DESCRIPTION:
Folio for unspecified ensembles (1952)

I. October 1952
II. November 1952 ("Synergy")
III. December 1952
IV. MM-87
V. MM-135, March 1953
VI. Music for 'Trio for Five Dancers', June 1953
VII. 1953

Nils Vigeland, piano
Eberhard Blum, flute
Frances-Marie Uitti, cello

Earle Brown's Folio set of three pieces for piano contains early and remarkable experiments in music notation and the performance process. They grew out of Brown's enjoyment of group and solo jazz improvisation, a desire to find a way out of metric music, and his fascination with sculptor Alexander Calder's mobiles, specifically their quality of being "variable but always the same". In October '52, Brown wrote in standard notation but left out all rests "intentionally trying to throw the performer into a relational space, rather than a counting space ... it has to be read at a constant rate ... but no two pianists will feel the space exactly the same" (Brown). In November '52 (Synergy), standard note durations are used, but the notes are distributed all over a sheet of five-line staves without measures or meter. These notes are to be "considered floating in space, moving forward and backward ... it's multi-spatial ... the things are on moving tracks ... you can go from any point to any other point ... if they happen to coincide here, boom! they could be ... one huge chord cluster." In December 1952, the score consists of vertical and horizontal bar-lines of varying thicknesses seemingly "just sounds in space." The space and lines present relative frequency, duration, loudness and time-space "implications." Each of these pieces will, of course, sound different from performance to performance, and relying on the particular "realization" given by the performer(s). Brown, while not composing by chance procedures like John Cage, nevertheless creates freedom in a performing situation that is indeterminate of the act of composition. [allmusic.com]

Art by Amédée Ozenfant