Will Holder speaks in circles. These are often, well mostly, other people’s words. He selects them, edits them, gives them form (often a context, also), he publishes them (for example in F.R. David, the journal he produced for nearly 20 years), he performs them, and then he lets go, setting the words in motion to move around on their own momentum. Will sent along some in a cheat sheet / liner notes for this Tuesday’s class. Please read. And here are a few borrowed from Robert Ashley:



The graph is read circularly. Each dot represents a constant unit of time that is determined privately by each performer. This unit should be a natural pulse that does not tend to subdivide in the performer’s mind. The individual performer assigns to each quadrant of the score one of the following sound elements: pitch; intensity; timbre [tonal color changes effected through the use of mutes, filters, bow movement, etc.]; density [the mixing of tonal in gredients, as in: flutter-tongue, double-stops, mixed vocal and instrumental sound, etc.]*. These sound elements may be assigned to the quadrants in any pattern, and that pattern—while it will “revolve” in its relationship to the score—will remain constant. (in the relationship of its parts) throughout the performance. The ensemble should prepare a sonority within which the individual instruments are not distinguishable. This sonority will provide, for the individual performers, a tonal reference for the various sound activities that constitute the performance. Whenever any performer is playing his contribution to the reference sonority, time (duration) is unmeasured (free) for him. Whenever any performer is playing through the (sixteen) measured pulses of a quadrant, he must deviate continuously, but as gradually as possible, from his contribution to the reference sonority.

The performance begins with the reference sonority. At any time, then, individual performers may play through any (starting) quadrant. Subsequently, they will continue reading circularly, alternating unmeasured periods of their contribution to the reference sonority with measured periods of assigned deviations.

Whenever any performer first becomes aware of a deviant element (other than his own) in the reference sonority, his pattern of assigned sound elements (quadrants) shifts circularly so that the mode of deviation he recognizes is assigned to the quadrant opposite that in which he is playing or will play next. (As the pattern of quadrants remains constant, thus, all quadrants will be redesignated.) The pattern of quadrant designations remains in its changed position until the performer has played through the succeeding (newly designated) quadrant, after which it is subject again to transposition through the appearance of deviant elements in the sonority.

(Robert Ashley, …in memoriam Esteban Gomez (quartet) instructions, 1967)


Continues in class . . .