It is only fair to let you, the reader, know from the outset that we, the authors of this article, know something about how Björn Heile's 3 × 10 Musical Actions for Three Socially Distanced Performers was composed. We have had the opportunity to talk to the composer and to read the score in the form of ten detailed slides provided for each of the three performers, which give specific instructions regarding what is to be done in the course of the performance. For the purposes of this article, we are setting this knowledge aside. When we were present at the initial performance of the piece, in Aberdeen in October 2021, and later viewed the video recording of the performance,Footnote 1 we had neither discussed the piece with the composer or performers nor seen the score. This is the stance that we adopt in what follows, where we set out to ask how a listener/viewer might make sense of this piece as it unfolds. How do we knit together its various moments in developing a sense of what is happening within it?
We know from the title of the piece that there are three performers and that somehow or other the piece is most likely made up of 30 (3 × 10) actions. While no particular instrumental forces are specified, in the video recording of the Aberdeen performance the piece is performed on accordion, cello and clarinet. The performance begins with the three performers rather theatrically switching on their computerised scores at the same time (see Figure 1). Unfortunately, something is amiss before a sound is made, and they have to begin the synchronisation process together again. It is not entirely clear to the audience at this point whether this is a mishap or one of the musical actions of the title.
Björn Heile, 3 × 10 Musical Actions: the first attempt at synchronising the start of the piece.
The second attempt at synchronisation is more successful and this time the three performers steady themselves with studied attention before beginning to play. The clarinet begins the piece, joined immediately by the cello and accordion. In the opening passage, the clarinet begins with a forceful, jagged melody, which settles down to a slower, more regular sequence of pitches. The cello plays a repeated note several times before moving to a second pitch, which is repeated in the same manner as the first. The accordion has a repeated motif which could be related to the opening material on the clarinet, but, like the cello part, the motif is repeated multiple times and becomes slightly more ornamented as it progresses.
While this opening could easily pass for a traditionally notated composition, that impression does not last for long. The first noticeable change in texture and approach is when the cellist starts to play rather stereotypical historical musical material, in the manner of a study for the instrument or even one of Bach's cello suites. The accordion continues to sound throughout this section while the clarinet is silent. When the cello completes the Bach-like material with a cadential flourish, the accordionist speaks, saying something like ‘four sounds’, and lifts his audience-facing hand to his head. This is rather surprising, doubly so when the clarinettist immediately echoes the words and mirrors the gestures of the accordionist (see Figure 2). This section consists entirely of words and gestures spoken and enacted first by the accordionist and then copied or mirrored immediately by the clarinettist. No instruments are played during this section and the cellist does not participate.
Björn Heile, 3 × 10 Musical Actions: a motion history image showing the sequence where the accordionist gestures with the right hand, followed by the clarinettist.
By this time we have become aware that the piece is not through-composed and that, up to this point, it has been composed of a series of short sections. Each section is punctuated by a short silence, after which the musicians begin to perform a set of new, unpredictable musical gestures in different groupings.
The three instruments all play together in the third section (43′38″), which seems to begin with the cello's long bow strokes followed immediately by the accordion. It is not so easy to follow exactly what is happening here, but it seems once again that the clarinettist is echoing what the accordionist is doing, this time solely with instrumental sounds. The accordion and clarinet are involved in something resembling a musical race or duel as they play similar-sounding, fast-paced material while the cellist contributes contrasting material consisting of various portamenti. The cello brings the section to a close on a sustained note.
At this stage it becomes rather difficult to grasp exactly where one section of the piece finishes and another starts, or who is following whom in the various mirroring, echoing, copying and following strategies that are in play and are clearly key to the conception of the piece. As we move through the third and fourth sections of the piece and beyond, the range of gestures employed independently by the three musicians, in addition to the shifting vectors in their relational dynamics (who is directing whom?), suggests that the piece is moving slightly or even quite a bit faster than comprehension can always grasp in real time. Conscious that the performers can only perform together in this way because of an underlying logic that is not apparent to the audience, the performance, as well as presenting intriguing and enjoyable musical moments, becomes something of a puzzle for the listener/viewer, who may be trying to fathom the secret logic of the piece's operation.
