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Errollyn Wallen – All the Blues I See | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Welcome to this site which explores the making of All the Blues I See, composed by Errollyn Wallen and first performed live by the Brodsky Quartet with flautist Emily Beynon at St George's Bristol on 4 March 2004, and then subsequently broadcast on Radio 3 on 12 November 2004 (go to the BBC3 site for playlist and details.). In a ResCen public seminar ‘Making Space’ with Doreen Massey, Errollyn said that music ‘begins and ends in the air’ implying that, despite recordings and scores, the ontological status of music is as a transient vibration. This site has attempted to remain honest to that observation, and to the interweaving of the seemingly mundane activity of selecting colours for painting walls into the fabric of hours spent drawing music into being, forming it on the page in notation even while knowing this is simply a codified simulacrum. The correspondences between Errollyn and the musicians give us direct insight into the important negotiation that takes place between the composer and her performers, as well as how their responses help to shape both the written score and the performance. It may be that the use of notation, and currency of the phrase ‘writing music’, leads us to see this as a scriptural activity – Errollyn’s account, by contrast, reminds us that the performance is the music, and that any document can only point to it, and to the processes that bring it into the air. The link below takes you to the beginning of the mapping of the creative process, from the commissioning of the composition. The site has been carefully constructed to reflect the eclectic and sometimes unpredictable elements that affect the composer. Many of the audio, video and text components are hidden and require you to click on unmarked parts of the interface. In this way, you will discover new elements each time you visit the site.
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Site credits:
The photograph of Gina is by Richard Holder. The full score of All the Blues I See is available from Peters Edition. Please note: Broadband connection is recommended for the audio and video content, files are compressed but of considerable length. |
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