Writing a contemporary piece of chamber music is inevitably a blending of elements of classical tradition with modern sensibilities. Crafting a composition for just two strings, the violin and cello, is bound to be stripped down in terms of timbre and structure yet it’s hard to deny the expressive power of these instruments.

In this intimate setting, the composer must navigate the rich tapestry of possibilities of the two versatile instruments. The limitations of this particular string duo serve as both a challenge and an opportunity, compelling the composer to distill their musical ideas into their purest essence. Among the opportunities you can also count in that the present repertoire is relatively sparse.

I’m always reluctant to force an interpretation on the listeners and performers, but maybe a few words about each piece can be helpful.

The very opening of the First piece introduces the listener to a familiar polyphonic structure where the violin and the cello essentially delivers a brief crab canon. They also introduce some tone material which later will reoccur. After this short passage the music becomes more homophonic consisting of short alternating patterns which are also repeated, including some very short interludes which are not repeated.

The second piece contrasts the first with something softer and calmer which in turn is interrupted by something more unsettling in the middle.

The third piece uses similar material throughout. The two instruments are engaged in a dialogue that is solistic with frequent use of multiple stops yet the interplay is seemingly complementary.

With the fourth piece, the interplay has deepend several degrees and the violin and the cello occupy occasionally the same time and space while still establishing a friendly coexistence.

The final piece, return to the more hectic tempo of the first piece. In regards to the form it could be seen as a rondo with a principal theme that is repeated alternating with different contrasting episodes.

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Eclectic piece, mixing classical and more contempoary sounds.

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Vocal Quartet and Saxophone Quartet. Inter-artistic and dramatic work with references to phenomenons including Shakespeare, absurdist theater and pop art.

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Vocal Quartet and Saxophone Quartet. Inter-artistic and dramatic work with references to phenomenons including Shakespeare, absurdist theater and pop art.

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A while ago in a series of posts Tim Davies argued that many scores these days are over-notated, and introduced the concept of the default interpretation or performance. The basic idea is that by notating what the players would do anyway by "default" you're wasting your own time as a composer/arranger/orchestrator and distracting the players. (Check out deBreved).

I find this whole idea very interesting. Furthermore it's a bit counter to what I have been taught, which centered much about clarity and avoiding questions.

Redundant information

Let's start with a very simple example to explore this idea: if you are writing music for strings (let's say a string quartet) arco is the default playing technique, so it would be totally redundant to include the text 'arco' on top of the score. Only if you have a previous 'pizz.' marking it would make sense to add an 'arco' marking. With Tim Davies terminology we could say that to put 'arco' at the start is an obvious example of not knowing the default.

This example is somewhat trivial but it's a good starting point because here I think not many would disagree with Tim Davies in trusting the default and omitting the 'arco' mark at the start of the piece.

Counterproductive information

To expand on Davies point I also think that one can find examples where trying to notate the default would be not only redundant but even counterproductive. I'll give an example which I think is quite relevant and clear:

The default for the string players would include some amount of vibrato so therefore it would be productive to give the instruction 'non vibrato' (or senza vibrato) which would give no vibrato (or at least less than the default amount). It would also be productive to call on 'molto vibrato' to have more vibrato than default.

But would happen if you give the instruction 'vibrato' in the hope of getting the default vibrato? I'm pretty certain that the performer will give you more vibrato than default just to make sure. But if you write 'poco vibrato'? I'm pretty certain that this will result in less vibrato than default (but not as little as 'non vibrato').

The best way to make certain that you get normal vibrato is to explicitly call for normal vibrato (or something equivalent such as vib. norm, vib. ord). This is also recommended notation when you return from a non-default vibrato (see Gould: Behind Bars pp 146-147). You can give this instruction without risk of being counterproductive, but it is perhaps even more obviously redundant than an 'arco' marking (if used without any previous non-default playing).

I'd also like to add another example: For strings the default without any articulation marks is to change bow direction with each note and to add no space between notes. Let's not even go into the bowing but only ask - can you notate this default articulation with any combination of articulation marks? I think the closest thing would be to add tenuto marks but that would imply slightly more emphasis on each note.

Changing standards

It's time to look at this concept of the default from a more critical perspective. Things change, one cannot assume that what is default performances today will remain default forever. Earlier it was stated that 'arco' is default playing technique for string players (or at least for the string quartet in the example) but there's an example where this has changed; if you play jazz style contrabass, pizzicato is obviously the default instead of arco.

Wouldn't it be better to try to anticipate these changes of standard and try to be more precise in the notations? Then the score would be future secured. It's hard not to find this objection convincing, but it seems to me that it misses the fact that the notation standard change as well as the performance standard. If early music were more precisely notated would it be more easy for today's performers to do it justice? Yes, perhaps but only given that we could interpret the meaning of there symbols correctly. As musical notation is a form of communication I think it's better to focus on the communication with contemporary performers and only hope that future performers will do it justice (if at all). Furthermore if you really want to make sure the future will perceive the music as you want them to, you should make a good recording that gets preserved.

No default

So far I haven't raised any major objections to the idea of the default. But I think there's one comment that has to be made. It doesn't seem to me that there are defaults that cover the whole range of musical notations. The most obvious counter-example to me is dynamics. With the exceptions of instruments like the organ or harpsichord that doesn't suit well for dynamic considerations, you have to notate what dynamic level you're aiming at. There isn't any dynamic level that will take precedence.

At the moment I don't have any more examples of notation contexts where the idea of a default doesn't apply. If you have some additional ideas on this please write a comment below!

Conclusion

If we imagine a score with the bare essentials needed for a performance. We can assume that it contains pitches and durations. It would also contain some tempo indication. I've also argued that it would have to include some information about the dynamics. Maybe there also need to be some more information. What we're after is some score that contain all information needed for a non ambiguous performance (hence no questions) but which contains no more specific performance instructions. The view is then (following Tim Davies proposition) that we should add only those performance instructions to this basic score that would change the performance (compared to the performance of the plain score). All other indications are redundant, or worse - misleading and counterproductive.

I'm currently composing a brass quintet. One of the first major compositions I did when I was studying music was also a brass quintet. When I now return to the ensemble form it feels like something of a new start; not only for the reconnection with this early piece but also because i think I have some fresh ideas - especially on form, and also because I'm trying out a new method when composing (perhaps I can go into more details about this in a future post).

I've looked into the brass quintet repertoire a bit and it doesn't seem to be that much original compositions around - on the other hand quite a lot more or less successful arrangements and transcriptions for the ensemble (a transcription of Bach's violin concertos were very inspirational for me last time). If you know any piece you think I should take a look at please leave a comment below!

I also have the ambition to revise the first brass quintet which I still think have some merits. So hopefully I can soon publish two new original brass quintets...

Four short etudes that holds different challenges for the harpsichordist.

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Recently I uploaded a new electroacoustic piece to my SoundCloud account. The track is called Rubiop and is a rhythm and sample based piece inspired by the pop art of the 1950s and -60s. It could be seen as a collage with references to pop culture realized in audio. The piece was premiered in Fylkingen, Stockholm Sweden on the 4th of April 2014. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/147032467" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="600" iframe="true" /]

A rhythm and sample based piece inspired by the pop art of the 1950s and -60s. It could be seen as a collage with references to pop culture realized in audio.

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On the 31st of January 2014 in Redpath Hall, Montreal Alexandra Fol will premiere an organ piece I've written for her called Thoughts from the Inside and Outside. Read more about the piece on the work list. Alexandra Fol is a fellow composer, organist and doctor of Music. More about the event.

I've started to study Behind Bars by Elaine Gould. "The definitive guide to music notation", according to the subtitle. And in a foreword Sir Simon Rattle affirms this view:

"Elaine Gould, in this wonderful monster volume, has written the equivalent of the Grove Dictionary for Notation. It is an extraordinary achievement, and if used by the next generation of composers and copyists will be a blessing for hard-working and long-suffering performers everywhere! Every chapter presents solutions and rules that will make our life easier, save rehearsal time and frustration, and will ultimately lead to better performances. What is important for a musician is to be able to spend rehearsal time on the music itself. I not only welcome her book unreservedly, but I would also pray that it becomes a kind of Holy Writ for notation in this coming century. Certainly nobody could have done it better, and it will be a reference for musicians for decades to come."

My first impression is also very promising. I'm sure I will post some more during my reading of it.

A double quartet may just be an ensemble of eight musicians (then perhaps more properly called an octet), or as in this case an ensemble consisting of the combination of two existing quartets - a vocal quartet (Vokalkvartetten Vox) and a saxophone quartet (Rollin' Phones). This may seem like an odd combination, it is not a double string quartet, but if you think of the names of the different saxophones - soprano, alto, tenor and baritone - it may make perfect sense. Anyway it is an interesting combination and an inspiring mission. The piece is commissioned by C-Y ContemporarY through Swedish Arts council.

