Developing (and disrupting?) skilled practice the historical basset clarinet in creative collaboration Emily Payne, University of Leeds e.l.payne@leeds.ac.uk Fourth Performance Studies Network International Conference Bath Spa University, 14–17 July 2016
‘indolentiae ars’, a medium to be kept for eighteenth-century basset clarinet (2015)
The ‘Lotz’ basset clarinet
‘[P]eople do not acquire their knowledge ready- made, but rather grow into it , through a process of what might best be called ‘guided rediscovery’. The process is rather like that of following trails through a landscape: each story will take you so far, until you come across another that will take you further. This trail-following is what I call wayfaring […] it is through wayfaring , not transmission, that knowledge is carried on.’ Ingold (2011: 162; original emphasis)
‘Through repeated trials, and guided by his observations [the novice] gradually gets the “feel” of things for himself—that is, he learns to fine-tune his own movements so as to achieve the rhythmic fluency of the accomplished practitioner.’ Ingold (2000: 353)
‘I’m not quite there yet with it to do something beyond just playing it to myself.’ Carl Rosman, Workshop 1, 4 April 2014
‘ With a lot of my work, I aim for this result which is this very gentle, very delicate, very lyrical almost, ornamented, graceful thing, but (especially in solo pieces) I like to try and get there through ways that take a lot of energy. So things that barely sound that the instrument has to force out and you get a little squeak at the end; or things that are just really awkward or really tiring to do but generate these really soft and gentle results. So I ’ m really interested in those things that require the sense of the body, the sense of the musculature and the embouchure and the lungs, but completely privately. ’ Evan Johnson, interview, 6 April 2014
‘(Controlled) accidents’ ‘Fortuitous as these discoveries were, the conditions out of which they arose – both the immediate technical conditions and the rationale underlying them, the “how” and the “why” – had been carefully thought through (hence “controlled accidents”).’ Fitch and Heyde (2007: 92)
‘(Controlled) accidents’ Liza Lim, Invisibility for solo cello (2009) ‘accelerations, glitches and slippages as the undulating surface of alternating hair and wood passes over a string’ Lim (2013) ‘guiro’ bow
The ‘thwocking’ effect ‘The sound of the fingers opening and closing— those little pops that you get—that’s the sort of thing that never would have occurred to me sitting at home that that would happen. […] This is a completely new thing for me; it’s something I’m really excited about.’ Evan Johnson, interview, 6 April 2014
The ‘thwocking’ effect DIALOGUE ACTION EJ Ways of bringing out the; as you know, I’m fascinated by this open-holed finger sound…Is that sort of just amplifiable in a key slap sort of style? CR Plays trills with various degrees of hole pop sounds. CR More options if you’re not trying to [slaps keys] EJ Depends on the fingers. CR Plays trills, with wider intervals. EJ So I think you sent me a complete fingering chart, a sort of basic fingering chart. CR Yeah, the semitonal basic fingering chart. EJ Yeah, so I could look for tremolos like that which would be nicely, with more actions. CR Yeah. In the low register you can probably count on the fact that if you’ve got a fingering then an open hole then another hole [demonstrates] then the pitch effect will be less. Although when just slapping one finger on its own, then there’s not much of a tube for it to resonate off is there?
The ‘thwocking’ effect EJ The ones with all three left-hand fingers, that tremolo is really nice. [CR plays tremolo] […] There’s a minor 6 th that was nice. [CR plays] Yeah that one. CR Yeah, low E to the C above it. EJ Yeah, so most things it sounds like in that lower register are actually…What above some other things like F to A? CR Tremolo from F3 to A3. EJ Yeah, it’s all basically…as long as the fingers… CR Tremolo from F3 to A3, and then adds register key to make it C5 to E5. Experiments with various tremolos landing on E5. CR That’s me mucking around there. EJ So it’s really the right-hand trills that have the thwocking effect. CR Yes a thwocking effect. That’s the technical term, yes. EJ It is now, I’m writing it down. Thwocking: T H W O C K I N G. CR Very nice. I expect to see that in the performance notes. EJ Thwockando! [Laughter] Quasi thwockando, ma espressivo!
‘Inside/outside the room’ ‘[D]ialogue that references materials, persons and practices outside the room, as well as the immediate references to these things in the room, brings out the mesh-like qualities of creativity as distributed over time, materials (notations, images, instruments), and people’ Clarke, Doffman, and Timmers (2016: 143)
The ‘thwocking’ effect [Tremolos should be executed] ‘with fingering “noise” (in particular, perceptible timbral disruption from the opening and closing of the open holes) encouraged.’ ‘indolentiae ars’ , performance notes
References Clarke, Eric F., Mark Doffman, and Liza Lim, 2013: ‘Distributed creativity and ecological dynamics: A case study of Liza Lim’s Tongue of the Invisible ’, Music & Letters 94, pp. 628–663. Clarke, Eric F., Mark Doffman, and Renee Timmers, 2016: ‘Creativity, collaboration and development in Jeremy Thurlow’s Ouija for Peter Sheppard Skærved’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 141, pp. 113– 165. Dueck, Byron, 2013a: ‘Jazz endings, aesthetic discourse, and musical publics’, Black Music Research Journal 33, pp. 91–115. ——, 2013b: Musical intimacies and indigenous imaginaries: Aboriginal music and dance in public performance (New York, NY: Oxford University Press). Fitch, Fabrice, and Neil Heyde, 2007: ‘“Recercar”: The collaborative process as invention’, Twentieth-Century Music 4, pp. 71–95. Hutchins, Edwin, 1995: Cognition in the wild (Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press).
References Ingold, Tim, 2000: The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill (London: Routledge). ——, 2007: Lines: A brief history (London: Routledge). ——, 2011: Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description (London: Routledge). Johnson, Evan, 2014: ‘Biography’, Evan Johnson: Composer. Retrieved from: <http://www.evanjohnson.info/biography/> [accessed 15 April 2014]. ——, 2015: ‘indolentiae ars’, a medium to be kept (self-published score). Lim, Liza, 2013: ‘A mycelial model for understanding distributed creativity: Collaborative partnership in the making of Axis Mundi (2013) for solo bassoon’, paper presented at CMPCP Performance Studies Network International Conference, University of Cambridge, 4–7 April 2013. Nakamura, Fuyubi, 2007: ‘Creating or performing words? Observations on contemporary Japanese calligraphy’, in Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold, eds., Creativity and cultural improvisation (Oxford; New York, NY: Berg), pp. 79–98.
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