Wow, to be frank, The
Poetics of the Open Work (Umberto Eco) was a fairly dense article, and I’m not sure I
totally understood every bit of it through my first read-through. However, in
an attempt to help myself understand the article, I would like to repeat a few
points and lingering questions that I caught:
- An open work is one that could be interpreted in multiple ways.
- Can a work ever be considered “truly open?” Must there be some sort of core idea that’s holding everything together to make it “complete?”
- Composer may give the performer different ways to play through the piece (aleatoric elements, for instance)
- Or, there is also the idea of openness on the consumer’s side (i.e. how is the one partaking in the art taking in the experience?). This leads to many different perspectives!
As for an example of a work that addresses this issue of
“openness” vs. “complete,” I believe my own piece, Chromoscope (2012), may work in this context.
The piece itself focuses on the idea of shifting perspectives
and chance as it affects various parameters such as the instrumentation, player
choice in performance (improvisation), player placement or audience location,
and the course of the piece (form).
As long as there are eight or more people and all the
instruments are capable of sustaining pitches (for instance, the melodica,
Irish tin wistle, voice, violin, etc. are all valid), the possible combination
of instrumentations is practically infinite. Moreover, a moderator (conductor)
rolls a die to determine the “musical line” that the players perform, and even
then, as the piece goes from one section to another, the sections may require
the player to look ahead or look back as they apply different musical
parameters to the upcoming section. The piece ends when either all the lines
have been played once or when one particular line has been played three times.
On the player’s side of things, there is a lot of room for
improvisation, as long as it fits the “rules” in that particular section of the
piece (anything from possible pitches to dynamic style and note
articulation/style). If the instrument is capable of producing different
timbres (either by using mutes, or perhaps with phonating different vowels in
the voice), then the performer can take the liberty to do so. The players are also arbitrarily scattered throughout the performance space to provide a 3D-acoustical-field.
As for the audience members: they are allowed to stand up,
sit, or walk around throughout the duration of the piece. Depending on where
one is situated during certain moments of the piece, individuals will
definitely obtain different listening experiences.
With that said, even though there is so much variability in
the piece, I feel like the piece still has a unique feel that is apparent when
one experiences it multiple times. This is much like many of John Cage’s pieces
that focus on chance; though on the surface level one can say that the pieces
are simply randomized, we could say that they are “randomized in a distinct
Cage-like style,” as my Analysis and
History of Electroacoustic Music Professor liked to say.
Additionally, when connecting this with the musical content
class that I took last year (in fact the blog for that class is included in my
blogroll, for those who are interested), I feel that sometimes the core ideas
are the things that make the work more tangible (complete), and perhaps the
free-flowing nature (the “openness”) may actually also speak to the
content/main-ideas of the piece. In my piece’s case, the title Chromoscope as well as the program notes
reveals the colorful nature of the piece. The materials (varied/unique
instrumentation) support the concept of colors. The context (a
“concert piece” that is more like a museum exhibit) plays beautifully into the
title/concept, as the varied perspectives are unique to the individual (each
individual’s experience of “color” is unique—“colorful,” in a way).
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