Some month ago I visited a concert with the saxophone quartet, Rollin' Phones. After the concert we got together and discussed the project. This was a kind of starting point for me in my work. Equipped with inspiration from the concert and the meeting I started working on the assignment.

The initial instructions in the request were loosely to give the pieces some dramatic qualities and to compose in stylistic freedom. My idea is to make a section to section mix of dramatic elements and stylistically free music.

In the project besides the musicians in the two quartets there are also the fellow composers Ulrika Emanuelsson and Stefan Klaverdal, and the director and dramaturge Helena Röhr. We discussed having tolerance and respect as some kind of theme for all of our compositions. (Actually we talked about ‘respect’ but my suspicion is that we really meant ‘tolerance’.) This I have taken to heart. And I also found some inspiration from a sculpture Für Toleranz ("for tolerance") by Volkmar Kühn, located in Gera, Germany.

Cello and Marimba Piece about controlled simplicity. I would like to compare this to east asian ink (and wash) paintings.

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Work about the difference between humans and computers; and the huge gap in communication which really has to be bridged for the everyday interactions we have with computers and other 'intelligent' machines.

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Cello and Marimba Piece about controlled simplicity. I would like to compare this to east asian ink (and wash) paintings.

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Work about the difference between humans and computers; and the huge gap in communication which really has to be bridged for the everyday interactions we have with computers and other 'intelligent' machines.

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Different attempts to handle the fact that a guitar quartet is four instruments with exactly the same range and timbre. As suggested by their titles the movements are in somewhat contrasting styles.

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First an important note before I go into more details of the creative commons licenses: authors, artists, composers and creators and originators in different fields are learning more about how to share their creations and the creative commons licenses are providing them the means for legally doing so. Please do advocate that more should go in this direction, if you like. But don’t be impatient, do respect the decisions of the creators and most importantly don’t encourage unauthorized sharing! But now let’s learn some more about creative commons. Let’s start with this introductory video:

[embed]http://vimeo.com/25684782[/embed]

Creative Commons Kiwi by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand (CC BY) license. The video was made with support from InternetNZ and is a project of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Produced by Mohawk Media. http://creativecommons.org/videos/creative-commons-kiwi

More videos can be found at http://creativecommons.org/videos I know that this involves some legal stuff which may be difficult to grasp. So let’s go through this from the basics. One important thing to understand is that the licenses are non-exclusive, that means that even if you are distributing something for free through one of these licences you can still sell it for money elsewhere. But if you are selling through a dealer who for their part wants exclusiveness, this can't be done because of the CC license. And it can of course be difficult to sell something you at some level are giving away for free. This feature of non-exclusiveness is actually quite important when it comes to deciding which license to choose. If you still want the possibility to make money on the creation even though you are sharing it with a CC license, you should choose a license which restricts the commercial use. This may seem counter-intuitive, to choose a non-commercial license if you want the possibility to be commercial. But what you are actually doing is saying that you can use my stuff freely as long as you don’t do it commercially, in that department I would still like to keep some possibilities. I like to think of it this way, put simply (a view which is also implied by the video): When you create something which is under the ordinary copyrights law you automatically get certain rights from these laws (remember that the copyright laws can be different in different countries). You keep these rights a long while, hopefully at least as long as you live. But after a certain time the rights is withdrawn from you or your surviving relatives and you creation enters public domain and is free for everyone to use. An obvious example of this is the compositions of Mozart. When describing the creative commons licenses I want to start in that end; through a CC license you can give up your rights and let your work be as free as if it were in public domain. You can’t give up the right to be attributed though when the creation is shared, showed, performed or else way used. And as I understand it works in the public domain surprisingly doesn’t have this right, perhaps because it would be legally impossible to distribute and follow up on these rights. But morally and in common practise these rights exists. You wouldn’t play a piece of Mozart without saying that it was by him. You also have the right to be attributed when the creation is remixed or adapted, and here perhaps we have a difference compared with the works in public domain even in practise. If you don’t like to give up on all of the rights except attribution but would like to keep some, you would like to restrict the CC license. So, what we have is a scale which starts with the public domain with no rights and free use, next is the basic CC license with only the right to be attributed, then follows the other CC licenses which retains more rights and at the other end we have ordinary copyright with all rights reserved. Lets look at this different alternatives in more detail, ranging from totally free to all rights reserved. All quotes taken from creativecommons.org licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. 1. Public Domain: “When a work is in the public domain, it is free for use by anyone for any purpose without restriction under copyright law. Public domain is the purest form of open/free, since no one owns or controls the material in any way.” 2. Attribution CC BY, what I call a basic cc license “This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.” 3. Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA, the creation can be adapted but the adaptation must have the same license “This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.” 4. Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND, the right to not have the work altered is retained “This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.” 5. Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC, can’t be used commercially without ordinary permits “This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.” 6. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA “This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.” 7. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND “This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.” 8. Normal copyright all rights reserved As always, if you think I’m wrong or want to respond in an other way please comment!

Work for solo guitar about genomic DNA sequencing, especially of the human genome. The piece also includes a DNA sequence interpreted as music.

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Work for solo guitar about genomic DNA sequencing, especially of the human genome. The piece also includes a DNA sequence interpreted as music.

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In late September I was one of those in the receiving end of a “cryptic email” from the ensemble thingNY calling on contributions to their event SPAM v. 3.0. The theme for the call was “assembly”, and the first association of this I made was to assemblage in art; which I think was the intended interpretation, if any.

Assemblage is an artistic process. In the visual arts, it consists of making three-dimensional or two-dimensional artistic compositions by putting together found objects. In literature, assemblage refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts in order to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context".

(As explained in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_(art))

As attractive as this link to the artistic process of assemblage seemed, I still wanted to go beyond my first and most obvious interpretation of the task at hand. I ended up with another interpretation of the assembly-theme, namely to assembly computer languages.

(Assembly language is described in the following way in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language):

An assembly language is a low-level programming language for a computer, microcontroller, or other programmable device, in which each statement corresponds to a single machine code instruction.

Assembly languages is thus suited for talking to computers or other similar machines on their own terms, and not so much adjusted to be user-friendly for the human operating it.

On a philosophical level I found this very interesting to emphasize the difference between humans and computers; and the huge gap in communication which really has to be bridged for the everyday interactions we have with computers and other “intelligent” machines.

My idea was to simply make a series of performance instructions for the ensemble but to write them in an assembly-like manner. To be comprehensible at all I had to add a massive amount of explanatory comments to the code (also in the manner of assembly code). But nevertheless this type of code is very abstract and not at all suited for human communication.

As 2012 is a John Cage year celebrating 100 years from his birth, I like to add a little Cagean perspective on the whole project. The whole point in my involvement in this is the creation of the assembly-like code score and the ideas behind it (which I have tried to described in this post). What the performance sounds like is in many ways out of my scope in this instance. In my mind this corresponds in an interesting and major way to Cage’s concept of non-intention. The actual performance of the piece is in this case beyond my intentions for it.

I hope the ensemble will forgive me for the obstacles in interpreting and performing the work and finds a way to enjoy it and make a great performance. If the ideas behind the piece is totally lost in performance I can blame only myself, and at least you have read them here.

The event will take place on Sat. Dec. 15, 2012 - 7:00 PM, Flushing Town Hall, New York.

This post uses material from Wikipedia, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

In little less than two weeks the organ piece All People are Equal will have its premiere in Lund (Sweden). The piece is to be performed by Larsåke Sjöstedt. Adjacent to the the music there will be an exhibition compiled by Kerstin Svensson, teacher in Art history and artist. The music and the exhibition is a celebration of cultural openness and ethnic inclusion.

 Poster art by Kerstin Svensson

As I have previously written

here the theme of cultural openness and humanism were determined from the start, but as the piece was written in July / August 2011 it obviously was affected by the terrible events in Norway at that time. I firmly believe though that the topic is relevant enough anyway without being linked to specific historical events. The title 'All People are Equal' is inspired by Peter Spier's book People and from the phrase 'All animals are equal (but some animals are more equal than others)' from Animal Farm by George Orwell. The piece has nine sections with the following headings:

1. stand firm against racism and discrimination

2. all humans are sisters and brothers

3. minority rights, majority obligations

4. don't be scared of the unfamiliar

5. open your eyes against the world

6. much to feel sorry and angry for

7. love and integration

8. in your mind and actions...

9. we are all alike

Update: the concert was postponed due to circumstances I cannot go in to here. The piece was finally premiered on 25 october 2014.

