CeReNeM Journal, Issue 3
11
two times it included (notated vs. heard), as well as the multiple eras it referenced (Chopin’s 1839, Argerich’s 1975, my own 2009). It was only when I heard the piece performed, at its première by the Kreutzer Quartet at Wiltons Hall, that I realised how much the Chopin/Argerich time ‘comes to life’. What looks on the page like grid-based, even minimalist music, sounds in time like a supple, breathing body. This is achieved because the grid-based materials (the flutter echoes, the rhythmically-activated melodic lines) are all triggered according to the micro-temporal measurements of a ‘natural event’: Argerich’s expressive and volatile interpretation.
Performer’s commentary Although the composer notes above that Flutter Echoes feels ‘hardly like my work at all’, for the quartet it was Beaudoin’s compositional presence we encountered most immediately on our first play-through - a presence that was paradoxically intensified because the source materials were already known. When Beaudoin first contacted me about the pieces my immediate concern was whether it would permit ‘interpretation’ at all. What role could there be for the performers in this unique context other than to translate the score into sound? Nevertheless, the quartet’s curiosity had been piqued and there was only one way to find out. When we began to rehearse, the most immediately pressing issue was not whether there would be a way of sustaining the architecture over such an extended time scale (which of course was and remains a challenge), but whether the necessary ‘grid’ of bar lines that permits us access to the hyper-detailed transcription of Argerich’s recording would prove an insurmountable obstacle. Whereas Chopin desséché is performed by one person, for whom the ‘inaudible ticking’ of the metre has no physical presence, a quartet has to communicate something to one another in order to stay together. There is thus a palpable tension for the performers in the relationship between the internally communicated (and externally visible) metre, and the directly audible, agogicallyshaped structural rubato of the sound itself. One could go as far as to say that, for the performer, Beaudoin’s piece (as distinct from Chopin’s - or Argerich’s) exists principally in this tension. The notation, as the source of this tension, functions dialectically, despite its outwardly traditional appearance. Because the sources are known, the notation of each event conveys both a structural function and a psychological ‘displacement’. The score is thus extremely challenging to realise and we are torn between the competing demands of total synchronisation of the flutter echoes and accurate placement of the initial ictus. A conductor might make this easy, but conducting the ‘hidden pulse’ would also remove the very thing that gives the piece its life. Dynamics prove equally challenging, not least because we feel the very long phrases and each tiny variable thus has consequences for the next note (as, for example, at the end of Chopin’s long first phrase, where we fall significantly below the notated dynamic level). In his notes to the players in the score, Beaudoin observes that ‘the bar lines and metre act only as guidelines; they do not indicate any metric structure’. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the placement of events in