This week, composer John King talks about his new work, Dice Thrown, which will premiere at this year's VOX festival in May.

 

 

It means that each individual part -- all the instruments and all the arias -- are treated independently.  (Chance operations were also used for the creation of the pitches, rhythms, and "characteristics" of the musical material.)  In terms of the structure, for example, the singer has a set of eight arias or songs.  These appear in the work in a different order and for a different duration each time the piece is performed.  Then the audience, when hearing the texts, will be given the freedom to construct their own "story," create their own "imagery," and be allowed, with their own individual experiences, to complete the opera for themselves.  The sounds that accompany these arias don't impose any specific feeling or mood.

 

 

I am trying to free the sounds from specificity -- specific harmony, specific dramatic intent, etc.  I'm also trying to free the words from the imprisonment of a specific meaning, allowing them also to become sounds, independent from a weighted, tied-down meaning.  This is one of the elements which first drew me to Mallarmé's prose and poetry -- his sense of the word's sound being equal to, if not more important than, the word's meaning.

 

The musicians play written material.  They're also free to make choices as to where they start and stop playing certain (what I call) "musical characteristics."  Some of this is improvised to a point, but it is more accurately termed "structured improvisation."  This means the musicians are given "time-windows" to play within.  So for example, if they're given a "0:00-1:00" time-window, they can choose to play from "0:20 - 0:50," or to play from "0:15 - 0:30," as long as they're playing within the chance-determined time window in the score.  And, in working with other players, once this concept is clear and the understanding of what is fixed and what is freely interpreted is clear, it is easily performed.

 

As to the piece's ultimate staging, I've worked for more that 20 years with the brilliant, ever-innovative choreographer, Merce Cunningham.  In his work, the movement, music, lighting, sets, and costumes all function independently.  They only come together and perform simultaneously, as John Cage once said, "for the convenience of the audience."  The staging actually takes place in three movable locations: on an abandoned shipwreck near a destroyed city, within a night sky in the midst of constellations, and also within a timepiece without numbers (infinity) where dice rolls replace the marking of time.

 

 

When reading early 20th century French poets and writers (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Artaud), I was led to works written by Bertrand, Baudelaire and Mallarmé.  When reading Mallarmé, I began with his early work and noticed, even with my poorly pronounced French, a sonic flow -- internal sonic rhymes and ripples that resonated throughout his texts.  Then I happened upon, at the back of one collection, his final masterpiece, Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard [Dice thrown never will annul chance].  The title runs throughout the poem, in a capitalized, bold font in large type.  Other parts of the text are in small, italicized type.  In its 12 or so brief pages, the poem uses many fonts, styles, and sizes.  There is a great deal of "blank space" scattered throughout the pages -- what Mallarmé thought of as silences.  The entire poem, he felt, was a kind of "musical score."  It struck me immediately then, that this was a great text source to work with.

 

 

 

I spoke a bit about this in my previous response, but I can say that I have collaborated with a variety of choreographers with different approaches.  I've composed and directed two other "experimental" operas which always involved movement of some kind -- usually specific stage locations, blocking, etc.  I wrote music for a piece for the Mannheim Ballet with choreographer Kevin O'Day which used a full orchestra, two sopranos, and live electronics.  I actually find the most successful partnerships are with people who give their fellow collaborators the fullest freedom to do their work.  For my collaborators on "Dice Thrown" -- the set design, video design, movement, costumes, lighting, etc. -- I try to direct through non-direction.

 

 

My compositional style?  Nothingness?  An absence of style?  I try with my compositions to make what I call a "trilogic unity," that is: I integrate and blend (in many different ways, at many different levels) the concepts of composition, improvisation and chance.  "Dice Thrown" will be very loud and very soft, very dissonant and very peaceful, very chaotic but with a sense of absolute order.  I hope the audience takes away from the experience their own increased sense of individual freedom.  There will be no one correct meaning of this work.  The audience will bring together the musical, vocal and textual elements from their own individual perspectives and experiences.  From freedom of expression flows naturally the freedom of interpretation.