Organ solo As I wrote this piece the topic of racism and ethnic discrimination was once again very much in the spotlight by a very tragic event in Norway. And it seemed very appropriate for me to proceed with my initial idea to take a stand for all humans equal rights and against racism and ethnic discrimination. The piece has nine different section with the following titles: 1. stand firm against racism and discrimination 2. all humans are sisters and brothers 3. minority rights, majority obligations 4. don't be scared of the unfamiliar 5. open your eyes against the world 6. much to feel sorry and angry for 7. love and integration 8. in your mind and actions... 9. we are all alike

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Organ solo As I wrote this piece the topic of racism and ethnic discrimination was once again very much in the spotlight by a very tragic event in Norway. And it seemed very appropriate for me to proceed with my initial idea to take a stand for all humans equal rights and against racism and ethnic discrimination. The piece has nine different section with the following titles: 1. stand firm against racism and discrimination 2. all humans are sisters and brothers 3. minority rights, majority obligations 4. don't be scared of the unfamiliar 5. open your eyes against the world 6. much to feel sorry and angry for 7. love and integration 8. in your mind and actions... 9. we are all alike

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Art music (also known as serious music, legitimate music, concert music, or erudite music) is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_music

When you're deeply involved in making so called art music, its only natural to at some point ask the question “what is art music?” and further “what is the difference between art music and other forms of music?”. Perhaps the phrase 'art music' is not so widely used, but for me this concept is of greater relevance than others, e. g. contemporary classical music. My main point in this preliminary attempt to answer will be that the difference is not a question of stylistic differences but instead a question of attitude; the ambition of anyone making art music either as a performer or as an originator should not be to imitate the style of other music but to have an artful attitude towards ones task. That is not to deny though that art music can have a relation to other art music or other music overall; I don't think one can nor is it desirable to create in a vacuum. If this could be agreed upon, that if you have the right artful attitude in the creation the stylistic options are of secondary nature; we have nevertheless not come especially far – we still need to know a lot more of what this attitude could be. As seen in the short quote from Wikipedia in the beginning “Art music” is sometimes equated with “serious music”. Can this tell us something about the attitude, i. e. should we have a 'serious' attitude towards art? I would be deeply hesitative towards making this claim. But what I do would like to bring to the formula of the attitude we are seeking, is that we should think that art music is something important. So, not an 'serious' attitude but rather a sense of something important, or significant. If I may further expand on this, we might add the criteria that the importance or urgency should not only be important for me or you - but on a much more general scale. I hope you realise that this is increasingly more difficult and that people involved with art music, including myself, sometimes fail meeting this criteria. I also feel that I should comment shortly on the other “also known as” in the wikipedia quote above. “Legitimate music” - that some music can be more legitimate than other is for me foreign. “Concert music” - any music could potentially be presented in a concert. As a concept it is not especially clarifying; “Art is what is presented in art galleries.”, “concert music is what is presented in the concert halls.” “Erudite music” - this concept is not familiar to me, but it seems that the general idea like with legitimate music is to give a high evaluation of certain music. I think though that it is vital not to mix the categorisation of music and the evaluation of the same; after you categorised the music as belonging to a certain category it should still make sense to ask if the music is good or bad. In my mind nothing of this take us any closer to the core of art music. Next up I think we have to realise that the concept of art itself has changed over the course of history. So we could if we wanted differentiate between different attitudes for different historical periods. At the moment I'll settle for the simplistic description that art was in the past more judged for the craftmanship behind it and today it's more judged for the ideas and thought behind it. But in either case I think we have to again make the point that it is the attitude and intention which is of importance here; you can only fail to deliver an excellent piece of art if your intention has been to create such a thing in the first place. If you just whistle a tune its not intended as art music and should no less be judged as such. Admitting that the art-concept has changed its focus the most interesting would be to explore the attitude demanded by art today, even if it still would be interesting to find out how this was different in the past. I would roughly say that having an open mind and trying to see things from a new perspective is the attitude we are looking for. To be involved in art music is I suggest to be to share the artistic attitude common to other art forms. What this attitude is is not fixed and stable for all times, but there has for a long time been a consequent wish to create an other roam separatad from the ordinary and the common. Today art fill the purpose of leaving the ordinary by means of new interesting ideas and perspectives on our world and our our perception of it. I would say that it is not change our novelty for the sake of change or novelty, but to because this change or novelty is deeply felt as important. I will not attempt to suggest that this will be the final answer on what art music is, not even on this blog. Please leave a comment if you agree or disagree or has some thoughts of your own!

2 electric guitars, 1 electric bass Piece exploring the border between sound art and music, with the aid of the electric instruments. Using references to Beethoven's seventh symphony and to songs by Red Hot Chili Peppers, hence the title.

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2 electric guitars, 1 electric bass Piece exploring the border between sound art and music, with the aid of the electric instruments. Using references to Beethoven's seventh symphony and to songs by Red Hot Chili Peppers, hence the title.

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Published IEI - Interpret, Express and Interact! for any wind instrument and optional non pitched percussion at scribd.com in the open scores collection. IEI -

- Images from the Brain Organ solo It has often been said that good music preferably is a mix between reason and emotion. The latter distinction being closely related to the the dualist separation of mind and body often attributed to Descartes. This piece is not only an unbalanced mix between analytic and at times mathematical content and emotional content; in addition it also brings forth the question of what it is possible to deduct from the outside of what happens inside the brain.

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- Images from the Brain Organ solo It has often been said that good music preferably is a mix between reason and emotion. The latter distinction being closely related to the the dualist separation of mind and body often attributed to Descartes. This piece is not only an unbalanced mix between analytic and at times mathematical content and emotional content; in addition it also brings forth the question of what it is possible to deduct from the outside of what happens inside the brain.

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This summer I wrote an organ piece to the swedish organist Larsåke Sjöstedt. My idea was right from the start to deal with the issue of ethnic and cultural openness. As I was working with the piece the topic of racism and ethnic discrimination (again) came into the spotlight in a major way with the terrible mass murder in Norway. That of course only strenghtened my initial purpose. Today Larsåke and I got time to go through the piece. It went very well. We found some nice registrations, and what I heard corresponded to my mental “sound-image” of the piece. To create an extra context for the piece in the purpose of giving the main context of ethnic and cultural openness an additional weight, the piece utilises six different sources from the music literature. My own view is that I use these sources in much the same way that for instance Picasso used references to famous paintings by e.g. Velázquez, Delacroix and Manet to create original pieces of art.

Picasso - "Luncheon on the Grass. After Manet", 1961.

To emphasize the point of openness I have decided to give the piece a creative commons license and upload it to my account at IMSLP.

Jazz trio I. On Archaic ground II. New and inherited patterns III. Deconstruction The three sections are based on three different approaches to the interplay between art music and jazz. But the idea was also to put this into a larger context. I am interested in how different cultural traditions in general can change. And I think I have found three important ways: 1) one tradition can change by absorbing features from a different tradition, 2) it can change with very careful and deliberate alteration, and 3) it can be changed by more radical dissolution of the structures that defines the culture. I would like to point out that I have no real intention to change the jazz tradition as the jazztrio stands for, but instead explore these ideas in an overall sound collage-like composition.

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Jazz trio I. On Archaic ground II. New and inherited patterns III. Deconstruction The three sections are based on three different approaches to the interplay between art music and jazz. But the idea was also to put this into a larger context. I am interested in how different cultural traditions in general can change. And I think I have found three important ways: 1) one tradition can change by absorbing features from a different tradition, 2) it can change with very careful and deliberate alteration, and 3) it can be changed by more radical dissolution of the structures that defines the culture. I would like to point out that I have no real intention to change the jazz tradition as the jazztrio stands for, but instead explore these ideas in an overall sound collage-like composition.

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I've finally got started with SoundCloud, and when using the upload function I realised that this could be a great illustration of how simple the question about file sharing really is: When uploading you choose between 'all rights reserved' or 'creative commons' for the license of the uploaded file. Then you can also choose if others are allowed to download your clip or not. But legally the license question is the vital question for how your soundcloud clip is allowed to be shared and spread. Without going in to exactly how the different license options work, I would like to state it as simple as this – if you want your audio clip to be able to be shared by anyone, choose 'creative commons'; if you do not want this, choose 'all rights reserved'. (I'm assuming here that you have full rights to the stuff you're uploading in the first place.) For the user/listener the point can be stated even more simple – if the copyright owner allows sharing, feel free to share as much as you want; if the copyright owner does not allow it, please respect that! Please comment on this if you're of another opinion or if you think I'm missing out on something!

