ekmeles Contemporary voices

As part of our 2017-2018 season we’re continuing to give each of our core singers a turn at the helm of the blog. The below post below comes from our soprano, Charlotte Mundy.

What would it mean for classical music if the score wasn’t the definitive version of the piece, but just a guide – a starting point?

In a recent interview on the Resonant Bodies podcast, Jennifer Walshe said, “In the theatre world they understand the script is the starting place, it’s not the definitive document…. People don’t rush up to the director’s table [after a play] and look at the script, whereas after a new music concert they rush up to the stage to look at the notation because that’s where we have been told that the piece is located. It’s located in the notation, and the analysis of the piece should always lead with the score.”

I find it exciting, then, that three of the pieces on our program on October 7 require the study of non-visual material apart from the score, i.e. recordings, as part of the rehearsal process.

Primo Libro by James Weeks uses a tuning system that divides the octave into 31 notes (as opposed to the usual 12). The intervals are audible but so tiny that they’re hard to comprehend unless you’ve already heard them, preferably multiple times. They’re virtually impossible to read off the page. The only way to come close to learning this piece properly is to use a synthesizer to render Weeks’ insanely precise (and also incredibly expressive and dramatic!) melodies and vertical harmonies.

As part of the process of learning Guide, composer Cassandra Miller asks the performers to memorize the phrasing, inflection and diction in Maria Muldaur’s 1968 recording of the song, “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah.”

Her Disappearance is graphically notated, and intended to be a relatively ‘open’ piece. It should, in theory, be possible without hearing the recording of the composers’, Bethany Younge and Kayleigh Butcher’s, performance. But the recording has been indispensable in helping Elisa (Ekmeles mezzo) and I understand how to approach the piece.

I think our concert on October 7th proves that re-thinking how music is written, disseminated and learned opens up space for more flexible, exciting, new sounds. It will also ultimately open up the role of ‘composer’ to people who have brilliant musical ideas but don’t feel at home between the five lines of the musical staff. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.