A trio - led by the voice-like cello and saxophone - “read” improvised writings “a prima vista” from their music stands.
In this case the process began by the musicians responding to an exhibition, but preferably it would be initiated by five writers responding to the musicians tuning up. These responses are then placed on the music stands for them to respond to for roughly 15 minutes. The writers have the duration of the piece to respond again, with the writing subsequently placed in front of the trio again.
The process is repeated another three times, with the writing and the music moving back and forth in conversation. The final writings are left as the starting point for the next event.
/aːˌpri.maːˌvis.taː/
• (music) sight-read; to perform a musical piece while reading it for the first time, without rehearsal.
In collaboration with:
• The writers respond on A5 cards which are blank, unlined and have a line and a box for the writer’s initials and number of the response (T) (1) (2) (3) (4).
• Once each performance is over, the writings must be collected from the music stands to make way for the incoming written responses.
• The cello and saxophone are the core instruments, and there can be up to three other instruments added to compile a quintet. Preferably this quintet would be cello, viola, violin, piano & saxophone.
• The audience are encouraged to write their own responses - they will not be used for the music, but shown afterwards in documentation.
• The titles for the songs are chosen mostly ‘at first sight’ upon looking at the finished writings, with one title coming from each writer. The titles name the songs they inspire, not that they are in response to.
in response to the exhibition of the same name by Oliver Pearce, Jeremy Stokes & Peter Carrick. Listen to the music and read the live written responses to "NOCTURNE" below:
PIECE ONE
the things scattered under the moon
were only silence
or, well, other things also:
the crisp shadows of what were olive trees
that filter away down from the mountain ridge
toward the sea, the white fronts, the little waves,
whose sound you imagine as quieter than it
really is
crashing and actualising the rocks, whose miniature
lagoons find crabs fluttering, the apparatus of
some terribly dramatic nightmare, fluttery,
prehistoric bat then also, fleshy, unfortunate,
and creaking, - remember, they have eyes -
like the configuration of things you know
will happen just a few minutes from now -
wire me up
sit still bristles and burrs
we stood
by the lilies an insect on
my neck
my legs were cold
sticky feet
and salt Grecian
on my hips surge
stir me
a cultivated spin
a lark cried
in the meadow corner pulse between
my toes
FICKLE AND TENDER ARE
THE EDGES , I CLING
TO THEM
Lest the night end
MOONFLOWER
THERES THIS MOONFLOWER LIKE
NOCTURNE’S CROCUS RESIDING IN
AN EBONY LIP OR
ALL THESE TAUGHT STRINGS I
AM SPILLT I
AM FULL OF IT I
CAN’T LILT HERE
IN FULL SIGHT OF AN
ARMY OF DUST BUNNY HONIES
I’M ROPE-A-DOPE
I CAN COPE
TAKE FLIGHT AND
FIND A NEW DOGGERLAND
OR
I CAN CHANGE
CROAK
AND FEEL
GOLFO
MILKSHAKE
PUSHING UP AGAINST PORES
THE MELODY EXCRETES ITSELF
IN QUAVERS AND QUAKES
DROWING IN LOST SCALES OF
BLUES, TERRA-COTTA OR
MIS-TAKES
MILKSHAKES
DISTASTE
STOP CHEWING AND SPIT IT
OUT IN POPCORN
BALLS
OF FOR
HER SAKE
HIS SAKE
THEIR SAKE
MILKSHAKE
It was syndicate ————
live ——————
blue ———
Pushing around around the stars
slipping on butter con-
-vulsing whispering shh. shh.
SHHH hunt me
They said hunt me
I swim in oceans in salt
lakes in rivers I beat
currents I live in moments
I let my body become
it. ———————————
yes more
more more——
more more ————
— i can hold ———— it
in response to the pieces written live whilst listening to Part 1 (NOCTURNE). Title taken from Thomas Dervan's writing. Listen to the music and read the live written responses to "what were olive trees" below:
PIECE 2
In obscure halls and corridors
some lost crumble, some lost island outpost —
I move, and within the air and the wood,
there is a sinuous expansion, a completion of
the trembling space among the sections of my body.
A shallow light is erected along the angles of the
wall; I have caught a window.
Outside there is nothing, I promise, except the
landscape, and the million-division tumult of the rain, vague
I do not find it ominous, but nonetheless it
is unbearable; it sees in itself the violent
extension of everything - the moon under which
everybody on earth, in all their positions, find
themselves - everything outside where I am, the
blueprint of every movement ever made, there is the
tree, swaying. - never mind, it doesn’t suit me,
I shouldn’t think too much, well, about these
things, it makes me so ill.
rush to the plinth
and dwell amongst
blue triangles ,
strangers outside
pulling at their
skirts and the the sweltering
quiet of lines come
to meet you,
gather keys and snag at your
plant them in every ankles.
lock If you look
do not struggle , long enough
tousle them at that
play and meet the form, shape
other side it twists and
escapes
pity the bottom of
these doors, always
swinging
catching draughts,
dropping hinges.