Today I went to Copenhagen for a rehearsal with Magnus Hjorth Trio, which is a young and brilliant jazz piano trio. The rehearsal was in preparation for a concert next week, with five new pieces premiered of which I have written one. The project presented in the concert is an interesting inter-genre cooperation, where five contemporary composers aims to use the jazz trio's rhythmic precision, frequent interaction and unerring ability to improvise, but also use their own art musical background to create something that goes beyond the trio's usual repertoire. My contribution to the project is called absorb, alter and dissolve. A piece where I explore three different approaches to this integration between art music and jazz. Simply put, the first section is about a possible mix between classical art music and mainstraim jazz; the second is about an acceptance of the jazz idioms but with minor tweaks; and the third is with a more radical disassemblage of the jazz style but with havens of more ordinary jazz sounds. These three approaches is not to be seen as only different solutions to the problem at hand though. My aim is also to somehow explore some more general cultural and sociological phenomenons. How can traditional cultures change over time? There are of course several possible answers to this question but what I'm dealing with in this piece is perhaps three major aspects of cultural change: a culture can change by lending from elsewhere and thus somehow absorbing traits from another culture, it can change by very gentle alteration and it can change by more radical dissolution of the structures defining a culture. The success of these changes of the jazz-tradition the trio stands for is perhaps questionable. My aim though, as you understand from the above, is not to make some kind of improvement but to explore the ideas set in a musical context. This, as I would call it, conceptual approach leads to the piece being some kind of sequence of musical ideas (or ideas set to musical context) - rather like a sound collage. The piece will be premiered by Magnus Hjorth Trio in Lund the 29th of September.  

I'm currently reading John Cage:s Composition in Retrospect. It is mostly written in his characteristic “mesostics”, a form of art text with linked lines of prose poetry. A key word in Cage:s production is 'non-intention'; he wanted to free himself from “memory, taste, likes and dislikes”. He often used chance operations to attain non-intention, but also other methods. I'm very intrigued by this idea, although I do think that Cage took it to the extreme. I will defenitely go back to this later, but compare if you like this to my previous writing about choice, chance and rules.

Last month a new piece for string quartet and percussion was premiered at a festival/workshop-week in Lithuania. The process behind the work was somewhat unusual for my part. I actually made the first sketches for the piece a few years back. When Bo Håkansson requested a piece for that very setting I took the opportinuty to finish the piece. The piece is called Green Future? And is, as you might guessed from the title, about our concerns for the future in light of global warming. Read more details and listen to Bo's and the quartet's excellent performance in my work list.

Update:

You can also listen to the performance on SoundCloud: [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/24048020" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="600" iframe="true" /]

It was said of Mendelssohn that he was too fond of the dead, when he frequently performed older music. Where is that attitude today? It seems to me that today too much effort is put in preserving the great tradition from two centuries back. I don't blame Mendelssohn for contributing to this interest in the music of the past. I just wish that the demand for new interesting art music could be greater in general.

String quartet and percussion We all have to relate to the much feared threats to our environment in some way. How will our world be changed in the future if the temperature keeps rising? In the current situation we have to try to change something, but should we go "back to nature" in some sense or will we solve the problem with technological means? One thing is clear though, we can't go back in time to how it was before.

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String quartet and percussion We all have to relate to the much feared threats to our environment in some way. How will our world be changed in the future if the temperature keeps rising? In the current situation we have to try to change something, but should we go "back to nature" in some sense or will we solve the problem with technological means? One thing is clear though, we can't go back in time to how it was before.

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Today Sarah Nichols plays my piece Strings, Skins and Wood for harp and percussion on her final bachelor exam in Schonbergzaal, Koninklijk Conservatorium, Den Haag. The piece was previously premiered by Duo Harpverk. Sadly contemporary art music normally doesn't get many performances especially not by various performers, so it is very exciting and somewhat unusual experience that the piece gets played several times by different performers in the duration of a couple of months. I'm also excited about the positive response I've got on the piece.  

If you visited this blog before you may have read about my ideas for a cello and marimba piece, here. Since then I have done several attempts, but I never have been totally pleased with the result. But now on my third version it actually seems that I've done something that I can put out without doubts. The piece will be dedicated to Y.T.Lee who as you can see commented here on the original post.

Theatrical piece. With a lot of symbolism, e.g. coffee as code for the usual, common and obvious.

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Theatrical piece. With a lot of symbolism, e.g. coffee as code for the usual, common and obvious.

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Today Duo Harpverk (harp and percussion) starts a tour in Europe with a performance in the Icelandic Music Days at the Blue Note of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Included in the program is my piece written for them Strings, Skins and Wood.

Flute, Recorder/Crumhorn, Alto Trombone,Guitar, Contrabass,Percussion Eclectic and interdisciplinary piece which touches on many different subjects and perhaps evokes some interesting questions.

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Flute, Recorder/Crumhorn, Alto Trombone,Guitar, Contrabass,Percussion Eclectic and interdisciplinary piece which touches on many different subjects and perhaps evokes some interesting questions.

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Previously the concept of remix was mainly related to “[...] audio mixing to compose an alternate master recording of a song[...]” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix). But in contemporary art music the ideas behind the remixing and sometimes also the word “remix” has lately been used also on purely acoustic composing processes. And often this involves reusing music from the old masters in a remixed form. To reuse others music in art music is of course nothing new in itself and has been done extensively in the past (often in the form of a variation). But when you borrow both the concept and more importantly the attitude from the more popular remixers it undoubtedly amounts to something new. Apart from the freshness of these forms of remixes, I am mostly interested in the connection with similar approaches in other art forms.

“A remix may also refer to a non-linear re-interpretation of a given work or media other than audio. Such as a hybridizing process combining fragments of various works. The process of combining and re-contextualizing will often produce unique results independent of the intentions and vision of the original designer/artist. Thus the concept of a remix can be applied to visual or video arts, and even things farther afield. Mark Z. Danielewski's disjointed novel House of Leaves has been compared by some to the remix concept.”

“A remix in literature is an alternative version of a text. William Burroughs used the cut-up technique developed by Brion Gysin to remix language in the 1960s.[2] Various textual sources (including his own) would be cut literally into pieces with scissors, rearranged on a page, and pasted to form new sentences, new ideas, new stories, and new ways of thinking about words.”

“A remix in art often takes multiple perspectives upon the same theme. An artist takes an original work of art and adds their own take on the piece creating something completely different while still leaving traces of the original work. It is essentially a reworked abstraction of the original work while still holding remnants of the original piece while still letting the true meanings of the original piece shine through. Famous examples include the Marilyn prints of Andy Warhol(modifies colors and styles of one image), and Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso, (merges various angles of perspective into one view). Some of Picasso's other famous paintings also incorporate parts of his life, such as his love affairs, into his paintings. For example, his painting Les Trois Danseuses, or The Three Dancers, is about a love triangle.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix

Another example from pop art is Roy Lichtensteins reuses of iconic images from comics.

Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam! (1963). On display at the Tate Modern, London. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art)

Many times have I had the notion of using older music in an iconic way.

I 've got great response so far on the piece I'm doing for Ensemble for New Music (ENM) - TheMusArt, premiere in the beginning of next year. Yesterday we briefly tried out the beginning of the piece. "TheMusArt" stands for Theater, Music and Art, and the piece constitutes of 36 sections whereof less than half of them is short passages of actual notated music, the rest is written instructions. Apart from the immediate experience of unpredictability, I also think that the piece raises some interesting questions, mainly about the nature of different art forms. In our time the differences between the performing arts are blurred. Can you actually separate them? Is it a piece of music, because it involves musicians? Is it dance because it includes motion? Is it theater with actors with musical instruments? Maybe it is an inter-artistic collage!? Or could it all be summarized as live art?

It seems that quite a few of my latest projects have involved ideas about openness and tolerance; which always is an important and current topic. On sunday one of the most distinct examples of this idea have its premiere - Mental Journey, written for ContemporarY Ensemble. It features strong influences from different parts of contemporary (and past) cultures.

any wind instrument and percussion (with optional non-pitch instruments) Written for the exciting (jazz) duo Medi, but performable for any duo with wind and percussion.

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Recorder, Tenor saxophone, Banjo/Ukulele or Guitar, Viola. Prologue: Now Going west Going east or further west Going back Epilogue: Forward A piece about keeping an open mind against cultures and ideas that perhaps feels foreign in one way or another; in this is also included to keep an open mind about the past and the future.

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any wind instrument and percussion (with optional non-pitch instruments) Written for the exciting (jazz) duo Medi, but performable for any duo with wind and percussion.

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Recorder, Tenor saxophone, Banjo/Ukulele or Guitar, Viola. Prologue: Now Going west Going east or further west Going back Epilogue: Forward A piece about keeping an open mind against cultures and ideas that perhaps feels foreign in one way or another; in this is also included to keep an open mind about the past and the future.

