I have been thinking more about this vocal piece. There are some issues with writing a piece that involves so "little" amount of work from my part. I feel like I am not actually doing anything, as if I was just relaying the burden of composing to someone else, doing something like what Borges does on his short story, Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (and others, but this is my favorite example): outlining a possible outcome for a creative idea, suggesting a line of thought that could be followed by a more apt pursuer rather than following it myself.
But, then again, am I really not doing anything? Am I really not working hard to arrive to this conclusion? Is it really not the result of hours and days and weeks of thought, and debate, and changes, and more changes, and questioning and more questioning? Furthermore, should I always comply to an ideal of "hard work" as a kind of work that delivers a finished material to be easily consumed by the public? Why can I not allow myself to trust the performers, to allow them to have some more part in the creation of this music? Must I always dictate to the utmost degree of precision what everybody has to do?
John Cage, one of the fathers of Indeterminacy
I feel that, mainly, this is a result of my own insecurities. I fear that, if I am not clear enough with what I say, the result will be a disaster, or that it will not result in what I want. But, another question, should it always result in what I want? On one hand, I could say "yes, that's why I'm writing music in the first place, so that it stays." But another me could say, "but, wait, do you really need to be able to predict what is going to happen, to have control over destiny in some way, to be satisfied with the outcome? Why not have some degree of surprise, of indeterminacy?"
This post is a kind of self-debate. I feel the need to be able to justify why I am doing this, because it represents a complete detour from my usual way of working (id est writing everything in a fully-notated way).
I don't feel like I am doing this to impress anyone, or to demonstrate anything to anyone. If I was (I have to be really sure I am not), then the whole effort would have proven meaningless, since then the piece would not have any value of its own, it would not be a fruit of my own liking, but rather a vane attempt to imitate someone else in order to gain respect from others.
The problem I see with this writing is that the great freedom I give to the performers can be interpreted as a permission to do "anything," which is something Christian Wolff mentioned a lot in his lecture. He said that he has the ideal that the musicians will be willing to put all their effort in making the piece sound as good as possible, but that this is, of course, not always the case. In my case, I have two performers that are very open to working with new music and whom I consider also to be very good persons as well. So maybe this problem is not very much of a problem at all. I also has to do with the rehearsals of the piece, and I intend to have many, so that the performers really feel what the idea is about, and can build the music around it.
I think it might be a problem of facing the fact that I don't want to control this music, although I feel the great urge to do so. I feel that this piece should be free, it should be what the performer wants it to be. The journey from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment has to be a personal one, this is why the piece simply cannot be a through-composed piece, because each performance has to mean a different search, a different path. Each duo has to find its own way.
I think it might also be that I am afraid of "wasting" my time in writing a piece that will be worthless, and then having to redo it. But is time really wasted? Who am I to declare if I wasted my time or not, as if I owned it? Would I have learned nothing? I don't think so now.
Maybe there is nothing to worry about, then. Maybe I just need to write the music and see what happens. Maybe I just need to stop being so frightful about jumping into these unknown waters. I am not a believer of the "try everything at least once in your life" philosophy, but I do believe you can apply it to certain things in life. For example, this. I wouldn't like to let go the opportunity of exploring into the terrain of indeterminate music, of musical experimentation. That's why I decided to study composition in the first place.
So, I go to write now.
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