THE GULL +
In the crease of
I
‘tween the sea and
the
sky
swam
a with
Gull a
Pearl
though it wished
it could
fly
in July.
St Denis burned 2 months ago? The light
from her tower [could not be seen
on the moon, but] she felt it.
Funny that only one person found the
diamond.
My tectonic plate shifted that evening
because
I wanted it to.
Downstairs they only heard sentences
that didn’t end.
only.
The stairs become richer and more
flat. Housed by soil 89 years later
or eroded and worn, stuck in a
cupboard
torn
taken
plastic
rotting
so. possessive. so selective.
only mud, no sweet grass. But that was how
it happened.
AND the sun collapsed
melted into puddle
SWAM
into nothingness
————————
————————
————————
————————
————————
————————
plonk
T H U N D E R
in response to the pieces written live whilst listening to Part 2 (what were olive trees). Title taken from Hannah Machover's writing. Listen to the music and read the live written responses to "rush to the plinth" below:
PIECE 3
under the ocean things can shudder sometimes,
and crack, did you know?
Trust me, I do, and be sent apart, and
shatter, and split, even though they are
iridescent, and smooth and nimble
there are, also, I think, waterfalls under the
ocean;
a grain of sand, having many surfaces, reflects
light both this way and that, and this! and that!
way too!
and has meanwhile the vanishing point of
impossible masses in its ridiculous hidden
centre, or, maybe, I imagine, maybe
it doesn’t.
If the cuttlefish, the sea slug and the barely existent plankton, all of whom have tea and
biscuits at four and then kill each other - if they
don’t care, then, I don’t imagine you should either.
salute the gate as the sky
clears your brow
Does that w?isp of
a cloud tell you —
————— to
drag your feet?
tickled by the storm and the way
flies tread on pages
so careful
itching to point out
the flaws and how
best to wipe up
the spilt and the stains
———————————
rumbling strain secretes a honey
that anoints trembling palms
\ all to endure the
finer threads, the
bringers of long days
and fuller evenings
calculate the trickles and it will
give you the form.
SUGAR BUGGER
HE CAME HE SORE A CONKER
NOT SOME PONCE, NO PLONKER
JUST A PLAN OF MAN SPLAYED
PUT PAID TO MY RUBBER MISCHIEF
THE MUSIC DOESN’T ALWAYS HAVE
TO MEAN THERE’S PORTENT IN
PLANT POTS AND HEAVY TOPS —
SO STOP AND HAVE A WEE PIDDLY
STROP
COP A FEEL OF SOMETHING BLUE
AN’ AIRY FROM ME THE
SUGAR BUGGER ( BUT LET
ME TELL YA KIDDA, IT’LL NOT
BE TIDY).
Drowned and dangled in ash, white
a stone.
Dressed ready to pour the inches around
the shoulders globed and ankles
pricking eyes dry from so much
liquid.
Run out of soap.
Cleaning the branches. Snow for
Sheep to tread lightly on
and cheese for rich men to
gauge on in marble kitchens
with digital flames warming
the glass and their bones.
My thoughts in your minds.
when I speak in Lyrical toung
I spin storys not yet begun
some are new or is it old
try do what you’ve been
told, ————————
screech and scratch, like
a cottage roofed by thatch.
————————————
————————————
————
an itch that spreads like
butter on my leg n
moving north to my
Dench teeth abduction by
——— the un cooth
HEBANA MEBANA
in response to the pieces written live whilst listening to Part 3 (rush to the plinth). Title taken from Oliver Pearce's writing. Listen to the music and read the live written responses to "teeth abduction" below, which were not made live on the night, but written live in response to the piece broadcast on our monthly radio show By Ear. These writings will provide the stimulus for Part 1 of at first sight No.2!
Trains move on train tracks,
rattling,
sparks flare.
A flock of birds take off
from a tree,
rained-on cobbles,
kneading dough
with hands needing flour.
Red apron, pink with flour.
Red flour blends with milk.
A glance unsure, given to the night,
for there are red wolves in the woods.
Their eyes are very reflective.
The man in the hut warms his toes
by the fire,
a thick fur round his neck.
A bright green leer
peering in.
In some other place a being enters a house,
his scaley body makes the floor creak
under him
he is that heavy.
He is hungry and his claws scrape through and down the hall, he drags his tail behind him.
His belly is the softest part of him
he knows this as none are able to get too close.
Metal crafts shove buildings aside.
Mouth opens underwater to scream,
a million bubbles spill out,
the sound turned into circles.
Asleep in the leaves, cheek pressed
against them.
