Thomas Buckner on Robert Ashley - Wednesday 28 October 2009

Thomas Buckner gave a vivid account of his work with the American writer and composer Robert Ashley. He began working with Ashley after 'Perfect Lives', the opera which Ashley conceived for television (the work's proportions and internal durations being exactly determined by the requirements of the television format).

Thomas Buckner detects a gradual increase in complexity, over the years of producing new pieces, in terms of the treatments by Robert Ashley of his own original texts, whose declamatory rhythms underpin the compositional basis of each piece.

The rehearsal process on an Ashley piece involves six days working 10 to 6 to develop the characters. At this stage the composition is minimally notated. By the time it approaches performance, accuracy is at a very high pitch and a click track is used to determine the synchrony and timing of the layered speech-based performances. Thus, the working process moves from a framework for musical innovation towards a highly specified and determined outcome so that the audience can experience the piece just as it is on the CD.

For his recent work 'Concrete' Ashley initially excluded himself from the performances, but he realised the piece was flawed without him, so he rewrote it. Being a meditation on age, Ashley appears as the main character and the other performers are projections of his dreams.

Another work, 'Dust', resulted in a collaboration with a Japanese video artist, Yukihiro Yoshihara, who created a mosaic or collage of American TV on monitors above the performers. Simultaneous commentaries and translations illuminated the meanings of the spoken texts for the Japanese audience. Comprehension of text is a key concern for Thomas Buckner.

Prof. Nicholas Till (Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, Sussex) commented that Ashley quite definitely is a writer, in a literary sense, and that his ability to work at both a detailed and realist level, and at an allegorical level, gives his work unique interest.