Describing my artistic praxis
In discussing my interrelating roles as performer and composer, I wish to first describe my artistic praxis. I am a musician performing, at the moment, mostly in the quite different genres of modern jazz, church music, session work and West/Northwest African musics.10 My primary instruments are double and electric bass, and I also enjoy dabbling with secondary instruments of which I have recorded several. I see myself as a versatile musician who adjusts to context and genre. I like the challenges and opportunities for growth that come with a varied artistic praxis, and see it as a necessary skill to be able to work as a freelance musician. I admire bassists such as Ron Carter and Pino Palladino, who, while having their own distinctive style, manage to adjust and adapt to a multitude of genres.
In my master project, it has been necessary to put some aspects of my artistic praxis in focus and others less so. I have been reflecting, not on the versatility that lies as a foundation for my artistic praxis, but rather on the questions "Who am I, on my own terms?" "What music do I wish to create?" This has led me to focus on my praxis as a performing composer in a jazz context, where I have more influence on the artistic outcome. Though other parts of my artistic praxis have not been in focus for my master project work, they have informed it and been informed by it.
Rehearsal Processes
As a jazz musician, I perform in bands in which all music is composed by bandmembers. The field of free improvisation is not the one I specialise in, though it's occasionally used as a technique inside and between compositions. I relate to Øyvind Skarbø's claim on the cover text to Bly de Blyant's debut album: "Free improvisation is a method, not a genre." [2013] The first thing that happens when initiating a project is creating compositions - or at the very least compositional sketches. Depending on the level of compositional detail, initial rehearsals can range from rehearsing a finished compositional idea, to co-creative processes evolving from simpler compositional sketches or free improvisation. In initial rehearsals, focus is often on understanding general compositional ideas and potentialities. I will show some excerpts of dialogue from a specific reherseal where I was the composer, with an excerpt of the score shown in picture below:
The musicians ask to clarify compositional elements that are uncertain, in order to get a correct understanding of the composition. Meanwhile, I listen to the performance and verbal inputs of the musicians to see if they take the composition in another direction than I originally envisioned, which often gives interesting artistic results.
After getting an initial idea, new rehearsals are set and the composition goes through a kind of ripening unconsciously in between rehearsals. When the composition is touched upon again, it is with a stronger sense of certainty and familiarity than initially, making more experimental approaches to interpretation viable. The musicians become more involved in shaping the composition and its aesthetics, giving feedback and suggesting ideas. The performing composer has the last word on broader compositional elements like form, style, dynamics, progression etc. The performers have the last word on their performance - grooves, voicings, improvisational approaches etc. In the undefinable overlap between the whole and its parts, meaning has to be negotiated.
Meg: Jeg synes at den loopen der [C] er liksom sin egen del, så vi kan holde på en liten stund med den.
Musiker: Det som er litt corny, er når vi har vært så lenge på den 15/4 polyrytmen eller hva det var, og så går vi tilbake til den andre [4/4]. Går det ann at de to taktene før loopen har litt underdelinger i den enda mer, sånn at det liksom glir over i hverandre?
Meg: Så at vi ikke spiller tydelig 4/4 de taktene der?
Musiker: Ja, kanskje for at bare det ikke plutselig stopper, men at det glir, for hvis det skal gå en stund er det tøft at det glir ut, kanskje?
Meg: Jada!
Me: I think that the loop there [C] is kind of its own part, so we can play that for a little while.
Musician: You know, what's a bit corny is when we've been so long in that 15/4 polyrhythm or what it is, and then go back to the other [4/4]. Is it possible that the two measures before the loop have a little more subdivisions, so they kind of glide into each other?
Me: So we don't play clearly 4/4 those measures?
Musician: Yes, perhaps just so it doesn't suddenly stop, but it glides, because if it lasts a while, it's cool that it glides out, perhaps?
Me: Absolutely!
