On February 14th this year, I found myself in the fantastically monikered Thames Pavillion at the RFH
as part of a panel discussing collaboration. To say that the panellists out-numbered the audience may
not be factually correct, but to say that it was a select gathering would certainly be true - a shame
- because it seems to me that models of collaborative practice should be at the centre of our concerns
at the beginning of the C21st.
Most composers taste their first collaborative moments when working with performers. If the conditions
are right, this can involve the negotiation of a common language, shared territory and the establishment
of boundaries - 'No, I don't want to sever the A string with a sharpened chisel and I don't care
if that's what your magic numbers told you to do...' - and so on. So often, these relationships
simply involve the handing over of score and parts, a forty minute rehearsal and a performance.
I first realised that collaborative relationships could be at the centre of partnerships with performers
when I started to work with choreographers. Although the devising process associated with dance seems to
have no clear parallel in the structures available for the production of contemporary music - except,
perhaps, within improvised work, composers can certainly learn from the aspects of this process which
relate to composer-performer interaction and the painstaking devising of materials in combination with
the performer. Unfortunately, the notion that a composer could receive funding, for six or so weeks of
intensive devising with an ensemble seems inconceivable.
My most positive experience of composer-performer collaboration was a project called Sound
Moves, a residency at The Place Theatre to which composer-choreographer teams were invited. I
worked with members of [rout] alongside dance company prang. In five days intensive work,
I was able to lay the foundations for a whole series of pieces and re-invent my compositional
practice - yes, really! Why did it work? It was the willingness of the players to try
ideas without pre-judging their outcome and the fact that as an ensemble, we already had a
shared frame of reference. This is harder to achieve when collaborating with players you are
unfamiliar with.
Despite these occasional experiments and the best efforts of composers using collaborative
modes of practice, we still seem to be hemmed in by the historical conventions surrounding
compositional practice and by the principle notion of the solitary creator. This has to change
if contemporary composition is to return from the margins of cultural life.
Meanwhile, back at the RFH, the discussion eventually turned to the model of collaboration
that I'm generally more familiar with, that of two or more practitioners working together
to produce a product which belongs equally to both, and bears the stamp of their collective
creative processes. This model doesn't have to refer solely to cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Indeed, some of the most fruitful collaborative work I have undertaken has been in partnership
with other composers. bcnsfld, a [rout] performance at Beaconsfield was an example
of this and involved the development of a compositional strategy that more than one composer could
participate in. This strategy suggested a closer relationship to site and the use of recording media
to amplify the sounds already in the space.
Collaborations - and for that matter the act of composition - should start with questions
and not answers. How can you know what you are going to create or what your collective parameters
will be when you first start working with another practitioner? Does the end product always have to
be defined by the expectations of a commissioning institution? Why not follow the collaborative
research to its conclusion and find alternative methods of funding projects and find sites for their
presentation which are actually appropriate to their content?
If nothing else - collaborating helps composers to keep asking fundamental questions about
their practice and when they stop doing that - its time to stop listening...
Paul Whitty is a senior lecturer in composition and tutor in interdisciplinary practice at Oxford
Brookes University. For details of Oxford Brookes MA in interdisciplinary practice which includes
a pathway in Composition and Sonic Art visit
http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/artandmusic/
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