I am finding that working on my piece for the Presteigne Festival is taking a heck of a lot more time than I had originally allocated to it, which is worrying as the deadline is approximately two weeks away. My piece is provisionally entitled 'Catharsis I' and is loosely based on an old clarinet piece, 'Propagation III', which I had written whilst studying at Leeds.
Ghost-Composed Parts
I thought that this would be a great opportunity to fuse fully written parts with live semi-improvisation. Therefore, no two recordings of this piece will be identical. As you can see from the table at the end of the post, only the clarinet in the 1st section is semi-improvised. I term this semi-improvisation 'ghost writing', for the reason that only the boundaries (called 'pitch zone' in the score, displayed as a higher and lower note only) and limitations are shown. (called 'exclusion notes' in the score, displayed as all disallowed notes in this pitch zone) This is a chance to give some control back to the performers. In addition, the alternative pathways can be used to generate an even more improvisatory feel. Whether reading off a pitch zone or exclusion note stave, metre and rhythm are always displayed.
Alternative Pathways
1. If an ossia is included above the 'pitch zone' stave, this will be an alternative pitch zone scored in exactly the same way.
2. If an ossia is included below the 'exclusion notes' stave, this will be an alternative exclusion notes stave scored in exactly the same way.
3. If there are two ossias notated at any point in the piece, then the performer may choose from any two of these four staves, provided that one is a pitch zone stave and the other is an exclusion notes stave.
Random Generation
The first section of 'Catharsis I' contains 11/4 bars. So, for instance, if the indicated pitch zone is a range of 15 pitches, and 3 of these are disallowed, the performer may choose from any one of the 12 remaining available pitches. If this is repeated across 11 quarter notes in a bar, then there are 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 possible pitches in one bar alone. (roughly 743 billion!)
Structure
The general structure of 'Catharsis I' falls into three sections. Each of these are defined by the types of scoring I have used as shown below:
Instrument: 1st Section: 2nd Section: 3rd Section:
Clarinet Semi-improvised Scored Semi-improvised
Piano Scored Semi-improvised Scored
Cello Scored Semi-improvised Scored
Instrument: 1st Section: 2nd Section: 3rd Section:
Clarinet Semi-improvised Scored Semi-improvised
Piano Scored Semi-improvised Scored
Cello Scored Semi-improvised Scored
