Worth noting: Roger Reynolds's Form and Method.(Book Review)

Rather than being suddenly revealed, whole, a musical work is achieved gradually over time in a manner that doubtless varies for each composer: part discovery, part construction, even, admittedly, part contrivance (and, if the poet John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is to be believed, also part sheer undirected bumbling). But, in most cases, there is a necessary (though by no means uniform) staging involved in the process of completing a musical composition. We can thus inquire into the process recognizing it as a multileveled search for ultimate integration rather than the unrolling of a scroll upon which has been inscribed an already, mystically completed continuity that one only needs to receive.

Roger Reynolds

REYNOLD'S BOOK is sectioned into a Part I containing an essay on Form (pp. 1-42), an essay on Method (pp. 43-81), brief concluding remarks, a bibliography and discography, an index, and--at the back of the book in a section labeled Part II--137 pages containing 133 examples comprising scores, sketches, formal plans, and other working materials for the compositions discussed in Part I. Reynolds writes fluently and persuasively in Part I's essays, setting up some useful conceptual distinctions for composing in general. His discussion is informed by collaborations with cognitive psychologists, such as his editor, Stephen McAdams. However, the meat of the book is in the examples and in the discussion of the examples in the essays.

The examples strikingly reveal how thoroughly Reynolds plans the overall compositions. There is a high level of "pre-compositional" planning and structuring, in most cases including a durational plan for subsections based on geometric series, chaos theory, or some other mathematical principle (one is reminded of... John Cage!). Often, a precise conceptual framework unique to a particular piece is tied closely into such a formal plan, still abstract and pre-compositional, but fleshing it out in some detail before the notes. Added in to this formal mix are elements drawn from Reynolds's abiding interest in other arts, particularly literary and visual art.

For example, Ariadne's Thread is a UPIC composition from 1994. Example 32a shows its overall plan, a structure of interaction between the (Ariadne's) thread, the characters, and the labyrinth--already a conversation among three concurrent formal strands, rather than a single musically narrative line. This is typical of Reynolds. Example 33 plans out on log graph paper the structure of the logarithmic proportions used to determine the durations of the subsections in the piece. Example 34 is a drawing by Jasper Johns--a bold, rich, and rhythmically vital tension of elements which are short sections of ...