The sections of the piece are all relatively short. The audience member does not know that the slides containing the score usually change every 30 seconds and, consequently, that new sets of gestures, types of materials and instructions appear before the musicians every 30 seconds. As the piece develops, the range of types of activities expands in surprising ways: for example, when the cellist mirrors the musical material performed by the accordionist and the clarinettist gazes out into the auditorium (see Figure 3), dissociating himself from the other two performers and affecting an air of boredom, emphasised with a rather theatrical yawn (45′04″).
Björn Heile, 3 × 10 Musical Actions: a motion history image of the clarinettist stopping and looking at the audience.
In the following section, the accordionist conducts the other two performers, whose material seems completely unrelated to the conductor's demonstrative gestures. The clarinettist plays a number of arpeggios and study-type figures, as if rehearsing or warming up for a performance rather than performing for an audience (45′26″). This trope continues in the following section, where the accordionist plays some impressive, virtuosic runs. At such moments we become aware of the wider technical accomplishments of the performers. While the cellist plays more expressive, romantic material, the clarinettist leaves his chair and stands in front of the other two performers and takes up the role of conductor, doing this at first in a rather conventional manner but then becoming more anarchic in his gestures (see Figures 4 and 5). And so the piece continues.
Björn Heile, 3 × 10 Musical Actions: a motion history image of the clarinettist standing up, leaving his instrument and walking over to conduct the others.
Björn Heile, 3 × 10 Musical Actions: a motion average image (top left) shows that all performers are mainly seated on their chairs throughout the performance. The structure of the performance can be seen in the motiongram (bottom left, time running from top to bottom) and sonogram (bottom right). In the motiongram, one can clearly see the point when the clarinettist stands up and conducts the others.
Musical Actions and Gestures
A wide range of musical actions are on display throughout the piece: playing, speaking, singing, moving. We think here of musical actions as short and coherent motion ‘chunks’ performed by the musicians. These may be sound-producing actions on the three different instruments, sound-facilitating actions connected to the sound production or communicative actions between the musicians or targeted at the audience.Footnote 2 The latter can be seen as examples of musical gestures – that is, actions performed with a meaning-bearing element, with or without any related (musical) sound.Footnote 3 There are also numerous examples of interactions in which the musicians appear to respond directly to each other's actions.
It is never entirely clear to the audience how much of the piece is notated conventionally, how much is improvised and how much is the product of some intermediate condition between these two poles. While there are a number of places where the material gives the strong impression of being improvised, listeners cannot always be sure that this is the case. Beyond this fundamental ambivalence the piece features a wide range of types of musical material, from modernist-sounding moments of post-tonality to much more conventional material from across the centuries. The warm-up exercises and the verbally descriptive instructions are rehearsal-like and integrate into the piece aspects of musicianship which normally lie outside of the concert-hall experience. This presents a kind of playful subversion of the musical routines the performers engage as they get ready for the performance, something to which we do not normally pay much attention. In 3 × 10 Musical Actions, everything becomes concert material. When the clarinettist yawns, it is not clear if this is part of the performance or not. We presume it is, but we cannot be sure. The piece also allows the performers to produce moments of instrumental virtuosity which appear in the midst of rather anarchic textures as moments of illumination. The piece gradually comes to resemble an ironic play on the history of music in which the performers dip in and out of multiple musical traditions and performing styles in light-hearted ways.
Amid the fun the question arises as to whether there is an element of competition among the performers as they attempt to follow, copy, mirror or echo one another. While the audience does not have access to the fundamental organising principle behind the piece (the nature of the score, the instructions or guidelines the performers are following), we are nonetheless aware of a constant readjustment of hierarchies in terms of who is leading or following, and which pairings are operative at any given time. There is a great deal of interaction throughout, and the performers respond to one another demonstrably, looking at one another with idiosyncratic facial expressions, giving verbal directions and with a range of bodily movements, whether just moving from side to side or taking up different spatial positions in relation to the others. At several moments one player's performance is directed or even constrained by another's, yet this never seems oppressive and is carried out within the limits of enjoyable music-making. The performers are mutually dependent on one another and need to be comfortable with one another to enable the piece to work. The piece also seems to presume performance by musicians with a certain standard of technical proficiency and knowledge of a wide range of musical repertoires, including recent styles of contemporary music, as well as the capacity to improvise and to respond to other musicians with immediacy and expertise.
