Terrific concert last Saturday:

Richard Barrett - Flechtwerk
Richard Barrett & fORCH - fOKT IV

I thought "Flechtwerk" was super (and what a performance); best clarinet/piano duo I know since Maxwell Davies's "Hymnos".
I heard it as a piece in two halves - the first of which was extremely dense (everything at once) and a stunning second half where 
it massively thinned out and the materials - and (often unison) workings between the players - revealed themselves.

Some of the sounds in "fOKT IV" where not always to my taste/interest (e.g. the electronic sounds at the beginning), but some of the textures were stunning and I found the unfolding clear and compelling. With all the hand signals and eye contact between the players, there seemed a degree of prior construction, so, if Richard is happy to talk about his own work here, I'd love to ask him the obvious nerdy question: could you tell us about the decision making that took place prior to the performance?
Also, the male vocalist was rather visually striking with his constant and various contorted facial expressions, almost as if he was performing the theatrical part of a .... madman. Considering everything else was pretty much PURE MUSIC, I am curious to know how he, and anyone else, felt about that.   

Yes, I did wonder if that was the explanation. Unfortunately I found it hard not to 'read' meaning into them, with the result that I felt the piece would have been a very significantly different thing without him in it. (This might well not be the case in a broadcast/recording.)

What do you think are the important considerations (if any), Richard, when including voices in such a performance? Does one have to be more careful about avoiding unwanted significations with the human voice?

I think I must have seen Phil perform so many times that I no longer notice that he can look a bit deranged when he's singing. Anyway I find watching say Cecilia Bartoli much more offputting.


At the risk of seeming to dodge the question, when the group was originally being put together, the primary considerations were more to do with maximising its timbral/articulational range and possible subgroupings and "symmetries" with only eight performers (hence 2 voices, 2 melody instruments, 2 electronic instruments, (prepared) piano & percussion), and with the actual musical personalities and their possible relationship within such a collective, than with "unwanted significations" - since it's principally an improvising group, once (say) Phil is part of it, anything and everything he does is by definition "wanted".

Yes. The idea is that with the addition of the keyboards and other external controllers, the laptops become instruments, albeit of a different species from the others. And most of the sounds they were producing were actually derived from the (previously recorded, edited and transformed) sounds of the other performers, which is one reason why it might not always have been possible to tell who was doing what. (Another is that the acoustic in the church did tend to iron out a lot of the perspective and "edges" of the music.)

I agree about the prevailing aesthetic of improvised music. To me (and my colleagues on Saturday evening) what the music "says", structurally and poetically, is as much to do with the relationships between sounds as with the sounds themselves. The fact that so much (but by no means all!) improvised music is predicated on somewhat oversimplified interrelationships makes it easy for many to regard it as being in itself inferior or limited in scope relative to notated music, which in my opinion is very far from the truth.

I should add that whatever variety of response between the musicians there may have been on Saturday wasn't principally because of my score! (Many of the most interesting moments, for me at least, came about through the score being flouted rather than followed.) The musicians were of course carefully chosen for their abilities and propensities, in addition to which, when the ensemble was put together for the first time we had the luxury of five full days of rehearsal/recording followed by four concerts on consecutive days, which served better than any notation possibly could to develop a collective musical personality.

Regarding the laptops, though, I don't see the situation the same way you do. Which one of us is making any particular sound, firstly, isn't really crucial, since we don't always know ourselves, the gear being set up so that it's more a case of a single instrument played by two people than a "duo" (and with twenty years of performing together behind us). Also, not all the electronic sounds are derived from the other players, although this was the case in the opening trio, and in the later trio with viola. I think you might, on hearing the broadcast recording, eventually change your mind about how equal the terms are. On the other hand you might not, and I certainly have no wish to try and tell you how to listen!

I'd submit that that's a function of several factors:

Electronic instruments can do anything  with sound, limited only by the imagination and know-how of the programmer. Thus limiting their ability to establish an 'identity'
Electronic instruments don't rely on a set of technical limitations as a source of expressive 'resistance,' such as the effort that comes with high notes, loud notes, or even clean intonation.
Electronic instruments need not be (and usually are not) embodied, which means they cannot rely on or make use of "gesture" beyond what they have been programmed to do, which by definition will be more primitive than gestures used by people
...but these 'human' standards are both a blessing and a curse. Schools of thought on electronic music are split into those who feel the 'embodied' dimension is what's lacking and those who think this lack is precisely the medium's strength.

Again, a word from someone who wasn't even AT the concert. Grump!

Ergo?

ERGONOMICS:

Sorry, that was purely silly, thanks for describing your interface.

What does the term "gluiph" mean?

Colin, the article Richard linked above explains things pretty well. Still, he might elaborate.

Anyhow, I read that thing again and didn't find an explanation for the name. It could have something to do with "glue" -- at one point he mentions glue code for the audio drivers. Because he mentions it in passing doesn't mean it isn't a critical feature of the technology. Of course, I can't pretend to know the meaning of glue code, but I could do some of my own snooping.

Now I just have to clarify the "iph" part -- something akin to "glyph"?