Adam B -
It’s been a long time coming, but Adam, Helen & I have now actually started rehearsing For Philip Guston. But one of the issues I keep on dwelling on is how to actually rehearse it. Starting a new piece of music is usually easy enough, but this is unlike anything else I’ve come across - it’s just so long.
But for me, its length is one of its attractions. I find long-duration and/or repetitive music to be really fascinating. It creates an experience that can’t be had any other way. Whether you approach a long piece as a form of meditation, an exercise in deep listening, or the chance to wallow in an ambient texture, the journey through the piece is always unique and the silence when you finish never sounds like the silence before you start.
But needless to say, the length also brings its own distinct problems. You can’t just play through it, and its really hard to get a sense of the overall shape of the piece – or even whether the piece can be said to have an ‘overall shape’ in the first place.
All the musicians play from the same score, which is 102 pages long (we’re all playing off tablets which makes the page-turns a lot easier, though we mustn’t forget to charge them!). To get started, we chose three sections to work on - roughly 10 pages each from the beginning, middle and end logically enough! Between them, they include some representative textures & types of material, and allow us to try out a number of different approaches to counting, cuing & coordination.
They’ve also given me plenty of ideas about what sort of markings might be helpful to write in directions on my music, and what sort of info I’ll need to be aware of in performance.
The music is incredibly difficult to play together, although sometimes very easy to play on your own. But it is amazing how quickly it starts to sound like Feldman. His music is so distinctive, it really doesn’t sound like anyone else – you definitely couldn’t improvise this!
It’s a long, long piece and we’re at the start of a long road to learn it – but it’s already being incredibly rewarding. Roll on November 2nd
