FORMS OF MAKING: RICHARD EMSLEY'S FOR PIANO AND STILL/S

Abstract

AbstractThis article considers the recent music of the British composer Richard Emsley. It takes as a framework Tim Ingold's reflections on the creation of knowledge, not as the study of fixed objects but as a study with them, expressed in his 2013 book Making. The article examines the forces of resistance and opportunity that have shaped Emsley's creation of an algorithmic compositional method, and its use and adaptation in two groups of works: the series for piano (1997–) and the cycle Still/s (2002–19). The origins of for piano lie in a creative block that Emsley suffered between 1987 and 1996, during which time he began experimenting with using simple computer programs to create algorithmic compositions. Still/s extends this practice into a cycle of 24 pieces for instrumental quintet, originally inspired by a collaboration with the painter Joan Key. What emerges from both collections of pieces is not a form-based way of making but a practice, out of which forms might be discovered, and which requires skills of attentiveness, or what Ingold calls ‘correspondence’. The origins and subsequent elaborations of both for piano and Still/s show how the music itself has altered Emsley and his ways of working.