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Examined in light of Fried's four compositional concepts we find a mapping typical to his work:
Interrogation: The use of MDM and headphones is a standard to the recording industry. The tools here are used to full extent: MDM as a source of eight tracks of recording/playback, the headphones as playback instruments for the performers.
Differentiation: In terms of specificity of use, no other tools would effectively replace the headphones or MDM (except eight tracks of digitized audio recorded/played back from a hard disk recorder or computer, which would serve exactly the same function - the choice of tools among these makes no difference).
Catalysis: The use of the MDM vocal tracks and headphones in the service of this live event is unique to the moment. The vocal tracks remain unchanged. Transparent to the audience, they cause the live vocals to be generated as they are without the tracks themselves interacting with the perceived performance.
Subversion: Fried's fourth conceptual criteria for composition is perhaps his most
interesting and atypical generator in the technological realm while at the same time
among the most creative concepts of his repertoire. Subversion, thinking around,
redefining, appraising the situation and interpreting how it may be re-invented from
within its own internal resources is fundamental to the artistic process. In Headphone
Sextet subversion is rampant at every level. The recording studio technology is
subverted: headphones are usually used only as sound monitors, not as cueing and score
material vehicles; MDMs are used as recording and playback devices in the tracking and
mixing processes, not as performance machinery; mixing boards are mixdown devices, not
sextet musical performance material feeding devices, unless as used for monitor feeds
which is clearly not the case here. Beyond the technological subversion, the conventions
of the performance idiom and language as a communication device are all re-thought.
Live performance here is a reinterpretation of what is being fed to the vocalists. It
is a shattered performance, unheard by the audience, only partially heard by each
performer, and on-the-spot re-assembled. The vocals are highly structured yet
quasi-improvised by performers cognizant that they are utterly doomed to failure to
achieve perfection. Impossibility breeds the comic, the tragic and ultimately
the heroic.
Another experience, though quite different, speaks to Fried's subversion of the text: more than a dozen years ago at a performance of Tannhaüser at the Met, the title role was performed by a last minute stand-in. The singer had voice, terrific voice. But he had no accurate recall of the libretto, though he knew his melodic parts. Up in the score reading desk section of the Met every sound on stage is transparent. Throughout the evening the prompter could be clearly heard giving the errant Tannhaüser virtually every line of text just before he sang it. The general audience, not up in the reading desk area had no idea that this was the case. Like the general audience for that production of Tannhaüser, Fried's prompting remains unknown to the audience. The tension in the vocal singing in both cases takes on a new dimension. Spontaneity flourishes, in the case of Tannhaüser not always to the best effect. But in the Fried, this is the base material for the work. It is new, fresh, challenging for performers and listeners, and fraught with the potential for linguistic train wrecks which adds up to terrific theatre.
Copyright © 12 February 2000 Jeff Talman, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA
Visit Joshua Fried's website:
http://www.echonyc.com/~joshua