Here we present a diverse collection of works written for "performers". These works are unique in that they do not fall neatly into a specified category of instrumentation and in fact challenge how music should be defined.
Many of the composers in our catalogue favor creating works with non-traditional instrumentation. These compositions range in style and structure with some composers utilizing electronics and novel instrument constructions, while others highlight the expressive possibilities of the human body, face and voice. Some works are notated with great precision and require a high level of musicianship, while other compositions are more improvisatory and in some cases, require no formal training to perform. Both performers and audiences alike will find intimacy, humor, vulnerability and dynamism in this special collection of works from the catalogue.
With his radically reduced works, Jeppe Ernst (b. 1985) fundamentally questions our traditional ways of thinking about music. By removing all unnecessary layers of a work he seeks to illuminate its most essential idea, often eliminating one or more of the most basic musical parameters in the process – such as, for example, the audible sound. At the same time, his music displays compelling social and intimate aspects as it often breaks with traditional performance practices and is performed for a single person or without the intervention of any musicians at all.
His catalogue of works focuses primarily on the human body itself. Most works can be performed by any performance artist, regardless of their specific training as, for example, instrumentalist, singer or actor.
Hear more about Jeppe Ernst on our podcast Kunstpauser.
Præludium (Aftensange) (2019) for 2 female and 2 male musicians / Score
Browse through the rest of Ernst's catalogue here. With the exception of Monuments, all works are composed for performers.
Lightness and brightness, beauty and poetry, are all over Dreyer’s works. A characteristic method is to use minimal themes gently repeated or painstakingly metamorphosed. Radiant explorations of timbre might be used to distract from a neat, diatonic harmonic process. Shapely songs or lullabies might be stretched over deep electroacoustic drones and there is often a quiet, intimate nature in these works.
Mads Emil Dreyer often sets up a dialogue between electroacoustic and acoustic entities. His music might use electronics to blur tonal harmonies, lights to mirror sound or pedal tones to place a fog around regimented instrumental robotics. The works require musicians who perform on, for example, toy instruments, percussion, keyboards and electroacoustic set-ups.
Lys 4 (2021) belongs to a series of pieces that combine sound and light. The piece is played by two performers who control 12 incandescent light bulbs and two sine wave synthesizers.
Many of Dreyer's works are scored for performers, especially those in the Chimera, Miniature and Lys series.
Simon Løffler’s works range from extremely intimate set-ups to enigmatic constructions, embracing traditional instruments (transformed in various ways) as well as novel instrumental concepts.
The works featured here use his novel instrumental set-ups. With the exception of Monodactyl, these constructions all feature electroacoustic music, including pedals, lights, amplification and motorized, moving parts. Løffler writes compositions which are often complex and precise, lending themselves towards performers who are percussionists or highly skilled musicians with a strong rhythmical sense. The resultant works are captivating and kinetic, in that the visual impact paired with the audio effects creates a completely new experience for the audience.
Monodactyl (2018) for 5 musicians, tries to separate all five fingers from each other, to investigate the expressive potential of the movement pattern of each specific finger.
For more works written for an ensemble of performers, explore Løffler's 'Alphabet series' which feature electroacoustic constructions. His composition b (2012) is written for 3 players, 6 effect pedals, 3 neon lamps, and a loose mono jack cable. It is an exploration of static electricity and amplification of the human body as a source of electronic sound. Find the video here.
Juliana Hodkinson is a composer and sound artist, who critically explores social relations within and outside of art. She includes everyday objects in her works and, most recently, draws on the audience as active participants in the performance situation, with the objective of questioning social, cultural and political relations in musical practice. Her practice moves within experimental music and sound art genres. Her works range from intimate chamber works to multimedia pieces with film, text, speech and elements of live hörspiel, to larger electroacoustic productions.
Lightness (2015) is a study in total darkness, with crisp sounds from amplified matches and matchboxes. Three performers light, strike, extinguish, and shake matches and matchboxes in a tightly composed sequence. The sound elements create a varied instrumentation that sounds by turns raw, military and expressive. Each strike of a match, followed by a small flame, illuminates the performance space just enough to connect the visual and aural expressions in an artistic chain of cause and effect.
Other performance art works from Hodkinson's catalogue include:
(something in capitals) (2017) for 6 or 12 amplified voices / Score
Nothing Breaking/No Care (2016) for 1 or 2 performers / Score
Nothing Breaking the Losing (2016) for 1 or 2 performers / Score
Steen-Andersen’s works live in the passages between the simple and the complex – in a field in which orchestral music, video art, choreography, performance, music theatre and installation are mixed with sampling, pop-culture references and game-aesthetics in surprising and thought provoking ways. His works therefore present a pronounced expansion of music, where no material is too fine or too simple to be given careful attention, taken apart, and assembled anew.
Korpus (2015) is written for three Harry Partch instruments: the marimba eroica, chromelodeon I and bloboy. This work is an exploration into the sound and mechanisms of these special instruments and an homage to the groundbreaking composer who first conceived of them.
Browse more works from Steen-Andersen's catalogue:
Run Time Error (2009) video installation / Score
Difficulties Putting it into Practice (2007) for 2 or 4 musicians / Score / Score
Next to Beside Besides #10 (2007) miniature video camera solo / Score
Rerendered (2004) piano solo with 2 assistants / Score
Drownwords (2003) for guitar + performer / Score
In Greta Eacott’s compositions, she works with simplistic, structured forms in combination with elements of indeterminacy and a minimalistic approach to material that heightens the relationships between sound and silence, movement and stillness, texture and space. Her primary focus is composing live performance works for large and small instrumental ensembles; working with both people with no experience performing music, as well as for instrumentalists at the highest professional level.
In her ‘no previous experience necessary’ percussion piece, Breathing Exercise (2020), the composition is driven by the cycle of each player’s breath which determines when to play their percussion instrument. When performed by multiple players these form a multilayered meditation on the subtle balance between sound and silence.
All of Greta Eacott's compositions are conceived as performance art works. See the collection here.
Since 2012 Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has experimented with creating music that lets the instruments transcend their inherent sonic norms and reappear in another form. In the work series SOUND × SOUND (2013–2017) he explores this by way of multiplication with a series of works multiplying one instrument a number of times: One piece is written for 9 pianos, another for 18 clarinets, 10 hi-hats and so on.
The process of multiplication brings out new timbral phenomena through the interference of sound waves and vibrations, and highlights what Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard calls the “sound’s potential of transformation”. He describes this as the quality in a musical piece when you no longer hear recognizable instruments, but instead the overall sound – when the individual musician is dissolved into the collective sound.
SOUND X SOUND Music for 10 Hi-Hats (2014) for 10 hi-hats / Score
There are 8 compositions in the SOUNDXSOUND series, written for the following instruments: Bb clarinets, soprano recorders, alto recorders, shakers, hi-hats, triangles, pianos and chromatic tuners. Find all of the scores here.