‘Liminal’, from the Latin limen, denotes both thresholds and, curiously, the home. Since its original use by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909 to label the central stage in a transformational rite of passage, the term has been used in very many contexts: from writings concerning sociology within both local and global contexts to an internet aesthetic of eerie empty spaces, a sort of loose understanding of modern spiritualities and plenty of art gallery labels.

The recent new edition of Helmut Lachenmann's Salut für Caudwell (1977) published in Breitkopf & Härtel (2020) by guitarist-researcher Seth Josel has renewed public attention on this seminal work from contemporary guitar literature. As a performer myself, I first performed the piece in 2008 (its Chilean premiere) and have recently premiered the new edition. Performing this piece in a concert situation is always a big event for both performers and listeners; the score seems to age well and its multivalence urges a rethink about how to approach it today. The purpose of this article is threefold: to consider the contribution of the new edition, to examine the relation of notation and performance through the analysis of selected recordings and to interrogate the possible futures for Salut, given recent developments in research into contemporary performing practice.

This article examines the relationship between notation and improvisation and the ways in which notational representation and prescription are extended by para-notation in the work and practice of the improvisers Sarah Brand and Moss Freed and in the work of ethnomusicologist Floris Schuiling, in particular through his research into the Dutch collective, the Instant Composers Pool (ICP). Sarah Brand analyses her own improvisation transcriptions using concepts derived from music therapy to help sharpen awareness for future improvisation. Moss Freed's Micromotives features his own variant of conduction, developed through reflexive and cyclic processes of notation, rehearsals and discussion. Floris Schuiling's ethnomusicological research into the ICP reveals how notation can be used to generate creative challenges, not only for the members of the collective but for musicians in general. A series of interviews reveals that these musicians use notation to render processes visible and to build and develop communities and cultures.

In Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are on their way home to Ithaca when they land on a remote island inhabited by lotus-eaters. The locals share their indolent-making lotus plants with the Greeks, such that the troops’ homeward journey is disrupted and they find themselves in a state of limbo. Identities, both individual and communal, become entangled and blurred. Beat Furrer takes these sorts of uncertainties of self as inspiration in his Lotófagos (2007) – that is, Lotus-eaters – scored for soprano and double bass, which sets José Ángel Valente's poem of the same name. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's conception of bodies, this article argues that the identity of an elusive but persistent collective subject in Valente's text can be found within the difference between the two performers’ bodies in Furrer's setting. The pair's movements weave in and out of each other, moving through spectres of each other's material, fleetingly suggesting cohesion through tension before jettisoning this for what contextually appears as relief. As such, the series of surreptitious vignettes presents a ‘conatus’ of the piece defined by tension, emulation and transience; Furrer's Lotófagos creates space for Valente's mysterious subject to be presented as the immanence of forces between two performing bodies.

This article considers the possibility that the emphasis we place on composers developing an artistic voice might be unhelpful for making good pieces. I look at what constitutes an artistic voice and consider pros and cons for having a voice. As an alternative I examine strengths and weaknesses for being a capricious composer, which I define as a willingness to explore different compositional avenues without concern for constructing a consistent body of work. My objective is not to discredit composers who have a strong voice, but rather to loosen the grip of the single-voiced model that dominates the value system of new music.

The title of Beat Furrer's nuun, for two pianos and chamber orchestra (1996), invites two principal readings. As a pun on the German ‘nun’, meaning ‘now’, it invokes a presentist mode of musical thinking, whereby each moment is heard to exist in a continuous state of development. It also invokes myth, as suggested by Wolfgang Fuhrmann, in its palindromic reflection of the name of the Breton goddess Nu, who, in medieval mysticism, ‘had the power to let time stand still’. In this article, I use Byron Almén's 2017 theory of musical narrative as the basis for a narrative analysis of nuun, aiming to reconcile these allusions with the aesthetics and formal processes of the piece, as well as Furrer's documented preoccupation with notions of storytelling in music. In doing so, I expand upon the hermeneutic readings of the piece proposed thus far, establish connections with textural archetypes in Furrer's oeuvre, both pioneered by and preceding nuun, and consider lines of dialogue with broader discourse on time in contemporary music.

This article explores the times and datedness of new opera. When referring to an opera (20**) the bracketed number that follows the composition title usually refers to the date of composition or the first performance. When asked how many times an opera was played, its interpreters tend to refer to the number of performances, not the number of instances of rehearsal and individual practice. These times often remain unmentioned by performers, composers, production teams and institutions. But what do we make invisible when we exclude the main act of collective labour in the production of a new staged work? How do new operas structure their times and, in turn, how do these various times restructure new opera? I call for an inclusion of the rehearsal in the temporal narratives that new opera tells through its dates and times, emerging from collaborative processes in compound temporalities. With ethnographic glimpses into different operatic rehearsal studios, I examine the process that takes up most of new opera's time – rehearsal time – rather than audiences’ or performers’ lived experiences during the performance. This article maps the times inside rehearsal time – from daily schedules, call times and deep times of props to computational time and the timing of time itself – for better understanding new opera's ontology.