The negotiation goes back and forth, moving just as much through interplay in performance as through verbal discussion. There happens a kind of collective reflection in action. [Borgdorff, 2006, p. 5] A bandmember instigates a certain kind of performance, for instance by suddenly performing with extended tonality. I follow their lead into experimental harmonic territory. But the bandmember perhaps desired to create a contrast to my performance, and change their performance immediately as soon as I start imitating theirs. I understand their approach, and hold my ground with the original tonality instead, perhaps even simpler than initially to provide a stable foundation for their tonal ventures. No words have been spoken, but the performance of the composition, the musical roles of the instruments and the aesthetic expression of the performance has been negotiated through practice.
Sometimes, a composition changes and undergoes several stages in rehearsals. The composition The Sphinx [Cort Piil, 2021] is an example (not composed by me), here linked to in Spotify, but possible to hear on most streaming services. Initially, it was performed as a typical jazz ballad, with the bass holding long notes, drums playing with brushes, etc. As a result of workshop-like rehearsals, the composition became polyrhythmically centred, with every instrument playing a different time signature divisible within a 6/4 bar. After a while, the strict systems felt constraining, and we wanted to free it up with the rhythm section playing fast double tempo swing and the melody instruments playing rubato, a similar approach to the composition Lonely Woman [Coleman, 1959]. Over time, it collapsed into everyone playing rubato, giving it a calm, solitary feel as I see it. The only elements constant through the interpretational history are the melody and chords. Were they to be disregarded from reflection, there would be no way to hear that we were performing the same composition through it's different versions. We can truly hear Leech-Wilkinson's assertion that "the same notes can make (and have made) substantially different music." [2016, p. 328]
The Debatable Term of Interpretation
Many words could be used to describe the musical performance of a composition, but in the educational context in which I am situated, the dominating term is that of "interpretation." A performer interprets a composition. One try to understand the composer's intentions through their score and turn them into sound through performance. What the composer has made clear, one strives to play as intended. Where there is ambiguity in the score, one may reason their way to figure out how to perform. The performative liberty starts where the composer's specificity ends. But the performative liberty is not entirely free. If the composer has not indicated tempo, for instance, one is not free to play in any tempo. One must reason from the existing elements of the score, from other works of the composer, from the historical style, from interpretational history, historical sources, etc. to figure out what the composer could have meant. "How fast is allegro vivace? (...) How loud is forte? (...) How should this passage be played? These sorts of questions preoccupy serious musical performers. They are questions of interpretation." [Krausz, 1993, p. 1]
This may be a constructive approach to performing music composed by others, perhaps particularly the romantic and modern-era music for which the terms are devised. But for me as a performing jazz composer, the notion of performance as interpretation seems somewhat absurd, and the associations the word carries limits my creativity. What does it mean to interpret? It seems to me in a general sense to imply deciphering the meaning of someone else's thoughts and clarifying what is unclear, translating it in order to present its meanings to a third party. In music, the term seems to me to superimpose an understanding of the composition as a stable, finished entity, something existing in the past or in a platonic plane. The notion that "each musical work we hear has, somewhere Out There, a corresponding Platonic entity that exists prior to, and indeed independent of all performance." [Small, 1998, p. 113] My role as performer seems to be to interpret and represent this entity to an audience, attempting to be as faithful as I can to the composer's musical meaning. It hallows the role of the composer to an exalted position, in which they know exactly what they want and are the primary creative agents of the musical process. It is the composers' thoughts and visions who are to be represented faithfully, and I am the composer's instrument, transforming their abstract thoughts to concrete sound. It is "the centuries' old formula of the omnipotent composer and subservient musician." [Cornish, 2015] I exaggerate somewhat, but only to display the problematic assumptions covertly understood (or misunderstood) in the vocabulary of musician as interpreter.
