Another Timbre Interview with Jakob Ullmann

The CD contains two of your solo pieces - Solo I for flute and Solo IV for a low stringed instrument - which are realised simultaneously. When you composed the solos, did you already have in mind the idea that they might be combined and played together?

In the late 1980s I made my first attempts to depart from the strict conventions of (western) musical notation and to introduce some more or less graphic structures into my scores. The experiences of writing disappearing musics - a piece in which different groups of instruments rehearse independently and coordinate the performance only with the help of a clock - helped me to plan a series of solo pieces, which give the musicians (with the help of graphic notation I discussed with John Cage) much more freedom in performing the piece than in my earlier pieces. The performer has to develop a slightly different version for each performance, whether with or without other solo pieces. Following the first three solo pieces, which date from the beginning of the 1990s, new versions of the older pieces have been made: Solo I in a version for oboe da caccia (formerly for flute) and a version of Solo II for bassoon (formerly trombone). In 2013/2014 I added the solo piece for a (low) stringed instrument (IV), and solo pieces for piano (V) and percussion (VI) to this series. The music is very soft, and lasts for at least 45 minutes.

Can you tell us a bit more about the scores? Is any of the music written out in conventional notation, or are the scores all graphic?

The material for the musicians' plan for performing one or more of the Solo-pieces is generally more or less similar for all the Solo-pieces. It consists of 4 or 5 different kinds of information which have to be combined with the help of a rather short and sometimes open list of instructions for the use of the material.

Firstly, there is graphic material (10 sheets with one or more coloured squares - the cd-cover gives an impression of this). Most of them contain one or more blue or red coloured circles. The interpretation of these graphic sheets is made with the help of lines of different lengths which are placed on the sheets). This material is used mostly to determine the character or colour of the sounds produced.

The second kind of material is a series of pitches which ordain (prearrange) the sequence of central pitches which distinguish the regions of the piece. The order of the pitches is fixed, but the duration can differ.

The third kind of material is a more or less complex diagram which contains different ways of playing the instrument. The diagram is used to find out which kind of treatment can be combined or followed by which other. This diagram is important for the interpretation of the results that are produced with the graphic sheets and the lines.

The fourth kind of material contains some transparent sheets of paper which are used to produce glissandi and/or multiphonics, especially as applied to the series of central pitches. Some of the solos contain some more material for additional sound-events.

To prepare a performance, you have to fix the duration of the whole piece, and then the durations of the central pitches. Then you can start to produce the other necessary information and apply it to the time-structure in general.

Some performers (Hans-Peter Schulz (organ), Dafne Vicente-Sandoval (bassoon), Lukas Rickli (piano)) have written about their experience of preparing and playing Solo-pieces alone or in combination with others, and have discussed the special problems of applying very low volume sounds to their instrument(s) (see: Musik-Konzepte 210, Booklets (fremde zeit addendum and the double-cd with bassoon-pieces) and MusikTexte).

The music combines acoustic instruments with playback. Do you prepare tapes (or files) for playback, or is this something which the musicians take on?

During the preparation of one or more of the Solo-pieces the musician will find out very soon that it is impossible to realise everything which the material for the piece demands and/or suggests. Even if you have access to some assistants for the performance (especially necessary for Solo III and Solo V - it seems impossible to perform these pieces without assistants), some of the necessary sound-events must be added by help of loudspeakers. As, for instance, with very low and/or very high pitches which have to be heard during the whole performance. Due to different kinds of instruments and their tuning, it is impossible to pre-record these sounds for every performance. The recording must be made for the particular acoustic situation of the venue, the kind of instrument(s), even the standard pitch (especially for performances of Solo III, Solo V or combinations with these pieces). The recording should resonate perfectly with the instruments and help avoid a mixture of different types of performance.