Note on the performance practice of Timeless Echoes by Chong Kee Yong Arne Deforce Timeless Echoes is an interesting example of multicultural musical performing art. It is quite a demanding piece on the domain of performance practice, inventive playing technique and creative musical imagination. Having premiered the piece with Kee Yong it was clear from the very beginning the composer asked a certain kind of freedom in regards to the notation and the actual music to be sounding. The piece is conceived as an inter-change between two traditions East and West, improvised and notated music, instrumental and electronic music, music and visual performing art (action painting). Inspired by the GuQin (a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family) Timeless Echoes “explores” more precisely the articulatory (diverse pizzicati) and the vibratory characteristics of the cello. As the composition is fully notated within the tradition of Western sound-notation it is however not totally clear how the performer is to execute certain passages. There the performer has to imagine, create and construct for himself a musical reference and artistic solution to the propositions made by the composer. More particular I think of the opening passage to be played pizzicato with a “bottle-neck” making reference to the gliding pizzicato sounds of GuQin’s music. Using an empty wine-bottle we experimented diverse possibilities on how we could achieve a qualitative gliding pizzicato sound that could imitate or “echo” the typical sound characteristics of the GuQin. I remember in the beginning I played that particular passage improvised within the spirit of the written music. Improvising I searched for interesting inflections in pitch, timbre, and intensity that where musically convincing so I could learn about the “idea” the composer had written down. In a later stage I tried and studied the “bottle-neck” technique to come closer to the text, match the score and refine the playing technique. I believe it is an interesting experience for future performers to do the same and explore how echoes of the sound qualities of the GuQin can open a new spectrum on the cello. Moreover one also has to find a way on how to project these sounds in the texture of the electronic sounds, which is clearly creating an Oriental kind of sound reference. It is interesting to mention that reading and playing the score, the question on its “notations” here needs certain artistic and experiental considerations on “how to make them work”, rather than questioning if they work. In other sections like the bowed “quasi impromptus” and the “luminoso”-passage the performer has to take a similar liberate and imaginative approach towards the notation. At several stages I have experienced the pitch notation is better off when seen as pitch “location” giving focus to a refined information on how a certain passage could be played or “worked out”. Hence I consider the score more as a notational image (representation) of the sounds location, the gestures to be performed on the instrument, giving a detailed sense of the structure, the flux, the timbre and energy of sound. In this sense the notational image of the music in the score opens interesting approaches of a composed highly informed explorative performance practice. The musician is so to speak “inter-acting” within the notated image of the music, a notated flux of sounds, gestures and energy giving sound to what is hidden within the trace of its notation. Finally the notion of its title, Timeless Echoes seems to find its meaning on many different levels of perception. Arne Deforce
March 23th 2015
Arne Deforce playing Timeless Echoes (Bottle-neck section)