The Absurdity of "Interpreting" My Own Composition
But what does it mean for me to interpret a composition of which I am the composer? If interpretation signifies the clarification of what is unclear, the interpretative process collapses when I know exactly what I meant. If the performer's activity is primarily interpretation, it would seem that performing self-composed music would be the least creative kind of performance, since all ambiguity and unclarity in compositional intention, which the interpretative process is dependent on, is done away with. It would follow that the performance of self-composed music gives more identical performances over time, since I, the performing composer, know my compositional intentions and have no need for interpretation.
I asked a classical musician I know: "What would performance without interpretation look like?" I paraphrase his response: "If even possible, it would probably be quite mechanical, in that all variation of phrasing, dynamics, timbre etc. is removed and the music is performed simply as written." It is similar to how Stravinsky defined his ideal of performance not as "interpretation," but rather as "execution" [In Small, 1993, p. 6]. The consequence for the performing composer seeking to perform self-composed music, seems to be to execute them simply and plainly in a less creative approach than performing the music of others, as a composer I know said: "I am no longer a composer when I'm performing a piece."
Another musician I talked to had a creative approach to bypassing this dilemma, which I paraphrase: "When I interpret a piece by myself, I first compose it, then let it rest for a while. When I pick it up again, I pretend that it was written by someone else - someone preferably dead, but at least someone I could never contact to ask questions. I assume that they have not written anything outside the score that could guide me in interpretation, that the score is the only document left. Then I start the process of interpretation."
I find these approaches and experiences fascinating, because they differ so drastically from my own. In my experience as a performing composer, self-composed pieces have the greatest variety in performance, which runs contrary to what one would expect if conceptualising the composition as a stable, finished entity. The process of performing self-composed music is for me vibrant and creative, varied and captivating. I engage in the same creative process when I compose and when I perform self-composed music, the approaches have many similarities.
I'll present this as a philosophical argument in order to illustrate a logical fallacy:
Supposition 1: The primary creative process of performing scored music is interpretation.
Definition: The process of interpretation is (linguistically) defined as seeking to understand the composer's intentions in order to present them musically to an audience.
Supposition 2: My performance of self-composed music does not involve interpretation (in the definition above).
Conclusion: My performance of self-composed music involves a low degree of creativity.
As the conclusion is self-evidently false (I hope!), some sort of logical fallacy or false presupposition must be present. Since supposition 3 is derived from and about my own personal experience which I know better than any others, I assume that the fallacy is in either supposition 1 or 2. Either 1: the process of interpretation is not the primary creative process in performance, but other more underrecognized creative processes are at play in performance. Or 2: the term interpretation is not actually what it makes itself out to be. It is a term used for something different than what one would expect from the word's general usage. For me as a performing musician, these two potential fallacies are essentially the same, in saying that interpreting the composer's intention is not the primary activity involved in performing self-composed music, there are other underrecognized processes in play as well.
Non-Interpretative Processes in Performance and Composition
I will now look at some of the similarites I experience between performance and composition: I am both processes a creative agent: generating, moulding and presenting music. As a composer, I generate abstract musical ideas, mold them through development/revision and present them in notated or oral form to musicians. As a performer, I generate audible sounds, mold them through my control of an instrument and present them to a physical or digital audience. The medium differs, but the processes are for me the same, and this is perhaps even more true for the performance of self-composed music.
In both contexts, I ask myself similar unconscious questions: "Who am I, artistically?" "What do I want this music to be?" "What can I express musically, today?" "Do I wish to approach this the same way as before?" "How should I develop this?" "Does this work?" "How should I relate to the intentions/desires/requests of others?" "Should I adjust to this context, and in that case, how much?" "What expectations do people have to me, and should I fulfil them or not?" "How does this sound for an audience unfamiliar with the music?" "How much should I adjust my music to audience expectations?" "Are my expectations about audience expectations correct?" "What is this music really about?"
