Michael Boyd
Avante-Garde Experimental Composer
(image credits: Photo by Lisa Boyd,
Layout/Comp by Kris Swenson)
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1. What got you
started in avant-garde/experimental music?
I made a pretty
gradual transition the point that I currently occupy. During
my first few years as a composer, like many young composers and
artists, I primarily imitated those that I admired – early on I was
enamored with Philip Glass and
Reich’s music (particularly Einstein on the Beach)
that, though experimental, has many connections with more
traditional music (tonal sounds for example). After that I
moved on to other, arguably more experimental or avant-garde
composers: Morton Feldman and Iannis Xenakis.
My recent music
results from my personal perspective on a compositional trend that
is traceable to the mid-twentieth century: indeterminacy. ...I
would like to differentiate between two distinct terms,
indeterminacy and chance, that are typically used synonymously
(incidentally both terms are strongly associated with John Cage, and
reading his writings can also help one to correctly conceptualize
them). Chance music is “indeterminate with regard to
composition.” What this means is that a composer uses a
process that is somewhat out of their control (rolling dice or
flipping coins for example – there is a statistical element to such
processes) and utilizes data gleaned from that process to make
compositional decisions. The work that results is a fully
notated composition that is performed in essentially the same
fashion each time. Indeterminate music is “indeterminate with
regard to performance.” In this case, certain aspects of a
performance are left to the discretion of performers. Cage
correctly points out that music from the classical canon is
indeterminate in some respects – dynamics for example are notated in
a very general manner with the specifics left to performer
discretion. In my opinion then, this term is best reserved for
music that renders indeterminate facets that are specifically
composed in traditional settings (for example pitch, form, rhythm,
etc.). Different composers who have explored indeterminacy did
so in personal, idiosyncratic ways, making it impossible to
generalize further.
I began composing
very pedantic music in a high school music theory class and decided
to study composition more seriously with Lawrence Moss during my
undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland where I started
as a trombone performance major (1996-2000). Kristian Twombly,
a composer and good friend who now teaches electronic music and new
media at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, was a couple years
ahead of me at the Maryland. He acted as a sort of aesthetic
guide for me, introducing me to new sounds and composers during my
formative years that helped move my interest from standard
orchestral literature (I initially aspired to be an orchestral
trombonist) to experimental and avant-garde music. I also
learned a lot taking classes with Thomas DeLio, an internationally
known experimental composer who has done really interesting,
groundbreaking work with silence. I first learned about
indeterminacy through Kristian, and DeLio furthered my knowledge of
this approach to composition by introducing me to Feldman’s
Durations III. I also started reading his book Circumscribing
the Open Universe which has significantly influenced me – this book
is a collection of non-traditional analyses by DeLio of a variety of
“open form” works by composers such as Feldman, Cage, Christian
Wolff, and John Ashley. During the end of this period I had
thoughts about incorporating indeterminate aspects into my
compositions, but never found a satisfactory way to do so.
I moved to Long
Island to start graduate school at SUNY Stony Brook as a music
theory/musicology major. The grad music program there was
highly interdisciplinary with really inquisitive, intellectual
students and faculty. Being part of that community really
opened my mind in a lot of ways. I also started composing more
and began working with electro-acoustic music – I took a class on
classic analog techniques with Daria Semegen and worked with Dan
Weymouth on several short CSound pieces. I also studied with
Peter Winkler for a semester, a very interesting composer with a
great knowledge of Cage, Xenakis, and others. Again I toyed
with indeterminacy but never really integrated it into my music. I
also met a lot of great performers, composers, and scholars who were
studying at Stony Brook – Sonya Hofer (musicologist), Ben Lanz
(trombonist), Phil Scheussler (composer), and Mike McCurdy
(percussionist) just to name a few.
I returned to
Maryland in 2003 to begin their doctoral composition program and
study with Thomas DeLio. I knew during my undergraduate work
that he was a unique artist and teacher, and I was anxious to work
with him on my compositions. DeLio held group composition
lessons – two to four of us would meet to discuss each other’s music
every week. I started working a piece for the experimental
trombonist I mentioned previously from Stony Brook, Ben Lanz.
To try to figure out all of the possible sounds that could be
produced on the trombone I began drawing flow-charts of how one
makes sound on the instrument. DeLio suggested that it might
be interesting to use the charts to make the piece, which led to my
first indeterminate work, Hand Leg Suit. Since that time, I’ve
felt that this is the approach that I had been moving towards or
searching for throughout my time as a composer.
One of my
overriding goals is to (re)integrate performers into the creative
process. Too often performers, who can be incredibly
inventive, are relegated to the role of “replicator” and are judged
on accuracy and the conveyance of feigned emotion. I would
rather create compositional scenarios that transfer significant
creative agency to performers so that a composer/performer
partnership exists (rather than pretending that the composer is the
solitary “genius”).
Each of my recent
compositions and the graphic notation that I choose for these pieces
addresses fairly specific issues that interest me at the time.
Hand Leg Suit (2003) is for mixed instrumental ensemble of two
to six players. In this work I attempted to graphically
deconstruct the process of performing on each instrument and recast
that process in a new ways by highlighting different actions and
parts of the instrument and body. Becoming…everything else
(2004) is a performance installation for a group of performers
from any discipline who perform in a single building at moments of
their choosing during a longer span of time such as a week.
