James Saunders

These versions were made for Apartment House for their two-date UK tour, organised by BMIC Cutting Edge. This was an offshoot of the series in London at The Warehouse the previous autumn. The ensemble comprised Anton Lukosevieze (cello), Andrew Sparling (clarinet), Alan Thomas (guitar) for Nottingham, and they were joined by Lore Lixenberg for the Brighton date. There were two versions for the trio played in Nottingham at Djagnoly Hall, and these were repeated in Brighton at the Pavilion Theatre, separated by a duo version for voice and clarinet.

Looking back at my notes, there is not a lot of detail in terms of planning. I must have lost the sheet which mapped out the timing of the modules (although it may be in a box in the garage), and I wasn’t including grids detailing the arrangement in my notebook at this point. This was the first time I made explicit reuse of the same version as a result of two closely spaced performance dates. The principle of #[unassigned] was that each version was unique, but this is perhaps open to interpretation. The two versions from Nottingham were played in Brighton but, given the time brackets that govern entries, there are differences between the overlay of modules in each performance. This approach became more important in later versions when I was having to make quite a few versions each year, and groups were repeating concerts in a short space of time. I also began to work with other strategies for creating variation (such as kit forms, or page permutations).

The other thing that was new in these performances was the use of multiple versions on the same day. Previously each version had a title derived from the date, but when more than one version was performed it necessitated adding a suffix number (-1, -2 etc) to indicate it was the second version performed that day. Generally this was needed where I’d made ‘movements’, but occasionally more than one version was performed by different groups in different locations (e.g. #050504-1 and #050504-2 performed by Sebastian Berweck and ascolta respectively). This extended numbering later included the suffix -[r] for recording only versions, and date spreads where the version was long and/or straddled midnight (e.g. #270504-[r] and #09-100508).

I can’t remember much about either performance, except for Lore appearing in the middle of #200501-1 to sing one of George Aperghis’s Recitations. The programme was played through without breaks, and I think as my piece was so quiet Lore thought it was finished. I quite enjoyed the interruption in the end.