The frequent changes to musical materials, playing styles, combinations of instruments and modes of interaction ensure that no one identity is established for long. As soon as a listener becomes comfortable with any one kind of event or type of material, everything changes and we are on to something else. With a duration of only six and half minutes, the piece features a rich range of permutations of activities so that it is never dull and always new, even if the audience begins to recognise the return of actions or gestures that have already appeared, such as the giving of verbal instructions by one performer to another, or one performer conducting the other players. Even so, what is noticeable is the distinctive personal styles of the individual performers, who, although they may enact similar gestures, do so in their own idiosyncratic ways, to some extent dependent upon their mobility in relation to their instruments. What endures throughout all the changes is a sense of play.
Play
What makes these musical gestures, actions and interactions seem playful? Can this still be a distinctive feature of the performance if, at some level, all music is playful? Arguably play is a precondition not only for music but for all art and culture. The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga emphasised that ‘play is older than culture’, noting that animal play has the same formal characteristics as human play.Footnote 4 With a pair of exuberant puppies, a football team or a musical trio, play can be understood as ‘a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary life” as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly’.Footnote 5 Certain forms of play involve special tools (balls, musical instruments) and special playgrounds (football pitches, concert halls). Yet, for Huizinga, play is not exclusive to games and the arts but is of general significance to culture. He connects play to language, religion, law, war and philosophy, among other domains. As Huizinga's title Homo Ludens (the playing man, rather than the wise man, Homo sapiens) indicates, play is essential for humanity.
For Huizinga, play ‘goes beyond the confines of purely physical or purely biological activity’,Footnote 6 but its physical dimension should not be overlooked. Play is embodied. Bodies at play move in distinctive ways. A distinction from the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty can help to clarify embodied aspects of play: concrete movement vs abstract movement. ‘Concrete movement’ involves practical engagement in the world and often includes tools, which form ‘poles of action’.Footnote 7 For example, chopping vegetables with a knife is a concrete movement. ‘Abstract movement’, by contrast, involves pretence and expression. Miming the action of chopping vegetables would be an abstract movement, simplified and stylised when compared to the concrete version. Concrete movement is actual, practical and centripetal, in the given world; abstract movement is virtual, reflective and centrifugal, creating its own background.Footnote 8
Abstract movement, then, seems essential for dance and play, which is similarly distanced from the everyday. Merleau-Ponty tends to destabilise such oppositions, and it is easy to imagine actions that combine concrete and abstract features (for example, when the movement of a cellist's bow arm blurs the line between sound-producing and communicative actions). Corporeality and abstraction are not truly opposed, and this is closely related to Merleau-Ponty's concept of motor intentionality, where action and perception/thought are not opposed but integrated, where the body itself thinks and has meaning.Footnote 9 Bodily action can be either concrete or abstract. Bodies – intentional bodies – can work or play.
Though embodied play is ubiquitous in human culture, it seems to have a special relation to music. Huizinga argues that ‘music… is the highest and purest expression of the facultas ludendi [the faculty of play]’.Footnote 10 This theme has been taken up in ludomusicology, the study of music and play. For example, Roger Moseley argues for reciprocity between music and play:
Music is not merely the outcome of a certain type of play, but constitutes a set of cognitive, technological, and social resources for playing in and with the world through the medium of sound, its mechanisms, and its representations. Play, in turn, becomes the means by which such musical behavior is made audible.Footnote 11
Yet even if ‘music never leaves the play-sphere’, music's playful qualities can easily be overlooked.Footnote 12 Much as a tool might withdraw into the work for a labourer, or a musical instrument might withdraw into the music for a player, the performance can withdraw into the music for an audience.Footnote 13 Players’ (embodied) performance actions, then, would be excluded from the so-called music itself; in a sense, they would become transparent. Arguably, this is why concert conventions in Western art music encourage performers to avoid speaking or dancing onstage, to wear all black or a standard tuxedo: these practices create conditions that foster withdrawal of the performance itself.