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I have found some inspiration for the instrumentation of Old Snow from the distant 20th century; I have decided to use the same setup as Boulez in Le marteau sans maître. Some of you may not agree with me that Boulez famous work is an "old" masterpiece (some may not even consider it a masterpiece), but I tend to think of it as a prominent work from another era as I would with a piece by Beethoven, Mozart or Liszt. (It was actually composed 1953 to 1954, with first performance 1955 and a small revision when published 1957.) I think this combination of instruments (although not quite so novel today as it was then) is very attractive. So, my idea for the instrumentation is this:

alto flute xylophone vibraphone percussion (frame drum, 2 high tom-toms, bongos (1 pair), maracas (1 pair), agago, large susp. cymbal) guitar alto (voice) viola

Music certainly has the ability to affect the listener, but can the reaction be controlled? Can music even contain information or a message to the listener? Even if we agree that (instrumental) music don't normally contain information, is it possible in some way to create music that does? Can music contain a code that can be decoded by the listener? For the moment I just state these questions. I will go back to them later. Feel free to supply thoughts and answers via the comments.

As you may have read here before, I am very interested in conceptual art and its possible application in music. A basic description of conceptual art would be that the ideas or concepts behind the art work takes precedence over concerns about aesthetics and craftsmanship. Traditionally aestheticism and craftsmanship have been very highly rated so a radical form of conceptual art would be to diminish these considerably. A famous and early definition of conceptual art by Sol LeWitt stated:

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

So basically we could say that in a radical or true form of conceptual art the execution of the ideas is merely a trifle. From this it can´t really be concluded though that the execution is swift.  And it can´t even be concluded that the execution doesn´t involve craftsmanship. But one way to make clear the shift from the aesthetical to the conceptual is an apparent lack of (traditional) artistic skills in the work. (In talking about artistic skill we have to  appreciate though that conceptual art involves new and different artistic skills.) All art forms has been and are in constant change. In my view conceptual art no longer needs to be made in its most crude or radical form; for me it is interesting to combine traditional artistic skills with the new conceptual artistic skills. But even older more aesthetically and artistically driven art of course included ideas, so to be called conceptual the precedence of the idea has to be maintained. In some if not all of my latest works I have permitted the aesthetical and stylistic choices to be totally dominated by the fundamental idea or ideas, i. e. if the idea have demanded a certain kind of music I have not hesitated in my ambition to create that kind of music or sound world. I would also like to make a distinction between what would be "conceptual" in a more strict sense, i. e. actually involving concepts; and more idea driven conceptualism not actually involving concepts. Many conceptual works has of course been "conceptual" in this stricter sense, even solely involving words and concepts. But I have not seen the distinction being made. Several of my recent works have also been conceptual in this stricter sense. I would like to conclude with a comment on a previous post.  Here I stated my belief in what I called conceptual neoestheticism. The idea could briefly be described as an idea-driven return to more aesthetical music. I would (again) like to clarify this: The term "neoestheticism" assumes a crude view which could be applied to much of the post-modernistic movement - the view that the modernistic movement was not interested in aesthetical considerations and that post-modernism implies a return to pre-modernistic views on aesthetical values. At first glance you could very easily come to this conclusion, which I now think is a mistake. My current view is that the modernists were not anti-aesthetic - they were merely "anti" the aesthetic view that preceded them; I think we must conclude that they clearly had a very specific aesthetical belief-system. What then happened when what has been labelled "post-modern" ideas came in to play, was a remission of the modernistic approach; a more liberal view where in its extreme forms everything is aesthetically acceptable. The return to some aesthetical ideas of the past is I think a result of this relaxation and a symptom for the strong distancing of the past by the modernists.  Put in this way my approach of allowing the ideas to rule the aesthetics is perfectly post-modernistic.

Several years ago I got the idea to set to music some of the poems from Old Snow (New Directions, 1991) by Bei Dao. The poems from the collection are all written while located in Europe but in Chinese with English translation by Bonnie S. McDougall. Dao is an acclaimed poet and has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has a simple and straight-forward language which I can relate to. Furthermore am I interested in the fact that poems are translated from a very fine looking Chinese script, which for me is totally obscure. I don´t really recall at the moment how far I got in realizing this idea. But I am pretty serious now in taking this up again.

The last couple of weeks I have begun to think about changing the order of 3PI. I originally thought it was logical and natural to arrange the four concertos chronologically. (If you have read my previous posts in the subject, you know that each of these four concertos for different saxophones and orchestra relates to different periods in the history of music.) I come up with this new order: 3 Part Interpretation – Applying the romantic (alto sax), 3 Part Idiosyncrasy – Peculiar classical (tenor sax), 3 part Immediacy – Apprehending the 20th century (bari sax), 3 Part Intervention – Interference with baroque (soprano sax). The titles of the concertos above and also the titles of the different movements are all inferred from the soprano sax concerto. So the setup is kind of like a riddle which gets its solution at the end when we reach that concerto. I also think it is interesting to jump back and forward in time and also regarding the different sizes of saxophones.

Yesterday we had a national election here in Sweden, and this have lead me to think of my relation, as a composer, to politics. As I have written before, and perhaps can get back to soon, I think of contemporary art music as being essentially about ideas and not about craftsmanship. (But craftsmanship can still, as ever, be essential to being able to express and realize the ideas.) Hence I think that art music should follow the general direction shift in art itself from being about aesthetic values to being more about concepts and ideas. (This is of course a very rough description of the development over the last century or so, but I hope you agree with me on the general outline.) Given this general attitude of mine, the question can essentially be put as being about the relation between art and politics. As I see it art can and should be political. But, and this is important, it should take into account the big issues about humanity that are most strongly felt and it should keep unconditionally impartial towards political organisations.

Recorder and harp. "The appealing tone came to us as a voice from a distant past. The wood and the dark strings lit up the gateway to the past.[...]"

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Recorder and harp. "The appealing tone came to us as a voice from a distant past. The wood and the dark strings lit up the gateway to the past.[...]"

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Today I reached the final bar of the tenor sax concerto, which means that I now only have to concentrate on editing and layout. It is especially the tenor and bari sax concertos I have to look over. So, to summarize: I decided to make four concertos for saxophone (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone) and chamber orchestra. The whole project I now call 3PI because all the concertos have similar names which all starts with 3 Part I... All four concertos were partly composed parallelly, especially in terms of idea, structure and instrumentation. The names for the different concertos I came up with were: 3 Part Intervention - Interference with baroque (soprano sax), 3 Part Idiosyncrasy - Peculiar classical (tenor sax), 3 Part Interpretation - Applying the romantic (alto sax), 3 part Immediacy - Apprehending the 20th century (bari sax). (The titles tells part of the story, and I will not go deeper into it at the moment. Also the titles of the different movements are important, but they are not completely set yet and I will get back to this.) The 20th of April 2010 the first concerto, i.e. the soprano sax concerto were premiered. Because of the parallelism between all the concertos they all had to be quite developed, for me to be able to finish the soprano sax concerto for the first performance. The alto sax concerto was also in principle completed at the time of the premiere, but the tenor and bari sax concertos were still somewhat sketchy. Last week I made progress on the bari sax concerto and this week as I mentioned the tenor got a similar treatment. Some work remains, but it is mostly editing.

Even for the audience that is skeptical about the post-Mahler music I assume there is a demand for new music. Even if there is a vast source, it is still limited and growing older and supposedly more distant from the performers and listeners. I myself have a fascination for the 19th century which I think I have in common with many of the lovers of the music from that period, but I think there also must be a need for expressions that is closer to our lives today in the 21th century. If we assume the demand above and also assume that the contemporary music have a demand for a greater audience, when will this two demands meet; when will we see a greater demand for new music? Tell me what you think...

Carillon solo. A piece about conscious decisions related to more automated and unconscious. It is also about how we humans have a tendency to interpret meaning, patterns and intention in phenomenons that perhaps are unintentional and even meaningsless. Written for the third annual midsommer concert in Malmoe.

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Carillon solo. A piece about conscious decisions related to more automated and unconscious. It is also about how we humans have a tendency to interpret meaning, patterns and intention in phenomenons that perhaps are unintentional and even meaningsless. Written for the third annual midsommer concert in Malmoe.

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In a week's time the first of totally four concertos for saxophone and chamber orchestra premieres. First up is the soprano saxophone, soloist - Johnny Hedlund. About one and a half year ago Johnny asked me to compose a piece for him. I came up with an idea relating the saxophone both to the oboe, and hence a baroque oboe concerto, and to modern sounds and even jazz. After finishing a first version I thought more about my fondness of the saxophones and the lack of repertoire for the instruments. I came up with the ambitious idea of a project including totally four concertos. In this project I have two main goals: 1. To relate the concertos to different periods in the history of music. The soprano sax concerto was already related to the baroque. I came up with the following distribution of the other three - tenor | classical period, alto | romantic period and bari | 20th century. 2. To apply the same formal scheme for all four concertos. Now the first of four is ready for public display! And the story about the other three continues...

I wanted to write a longer post about my trip to Tromsø and the premiere at the KontAk festival. But I haven´t managed to find the time. So now I just wanted to let you know that Tromsø is a wonderful city. Not quite so cold as you would have expected because of the Gulf Stream. And the premiere went really well I think. Nordic Fusion 6 did a great job performing the music and the ideas behind it. Read more about working with the ideas behind the piece: http://www.composerpeterbjuhr.com/projects/?tag=brisicoappe. Here you also can read that I had some struggle with the name. Eventually it turned out to be "BriSiCoApPe" referring in short to the five concepts of postmodern art that inspired the piece. The workdetails of the finished piece and link to the score at swedish music information center: http://www.composerpeterbjuhr.com/detail.php?id=39

Trumpet, baritone sax, clarinet, cello, piano, percussion and tape Piece in five sections which each reflects a different trait in postmodern art: 1. Bricolage (using whatever happens to be available) - the percussionist is using available stuff. 2. Simplification - simplified and minimalistic using only a few notes and durations. 3. Collage - short contrasting musical fragments with references to different styles. 4. Appropriation (taking possession) - borrowing from older styles of music. 5. Performance - performing words and very short sections with pop references.

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Trumpet, baritone sax, clarinet, cello, piano, percussion and tape Piece in five sections which each reflects a different trait in postmodern art: 1. Bricolage (using whatever happens to be available) - the percussionist is using available stuff. 2. Simplification - simplified and minimalistic using only a few notes and durations. 3. Collage - short contrasting musical fragments with references to different styles. 4. Appropriation (taking possession) - borrowing from older styles of music. 5. Performance - performing words and very short sections with pop references.

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When I use the dubious concept of computer-generated music (most recently here), a remark is in its place: A computer is just a tool, although an excellent one; a computer can't create music. The creator if any is the programmer/composer which uses the computer tool. Here again I think the concepts of rules, chance and choice can be useful in explaining the idea: The programmer/composer chooses which rules that are to be used and much other things. The programmer/composer also chooses which elements of the music that are to be governed by chance. The impression that the computer in fact creates the music, is perhaps enhanced by an extensive use of elements of chance. When the music clearly isn't  by human hand it is easy to attribute it to the computer. But again the computer is just a tool and similar result could potentially be produced by another less powerful tool, e.g. a dice. The important thing in this case is I think that the programmer/composer is choosing where chance is applied.

In my more theoretical blog I have recently posted several posts about Rules, Chance and Choice (e.g. http://www.composerpeterbjuhr.com/blog/?p=82). Starting a new year the energy is high, and it is a good time to start take these ideas into practice. I have found that computer programming is an excellent way of dealing with rules in music - and even better when it comes to chance in music. It makes me being able to concentrate on the things that I find most rewarding in creating music - the choices (and also editing). In this way the computer-generated music works as an input or a starting point for the composition. I would be an interesting experiment to try to program a script that generates a finished (or almost finished) score. But in the long run I don´t think that is a fruitful method. What I use is programmed scripts that generates music XML-files which easily can be imported into a score-writing program, e.g. Sibelius or Finale. I will post some thoughts about the application of rules, chance and choice, and the music-generating scripts. And hopefully the quite abstract thoughts behind this can become clearer.

Written for the concert Haydn Remixed to the memory of Joseph Haydn 200 years after his death. Scored for chamber orchestra (flute, 2 bass clarinets, percussion and strings). The piece is a lament using the first themes found in symphonies 82-86.

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Written for the concert Haydn Remixed to the memory of Joseph Haydn 200 years after his death. Scored for chamber orchestra (flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion and strings). The piece is built around a sampling technique where the opening bars of Haydns symphonies 23-27 is being used.

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Selected in Chai Found Music Workshop´s Wu Xing competition 2009. Scored for the eastern instruments zonghu, qudi, pipa, guzheng, yangqin, liuqin and sheng. A combination of eastern philosophy and pentatonic system with more western part-writing and form.

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Written for the concert Haydn Remixed to the memory of Joseph Haydn 200 years after his death. Scored for chamber orchestra (flute, 2 bass clarinets, percussion and strings). The piece is a lament using the first themes found in symphonies 82-86.

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Written for the concert Haydn Remixed to the memory of Joseph Haydn 200 years after his death. Scored for chamber orchestra (flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion and strings). The piece is built around a sampling technique where the opening bars of Haydns symphonies 23-27 is being used.

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Selected in Chai Found Music Workshop´s Wu Xing competition 2009. Scored for the eastern instruments zonghu, qudi, pipa, guzheng, yangqin, liuqin and sheng. A combination of eastern philosophy and pentatonic system with more western part-writing and form.

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I think the most important part of a composition is the idea behind it. The craftsmanship is also important but at this point in history there is of course vastly amounts of music already; and to justify the creation of more music I think you have to back up with a pretty good idea. What then is the nature of this idea that I seek? I have previously written about musics current relation to art (e.g. art and music and music art) and I think it is very interesting taking a conceptual artists view in creating the idea. But the idea can also be of a more esthetic nature (compare with a clarification). A conscious limitation can be an interesting start; to use chance or rules can also be interesting from a conceptual or esthetic point of view.

I promised to write more about choice and chance. And now I think I have found the piece of the puzzle that I was looking for - rules. Choice, chance and rules. Let me try to summarize the thoughts behind this rather abstract formula (I write here about creating music but perhaps this could be applied to all creative processes): When you create music, more or less consciously, you make choices you follow certain rules and you leave certain elements to chance. I am currently involved in a project about computer music. I think this phenomena can be a clarifying example, because it makes all processes more clear (at least for the person making the programming). You can use the computer to carefully choose every little detail, you can use the computer to make same parameters random (Aleatoric music) or you can use the computer to govern the music by rules (Algorithmic composition).

Harp and percussion. The piece centers mostly around the harp and its possibilities and limitations, viewed differently from the perspective of the harpist and the percussionist.

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Harp and percussion. The piece centers mostly around the harp and its possibilities and limitations, viewed differently from the perspective of the harpist and the percussionist.

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Trombone, tuba and 2 percussionists. Written for a concert in collaboration with the islandic group SLATUR.

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Trombone, tuba and 2 percussionists. Written for a concert in collaboration with the islandic group SLATUR.

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Before and during composing it is very interesting to set up limitations of some sort. In fact it is very hard to compose if you don´t limit yourself in any way; if you have all the instruments and all the musical possibilies actually available to you, where do you start? Bach of course was a master in composing under strictly limited conditions, e g composing a fugue.  This also relates to a previous post about choice or chance (where I promised to write more about its subject). It can be very interesting to use chance to set up ones limitations. Cage were, as I wrote in the previous post, very interested in chance. He was also very interested in natural or accidental sounds and their relation to "music", and used chance to investigate that relation. I am inclined to be more interested in using actual choices to set up the limitations - to use experience and judgment. I will get back to this (again) and write more about different limitations.

I´m interested in references to other works, styles and genres. Historically art music have often involved references to other periods and to other genres, i. e. folk music. Art music had also within itself a strong tradition to implicitly and explicitly refer to, e. g. when writing a symphony the composer in a way refers to all other symphonies ever written. In the high modernistic period (which I consider ended by the way) it was something of a taboo to use this kind references. At least was the end to make a clean start from tradition. But, although originality was a important virtue and the break with history was a important goal, modernism I believe was a tradition in itself. The fear of references ended with Schnittke and other pluralists using direct musical quotations in their works. Another 20th century movement has to be mentioned in this context - the neoclassical direction with its references to the classical, pre-classical and baroque periods; here references took an even more important role than in previous music, perhaps as some kind of reaction to the ahistoricism of modernism. Today contemporary music (and even more strongly contemporary art) is widely diverse in artistic styles and methods. It is as the modernistic project succeeded in its radical goals of originality and rootlessness, but ended up finishing off itself in the process; when the modernist direction finally suceeded in killing tradition there could exist no gathering movement and hence modernism had dematerialized itself. (This reflection I think is absolutely true regarding art, but regarding music modernism still takes its dying breaths.)  When tradition is dead and pluralism rules, references takes on a new role. You have the whole spectra from provocative appropriations and interventions to mere subtle implications of aspects of obsolete or popular cultures.

Carillon, two recorders and tape. Written for the second annual midsommer concert in Malmoe.

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Carillon, two recorders and tape. Written for the second annual midsommer concert in Malmoe.

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A bagatelle is a short piece of music, typically for the piano, and usually of a light, mellow character. The name bagatelle literally means a "trifle", as a reference to the innocent character of the piece. (wikipedia)

In a new piece for piano solo 21 bagatelles I do a rather extreme interpretation of the above definition; each bagatalle is only a few bars long and lasting for only seconds. The bagatelles are paired in groups of three with a common theme of some sort. But they can be played seperately or in any order. Check it out.

Piano solo
A rather extreme interpretation of the concept of bagatelle; each bagatalle is only a few bars long and lasting for only seconds. The bagatelles are paired in groups of three with a common theme of some sort. But they can be played seperately or in any order.

