Consolidation - Saturday 26th July

One week gone - and where are we? Well, virtually all of the different stories are being tackled, worked on and extrapolated some way or another by either individuals or groups or pairs etc. etc. and, to be honest it's really making sense already - which is quite amazing.

We have all kinds of different approaches which is demonstrated by these pictures (above) - these are two 'plans', blueprints if you will of two of the pieces - really brilliant way of explaining things, and all drawn up together in groups as well (happy composer families!)

Something that struck me and also the others as it transpires, is that the normal, everyday (if you can call it 'everyday') role of a composer is one which is quite an autonomous, individual, ostensibly solitary and even autocratic in a way...

If one thinks about it, a composer sits and writes their music which comes from their brains, their minds and their imaginations...and not forgetting their personal influences...

When it comes to the composers music being played - and that's another thing - we refer to the music as the composer's, generally we consider it as theirs... so in playing it - instrumentalists/musicians/performers, whatever you wish to call the realisers of the music, will invariably try to adhere to the composer's wishes (which would be given/suggested/muted in performance directions, performance notes, theses (ahem Wagner!)) which means the generator of the music, the person/mind through which the genesis of that piece of music is made possible is still in many respects autonomous.

Now, obviously, part of the magic of music is that not everything is pinned down to a strict, regimented and immovable frame within which to perform, but performers add their own inflection and interpretation on it, but essentially with Western music, any practitioner will try and be faithful to the composer's original intentions.

N.B - before I carry on with this emerging thesis (sorry - you would never guess I did a music degree eh?!!) this idea of (nicely...generally) autocratic composition/composer can only really be directly projected onto Western Music, as a number of world musics are not structured in the same way - for example a lot is of oral tradition - therefore are not written down, and don't really have a specific composer - rather, it emerges from community and culture, story-telling, social guideline infusing and so on and so forth. (again I could bang on about this too...did a lot of world music in the BMus!)

My rather drawn out point is that we all have wondered how merging ten composers, who are all used to working fairly individually and completely solo as the solo composer is going to function by throwing out this solitary idea - we are after all going to have to work effectively as a composer team - 10 different world voices creating one world voice, one piece...one world piece (see what I did there - and you wondered why I had such a cheesy title to this blog - now you know!!)

Now, I've already gone over, probably too many times now for you poor readers (but I am getting over excited about this process every day!) but what's happened, is quite easily, we've all thrown all autonomous notions, all inhibitions and grouped together like one creatively pulsating organism...hmm nice image there..!

Letting you into a secret though - virtually all of us have revealed and admitted that we did wonder if there might be some difficulties with strong characters and this sense of autonomy and interestingly possession of the music being created, and how that might cause clashes...

Obviously, no one can predict the future, so all I can truthfully say is that so far...clashing seems to be the furthest away from this collaboration...it's no where near to featuring in our vocabularies, and to be honest, I don't think it will to a massive extent.

It's sounding like the Brady bunch, I know - but when you put together such similar people, who also differ massively in background, experience, influence and so on, who are quite willing to very easily throw all inhibitions out the window and just go with it then, well, it works.

There have been instances obviously where some one has written something, or hears one of the stories in a certain way that in discussion each one might be a little more forceful trying to put their idea across - but in all honesty I think the main reason for this isn't because we all want our individual bits to be pedestalled above ever one else's because we're particularly pleased or proud of that bit, but it's more the slight difficulties of communication and ensuring that each person is understood.

I'm aware of space at the moment and how long this ramble is going on for (I have completely added to what I wrote originally!) So I'll write on the proliferation of the English language next - how enthralling!

Bye for now!