But 3 × 10 Musical Actions both respects and also subverts these performance conditions. It takes place as part of a formal concert, presented onstage by classically trained performers sitting behind music stands, yet the work seems to draw attention to playfulness. Individual actions can be playful. Sliding fingers across the accordion keys or tapping on the body of the cello are non-standard techniques. Additionally, playful incongruities emerge when the clarinettist and then accordionist work through technical exercises, or when the cello explores a pizzicato version of the Prelude from J. S. Bach's first solo suite. Interactions might be even more playful than individual actions. The players’ turns as conductors seem playful, and their conducting gestures are more abstract, in Merleau-Ponty's sense, than the actions involved in instrumental performance because this conducting does not involve an object and it generates its own space.
During one section, the accordionist Djordje Gajic plays a series of what appear to be freely improvised short melodies. The cellist Emily de Simone watches him closely and imitates his actions (44′42). She repeats his melodies as in a canon and also copies his bodily movements and facial expressions. This is an interesting example of musical reaction, or re-enaction. On a sforzando, Gajic's head jerks up as he suddenly leans back (see Figure 6). De Simone quickly follows. Her reactions seem to unfold in real time, suggesting a kind of riskiness that causes her to pay close attention to her co-performer. This looks fun to do and it is fun to watch: the players’ individual and collective actions seem playful because they communicate musical freedom and depart from ordinary concert conventions.
A motion history image of the interplay in which the cellist reacts to the accordionist's musical gestures.
Yet the piece's own conventions also contribute to the playfulness, and, paradoxically, play combines freedom and constraint. For Huizinga, ‘Like play, music is based on the voluntary acceptance and strict application of a system of conventional rules – time, tone, melody, harmony, etc. This is true even where all the rules we are familiar with have been abandoned.’Footnote 14 In 3 × 10 Musical Actions, certain rules about normal performance techniques have been suspended, but there seem to be other rules, even if the audience does not know precisely what they are. For example, the process of ceremoniously tapping the tablets at the same moment (including a false start) indicates the need to begin together. It resembles the beginning of a race or a face-off in hockey. The members of Ensemble Thing are good sports, voluntarily following the rules. They are up for the challenge; in other words, they're game. But we might imagine a spoilsport, a player who would ruin the piece by refusing to play along, by denying the rules’ legitimacy.Footnote 15 Perhaps this possibility is always present in musical performance. Huizinga argues that ‘it is precisely [music's] play-quality that makes its laws more rigorous than those of any other art. Any breach of the rules spoils the game.’Footnote 16
There are many precedents for musical games. For example, certain exchanges between players in 3 × 10 Musical Actions recall Mauricio Kagel's Match (1964), for two cellists and percussion.Footnote 17 That piece of instrumental music theatre sets up a tennis-like contest between the two cellists, who rapidly pass material back and forth, with the percussionist serving as the referee. Yet this game is scripted. In other cases the progress or outcome of the musical game might be uncertain, as in Kagel's Prima Vista (1964), in which score segments are presented via a slide projector. John Zorn has also created a series of game pieces, including Cobra (1984), named after a World War II–themed strategy game.Footnote 18 In it a prompter – whose role resembles a referee as much as a conductor – uses coloured cards and hand signals to guide improvisers, setting up interpersonal relationships instead of sounds.Footnote 19 By contrast, Scott Smallwood's On the Floor (2005), for laptop orchestra, realises a kind of musical casino, with a set of rules related to the players’ sounds and the ‘credits’ that they win or lose.Footnote 20 Of course, the integration of music and games is not unique to contemporary Western art music. The Inuit practice of katajjaq, often described as ‘throat-singing’, is a kind of vocal game.Footnote 21 The technique is used by singers such as Tanya Tagaq – in her solo work, in collaborations with Björk and the Kronos Quartet and in the 2015 production of R. Murray Schafer's Apocalypsis, a large-scale music-theatre piece – and has been appropriated by various composers.Footnote 22 But traditionally it is a two-person contest, with a clear winner; the loser is the first to laugh or stop. Musical games, then, come in many forms.