The natural world is a frequent touchstone for the Swiss-born Austrian composer Beat Furrer. In the operatic work Violetter Schnee (2019), for instance, images of snow and coldness take on a central role. Other works, such as Wüstenbuch (2009) and the Spazio Immergente triptych (2015), refer more indirectly to notions of barren landscapes and ecological excess. At the basis of all these works are sentiments of slippage and loss, of far-reaching melancholia and an unrepairable detachment from reality. The composer's multi-layered use of repetition further underlines these sentiments and aids in the creation of constantly shifting sonic landscapes. This article argues that the recurrent use of nature imagery in Furrer's work signposts a latent ecological dimension in his oeuvre. In doing so, the article focuses on the slipperiness of musical repetition, and more particularly on the heavily destabilising power of the loop. Taking Violetter Schnee as the starting point for inquiry, and using Timothy Morton's philosophical project of ‘dark ecology’ as a heuristic framework, the article reads Furrer's recent work against the background of ecological critique.

This article focuses on three of Beat Furrer's works described as opera or music theatre: Begehren (2001), FAMA (2005) and Wüstenbuch (2010). Each of these pieces sets texts from Roman, contemporary and historical authors in exploration of the liminal spaces between life and death, and the possible transitions between them. In Wüstenbuch one such text is included from the Papyrus Berlin 3024, known as the source of the Ancient Egyptian philosophical text ‘The Dispute between a Man and his Ba’, a reflection on the meaning and value of life and the transition between life and death. Furrer's compositional style does not offer a linear narrative on such questions but rather multiple perspectives and tableaux, each of which calls the others and itself into question. In order to explore this and understand what the meeting and interchange of the different texts and authors offers within the context of Furrer's music, I outline a method of ‘listening intertextually’ in order to hear the liminal spaces not only within but between these compositions. I consider the hybrid and hypertexts that arise within the music, and the ways that they can be therefore considered – as in the subtitle often given to FAMA – a ‘drama of listening’.

Creating new works combining live musicians with new technologies provides both opportunities and challenges. The Cyborg Soloists research project has commissioned and managed the creation of 46 new works of this type, assembling teams of composers, performers, researchers and technology partners from industry. The majority of these collaborations have been smooth-running and fruitful, but a few have demonstrated complications. This article critically evaluates collaborative methods and methodologies used in the project so far, presenting five case studies involving different types of collaborative work, and exploring the range of professional relationships, the need for different types of expertise within the team and the way technology can act as both a creative catalyst and a source of creative resistance. The conclusions are intended as a toolkit – pragmatic guidelines to inform future practice – and are aimed at artists, technological collaborators, and commissioners and organisations who facilitate these types of creative collaborations.

Seaton Snook was a thriving community of fishermen, blacksmiths, teachers, seacoalers, labourers and musicians on the coast of County Durham, UK. After 1968, however, government records and newspaper reports referring to the town cease and there are, apparently, no former residents still living. This article outlines the creation of What Happened to Seaton Snook?, an internet-based archive of sounds and music from the area, its residents and its workers, devised to try and form a picture of the town and what happened there. Among the nearly 100 artefacts in this ethnomusicological study are pieces for piano and harpsichord, pedagogic works, folk tunes for voice and Northumbrian smallpipes, brass band music, Krautrock, psychedelic rock and works for magnetic tape. There are biographies and photographs of people key to the history of the town, and interviews with experts in matters pertaining to the artefacts. The archive also seeks to examine the economic and cultural neglect of the North East of England and the importance of the stories we tell around the music we make.

Between 1967 and 1988 Maryanne Amacher's City-Links series comprised radio broadcasts, sound installations and interdisciplinary performances featuring her practice of mixing sonic material from multiple remote locations joined via telecommunications infrastructure. These works reflect Amacher's compositional elevation of the process of sonic perception alongside musical material, an approach that would evolve to inform her later work in which she dealt with the musical potential of psychoacoustic phenomena known as auditory distortion products. This article aims to provide an overview of the City-Links series as a unique product of the experimentation in post-war avant-garde music and visual and conceptual art. After a synopsis of Amacher's early compositional development, I offer a comparison between Amacher's City-Links and John Cage's radio works, exploring different contemporary approaches to transmission and broadcast as a compositional medium. I then situate the site-specificity of the City-Links works within the extramusical frame offered by Amacher's contemporary Robert Smithson's site/non-site dialectic. The article finally suggests the necessity for a more holistic examination of Amacher's legacy that accounts for both the musicological and art-historical implications of her work.