Skip to main content

Literature Review - starting points

Category
News
Date

The literature review will situate the project relative to similar research. Of course the project at the moment is in a highly theoretical phase, once the practical work with Heather begins, then the research will necessarily take different turns as new discoveries are made and assumptions questioned. The literature for this project is focussed on the two main traditions that are traversed by the research questions:

  1. the indeterminacy of (mostly) the clarinet in performance.
  2. the cueing/response mechanisms of open-score composition: not just clarinet pieces.

The second research question will be returned to later in the project. Before I can consider how the pieces are structured around indeterminate elements, I need to map out what those elements are. So the project begins by investigating the behaviour of the clarinet's unstable zones of sound production, which necessarily starts by seeing what's already out there. The research questions imply some constraints on the literature review, these, and the assumptions behind them, are outlined below.

The first constraint on the project is that I won't look at improvisers at this stage. The project is about compositional strategies, so notational solutions are a more straightforward starting point. More importantly, the improvisors who work with material agency (though they may not conceptualise it in those terms) have a highly-developed performative relationship with their instrument, allowing them to do things that I can't yet understand. I need to improve my basic understanding of the instrument generically before talking to improvisers about their highly individualised approaches. At this stage, I think that improvisors will inform this project but there probably isn't time to do more than scratch the surface of the variety of improvisation practice out there. Composition* is the focus.

The lit review for clarinet behaviours will examine pedagogical/technical resources for the clarinet and similar woodwinds, and also cover as much ground as possible of existing pieces that include clarinet (solo, chamber, orchestra). The key here is that the project is about how continuous sound may change indeterminately, which I think is relatively unexplored in clarinet writing to-date. I make some initial assumptions about what I'll find. Pieces will most likely fall into one of these categories:

  1. Pieces with multiphonics* as ‘objects’: i.e. where the multiphonic is presented as a set of pitches (or a timbre) with no development, just a block of sound. This includes multiphonics where flz, trills, hairpins etc are used to alter the surface of the sound but not its internal dynamics. Also including non-specific multiphonics: e.g. single pitch with 'M' above.
  2. Pieces with determinate dynamic multiphonics that move between elements of the multiphonic: e.g from single-pitch to full multiphonic (in same fingering) or similar.
  3. Pieces with indeterminate dynamic multiphonics, where the outcome is unknown to some extent i.e. includes dynamic changes to any part of the multiphonic production (volume, embouchure, throat-tuning, finger-slides [maybe?]) intended to alter the multiphonic but with incompletely specified results.
  4. Pieces where the player is not guided on what sound to make, but is given some technical indications on how the instrument should be manipulated (including tablature notations): sonic outcome is indeterminate.
  5. Pieces with freely improvised timbral sounds.

My assumption is that categories (1) and (2) are well-represented in the literature. I'll note some examples of these but otherwise won't exhaustively catalogue them (not the project aim). Category (3) is important because it's where less-stable multiphonics are more likely to be found: allowing the possibility of material-agency rather than strict control. [As an aside, there's an interesting question here about intention (of the composer/notation and/or the performer) already raised by Heather. In my own compositions I'll be looking for behaviours that the player knows 'can' shift, but not the specific ways it 'will' change. There's a delicate balance here across a spectrum of non- and total- determinisms.] Category (4) will probably be mostly tablature-style approaches to composition that specify technical activities (keys, scales of embouchure movement etc.) with indeterminate sonic outcomes: this is flip-side of my project, where I seek instead to organise strata of possible change without dictating either the technical means (at the micro-level) nor the sonic outcomes. Category (5) is included only to account for pieces that are notated (in some way) but also include elements of improvisation that specify timbral variation.

As I said above, I expect this to shift around once Heather and I start working. I'm also explicitly asking composers/clarinettists/listeners to contact me with examples, please email the project address <forking-paths@leeds.ac.uk>

 

* For what it's worth, I don't want to make a meaningless distinction between composition and improvisation. Of course there are many overlaps, and many people draw on both traditions (and the spaces between).

[edited 28/08/19 to improve categories; merged 2 and 3A (since they were essentially the same), and altering the subsequent text to reflect this.]