10 realisations of Manfred Werder's '2005/1'

[simon reynell]

Coming soon to the Another Timbre website, 10 new realisations of Manfred Werder's text score '2005/1' - which is the one that just contains the words 'place, time, (sounds)'. Manfred and I invited a number of musicians around the world who then independently realised the score in a wide variety of ways. Their works will be uploaded to a new AT webpage along with short statements about how they approached the piece, plus a long interview with Manfred.

The musicians are:
Anteroom (Jonathan Jackson & Andrew Jordan Miller) (USA)
Nicolás Carrasco Díaz (Chile/Italy)
Matt Davis (UK)
Julia Eckhardt (Belgium)
Patrick Farmer (UK)
Anne Guthrie / John Lely (USA / UK/Canada)
Anett Németh (Germany)
Lee Patterson (UK/Belgium)
Stefan Thut (Switzerland)
Taku Unami (Japan)

I'll post again when the project page is uploaded.

[laszlo juhasz]

at last some personal information on anett:

(germany)

[Wombatz]

Looking forward to these very much. I have strong doubts about this kind of text score, so I hope for interesting music and an experiment to prove compositional psi phenomena all in one.

[simon reynell]

This 2005(1) project is now up online here: http://www.anothertimbre.com/werder2005(1).html

There's a long interview with Manfred Werder here: http://www.anothertimbre.com/werderinterview.html
I think this is well worth reading as a context for listening to the various realisations.

I hope you enjoy it.

edit: and I forgot to say that submissions of new realisations of 2005(1) are welcome for possible inclusion in the project. If you make one, please send it to me at <info(at)anothertimbre(dot)com>. Submissions must be less than 15 minutes in duration.

[simon reynell]

Very nice comment on the project from Michael Pisaro on Facebook:
"Friends, this is wonderful. Fantastic interview with Manfred Werder - and 10 actualizations of this score by a truly great group of musicians. I've been immersed in it for days."

[simon reynell]

Four new realisations have been submitted since the 2005/1 project went online, and can now be heard on the AT website:

Daniel Barbiero: http://www.anothertimbre.com/barbiero2005.html
Bruno Duplant: http://www.anothertimbre.com/duplant2005.html
Bruno Guastalla: http://www.anothertimbre.com/guastalla2005.html
& Gil Sanson: http://www.anothertimbre.com/sanson2005.html

Other submissions are welcome.

[Seth]

I'm glad there are more than ten. Ten felt like the wrong number for this project. It's a full stop number, like a kid who can count or a full decade.

[simon reynell]

ha! I originally intended for there to be 11 realisations in the first set, which felt like a good number. But then John Lely and Anne Guthrie combined forces to make a joint realisation, so we ended up with a round 10.

[Seth]

I'd like to contribute one at some point, once June is out of the way. Is there a closing date?

[simon reynell]

No there's no end deadline, Seth. I already know of a couple more realisations on the way and as I see it the project might as well expand outwards until all music / sounding events are just other realisations of 2005/1 and Manfred takes over the world.

[Dan Warburton]

I hope your tongue is firmly in your cheek there, Simon

As far as a piece like Manfred Werder's 20051 goes, whose score consists of the words "place", "time" and "(sounds)", well, I suppose you could argue that everything you've ever heard in your life is a "performance" of that piece. I'm reminded of what the lads from Reynols said about their first "dematerialised" album, the empty CD box: "That CD is everything, everywhere." "Everybody has that record, even people who haven't been born yet." .

FWIW, have enjoyed very much what I've heard so far (3 down 11(+?) to go) - I look forward to a Reynols realisation of the piece

[free math]

I'm listening to three of them simultaneously right now, and they're sounding great together. I particularly like the hammering sounds in Lee's. Thanks!

[Yii]

here's manfred werder japan tour vids via futow records.
http://vimeo.com/user18565569/videos
enjoy!

act:
Manfred Werder
Mitsuteru Takeuchi

04/30 performances: Manfred Werder "2 performers"
05/01 performances: Manfred Werder "2012/6"

Date and time: 1 May 30 April 2013 open 19:30 start 20:00
Venue: Guggenheim House, Kobe (JR / Sanyo Shioya Station 5 min)

[Dan Warburton]

I'm listening to three of them simultaneously right now, and they're sounding great together.

Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the exercise, I wonder? Or maybe your playing of the three at the same time is itself a performance of the piece.. see what I mean? Everything is everything, as they used to say in blaxploitation movies.. why don't we just take composers (and maybe performers) out of the story altogether and just listen to the world around us? (Answer: maybe because it's not all that interesting half the time)

[simon reynell]

The questions you raise are valid, Dan. I can’t answer on behalf of Manfred – it’s obvious from the interview I did with him for the project that although I find his work and thinking extremely interesting and challenging, I don’t completely share his perspective.
But I will say that I think ideas of composition and performance are fundamental to his scores even when they are realised by ‘just listening to the world around us’. In the text about her realisation of ‘2005/1’ Julia Eckhardt writes well about how his scores are “more a ground for discussion than a clear instruction as to what should be done by the interpreter…. I feel that the way in which composer and interpreter collaborate in Manfred’s work is both good and surprising; the discussions create a bond and make it possible to represent the piece rather than execute it.”

Julia’s words connect with what Antoine Beuger said about scores in the roundtable discussion in the ‘Wandelweiser und so weiter’ box set:
“The musicians and their concerns are central to any musical experience. They are playing music and not just ‘performing a score’, i.e. they are doing things they seriously intend to do (based on their inner motivation), not just things they are told to do. Scores are there as a means of communication between a composer, who has a musical idea and a (group of) player(s) willing to be engaged in it. I like to refer to scores as “confidential letters” between friends, that is: as functioning within a situation.”
This idea of music as the outcome of a ‘friendly’ collaboration between composer and players rather than a hierarchical structure dominated by the will of the composer is a fruitful one, I think, especially for musicians with a background in improvisation. And I think that Manfred’s work is best understood in this context.

That notion of ‘friendliness’ might sound cosy or cliquey, but in fact Manfred was very open to and welcoming of those realisations of ‘2005/1’ which ignored, diverged from, or implicitly challenged his underlying thinking. As long as there’s an element of ‘goodwill’ involved at some level, then Manfred seems perfectly at ease with what I called ‘disobedient’ interpretations of his scores – and for me those disobedient realisations were some of the most interesting. Perhaps Graham’s listening to three of the realisations simultaneously should be seen in this light.

The word ‘goodwill’ in the practice of experimental music is taken from Christian Wolff, and Philip Thomas refers to it in the same roundtable discussion. He explains that for him “the strongest [scores] are always those which act as a catalyst for surprise. I’ve felt this time and again when playing pieces by many of these composers, that something happens (very often many things happen) that I could not have predicted, that take me aback and make me feel so very alive in the act of performance.” Again for me that’s a useful perspective in how one might constructively engage with Manfred’s recent work; the openness to surprise (which Julia also mentioned) and a sense of ‘aliveness’ in relation to (and as part of) the ‘sounding world’ are key, I think, to successful realisations of his scores, and involve something more than ‘just listening to the world’ in a mundane sense.

[Dan Warburton]

As long as there’s an element of ‘goodwill’ involved at some level, then Manfred seems perfectly at ease with what I called ‘disobedient’ interpretations of his scores – and for me those disobedient realisations were some of the most interesting.

I agree with you - and thanks for the long and thoughtful post - but I'm still curious as to where you (and/or Manfred) would draw the line between an "obedient" and a "disobedient" realisation (bearing in mind that he wouldn't like that word anyway, as he said in the interview).

First, 'any place and any time are equally perfect (perfect in their totality)' does not mean that just 'anything goes'.

I just don't understand the above sentence, to be frank. If any place and any time are equally perfect, then surely the notion of value judgement is no longer applicable, and, um, anything goes. Doesn't it? I must be missing something here. Back to Badiou, with a double espresso in hand. More later

[simon reynell]

Yes, I certainly can’t speak for Manfred on this because we see things differently.

For me what distinguishes a ‘disobedient’ realisation of ‘2005/1’ is when the performer(s) have – knowingly or unknowingly – departed from the principles underlying Manfred’s ideas by using what he calls ‘differential thinking’ and imposing definite structural, dramatic or aesthetic criteria in the way that they frame ‘the sounding world’. For me this is neither a good nor a bad thing; I really like some of the ‘disobedient’ interpretations, as well as some of the ‘obedient’ ones. Both approaches are fine; what matters is that the score remains a prompt for engaging and productive work of all sorts.

I agree with you, Dan, that there’s a contradiction in there somewhere as to whether the score does allow anything or prohibits certain things, but it would only become a problem for me if Manfred started laying down the law, denouncing or denigrating certain realisations. That seems to be completely contrary to his actual practice, which obviously involves and encourages a good deal of critical thinking, but is ‘friendly’, enabling and supportive with regard to any musicians who want to engage with his work.

[Wombatz]

I wonder about the breaking up of the performer/listener divide. It does seem that for a "proper" realization the performer will have to become listener, and that this often leads to good results. The listener, if unaware of the score, has of course no way of suspecting what's behind the sounds. If he does know the score, it's an encouragement to think along with the performer, which I very much enjoy. Unfortunately that to a huge extent keeps me from listening, judging the performer's choices for their realization against my theoretical one I will never undertake (couldn't afford it, I'd need studio time).

