Sleevenotes from Prima Facie CD247 Set of Five
CD 1
[ 1 ] Spoken introduction [1’37]
[ 2 ] NO 1 [5’42]
[ 3 ] NO 2 [7’10]
[ 4 ] NO 4 [9’03]
[ 5 ] NO 3 [5’35]
[ 6 ] NO 5 [11’40]
TCM Composers’ Ensemble:
Tarek Younis, voice
Reynaldo Young, guitar
Nikos Veliotis, cello
Danny Ledesma, piano
Daryl Runswick, pipes, children’s percussion
(London Borough of Marylebone, ambience)
World Premiere: live recording
Recorded at Hinde Street Church, Marylebone, 6.5.99
Recording engineer Kit Venables
Sonic rescue Phil Hardman
CD 2
[ 1 ] NO 1 [8’03]
[ 2 ] NO 2 [8’28]
[ 3 ] NO 3 [4’43]
[ 4 ] NO 4 [9’12]
[ 5 ] NO 5 [13’10]
Keith Tippett and Daryl Runswick, 2 pianos
Recorded in live performance at Dartington Great Hall, 26.7.99
Recording engineer Mike Skeet
Sonic rescue Phil Hardman
Daryl Runswick writes: “Set of 5 (composed in 1996) is exactly what it says on the tin: a set of five pieces (unconventionally scored – there is little notated music) to be improvised by any group that wants to. I wrote them… come again? How can scores exist if the music is improvised? The answer is as timeless as the history of music: these scores contain guidelines to be improvised as pieces always have been from the Renaissance through Baroque times and up to and beyond the jazz age. My guidelines are written sometimes in words, sometimes in graphics, sometimes in notes. Here is the original programme note, which doubles as instructions to the performers:
These pieces are intended for performance by small ensembles or consorts of whatever type and size. 3-5 performers is probably the optimum, but larger and smaller groupings are also possible. In common with Stockhausen this composer hopes that performers will improvise his pieces in his style, or one compatible with what they know of his music and tastes. I have written, spoken and taught on the subject of improvisation on numerous occasions and will provide source texts on application. For the present let it be said (because even now, after the life and influence of Cage, it will be necessary) that these are serious pieces embracing the possibility of emotion, drama and wit. I do not like the facetious use of quotations from well-known music, stylistic pastiche (at least in these pieces) or jokes with extra- musical allusions. Getting up and moving about also bores me, but performers may do this if they must.
Unlike the later music of Cage, my aleatoric and improvised pieces (these and others) should be constantly monitored during performance for style, sense of direction and artistic effect. Each performer must respect 1) the piece as an ideal 2) the piece as an actual event, now, and 3) the input of their colleagues. An ill-timed interruption can kill a piece of music as surely as it can a conversation: do not negate your colleagues’ improvisations. Differing as a musical technique is often called for; contradiction is destructive, and is banned from my music. This is chamber music, for the mutual delectation of performer and listener alike, as chamber music always has been. In the sense that it contains no narrative and concerns itself with abstract formal devices, it is not theatre; in other senses it may be. If the pieces are well-designed (and if they are well performed) they will contain as much differentiation and contrast as the movements of a string quartet.
The order of performance of the set is free, and may be determined by chance operations or not. Items can be performed singly or in any grouping: however if all five pieces are performed NO5 must come last. Vary the overall timings of the pieces: this can be extreme if you wish. At performances, scores should be visible to the audience.
This album contains two performances of Set of 5 by contrasting groups, sounding completely different from one another and yet recognizable as the same work. At the World Premiere (CD 1) it was performed in a chance order determined by the throwing of a dice by Tarek Younis, who announced each piece (to the players as well as the audience!) The performers were composition students of mine at Trinity College of Music in London. Hinde Street Church was the College’s main performance space in 1999, before we moved to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich and merged with the Laban Dance Centre. The church’s acoustic was wonderful but not soundproof and traffic noise from outside often impinged. On the day of this lunchtime concert the traffic was particularly intrusive, to such an extent that it influenced the players and produced a performance different from what it would have been if the noise hadn’t been there. After some thought I have not attempted to remove the noise from the recording (a process which these days would be possible electronically) but have included it and even credited it in the list of performers. In this I am confident I am acting in the spirit of John Cage, who at the end of his life used to open the windows of his New York apartment every day to listen to the traffic, which he said, being a chance event, he enjoyed as much or more than music.
Amusing and appropriate perhaps that the first and last sounds played in this performance are by me, on children’s percussion and on pipe. This recording was made during what I remember as a golden age for the Composition Faculty at Trinity College of Music. We were overflowing with talent and the sense of intense creativity, solidarity and mutual support was palpable. Our world was wide and tolerant of every style, producing exceptional work from students who might write conventional or avant- garde pieces or anything between – and to the side. My group classes were electric and attended by many from outside the Composition Faculty. These performances of Set of 5 show maturity, wit, virtuosity, subtle interaction and a standard of improvisational skill of international quality. In 1999 nothing remotely like this was happening at any of the other British conservatoires.
For the Dartington performance (CD 2) the written order of the pieces was observed. As a tutor at the Dartington Summer School I was given a concert of my own and I invited Keith Tippett, also a tutor, to do Set of 5 with me on two pianos. We subsequently performed the piece again in London. For these and the Hinde Street performances I printed five enormous (metre-wide) laminated photocopies of the score pages, which were displayed around the auditorium.
The improvisational style from the two pianists is not particularly jazz-influenced. Keith, nominally a jazz musician, had in fact a wide stylistic range and many of his performances (with his wife Julie Tippetts and with others) were very close to what the ‘classical’ contemporary music community were doing. My background as a composer-performer was similar.
I had invited Mike Skeet, my then record company CEO, to record the performance and he arrived at Dartington on the day of the concert after a long ride from Milton Keynes on his motorbike. Unfortunately, to my outrage, he had not been able to get all the equipment he needed into his pannier and the resulting recording gave an inadequate stereo picture where you could not differentiate who was playing what. Thanks to the electronic wizardry of Phil Hardman we have now managed to separate out the two pianos and Keith can be heard on the left of the stereo, myself on the right.”
