contemporary music making for amateurs
phone +44 (0)20 7403 3781News
Articles
Infinite possibilities...?
Tom Service on what researching repertoire can mean for COMA's future
Researching repertoire? What's all that about? Is it analysing the music in the COMA library? Or is it exploring other ways of making music apart from through notation? The researcher's tools of thinking and reflecting could seem to be at odds with COMA's central ethos of participating and creating, so how can research hope to uncover anything worthwhile for COMA?
The truth is that the aims of this research are contradictory. They are: to define COMA's position within the amorphous, ever-changing territory of "contemporary music", and at the same time suggest ways that COMA can remain open-minded (and open-eared) as it goes through a phase of expansion. This process of definition and suggestion is bit like catching a lump of jelly, or holding on to sand...
However, let's see what happens when we try to define what COMA's title really means. What is the 'contemporary music' that COMA 'makes'? Instinctively, we (as COMA members) all have a feel for whether a piece is part of COMA's vocabulary or not. But the minute these instincts are scrutinised, they seem much less certain and definitive. 'Contemporary music' literally means all of the music that is produced today. On the face of it, COMA should represent absolutely every kind of music-making if it is to live up to its title. However, to talk of 'COMA's vocabulary' is to imply that there are limitations to the music that COMA creates. That music is usually subsumed under the labels 'contemporary classical' or 'art' music.
The first Summer School sets out the priorities: commissions from Michael Finnissy and workshops with Judith Weir and Diana Burrell, for example. The participants attracted to such a programme would probably already have an interest in new classical music and a desire to be part of it themselves. And this is the other part of the title, '...for amateurs'; COMA, in reality, was not initially 'for all' but for amateurs who pre-selected themselves by their developed interest in the art music of our time. So is 'art music' style, a genre or a repertoire? The truth is that there is no over-arching definition of art music, because there is no kind of music from which it cannot absorb influences, so 'it' is constantly changing. Perhaps it's defined by a willingness to learn from many types of music and a huge variety of musical techniques. So much for 'definition'...
However, COMA is defined by its participants' activities. There is nothing to stop all kinds of music influencing what COMA does. Those interested in free jazz, Indian music, or pop can bring these influences to bear upon their COMA activities. However, to suggest that COMA should try and become 'all things to all people' would dilute and undermine COMA's specific activities. But that's not to say that COMA should impose limits upon music: there is potential to learn from all kinds of musical activity as long as COMA members are interested in participating in it. And COMA could use this open-minded approach to attract members from a variety of disciplines, cultures and communities. For in the moment of actually creating music, discussions of genre and style are rendered almost entirely redundant: it's the specific activity of making music that counts.
And it's by bearing this last point in mind that this research can suggest ways of thinking for the future. At the moment there is a schism between the public image of COMA and the private reality of its activities. In the wider arts community, there is a tendency to think that COMA is about commissioning easy pieces from big-name composers. This headline perception is of an organisation that solely aspires to be a watered-down version of an ensemble like the London Sinfonietta. COMA has to establish a different headline identity based on its participatory ethos. It should celebrate its membership's uniqueness and rejoice in the difference of its aims from those of professional musicians: as an organisation based on amateurs, COMA can afford to take risks and devise projects that professionals simply cannot.
It's regional activity which holds the key to this. The ensembles could develop in more innovative ways than just playing concerts like so many professionals do. There is no context which should be out of bounds for them. They are well-placed to show that contemporary music has uses inside and outside the special rituals of the concert hall, by collaborating with local dance and visual arts organisations, for example, or local ethnic music groups and local issue organisations. Whatever direction they take, they could and should demonstrate that contemporary music has a social context - perhaps the central tenet of COMA's philosophy. The concert hall is only one possible context for the presentation of contemporary music, and is as much the product of social engineering as the factory or the shopping mall; it is not the defining situation for new music.
There are many issues of administration and planning that need to be thought through before questions of open-mindedness and collaboration arise. And yet keeping ideas of context and uniqueness in mind is essential, especially during a phase of expansion. If COMA can develop the Summer School, the commissioning process and the regional ensembles so that they can think what,for professional groups, is unthinkable, then COMA can be recognised as a unique organisation, defined by the infinite possibilities of participation.