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Chapter One
The Poetics of the Open Work
1.1.
A number of recent pieces of instrumental music are linked by a common feature: the considerable autonomy left to the individual performer in the way he chooses to play the work. Thus he is not merely free to interpret the composer's instructions following his own discretion (which in fact happens in traditional music), but he must impose his judgment on the form of the piece, as when he decides how long to hold a note or in what order to group the sounds: all this amounts to an act of improvised creation. Here are some of the best known examples of the process.
(1) In Klavierstück XI, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the composer presents the performer a single large sheet of music paper with a series of note groupings. The performer then has to choose among these groupings, first for the one to start the piece and, next, for the successive units in the order in which he elects to weld them together. In this type of performance, the instrumentalist's freedom is a function of the "combinative" structure of the piece, which allows him to "mount" the sequence of musical units in the order he chooses.
(2) In Luciano Berio's Sequence for solo flute, the composer presents the performer a text which predetermines the sequence and intensity of the sounds to be played. But the performer is free to choose how long to hold a note inside the fixed framework imposed on him, which in turn is established by the fixed pattern of the metronome's beat.
(3) Henri Pousseur has offered the following description of his piece Scambi:
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"L'opera in movimento e la coscienza dell'epoca," Incontri Musicali 3 (1959). Bruce Merry, trans., "The Poetics of the Open Work," Twentieth Century Studies (December 1974). This chapter is a revised version of the translation.

 
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