Body washed up,
fully clothed,
no sign of a name tag.
I’m walking through the building now,
white walled porcelein hospital,
There’s noone in any room.
Penny’s dropped, I am embalmed.
I must be embalmed
but my cheeks are rosy red.
Glass hands,
a ballroom dance,
glance to the left,
glance to the right.
My legs and feet are never where
they’re supposed to be.
Cars pile through the underpass,
cats eyes turn them into rhythm,
a chugging drone, wheels dragged
over dotted surface.
Bring it over into the light so I can see better.
‘It’s been raining all day’, she says.
- I didn’t notice.
‘That’s because you haven’t moved.’
-Bagpipes, I’ve been researching bagpipes.
I’ve always wondered how they work, and why
they’re so loud.
She’s already left the room.
They’ve been making eyes at each other
over the campfire
all night apparently,
What are they going to do about it?
Oh wait, I looked away for a second
and
she’s been eaten by a shark,
he fell asleep on the beach.
Sharky eyes.
Rabbits race across the field,
a lone boot lies squelched into the mud.
Jagged.
A door left ajar.
Blackbirds scrap over a milk crate
on Bus Queue Anorak Thursday
That bloody automatic handbrake!
It’s a busy time to be
idle to be busy
:) Steady, lad
it’s like that time in
Liverpool
Her body, sloped in the crease
between the dust lining your gums
and the gaps between your teeth.
She lies on the padding of your anxious cheek walls.
It is not raining today
but the bathtub is full.
Spit - spraying off the lip, a
scattering not too far from here
carving space, sending future lines
to their shoulders,
right shoulder only, mind,
left lost itself about 17 minutes ago.
You have travelled here
only to find lots and lots of dust,
It could be mistaken for sand,
but just try eating it -
moving like currents,
swarming to the crevasses,
there are no corners
around here…
and it takes root,
this dry scratching
breathless aching,
the violin is scratching curving
stretching into my ears my moves;
it is anticipation
is the moment
you want to reach out and call-
voice failing
reason failing,
it is the first time
last time you you you
felt and it wrapped me,
back of my neck burning slow,
strings strapping me tight
to the side of the bed
sitting on the floor
radio on the bed behind my head-
There is a clamour and a wind blows
as a girl enters in cool blue
no, maybe pink-red taffeta like
autumn sky
at night,
she takes her bow, strikes,
shudders;
there is something about the violin that hurts/holds,
it is quickening feet sore
from hurtling undulating
floor giving way to-
it slows,
ten minutes in and vibrato calling takes me; I could be in the studio
but I’m knelt in a church
the sky pink-red through pulsing glass
and it’s been raining,
congregation a little sodden,
making haste to pews
hard cold, the church tiles are hard, hold,
breathing juddering,
I wonder - does the Eucharist judder
in its own grip,
to hold
hard cold, the church echoes
holds
the church is arms fingers strings
wrapped
pulled stretched
a little warmth at the edges,
candles in a tabernacle
is a cradle
is a rocking
to and fro
to and
and
and
myrrh takes,
burnished patina takes,
arms take draw in, ease
ease
inhale -
the girl in taffeta curves,
I imagine, rocking to and fro,
her finger pads sore as
she too cradles
violin to neck -
there is something about strings that hurts holds restless,
there is something that quivers, quickens me
push-pulling tightening, it is
how I imagine epiphany
imagine loving
imagine an entity I can wrap pull stretch -
- moved, the congregation look
to each other,
lower lashes lower heads,
let rain touch tiles, reverberate, exhale
on their heels to and fro
from the pew before them
the church is cold and echoes,
a shower
a pool
a reckoning
unfolding refolding binding,
the church is nails, wicks, deep space
heartbreak reified
is long drawn breaths before the body,
rattling, it is, was,
a clamour
now undoing,
there was a clamour undoing
a congregation, folding into
pews’ straight backs
into wavering candles
quieten,
unfolding to a hush of clerical prying
clerical, prayer -
folding unfolding, a hush holds restless,
burning.
_________________
‘after the pyre’
Oliver Pearce (b.1996) is a graduate from Camberwell College of Arts, whose artistic practice is rooted in a passion for the history of art, to develop visual striking imagery of varied themes, exploring human psychology and mythologies in rich layers of oil paint.
Participant in Late Works:
Paperweight I, at first sight, By Ear, 4
Emma Barnaby is a freelance audio producer, sound designer, and occasional musician based in London. Emma has made audio documentaries and podcasts for BBC R4, the World Service, BBC R1Xtra, Audible, Politico, and other independent organisations like UCL and Somerset House. She plays the cello with Levitation Orchestra and Fen Trio, produces her own music, and collaborate with other artists on film and visual work.
Participant in Late Works:
at first sight, By Ear