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Piano solo
A rather extreme interpretation of the concept of bagatelle; each bagatalle is only a few bars long and lasting for only seconds. The bagatelles are paired in groups of three with a common theme of some sort. But they can be played seperately or in any order.

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I´m interested in Cage´s methods of incorporating chance in music, but whenever I want to use chance as a factor in a composition I tend to go for choice instead. Let´s say that I would have six alternatives and I am thinking of using chance. But instead of throwing a dice to get a totally random result, I would tend to choose which of the six alternatives I prefer. I think that there is something fundamentally interesting here; let me get back to this... (To be clear, Cage used both choice and chance in his compositions.)

For acoustic and computer ensemble. The title refers both to the indeterminate outcome of the piece and the fact that the form can be looped continously.

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Adaptation of BWV 1001 (solo violin) for vibraphone, trumpet and percussion/drum set and electronics.

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For acoustic and computer ensemble. The title refers both to the indeterminate outcome of the piece and the fact that the form can be looped continously.

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Adaptation of BWV 1001 (solo violin) for vibraphone, trumpet and percussion/drum set and electronics.

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Last sunday we premiered whatsoever, an open score for acoustic ensemble and computer ensemble. We were three laptop players and three instrumentalists (trumpet and two percussionists). The title refers both to the indeterminate outcome of the piece and the fact that the form can be looped continously. (There is also a reference to Miles Davis´ So What which I cant explain here.) Check it out, and if you have an ensemble with both acoustic instruments and computer players, try it out... whatsoever (pdf)

Short piece for bass clarinet, marimba and tape.

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Short piece for bass clarinet, marimba and tape.

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Scored for banjo/electric guitar and live electronics. Written for a concert with focus on the electric guitar.

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Scored for banjo/electric guitar and live electronics. Written for a concert with focus on the electric guitar.

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The concept of sound art is well known:

Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art is interdisciplinary in nature, or takes on hybrid forms. Sound art often engages with the subjects of acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, noise music, audio media and technology (both analog and digital), found or environmental sound, explorations of the human body, sculpture, film or video and an ever-expanding set of subjects that are part of the current discourse of contemporary art.^{[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_art}

I propose to use a new concept - music art - as a form of sound art where musical sounds and structures are used in artistic practises.

The piece I was writing about in the latest post is for trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, cello, piano and percussion. The next step is to form the concepts in the latest post into a musical exposition. My intent is to let each concept influence seperate movements: 1. Bricolage: the percussionist is using the other instruments. 2. Simplification: simplified and minimalistic. 3. Collage: short contrasting musical fragments. 4. Appropriation: appropriating older music. 5. Performance: performing words and pop. The reader who has read the latest post carefully can perhaps guess that I have assembled the three remaining descriptions into the fifth movement.

Remaining are then “use of words prominently as the central artistic element”, “depiction of consumer or popular culture” and “Performance art”.

What do you think?

Yesterday I was reading a book about pop art and I wanted to find a few concepts describing this movement to form a basis for a new work. The search led me instead to following description of postmodern art (on the wikipedia page):

The traits associated with the use of the term postmodern in art include bricolage, use of words prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation, depiction of consumer or popular culture and Performance art.

Could this be a starting point? "Simplification" and "collage" are definitevly concepts I could use. But what about the rest?

Bricolage, pronounced /ˌbriːkoʊˈlɑːʒ/, /ˌbrɪkoʊˈlɑːʒ/ is a term used in several disciplines, among them the visual arts and literature, to refer to:

• the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available;
• a work created by such a process.

It is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoler – the core meaning in French being, "fiddle, tinker" and, by extension, "make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand (regardless of their original purpose)." Music Instrumental Bricolage in music would include the use of found objects as instruments:

• Irish Spoons
• Australian slap bass made from a tea chest
• comb and wax paper for humming through
• gumleaf humming
• Largophone (made from a stick and bottle tops)
• Trinidadian Steel drums (made from industrial storage drums)
• African drums and thumb pianos made from recycled pots and pans.
• American super instruments made from recorders and bicycle bells or metal rods and keys

Stylistic Bricolage is the inclusion of common musical devices with new uses. Shuker [1998 Popular Music: Key Concepts ] writes "Punk best emphasized such stylistic bricolage". Musical Bricolage flourishes in music of sub-cultures where:

• experimentation is part of daily life (pioneers, immigrants, artistic communities),
• access to resources is limited (such as in remote, discriminated or financially disconnected sub-cultures) which limits commercial influence (eg. acoustic performers, gypsies, ghetto music, hippie, folk or traditional musicians) and
• there is a political or social drive to seek individuality (eg. Rap music, peace-drives, drummers circles)

Unlike other bricolage fields

• intimate knowledge of resources is not necessary (many Punk musicians are not classically trained. Classical training discourages creativity in preference for accuracy).
• careful observation and listening is not necessary, it is common in spontaneous music to welcome 'errors' and disharmony.

Like other bricolage fields, Bricolage music still values

• trusting one's ideas
• self-correcting structures (targeted audiences, even if limited)

Visual Art In art, bricolage is a technique where works are constructed from various materials available or on hand, and is seen as a characteristic of postmodern works. These materials may be mass-produced or "junk". See also: Merz, polystylism, collage. Bricolage can also be applied to theatrical form of improvisation. More commonly known as Improv. The idea of using one's environment and materials which are at hand is the main goal in Improv. The environment is the stage and the materials are often pantomimed. The use of the stage and the imaginary materials are all made up on the spot so the materials which are at hand ar actually things that the players know from past experiences. (i.e. an improvisation of ordering fast food: One player would start with the common phrase "How May I help You").

This I think can be useful too.

Appropriation (art)

Composition with Fruit, Guitar and Glass. 1912. Pablo Picasso.

To appropriate something involves taking possession of it. In the visual arts, the term appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of new work. The borrowed elements may include images, forms or styles from art history or from popular culture, or materials and techniques from non-art contexts. Since the 1980s the term has also referred more specifically to quoting the work of another artist to create a new work. The new work does not actually alter the original per se; the new work uses the original to create a new work. In most cases the original remains accessible as the original, without change.

This is perfect! Remaining are then "use of words prominently as the central artistic element", "depiction of consumer or popular culture" and "Performance art". Let´s see about that...

In the latest post I defined myself as some kind of conceptual neoestheticist. But I think that both this choice of words and the actual view behind it needs some clarification. I would define neoestheticism as a renewed interest in esthetic values. This does not necessarily mean a renewed interest in some previous esthetic system, as a concept like neoclassicism would imply. Conceptual art could be defined as art were the abstract thought and ideas behind it takes precedence over the esthetic value; or as art were the abstract thought and ideas behind it takes precedence over the craftmanship in making the art. Both these definitions could in a way be in opposition to my supposed integration between conceptualism and estheticism. I would instead define it in less opposing terms. Conceptual estheticism or conceptual neoesteticism is then by my use of it the theory that abstract thought and ideas and esthetic values both are important in the creation of art and music.

Art and music have always been connected; but when art was painted by artists on canvas or some other material and music were played by musicians on instruments, there always were a gap between them. Now this gap is not as self-evident any more. Now artists are interested not only in the visual but also in the audial. And composers have a growing interest in the conceptual aspects of their works. I like to combine conceptual ideas with a neoesthetic approach.

"Your eyes are wandering without purpose. Suddenly you see something that catches your interest. You zoom in. You are caught. You lose yourself in the details and zoom in to the limit." Marimba and EAM. A gradual focus of pulse ends up in groovy jazz-flavoured electronica.

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Surprising variations on the theme from Haydn´s symphony "Surprise". Carillon solo.

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"Your eyes are wandering without purpose. Suddenly you see something that catches your interest. You zoom in. You are caught. You lose yourself in the details and zoom in to the limit." Marimba and EAM. A gradual focus of pulse ends up in groovy jazz-flavoured electronica.

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Surprising variations on the theme from Haydn´s symphony "Surprise". Carillon solo.

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Female choir with solo Partly a tribute to media, partly a critic of our attitude towards media. Text by the composer.

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An exploration of the instrument, and a journey from very free and respiring playing to strict and surprising rhythm. Accordion solo.

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Female choir with solo Partly a tribute to media, partly a critic of our attitude towards media. Text by the composer.

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An exploration of the instrument, and a journey from very free and respiring playing to strict and surprising rhythm. Accordion solo.

