- Part of 'A topology of musical encounter' (summary) -
The limitations of a musical encounter become clear when the collective is confronted with the sounding reality of each other’s musical presence. If we would bring together Nachson Rodrigues Pereira and Raphaella Danksagmuller on the basis of their shared connection to ‘music and eternity’, it will not be the ideological or personal limitations that obstruct a musical collaboration. The problems will occur in the sounding reality, in the timing of melodies, in the tuning of their instruments. One should not forget the habits and tendencies musicians bring from their practice. The fast reciting of Hebrew prayers does not naturally connect to the naturally slow attack of the Duduk. The fact that Nachson is used to singing on his own in the synagogue will not enhance his adaptational intelligence when he is faced with more complex timing problems, or has to adjust his intonation to the scales of other instruments. Before we can even start to think how to express musically their collective ‘eternal music’, it is already very hard to just play a few phrases together.
These are only a few objections that I can already imagine beforehand that can lead a musical encounter to failure. And the sounding reality of music is more surprising and unknown than we like to believe, trusting on an experienced musical imagination. Looking ahead to our intentions with a structural musical laboratory for new encounter, confrontation with failure is likely to happen more often. This failure is as important as achievement of success, and should be used positively by analyzing what goes wrong and how this knowledge can be turned into our benefit. When a collective clearly analyzes the major problems they are facing in a collaboration, the suggestions for possible scenarios to continue come to the surface. According to the situation the role of the mediator-composer can be of importance in the analysis of these problems and propose creative solutions for another form of collaborating. Realizing that the creative encounter has not led to any satisfying results yet, doesn’t mean it is the end of the collaboration.
The first and most obvious continuation would be to simply spend many more hours on fixing the intonation problems and adjusting the composition to create a better timing for the musicians to make their melodies sound. Whether this is worth the effort should be weighted carefully in every single unique situation. A second and more intelligent way of handling problems and failure is to make the confrontation itself into the main subject of a new musical direction we could take. This implies that all the elements that proved to be irreconcilable should be treated as such, and can be exposed as such in the presentation of the music. In that case the subject of the encounter is not the coming together in ‘music and eternity’ anymore, but the oppositions in sounds that have gained a creative form. We make tangible with musical means that these musical perspectives in fact don’t come together and why. The musicians should start all over again collectively in a second attempt. This could be done by artificially separating the musicians, exhibiting them one by one, expressing that the impossibility of their coming together at the same sounding moment is the most interesting musical discovery. There are many creative forms that can be found to expose confrontation. The main realization now lies in the fact that failure can be turned around from disappointment into creative force, if the problems itself are not perceived as something negative.
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