The Garden of Forking Paths: material-indeterminacy driving open-form composition for clarinets

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In a 2018 talk on Practice Research, composer Liza Lim asked playfully 'when I play the cello, how do I know it's not playing me?' She refers to the growing body of research (from music, philosophy, psychology etc.) around the ecology of music, and how an instrument is like a prosthetic limb (Bateson 1972) that extends the "musicking" mind (Small 1998) through the body and into the world. Lim's statement paraphrases Michel de Montaigne asking in 1580 "how do I know when I play with my cat that it's not playing with me?", crucially replacing the living cat with an inert and lifeless cello, here elevated to "living" status as a thought-experiment. For me, this is interesting not because cellos might actually have minds, but because following-through on the question "what is the cello's agency in the world?" allows all sorts of interesting and creative possibilities for composition. For example, "what sound does the cello "want" to make?" can be answered by playing it in the most neutral way possible, simply putting energy into the cello with the bow to observe what sound comes out. Trying different ways of energising the cello soon reveals its preferences. By limiting the imposition of human musical taste on it, the cello's own music emerges. The next step is to ask how can the instrument "play" the player?My project follows-through on that question, radically extending it to ask how can I compose music where the instrument leads the player, ultimately allowing the instrument to define how the music unfolds in performance. Unlike the largely stable cello, this project focusses on the clarinet, an inherently unstable instrument which, through years of training, a player learns to control. When we examine what sounds the clarinet "wants" to make, we find a bewildering array of noise-sounds and "multiphonic" timbres; where instead of one note, there are multiple simultaneously competing notes, all interfering to create a complex and ambiguous soundworld in delicate balance. These kinds of sounds in themselves are now ubiquitous in new-music and experimental music, with composers using them in different ways across a continuum from uncritical "sound effects" through to a careful and nuanced manipulation of the sounds. However, for all this familiarity with unstable and non-standard sounds, the dominant paradigm is that of control, wherein the composer defines a sound and the performer strives to produce it accurately every time. My project takes the other path to ask what compositional possibilities are opened-up if we replace control with "support"? If rather than defining specific sounds, the composer's role is to create a system where the player is always responding to the preferences of the instrument, allowing it lead her through the labyrinth of its sonic complexities. The primary role of the player here is energising the instrument and allowing the contingent and unstable sounds to dominate, using their technical skills to support the delicate balance of complex sounds and allowing the instrument to lead. For example, this can be achieved by directing the player to focus on bringing out the lesser of two competing pitches in any given sound: like a spelunker exploring a complex cave system, avoiding the path most travelled may lead one in a circle or it may open up whole new unexplored areas. The project's objective is to find and disseminate compositional strategies that constrain the infinite possibilities into meaningful-and novel-forms without damping the agency and physical materiality of the instrument. Through working closely with specialist clarinettists, an acoustician, and graphic designer. I will compose multiple pieces for one and two clarinets that outline a variety of strategies and notations. All of which is documented rigorously and continuously online to maximise public engagement.