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Yesterday I congratulated Messiaen on his 100th birthday. Today I have the great pleasure to congratulate another composer who are turning a century old and who are still alive and even still composing - Elliot Carter. Regretfully I have no score to honour him with as with Messiaen. But I have however three soundfiles which I can contribute to the anniversary with and which are based on recordings of his works. c100gb cmix cmixlounge

Today Messiaen would have been 100 years. Tonight I have performed on my laptop in a concert to Messiaens memory as a part of MDO, a swedish laptop orchestra. Originally the concert was thought to be with a Messiaen-quartet performing his famous work Quartet for the End of Times. I also wrote a new piece with a clear reference to Messiaens work, which were to have its first performance on the concert. Things turned out differently and the concert ended up featuring organ and laptop orchestra instead. Beyond the End of Times (score pdf)

As a representative for C-Y contemporary I was recently asked to describe the status of artmusic today; a task I find very stimulating. I think that we in C-Y have a very clear picture of what we are doing so the question wasn´t difficult to answer: First, and perhaps most importantly we have an integration of art and music under the concept of sound art. Secondly we have influences from other genres, were free jazz and electronica are perhaps those most closely related. But we have also now more references to older forms of art music. Artmusic is today more eclectic than ever before. In both characteristics above electronic music in different forms play an important role. These two are as I see the most recent trends. But naturally ideals from the two major movements of the twentieth century, modernism and minimalism, still lives on in our century.

Thoughtful piece about every day material and their sounds written for two percussion players. The following eight "elements" are stipulated: metal, wood, plastic, textile, water, glass, stone and paper.

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Thoughtful piece about every day material and their sounds written for two percussion players. The following eight "elements" are stipulated: metal, wood, plastic, textile, water, glass, stone and paper.

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On thursday the piece The Eight Elements for two percussionists will be premiered on C-Y´s concert Curious Drumming. I have already written about the fact that the score is unusually open and conceptual. Today I rehearsed the piece with the performers Johan Westerberg and Per Andreasson. I am very pleased with their interpretation of the score and I think that the piece will work very well on the concert. We also rehearsed and prepared a jam with percussion and computer (where I will play on my laptop) for the concert.

I have finished a first version of Our Solar System. I blame myself for exploring an area already being explored by Holst. But I think the basic idea is interesting: We start of with eleven of the twelve notes, B is excluded, and C is some kind of leading tone. Then in the next movement the C is excluded and Ab is instead the central tone. This structure is repeated, excluding the leading tones from the previous movements, ending up in the ninth movement with only three tones. This for me represents a travel from the warm sun out in the cold space, visiting all the planets. On the way towards the earth we are on somewhat safe ground, but when we go beyond earth the travel is more frightening. Especially the gigantic Jupiter is scary. But when we reach the tiny Pluto our strength is regained and we travel further out in space with a more positive attitude.

I´m writing a new piece about the planets. And, yes, of course it is inspired by Holst famous orchestral suite. I couldn´t resist the temptation to do a musical painting of our corner of the universe once more, and I think I have found an interesting new idea for the task. This time the earth is included; the working title is Our Solar System. It is scored for chamber ensemble - flute, bass clarinet, horn, percussion (including maracas, marimba, rototoms and bass drum), guitar, violin and cello. I did Mercury some month ago, today I did Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter. So you could say I am about half way through. I´m letting the music be influenced by the planets size and their distance from the sun, but also by the mythology behind their names (as Holst clearly did). Which principles I use I am saving for a later post.

Today I discussed a new piece with the performers. It is a very open piece called The Eight Elements for two percussionists. It is always awkward presenting a score that is simplistic and open. There is often a natural inclination to show of one´s skills as a composer. But the performers almost always like when they are given space. For me it is important to as far as possible adapt the music for the musicians. And if you go too far into the details, you risk reducing the musician from a performer to a mere executor. Don´t get this remark wrong; it is not to be nice to the musicans (even if that can be good too :) ), it is because the sounding result will be better - the best music is created, I think,  when both the composer and performer contributes their part to the whole.

My latest post on the projects blog raised some questions about working with sound tools when composing. Composing have often required the skill of imagining different or even all aspects of the music without beeing able to actually hear them; it wasn´t so strange that Beethoven could continue to compose even after he had gone almost completely death. When now the notation programs are offering better and better simulations of the written score, less and less of these simulations need to take please in the composers head. And the magic is partly gone forever. But I can´t see how the traditional skills of the imaginative composer can be a burden. If you depend solely on the computers output it will be some kind of time consuming trial-and-error-technique. Furthermore, the composers possibilities to market a new written score are increasing greatly when he need not depend on others having the same skills as himself.

I´ve just bought Finale 2009. My first impression is good. I think it is easy to work with. One of my biggest curiosities at start was on the Aria player. My thoughts now is that it is good but not too good; you get a pretty good impression of what your composition can sound like, but you are not dazzled away of the greatness of the sounds. For me I think the biggest improvement compared to Finale 2007 will be in working with percussion instruments who depends more on the sound than on the pitch.

I was listening to Aisha duo and got a strong inspiration to write a piece for cello and marimba. As usual I´m thinking in terms of contrasts: A section with pizzicato cello could be contrasted with a section with a more singing cello arco.

Written for the large but unusual outdoor instrument carillon. Upward, reaching movement.

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Written for the large but unusual outdoor instrument carillon. Upward, reaching movement.

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Quartet for the twentyfirst century in memory of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)

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Quartet for the twentyfirst century in memory of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)

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A piece about waiting for a loved one. Bass clarinet and marimba.

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Eclectic and playful piece in three movements roughly about the transition from disillusion and depression to joy and happiness. Guitar, violin, accordion and percussion.

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Piece for flute and guitar. Inspired by Ástor Piazzolla. Roughly in Tango nuevo style, but with hints of minimalism in the middle section.

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The inner state of a person sleepwalking and abruptly waking up. Trumpet, marimba and optional live-electronics.

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A piece for tenor recorder and harpsichord about extreme conditions on Uranus with some baroque influences.

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Piece for trumpet and carillon with improvisational middle section.

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Piece for electric guitar and computer - roughly sketched with much improvisation.

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A piece about waiting for a loved one. Bass clarinet and marimba.

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Eclectic and playful piece in three movements roughly about the transition from disillusion and depression to joy and happiness. Guitar, violin, accordion and percussion.

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Piece for flute and guitar. Inspired by Ástor Piazzolla. Roughly in Tango nuevo style, but with hints of minimalism in the middle section.

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The inner state of a person sleepwalking and abruptly waking up. Trumpet, marimba and optional live-electronics.

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A piece for tenor recorder and harpsichord about extreme conditions on Uranus with some baroque influences.

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Piece for trumpet and carillon with improvisational middle section.

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Piece for electric guitar and computer - roughly sketched with much improvisation.

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Global challanges for the 21th century. Tuba, electric guitar and live electronics. I. The Road to World Peace II. Clean Environment

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Global challanges for the 21th century. Tuba, electric guitar and live electronics. I. The Road to World Peace II. Clean Environment

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Duo for guitar and alto guitar. Piece in 6 movements which tells the story of a single relation, or human relations overall. The movements are titled: I. Acquaintance II. Conflict of Interest III. Attraction IV. Relief V. Routine VI. Domestic Solutions.

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Duo for guitar and alto guitar. Piece in 6 movements which tells the story of a single relation, or human relations overall. The movements are titled: I. Acquaintance II. Conflict of Interest III. Attraction IV. Relief V. Routine VI. Domestic Solutions.

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Piece with dance character, written for solo guitar.

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The piece is based on the theme from Danza Espanola no. 5 by Granados, and consists of five contrasting variations: 1) 'Quasi theme' - molto passionato ma alla danza 2) 'The Upbeat' - semplice e reflessivo 3) 'The Melody' - dolce e cantabile 4) 'The Grace Notes' - con moto e scherzando 5) 'Quasi theme' - agitato.

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Piece written for the enthusiastic and promising guitar trio Trio MaLaDa, former pupils of guitarist Carsten Groendahl. Not only was the piece written directly for the trio, each separate part was created directly for the individual guitarists. The piece is mostly in classical style but with hints from other genres. It is in three movements: I. Prelude II. Dance III. Finale.

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Piece written for the enthusiastic and promising guitar trio Trio MaLaDa, former pupils of guitarist Carsten Groendahl. Not only was the piece written directly for the trio, each separate part was created directly for the individual guitarists. The piece is mostly in classical style but with hints from other genres. It is in three movements: I. Prelude II. Dance III. Finale.

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Piece with dance character, written for solo guitar.

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The piece is based on the theme from Danza Espanola no. 5 by Granados, and consists of five contrasting variations: 1) 'Quasi theme' - molto passionato ma alla danza 2) 'The Upbeat' - semplice e reflessivo 3) 'The Melody' - dolce e cantabile 4) 'The Grace Notes' - con moto e scherzando 5) 'Quasi theme' - agitato.

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Piece written for the enthusiastic and promising guitar trio Trio MaLaDa, former pupils of guitarist Carsten Groendahl. Not only was the piece written directly for the trio, each separate part was created directly for the individual guitarists. The piece is mostly in classical style but with hints from other genres. It is in three movements: I. Prelude II. Dance III. Finale.

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