This piece most overtly reflects my interest in installation and
public-space art, and the notation reflects this as well. The
top of a score page lists staring and ending cues (for the
interpretation of that page) that the performer might (or might not)
encounter in the space (some are visual, others are aural, others
focus on the behavior of other building occupants); once the
starting cue is found, the performer concurrently interprets a
graphic image (which may imply spatial characteristics) and three
verbs. Bit of nostalgia… (2005-06) is my most recent
finished piece for one or two percussionists and live electronics
performer. Here a limited series of graphics are combined in
different ways creating a sort of permutational character to the
score. These pages are interpreted by the percussionist(s) at
a variety of instrumental set-ups (the performance space is divided
into sectors, several of which contain distinctive groups of
traditional and non-traditional instruments) – one possible outcome
of this scenario that interests me is that the variety of
instruments and semi-repetitive score will allow the percussionist(s)
to make somewhat similar types of gestures in different contexts
highlighting the differences between the instrument groups.
The computer performer uses patches that I made using Cycling 74’s
MAX/MSP (software that allows users to create graphical interfaces
for real-time sound synthesis and processing) to recall and
manipulate recordings of previous performances and rehearsals; the
percussionist(s) respond to these sounds at times, bringing a sense
of self-history into the piece.
2. How much do
you instruct the musicians how to interpret your compositions?
The amount of time
that I spend with performers varies depending on the logistics
surrounding each performance situation. I enjoy working with
performers during the rehearsal process, but I also like to see what
can happen when I have little to no influence. This spring I
had pieces performed at conferences where I didn’t get a chance to
hear the ensembles until the day of the performance – I heard/saw
fascinating interpretations of my scores each time. Typically
I provide few very specific instructions, but rather provide more
general comments, clarify performance instructions, suggest
rehearsal techniques, or help with formal design.
3. John Cage
had very defined ideas about how his graphic scores should be
performed. Is there a right or wrong way to perform your music, or
is it interpretive?
Cage’s music
varies significantly depending on which compositions you are
performing. For example, his “number” pieces are less open
than the Variations which don’t specify a lot about sound materials.
What is interesting about Variations IV, for example, is that while
it does not give a lot of instruction about what types of sounds one
makes, but is very specific about how one constructs a performance
and what locations one occupies relative to the performance space
while making sounds (Cartridge Music is another example that comes
to mind of a piece that is very specific yet very open at least
sonically).
My music is
similar to these Cage pieces in that certain facets are fairly
specific (in Hand Leg Suit this includes actions and parts of the
body and instrument) while others (pitch, rhythm, etc.) are open to
performer interpretation. I frequently employ graphic images
and text that are not standard music notation – these images allow a
significant degree of performer inventiveness since historically
they do not imply specific actions and sonic results (all notation,
after all, is graphic, but traditional notation implies that
performers do certain things).
I suppose for me,
the main facet that is important is that the musicians and artists I
work with should always experiment and be searching for new ways to
perform rather than simply going through the motions by making
idiomatic gestures.
4. Zorn’s
“Cobra” and Cardew’s “Treatise” are graphic scores that allow the
musicians a lot of freedom. What are you’re thoughts on
improvisation?
I think that
actual improvisation is rarely heard by audiences, and more often
occurs in practice or rehearsal situations. What is commonly
understood as improvisation could probably more accurately be
referred to as “flexible performance” or something like that.
I find these situations interesting, particularly those that are
less traditional-based (jazz for example typically, though not
always, entails a pretty specific set of expected performance
practices). I try to compose music that will present unknown
scenarios mid-performance that the performers will have to deal with
and respond to in their own way. If you look at what a few
composers were doing in the mid 1960s, Christian Wolff’s earlier
music and Karlheinz Stockhausen piece’s like Kurzwellen and Plus
Minus, something similar is apparent. There’s a sort of
unquantifiable aesthetic (perhaps an “aesthetic of immediacy”?) that
results from compositions like this – I guess it’s a similar effect
to the “aesthetic of difficulty” that one can sense in performances
of Brian Ferneyhough’s music.
5. A unique
feature of your music is the combination of music and movement of
the performers. How did this element come about?
That’s an
interesting question that I haven’t actively considered until now.
One of the composer’s whose music I’ve spent a lot of time with,
Roger Reynolds, often creates very distinctive spatial gestures,
though my study of his work postdates my first composition that
integrates movement. Another connection that could be more
overt in my interest in installation art – I’ve always been
fascinated by art that situates itself in a space in a way that
allows the viewer to understand or conceptualize the space in a new
way and makes the art seem inseparable from the space it inhabits.
This interest in space as an integral part of one’s experience of
art is something that I want to apply to my concert hall as well as
installation work.
6. Are there
visual artists or authors that have influenced you?
Visual artists:
Wolfgang Laib, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko,
Philip Guston, Dan Flavin, James Turrell
Authors: Jackson
Mac Low, Hermann Hesse, John Cage, Peter Inman
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>> Interview by
Mark
Cook for Art Anomaly.
Find Michael Boyd online at:
