Description
James Saunders · 2023
A score for at least three players, “but ideally many more”. Each player brings the same number of drone sounds, made with anything — instruments, objects, devices, materials, electronics. Two conditions govern the choice: every sound must use a different source, and every sound must have a visible mode of playing, so that the other players can see when it starts and stops and can tell which sound it is. Players sit so that they can see all the other players and their sources.
Before the piece, each player privately pairs each of their own sounds with one sound belonging to someone else, so that every pair is unique. This is not discussed, and some sounds may end up with no sound attached to them.
Then the rule:
Each player produces a sustained sound using one of their sources as soon as a sound being produced by the associated source stops.
Players answer every sound associated with their collection this way. If nobody is playing at all, then after “a mutually acceptable duration” one or more players may start something. Each player has to play each of their sounds at least once before the piece ends. The last line of the score is “Do the best you can.”
Saunders describes the piece as exploring “situations where a task cannot be completed because it relies on someone else to do something first.”
source — the composer’s page for the work · scores, free to download
The whole of the piece: one page of setup, six sentences of instruction.
image: score page, James Saunders, james-saunders.com