Commissioned by Contemporary Music for All (CoMA), and published in their book

‘partsongs’ (2018), Rounding develops a new manner of creating music, as a participatory

experience involving a group of amateur musicians. The goal of the work is to engage with a

group’s members as unique individuals—each with their own lived experience of listening,

meditating, and sounding—rather than relying on any unifying background education (reading

music, vocal or choral training). The score functions as instructions for the realisation of the

composition process, as well as the realisation of the performance. The work provides an

environment wherein the performers learn and share embodied knowledge of musicking.

The composition is part of a long-term engagement with embodied research focussed by a

method I call ‘automatic singing’, an iterative process of musical (and personal) transformation

that involves singing-along to music while meditating. Unlike my previous work in automatic

singing, this piece is the first in which the participants are not required to physically share space

with the composer to realise the composition. As a result, Rounding is the only case in which the

automatic singing method has been described in a score—greatly expanding the method’s reach

and significance. Each realisation of the work functions as research into the transmission of

embodied technique, as can be seen in the notable performance in the online participatory event

on the theme ‘isolated meditation’, organised by Manchester-based ensemble SHOAL (spring

2020, in lock-down due to COVID-19). Rounding carries implications for composition-as-embodied-research, meditation-based artistic

practices, process-led or collaborative composition practices, the academic field of voice studies,

epistemology of technique (embodied knowledge), and community group creativity—and it serves

as a significant and original contribution to the repertoire of experimental music for amateurs

 

Cassandra Miller