Rhythmic notation and meaningful ambiguity

The notation of rhythm in music with no sense of pulse is often ambiguous. As Morton Feldman said to a student in a masterclass in Johannesburg: ‘The minute we leave repetition patterns, the minute we leave Stravinsky, we’re in trouble’ (Feldman, 1983, p. 2). Without a repetitive pattern, and in solo

performance particularly, the composer is left with almost infinite possibilities of notating the same rhythm, all of which will convey a different feel to the

performer, even though, paradoxically, the audience may not be aware of such nuances. In conversation with Walter Zimmermann, Feldman explained: ‘When you hear it, you have no idea rhythmically how complicated that is on paper. It’s floating. On paper it looks as though it were rhythm. It’s not. It’s duration’ (DeLio, 2000, p. 105).

This rather evident but nonetheless essential characteristic of the notation of rhythm is not specific to new music; the end of the following example extract from Schumann’s Der Dichter Spricht (Kinderszenen, XXI), illustrates the problem within the context of a 19th-century work:

Figure 5: Extract from Schumann’s ‘Der Dichter spricht’ (Kinderszenen, XXI, op. 15 no13, 1838)

The rests in the last few bars destabilise the meter, which the pianist will inevitably perceive differently to his or her audience. Rhythmic notation willingly contains ambiguity in meaning/intention: each player will interpret these rests slightly differently.

This very simple example shows how unexpected information in rhythmic notation is a potential vector of expression. The notion of surprise or misunderstanding here reminds of a passage by John L. Casti, quoted by Chris Dench:

Surprise is what happens when common sense fails… the word surprise represents the difference between expectations and reality… Systems displaying surprising (i.e., unpredictable) behaviours are more or less synonymous with those we regard as being in some way “complex” (Dench, 2002, p.181).

The notation of time is at the core of the performer’s understanding of the score, and yet its representation is highly equivocal. To give a simple example, whilst a

performer, and audience in roughly the same manner, a rhythmic figure of comparable simplicity may be notated in a virtually infinite number of ways, which are then themselves open to different varying interpretations by the performer and subsequently, the audience.

As noticed by Morton Feldman in page 26 of the present thesis (DeLio, 2000, p. 105), in many cases the audience does not perceive the subtlety of rhythms written on the page, yet rhythm is undoubtedly one of the primary aspects of notation. The function of rhythmic notation might be understood then as an almost confidential dialogue between composer and performer, often suggesting ways of understanding the music, rather that ways of playing it.

The representation of time always takes a great deal of attention in my compositional practice. With a given sequence of durations, even in slow music, placing beats and bars, or positioning the attacks against the downbeat, constitute for me one of the most essential vectors of articulation and meaning. In my view, bars and metre articulate music in a very different way than slurs and accents. The metric structure of a piece conveys the performer a sense of architecture or coherence whilst it often remains potentially enigmatic for the audience (when there is no conductor). It is undeniable that choices in the notation of rhythm influence the performer deeply, but it remains difficult, in non- pulsed music particularly, to explain precisely how. Since the performer’s response is unpredictable, we may conclude that these notational choices

suggest or prompt, rather than prescribe or describe; the notation, to borrow a

term from Xenakis, functions as a symbolic excitation (Xenakis & Kanach, [1970] 2001, p.124).

The passage below, extract from my Piano Quintet (2013), bars 75-78, illustrates how, in the process of transcribing a rhythmic sequence, a small difference in the choice of meter may have a crucial impact on the musical result. This passage is based on the superimposition of different periodic pulses. Violin 2 was chosen as a reference. Consequently Violin 2 marks the down beats, Violin 1 is perceived slower than the meter, and Cello goes slightly quicker.

Had I chosen Cello as reference, its attack would be placed on the downbeat at the beginning of each bar, in a slightly faster tempo, the same temporal

proportions would look totally different on the page, and would be understood differently by the performers who play it.

Figure 6: Piano Quintet, score extract (1)

Such attention to rhythmic notation during the transcription process (which meter to assign to a particular passage, how to cut a continuous flow into bars and beats, etc.) is, for me, evocative of how verses are divided in a poem, or by extension, how material and form may influence one another. As a child, I remember being quite dubious about the insistence of my father, a poet, upon very simple forms on the page, as if the visual aspect were more important than meaning. Now I view these systematic forms, and the rhythms which they suggest, as some of the greatest qualities of his poetry.

They lie heaped beyond the horizon The poems I have not written, verses

I have not yet devised To set words afloat

Unto an untroubled surface of time Where the years will not touch them,

whether by just neglect or the attentive ear,

Which is why I would wish you still To continue in spite of our vehemence

and wasting of time which has no limit.

2 MORTON FELDMAN, BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH: