----- Original Message -----
Dear Allan Graubard
Thanks for submitting your text about Black February and
Mr. Morris to us.
I have a question concerning the general topic of your
article as I don’t see right now how it could fit into our publication,
which concerns itself with collaborative practices, as you
surely know. I know that Mr. Morrison gave many concerts with other
musicians, but such an experience or musical event is always based on a
“collaboration”. It is not this loose use of the term
(that is close to participation, or sharing a specific time and space
with others) that we are investigating in, though.
Perhaps I just don’t understand your text fully yet. Could
you possibly clarify your use of the term “collaboration” in
the below paragraph?
“And, yes, with the appropriate circumstance we will
continue this collaboration, as such or in kind. That it opens
interstitial spaces in the music-language encounter is something the audience
confirmed."
I am looking forward to hearing from you,
Lillian Fellmann
In “Conduction” there is more at stake than a loose musical
“collaboration,” since it is based on interpretation of the
conductor’s ideographic signs. As musicians interpret the
Conduction vocabulary, they also do so via new emerging aptitudes to
eschew style or type in favor of the music they are constructing in real
time. When language enters the performance, as with my intervention
with the “PhantomStation Ensemble,” other tensions come to the fore,
including how language can sustain “meaning” within the music, and
how it can hold an audience at a point where meaning seems to slip
away then return, and all the more poignantly for it.
Is this not a collaboration in an evolving praxis between
conductor and ensemble, ensemble and musicians, conductor and
musicians, and in another sense between interpretation and improvisation? Add
in the linguistic aspect, the texts I wrote and performed with the
ensemble, and the other issues I alluded to arise. The
“collaboration” between a writer and a Conduction ensemble seems quiet clear.
If this does not satisfy your criteria, then the piece is inappropriate for your journal. But then what is, and what informs, a “collaboration”?
yours,
Allan
I am re-sending this to you because I want to be completely
clear. I had a moment just now to re-read my initial e-mail,
and noticed a need for more clarity in the beginning of my
Dear Lillian,
I’ll do what I can to clarify your questions within your message.
Dear Allan,
thank you very much for your additional explanations.
I really want to understand this. Please accept my apology in case I
appear stolid to you.
Not at all.
It is one thing to discuss Conduction, another to
participate in the ensemble or as audience.
This is collaboration. I can see that at least partly now –
different parties seem to influence each other’s performance
reciprocally. Would you say this applies to conductor and musicians in the same
way and degree?
The degree differs. The Conductor establishes a musical
landscape that the ensemble inhabits, transforms, makes their
own but as they interpret the Conduction vocabulary; and as
each musician molds, for themselves alone and for the
ensemble, the music.
And does the “Phantom Station Ensemble” collaborate in real
time with the musician or the conductor, or is it an independent
participator that rather adds a layer to the audience’s experience? You
call it an intervention, do the musicians or the conductor in any way
intervene back?
Conduction is a performed in real time. And all aspects of a
Conduction, including, for example, my collaboration (text)
with the PhantomStation ensemble, is pitched into the moment.
There is a dramatic aspect to the performance as well
precisely in regard to the reciprocal tensions that emerge
from those involved, and how those tensions clarify the
various movements that arise through the music, including, as
in my case, the text.
I wouldn’t want to conceive of interpretation (musician-conductor) as
collaboration because it is one-dimensional, unless the
conductor is answering the musicians “moods” or reaction to his signs in
some way in real time. It seems though that in this case the musicians do
not “simply” follow but consciously digress from what they see (the
conductor’s signs). They work with that visual material and
form a third. Is that correct?
Yes, but, again, as an event in real time that embraces all
concerned, the Conductor responds to the ensemble as the
ensemble responds to the Conductor, with one difference. The
Conductor wields the baton, the musicians wield bows
(strings), valves (brass), sticks, mallets, etc.
(tympani/percussion), electronics, and so on. In this sense,
the traditional authority of the Conductor remains but the
music must establish its own presence in a distinctive way; or
the Conduction fails.
I am thinking of publishing our email conversation.
That could be interesting. If you wish to read more about
Conduction, you can find on line at New World Records a
booklet that I wrote with Mr. Morris and that is included in
the 10 CD box set: “Testament: Conduction Collection.” Mr.
Morris writes the first half, I write the second half. I also
have other texts you might be interested in on the relationship of Conduction to poetry.
Sincerely,
Lillian
all the best,
Allan
Dear Lillian,
You were interested in my text on Conduction and poetry.
I have attached it. As you will quickly note, this is not a scholarly text, and has no pretension to being one. It is a text that sketches in broad strokes certain synergies that I have found between Conduction and poetry; thus, the question mark in the title. Perhaps all of this will interest
you...
yours,
Allan