If I spend all my time on performance one week, I am a better composer the next. If I spend all my effort on composition, my experience implies that I would inadvertently become somewhat of a better performer as well. The processes seem to me deeply connected. But how can it be, that the processes of composition and performance, ever construed as dichotomic contrasts, are so relatable in my experience? Perhaps Small's concept of musicking is a more accurate description of my creative processes than a musicological approach dichotomising and dissociating the creative process. "To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing (...) or (...) by providing material for performance (what is called composing)." [Small, 1993, p. 9] Small's conception of performance, composition and more as a unified, intergrated activity resonates with me and reflects in my artistic praxis. Of course, performing and composing in their conventional approaches do have defined differences such as the medium of mediation (sound versus score), their modes of existence (auditory versus conceptual), their purpose (for audiences versus for performers), etc. But what I attempt to highlight is that the artistic processes are in many ways the same in my praxis.
In the void left after the removal of interpretative process, I see innumerable other creative processes revealing themselves, within the overarching process of musical performance. In my performance of self-composed music, I see many activities that I engage in that I would not define as interpretation. These performative activities needs to be discerned and engaged in, of which I will name some:
Redefining Interpretation
In some paragraphs, I might have seemed overtly critical to the performative tradition of classical music. That is not my intention. Rather, what I propose is that the vocabulary commonly used to discuss those performative traditions misleads us the actual processes the performer may engage in. I agree with Göran Hermerén's opinion that "Personally, I refuse to restrict interpretations by definitional fact to interpretations of the intentions of the composer. (...) Is the mind of the composer the only mind we are interested in understanding?" [in Krausz, 1993, p. 30-31] Still, his quote highlights the oxymoron that the word interpretation produces.
If I disregard the composer's intention (as I understand it), as I wish to perform their composition with some other aesthetic qualities, my performance may have a claim to some kind of aesthetic value. But it does not have a claim to be called an interpretation, rather risking being called a misrepresentation because of the dominance of the term interpretation in describing performance. Still, whether a performance is a true interpretation or not, is, as I see it, not the most interesting question. My opinion is that the center of discussion should be whether such an approach to performance can facilitate greater aesthetic experiences.
In time, I've understood that the usage of the term perhaps differs from its linguistic definition (interpreting the composer's intentions). In the start of my project, when I understood the term linguistically, I felt it as a limiting word, defining the extent to which I can be creative as only those aspects which the composer has left unclear. But through discussions with other musicians, my experience of the term has changed. I've seen that the term interpretation for many classical musicians does not indicate a limit to creative freedom, but actually its opposite. It gives them a room to interpret differently from other performers. It legitimises quite different performances, in arguing them to be different interpretations of the same composition. The ambiguities of the composer provide an avenue where they can express themselves. However, I still see the term in itself as having a potential for misleading, though I acknowledge that the artistic processes the term is used to describe are very legitimate, interesting and aesthetically engaging.
Performing as if I was the Composer
When I, as a performer, perform music composed by others, there comes certain considerations into play that one avoids in performance of self-composed music which I have discussed mostly so far. Now I have to consider how truthful I should be to the composition, how I should relate to the aesthetic of the bandleader/conductor, what my role is in a certain context, etc. Still, I think there are some realisations arising from performing self-composed music that are relevant to performing compositions by others.
As an alternative performative practice, I like to sometimes test out performing a composition as if I was it's composer. I imagine that I had creative authority over the performance and everything described in the sheet was intentionally put there by me. Then I experiment with how my interpretation changes, and consider which elements of change are of aesthetic interest. Usually, I gain a larger understanding of and experience of ownership to the composition. When I imagine why I would put an articulation mark at a certain point, had I been the composer, I start to see the musical meaning of the articulation rather than performing it mechanically. It also opens a greater possibility for expressing myself in the composition.
I've been reflecting on how much a performance is my performance of a composition or how much it is an execution of the composer's vision. The musical literature shows immense contrasts in answering this dilemma, from the composer-oriented perspective: "These, then, are the two kinds of art in music - the creative and the interpretative. (...) the performer, no matter how great his skill and how keen his insight, can but bring to life the creative thoughts of the composer." [Whybrew, 1963, p. 79] To to the performer-oriented: "The performer's role is always the same; he is always an active creator, shaping and molding [sic] the abstract scheme furnished him by the composer" [Meyer, 1956, as cited in O'Grady, 1980, p. 56] My compositional praxis has greatly informed my foundational values on this dilemma in the direction of the performer-oriented. Of course, any answer to such a dilemma should be sensitive to context, as some performative practices hold more legitimacy in some genres and among particular composers than others, and I of course adjust to what is appropriate in a certain context.
But to reference an experience from my performing composer praxis: when I am the composer, I do absolutely not want the musicians to merely execute my music mechanically and correctly. Several conductors have encouraged in rehearsals "just play what is written. Don't think, don't be a musician, just do what the composer says." Were this to be said about my compositions, I would be appalled. When I am the composer, I long for the musicians to take ownership of the music, to do something with it, to bring something of their own to the table and find a kind of middle point in which you can hear both composer and performer. I am overjoyed when musicians take the role of active participator and surprise me with their performances, it is very much wished for approach. Some interpretations might occasionally not be to my preference, but that is a risk I desire them to take, because the overall expression of active creativity means more to me than disagreements about particular segments.
As a performer, I am surprised by my positive attitudes as a composer. When I perform a composition, I am usually by default nervous to do something "wrong." I wish to please the composer and honour his or her written instructions. But as a composer, my focus is not on right or wrong according to the score. Rather, the composition is a framework, a starting point for initiating the process of creating wonderful performances. The difference of my intuitive ideals when I am placed on different sides of the score is drastic.
To me as a composer, even the notes themselves are open to discussion. In the realm of traditional interpretation, the musical aspects of dynamics, tempo, expression, etc. are seen as more open to debate and variation, whereas pitch and rhythm less so. [Krausz, 1993, p. 1-3] The alteration of notes, for any reason, is blatantly disregarded with argumens such as that were alterations allowed, "what would keep an interpreter from transforming Beethoven's Fifth Symphony into "Yankee Doodle?" [ibid., p. 3] Krausz's quote seems to embody a culture of mistrust to performers, implying that were performers given too much creative scope, it would lead to the dismembering of the composition rather than enhanced performance.
As a composer, my desires for interpretation are quite opposite from the typical description of interpretational possibilities. Traditional notation needs content - pitch and rhythm. Without these, music cannot be expressed in traditional notation. If I as a composer desire to convey a vague idea, a starting point, a tonal landscape etc., I am forced by the format of notation to represent it very concretely, perhaps more specifically than I wish the idea to be. In my music, where composition and improvisation are integrated, this poses an ever present challenge. It often makes the notes seem more specific than I desire, due to the fact that pitch and rhythm is required in a traditional format. However, notational elements such as dynamics, tempo and expression are not required, and so are placed there intentionally. If there is a forte, it is there for a reason, but notation of how to arpeggiate a chord may just be an example. If that is my experience as a composer, perhaps the prevailing attitude that notes are indisputable could, at least in some contexts, be opened up for discussion.
Naturally, this is only based on my experience as a composer. Different composers have different attitudes and as a performer I have to be sensitive to what kind of performance is desired and appropriate in a certain style, context or in works by a certain composer. If I perform in a symphony orchestra, the conductor is the leading creative agent and I must adapt to my role. I am well aware of this. But on the other side: I've been to band auditions where skilful musicians were not hired, because they played the music too correctly. The band desired new creative input, but their loyalty to score hindered them from getting the job.
My intention with this discussion has not been to say that all music should be performed with large creative liberties at all times. My contribution is rather to suggest that a practice of performing as if one was the composer can be a supplement in musical performance and preparation for performance. It is an approach which in my experience reduces performance pressure, instills a creative approach, increases sense of ownership to the music and (at least in a jazz context) often is desired by composers.