I've noticed that I'm so unimaginative only the versions using field recordings seem like proper realizations to me. But field recording belongs to a genre much like, say, metal guitar, where quality might enhance listening pleasure but won't significantly change the meaning. A field recording does not refer me to any specific place, it is merely "place" (except maybe when that place gets patiently introduced to me like in the conceptually brilliant Jason Kahn realization (which I haven't heard) or when it's educationally captioned). So I find proper passive listening with the score in mind (place doesn't work, time goes by anyway) much more difficult than a proper performance. In the end I'm not sure if there's room for a mere listener in the concept, which is probably a good thing "in concert," but I don't suspect listening to any of the realizations helps bring the composition to life. (Which is not to say that I do not like the resulting music, though on the whole I most enjoyed the takes that added a sort of tangible counterconcept.)

The composer himself of course does not need to listen. He offers his friendly authority as something to be grappled with. For me this approach seems to work best from within the accustomed hierarchies of the new music/art world, challenging some of the preconceptions that come with those, like good institutional critique would do.

P.S.: This started from a quote in the Werder interview: "I wanted to propose a different musical practice that would break the dyad of performer and listener." If breaking the dyad means the understanding between performer and listener is disturbed, then that's actually pretty close to my impressions, but I have a hunch this was not the intended meaning.

[Hayao Yamaneko]

I read Simon's interview with Werder the other day, and I found it very interesting. I've ended up thinking about Werder a fair bit (mainly because Seth was around a fair bit while when he was beginning to think about the Smithson show coming up in Southampton - Smithson is an interest of mine and a Werder piece is to be performed at that show). I'd not really got far beyond perplexed regarding Werder's work, and it was helpful to read his carefully thought and expressed perspective.

I have to admit though that I'm still a little perplexed. The main thing I took away was a clarification of my different perspective on the relation of music to place, performer, and the outside of the work. I think that alone - the encouragement of critical thinking that Simon picks up on - would be a perfectly good outcome and a worthwhile outcome for an artist's work (and of course it doesn't end there - Werder is a positive inspiration for many people).

I'm interested in this Philip Thomas sentence, quoted by Simon above, because it picks out a quality that I like in music, and it picks out something I miss in Werder (and I mean "I miss it", not "it isn't there").

“the strongest [scores] are always those which act as a catalyst for surprise. I’ve felt this time and again when playing pieces by many of these composers, that something happens (very often many things happen) that I could not have predicted, that take me aback and make me feel so very alive in the act of performance.”

I've not performed Werder publicly. I've listened to the environments I've been in ever since I was a kid though, and it's become my habit to pay that kind of attention to the sound of most places I find myself in. I think a lot of people share that now - we're used to recording, we're used to pointing microphones at things, that conditions a kind of attention I think, just like cameras create the landscape whether or not you're holding one, or even own one).
Over the last couple of weeks I've occasionally sat and thought "so, what if I perform 2005/1 now, for myself?" And I've tried it, and I've listened and I've thought about other ways of approaching it.
I've ended up feeling that what I miss, that I like to find in art, is a kind of resistance. It has a kind of cultural resistance obviously. I see the resistance to prevaling concepts of performance etc., but I've missed an aesthetic resistance in it. That quote above talks about the capacity for a work to surprise - which I think requires a certain kind of resistance - a ruling-out, against which something which finds its way "in" to the work can be a surprise, can change the perspective which the resistance of the work sets up.

Very often, I find that I can feel this way about an artist for a long time until some change of perspective offers itself up and pens up the work to me (the case I remember most strongly was Xenakis), so I don't offer all this as criticism - I'm just keen to share a perspective in the hope of clarifiying for myself other peoples' different takes.

Particularly I'm interested in your perspective Simon. You're a sound recordist so you no doubt came to Werder with your habits of listening and attending to the sounds of places already quite well developed in particular ways. You've obviously spent a lot of time with Werder's work too. Do you find the surprise indicated in the Philip Thomas quote when you come to something like 2005/1, and how do you feel 2005/1 differs from the listening you did before it came along. (reminds me of the Delillo paragraph about the most photographed barn in america ""What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns?"")

[Dan Warburton]

Splendid post - especially this paragraph

I've ended up feeling that what I miss, that I like to find in art, is a kind of resistance. It has a kind of cultural resistance obviously. I see the resistance to prevaling concepts of performance etc., but I've missed an aesthetic resistance in it. That quote above talks about the capacity for a work to surprise - which I think requires a certain kind of resistance - a ruling-out, against which something which finds its way "in" to the work can be a surprise, can change the perspective which the resistance of the work sets up.

and the quotation from White Noise, which I just re-read last week as it happens.