With that in mind, we can observe that 3 × 10 Musical Actions is played, not scripted. Every performance will be different. This game, however, has no winners or losers. It is not a war-like competition, and this avoids some of the competition, tension and aggression that often emerges in agonistic play. Nor does it feel like a serious strategic game, like chess. Instead the piece is highly cooperative. There are differentiated roles: at times, players in the piece lead or follow, much as players in charades act or guess. Moreover, these activities are apparently governed by a timer. Players have a limited amount of time to make decisions, so their decisions and actions must be spontaneous. The cooperation, roleplay and timing evoke a party game, the kind of game that provides a framework for being creative or sociable together. Of course, this piece for ‘socially distanced performers’ emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe this context stimulated a desire for play that would relieve the social isolation and boredom associated with quarantining or living in lockdown.
If the game has a referee, it is the system that presents instructions via the tablets on the score stands. It serves as a timekeeper that automatically advances slides after either 30 or 60 seconds, depending on the slide. This mechanism makes it easier for performers to manage the changes from one segment to the next, without worrying about timing or page turns. And the crisp juxtapositions again contribute to the piece's playfulness. That said, insofar as the technology is in control, it might seem like the system is ‘playing’ the musicians. The performers, then, would resemble puppets, or elements in a machine.Footnote 23 In other words, the musicians can be seen as the ‘sound-makers’, while the system is the ‘music-maker’.Footnote 24 As such, the musicians find themselves on a kind of musical treadmill, where as soon as they have responded to one set of instructions, they have to respond to new ones.
This might recall Charlie Chaplin stuck in the giant gears in Modern Times (1936) or the famous candy-factory scene from I Love Lucy (1952). Arguably, such examples are funny because of the mechanisation of the human – recalling Henri Bergson's claim that ‘the attitudes, gestures and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a mere machine’ (emphasis original)Footnote 25 – but also because the machines are out of control, and the human bodies cannot keep up. This is not exactly the situation in 3 × 10 Musical Actions, though, where the technologically driven pace is fast enough to be interesting, but not too fast. For performers and audience members alike, it seems to remain comfortable, enjoyable and playful.
Conclusions
The rules of 3 × 10 Musical Actions are never fully explained to the audience. Some features become obvious over time, while others are impossible for an audience to deduce. It is possible simply to listen and watch, to enjoy the process as it unfolds. This might be comparable to appreciating the energy, athleticism and aesthetics of an unfamiliar sport. Yet figuring out the piece can also be a game for the audience. When we start to understand the piece's modular structure, we might notice the ways in which performers articulate sectional beginnings and endings and come to expect such transitions. We might recognise repeated actions (conducting, quasi-rehearsing, mirroring) or groupings (duos). Patterns do emerge; there is a certain order in the chaos. After all, once the 3 × 10 permutations have run their course, it's game over. For us, such insights can offer a certain pleasure. Still, we can also be delighted by the surprises that each new set of actions brings. Experiencing the piece, we remain in a state of partial comprehension.
In this article, we have reflected on such experiences, while also showing how 3 × 10 Musical Actions can stimulate reflection on ‘musical action’ itself. Some actions in the piece can be undertaken by individuals, while others require two or three members of the trio. These can be understood as reactions (where one player follows or responds to another) or interactions (with give and take). While the piece stages social aspects of musical action, it also highlights the interplay of action and sound. A sound action is a multimodal entity, consisting of both body motion and its resultant sound.Footnote 26 When we only see a sound action, we can imagine its sound. If we only hear a sound action, we can imagine the body motion and objects involved in the interaction. It seems that 3 × 10 Musical Actions uses both sound and motion as the basis for interaction. In certain cases, players imitate another's musical motifs; in others, they imitate facial expressions and bodily movements.
Moreover, both elements contribute to the varied, intermingling functions of sound-producing and sound-facilitating actions and communicative gestures, and both facilitate an overriding sense of play. The unorthodox notational system relates to all of this. Though the audience cannot see it, we sense that it does not simply represent notes but offers instructions for the performers to follow, each in their own way. Indeed, according to Heile's programme note, the piece investigates ‘the nature of notation as an instruction for action, rather than a codification of sound’. Musical actions, then, are social, multimodal, functional, expressive, playful, embodied. Across these varied perspectives, as we listen, watch and reflect on this piece, one takeaway seems clear: musical actions are not reducible to pure sounds.
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