Scott McLaughlin composer

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The Garden of Forking Paths

Image of a clarinet superimposed-on and winding-through a map of river meanders and also many animals

Composing for contingency and material indeterminacy in clarinets (2019–current).

About

The Garden of Forking Paths began as an 18-month AHRC Leadership Fellowship at the University of Leeds (August 2019 – January 2021): practice research in composing for one and two clarinets. Instead of starting from the notes I want the clarinet to play, the project starts from the instrument itself: trying fingerings, often unusual ones, and listening to which pitches, multiphonics and timbres come out of them with different embouchures, mouth shapes and breath.

The central question is what happens if the clarinet is given more agency than is typical, so that (with support of the player's listening and technique) the clarinet can make its 'own' sounds: the harmony and resonances that lie outside the 12 pitches of the piano, and the noisy, unstable, and multiphonic sounds that traditional teaching tends to ignore. Rather than a a paradigm of complete control of the instrument it becomes a paradigm of support, setting up a system in which the player follows the instrument's preferences. That raises practical questions: what can be fixed before a performance, how to notate pitches and rhythms that emerge rather than being chosen, and how a piece can respond to the instrument's own resonances. The title comes from Jorge Luis Borges' 1941 short story of the same title, but the image I keep returning to is a river where every time it floods its course is rerouted and made newly concrete, as is also int he clarinet in performance as sound moving between stable and unstable states, settling differently every time.

The work was done laboratory-style, with specialist performers and an acoustician, and documented online as it went: scores and recordings, video tutorials, a blog, a symposium and a listening workshop, as well as a 'shadow project' at the Royal Northern College of Music. Since the fellowship ended the approach has carried on into new pieces, including works for other instruments.

Project website YouTube playlist Writing: 'The Material Clarinet'

People

Pieces

Scores on the project website

Scores of the studies and solos, free to download (they open in Dropbox).

Learning resources

Videos made with Heather Roche for clarinettists and composers who want to work this way.

Tutorials

Examples

Tools

Talks

The project website also has a reading and listening list (instrument books, music and theory) and a blog written as the research went along.

Performances and events

Videos

RNCM shadow project

Alongside the fellowship, staff and students at the Royal Northern College of Music took the research in their own directions, with thanks to Larry Goves and Sarah Watts. It produced three breaths (after Ben) by José Del Avellanal (four versions of the score, each with a different notation), Slushball Earth by Tywi Roberts (Johanna Leung), Output VI by Zakiya Leeming (Yanke Dai, Laurel Saunders and Grace White), my Venting Game Duet, and a composite Daisy Chains performance. It ended with a concert on YouTube. Scores and videos on the project website.

Writings

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