7 d. ago
Moving beyond bar lines: composer Nico Muhly on dancers reimagining his music
Choreographers hear, somehow, a larger heartbeat; it’s fascinating and revelatory to have them reinterpret your compositions, writes the US musician, ahead of a triple bill featuring his music coming to Sadler’s Wells. When I’m writing music, one of the primary challenges is figuring out how to notate rhythm in a way that is clear to the interpreters. When I hear a phrase in my head it is free of the confines of bar lines, but, in practical application, eventually it needs to get squeezed into recognisable shapes and containers. Every composer has their own strategy (some eschew bar lines entirely, or use alternative notational strategies outside the traditional western systems), but it’s always a negotiation: does the way the composer notates the rhythm correspond to how it should best appear on the flute player’s music stand?I have distinct memories of being 13, hearing a piece (specifically, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements), basically memorising it from the recording, an...
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