Text Score: Sonic Map

Find a large, resonant space.  It should be more open than not and allow for movement in at least two dimensions.

Recruit a number of musicians, somewhere around six to ten, depending on the size of the space.  Each musician should have a phrase or motif that they repeat; more complex ones should be relatively short and simpler ones can be longer.  Each phrase or motif should make musical sense with all the others, as they are part of a single piece.

Musicians are arranged about the space roughly evenly.  They should be close enough together to hear each other and far enough apart so that each performer experiences the others through the resonance of the space.  Musicians remain in place for the duration of the performance.

An additional person, referred to here as the recorder, is equipped with an audio recording device and stereo microphone(s), ideally binaural.  The recorder should choose footwear and be prepared to walk such that their footsteps are quiet, but not silent, part of the performance, but not foreground.  The recorder starts and ends their walk in the center of the space.

The performance begins when the recorder begins recording and the musicians begin performing.  The recorder then slowly walks through the space, passing close to each musician but not lingering.  They should choose a path that takes them through the entire space while minimizing crossing or retracing their steps.  The guiding intention of the walk is to produce a recording such that an imagined listener to the recording would be able to get a sense of the space, to map it and the locations of the musicians in their mind.  The performance ends when the recorder returns back to their starting position, the musicians stop, and the recording is ended.

Some considerations:  How to take advantage of layout, reflections, verticality, resonance, or other properties of the space so as to give the imagined listener sonic clues to its shape?  How to place musicians so as to optimize the relationship between the space and the quality of each instrument or voice (and what criteria define “optimize”)?  How might the strengths and weaknesses of the recording equipment, especially microphones, be employed by the recorder so as to maximize the imagined listener’s perception of the space?  How might the orientation of the microphone(s) within the space (e.g., standing in one place but rotating) at any given point affect the ability of the imagined listener to perceive the space and how might such effects be employed or accounted for?

Some options:  Keeping and sharing the recording vs destroying it.  Rehearsal vs no rehearsal.  Presence vs absence of a live audience.  Live streaming of the audio vs not.  Original vs established music.  Composed vs improvised music.  Predetermined vs impromptu walking path for the recorder.  Multiple performances vs a one-off.  Recorder monitors recording live (e.g., via headphones) vs no monitoring.

Keeping Score

A text score is a set of instructions for a performance, often of music, but not limited to that; I was first introduced to the idea of a text score when I was in music school.  The examples I recall from my time in college were ideas that could not actually be performed, such as "The performer comes to the edge of the stage and throws a live grenade into the audience."  (I'm uncertain of the composer of that, or even if I'm quoting it correctly, but it might be from Dick Higgins' Danger Music series.)  Text scores don't have to be impossible (or unethical) to perform; the format can be extremely flexible.  They can be pages-long instructions for execution of elaborate performances or brief, simple, single-sentence statements; there's even a Twitter account for them.

Use and composition of text scores has been part of my recent training in Deep Listening* and their role in Pauline Oliveros' work -- both DL and her broader oeuvre -- appears mainly designed to promote an experiential orientation to art, the communal production of art, and civic engagement.  Oliveros' scores also tend to give a fair bit of leeway to the performers in how they might execute them.  I also think that text scores also allow a composer to share an idea -- and, to my mind importantly, take credit for it -- when they may not want or be able to produce it themselves.

Recently, I had an idea for a work that I was excited by, but for which I do not currently have the resources or time to perform and it occurred to me that it would make a good text score, as it had a fair bit of built in uncertainty and would benefit from respecting that.  So, having written it up, I will be sharing it here.  I expect there may be others in the future, thus my introduction/explanation in this post.  In sharing them, it is my intent that others are free to perform them, provided that they credit the authorship appropriately.  I would be grateful for any notification of any performances.


*This is something I've been meaning to share about here; I plan on writing an in depth post on it once the course is complete at the end of this month.