughs at something misunderstanding or mishearing, nervousness, boredom,

pretentiousness wanting other people to see that they )get it' most likely!!, or a particular

sound might instantly recollect a recollection from the vast library that is our memory bank,

or they might remember a joke they heard earlier about cheese looking at itself in the

mirror!. hy am " being this honest ell, "'m starting to think, as " type this up on my

0holes O 2lidden Typewriter, that for this piece to work, you might need to know more

about what " think & " could be wrong, in which case, +uick, stop your reading this very

instant1 Eou're still reading so "'ll assume you agree. 4y standard way of listening to music

at home is to have two, sometimes three different playlists going at the same time, usually

in set patterns, like duration " practice the piano to this background, as Bavid Tudor used

to! & currently, "'m listening to a new work by *innissy called 9emembrance Bay, which " just

realised is +uite apt as it's the ==th

of $ovember. This is set against any /ach recording of

less than si(ty seconds, mainly cantatas at the moment. These combinations are uni+ue and

once heard, will never be heard again and " am very aware of this as " listen. " have written

pieces where failure is built in, in terms of pure impossibility or simply asking too much of a

player. As " e(periment more, " realise that this may be the way forward & instead of writing

pieces to spec, " want to annihilatethe possibility of a performance, a factor that is always

considered, but progressively less vital & if a decision comes down to prioritising a musical

idea against one of practicalities, the former wins every time which e(plains my gradual

receding from the concert stage. =>? 0pectacles can be viewed as an object of intense

nihilism. "ncidentally, every single piece of my own music in my iTunes playlist is rated one-

star!. "t is not impossible, five and a half hours, with almost constant clarinetting,

intermittent pianoing but with constant held pedalling! and existing orchestra & it's

admittedly tricky. "t would only be done if someone really wanted to do it which would

have my approval! or if someone wanted to do it as a one-off attention-grabbing gimmick

which would receive my concentrated death-stare!. " don't have any e(pectations. The


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theoretical physicist 8aul Birac knew a good e+uation when he saw one, he looked for

mathematical beauty first and if there were even slightly ugly abnormalities he knew it

would fundamentally fail at the e(perimental stage. 5e was not always right and suffered

similar problems to instein of an incredulity towards new ideas, but this makes me admire

him all the more & " love a soul heavy with contradiction. hy isn't the performanceimportant "t seems to be a +uestion so stupid and obvious so as not to be worth asking & a

composer writes a piece to be heard, surely e are so used to preconceived ideas about

what a person should or should be or do, that when a challenge comes along to shake the

ship, we are highly dubious, but we should always +uestion normality & not doing so has

being a major disability of our species in the past. " am not going to march down hitehall

dressed like Br *rank-$-*urter belting out )" Am hat " Am', but " am a little disenchanted

with contemporary music & " recognise the scene as something that is desperate something

that is either so old and stale or so shiny and new that it's difficult to look at. The most

astonishing stuff does not happen within the confines of an organisation that is ultimatelycontrolled by funding and to think otherwise is piss-poor naivety. Composers should sit in

front of a mirror and ask themselves the +uestion 6what am " writing for7 until the words

hold no meaning. %veremotional applause which " dislike!, smug performers annoying!

and smug composers unforgivable! are cooked in an ether of honesty which makes the

9ussian government look like the love-child of Chelsea 4anning and dward 0nowden,

carrying composers on airs of compliments to their heat-deaths. Birac yes, him again! was

not interested in the practical applications of his work, he simply searched for the 6pretty

mathematics7 and like *eynman, wanted to turn down his $obel prize, but realised that he

would receive more publicity by turning down the award. *eynman dismissed accolades,

claiming that the pleasure of finding the thing out was sufficient. " compose because " have

to and it gives me no pleasure. " recently found myself in a conversation that illustrated a

fundamental misunderstanding of why a composer composes & it is not something done for

pleasure and nor is it by choice. "t is very much a debate of semantics, " suspect, but to call

what " get from writing )pleasure' is to miss the point. "'d certainly go so far as to say that a

composer who does write for pleasure is a composer whose music " almost certainly do not

care for, but that pleasure for them is important & it helps them win all those really very

terribly important competitions and vital awards1

An unsavoury conse+uence of severe depression is the hyper-sensitivity to and the

magnification of the plethora of cancerous inade+uacies that style my consciousness, and if

" have ever written anything that begins to e(pose this devastating condition, it is this.

4atthew 3ee nowles

3ondon, FIth$ovember F?=>


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140 spectacles for clarinet, piano and silent orchestra [score+essay]

Documents