Fifteen years ago, my ex-partner called me and described a shopping experience in vivid detail: “The cashier lady who was scanning my bread was having some tubes attached to her back. I think they are not allowed to go to the bathroom!” This disturbing image fueled my imagination, and became the very first lines of the chorus—about a full bladder and daydreaming of the summer resort Palanga (in the English version it became Miami Beach). Lina composed a catchy tune, which ended up becoming the conceptual framework for the entire piece: music resembling the monotony of the checkout conveyor belt, repetitive songs, static cashiers, an opera about the routine of buying and selling.

The score can be read as a blueprint or explicated like a poem. There are scores hanging behind glass at eye level, removed from any sound-making at all and begging to be recognized as objets d’art. There are others that are innately useful, becoming well-loved maps meant to guide students through a musical geography. Understanding a score may require the translation of an expert, or it may be immediately obvious to an untrained eye; it can exist as a historical document or as a work of science fiction. The score does not need to communicate, nor does it even need to be innately musical. A score can be an idea or a feeling, a fragment of life. And if this is so, then the score can become a site for thinking that moves beyond the musical and into the way society is mediated.

Cage’s ethos of anarchist individual liberty was not always compatible with the collective labor of music production. Orchestra musicians sabotaged performances of Cage’s music by not following the score and not rehearsing, and even by destroying electronic equipment they regarded as a threat to their training, status, and livelihood. Cardew described this resistance “as spontaneous expression to the sharply antagonistic relationship between the avant‑garde composer, with all his electronic gadgetry, and the working musician.”

In short, we might say that New Complexity, which deploys impossible notation in order to demand personal choices and creative, interpretive decisions from every performer, is the opposite of “high” modernism, which sought to remove performers from the equation altogether. To casually assert that such scores demonstrate a lack of “empathy” for performers not only assumes what scores have (always) been for, but also that all performers are the same.

Conceiving of music as a by-product or unintended result can be a fruitful approach to a range of activities: music by other means, music as one outcome among many, music out of the corner of one’s eye. With the Sonic Meditations, it’s helpful not to be too eager for fortuitous beauty, not too preoccupied with fugitive glimmerings. Pauline’s thematizing of modes of attention is valuable in itself, and for me never registers as a boondoggle or workaround by which music remains the goal, whether disavowed or not. Its defamiliarization of the practice of making music—to begin with, by inviting participants who wouldn’t otherwise think of themselves as musicians—is among the most welcome of her gifts.

If post-punk was what Mark Fisher called “popular modernism,” then the Pop Group—which mixed punk with free jazz, dub, and avant-garde elements—is worthy of this definition. By the summer of 1980, when the Pop Group performed in Helsinki, their songs had evolved from raw and visceral punk to a sound influenced by Rock Against Racism and the philosophy of anti-Nazi funk.

Commentaries on Photographs (Komentarze do fotografii, 1962) is a unique book. Written by the Polish experimental poet Witold Wirpsza, it was created as a response to “The Family of Man,” the Museum of Modern Art’s 1955 travelling exhibition of photography. In his book, Wirpsza used a selection of the original photographs and juxtaposed them with his commentaries and poems written partly as ekphrases. In a note found in the poet’s archive, Wirpsza reported that his commentaries arose from the conviction that “The Family of Man” “serves not so much to reveal something, but at least to hide something.”

I think the sense of melancholy in Autumn ’60 is connected with failure. It’s always only partly a success, but it is also designed to fail because of the intrinsic structure—in conventional terms. When it was written in 1960, literally everyone who was a male composer, especially in Europe, was trying to fix music, trying to make everything highly notated. They thought truth was in the details and how things were made. This was the peak of total serialism, even if total serialism never actually existed. So I think that one could describe Autumn ‘60 as a melancholic piece, but not because of its possible sadness.

In an ideal composer-performer relationship, you make each other better. For me, it is most exciting when performers bring my music somewhere beyond what I thought was possible. A performer is always going to transform the written score, even if only in small ways, but some of my most valuable experiences as a composer have been when a performer sees something in the work that I do not, bringing their own taste, experience, judgment, and ideas into its realization. The score and the social relationship between composer and performer are inseparable. In the best possible scenario they are in a beautiful, mutually elevating symbiosis.

Erasmus, like all the other characters, has very specific moods. He appears slightly bilious at all times, as if he has heartburn, a mild stomach ulcer, or just indigestion. On top of this he is clearly out of it. Already under the influence of a heavy narcotic but never drunk. He can speak and sing clearly but his manner on stage indicates some near-complete inebriation. He meanders around. Clearly wise but lacking in direction. Despite all these things he remains lucid, if rather dreamy. This is a time for reflection, and a peculiar form of nonaction for Erasmus and his portrayal should indicate this from the outset. He will become increasingly disturbed as the musical develops.