Social Strategies in Composing for Improvisers: Compositional Voice in/as Ensemble Microtradition

This paper will consider the roles of ensemble ‘microtradition’ in providing meaning(s) within compositional frameworks and strategies designed for improvisers. I will position such improvisation-reliant approaches within composer-led ensembles as particularly fruitful subjects of analysis in this context and examine the ways in which ensemble-level microtraditions can be seen to intersect with compositional voice, focusing on the capability of shared socialities to shape musical outcomes. Using my ensemble Union Division as a case study, I will discuss the importance of leadership and followership styles in the collaborative development of our performance practice, outlining the processes by which we established particular modes of eliding improvisation and composition via self-organisation. In examining changes that occurred subsequently within the group’s practice, and looking to David Borgo’s (2006. “Sync or Swarm: Musical Improvisation and the Complex Dynamics of Group Creativity.” In Algebra, Meaning, and Computation: Essays Dedicated to Joseph A. Goguen on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, edited by K. Kokichi, J. Jouannaud, and J. Meseguer. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.) research on “swarm intelligence” in free improvisation and Irving Janis’s (1972. Victims of Groupthink: a Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin) concept of ‘groupthink’, I hope to illuminate: (a) how these changes can be seen to have impacted understandings of the compositions played; (b) how they were able to occur without conflict via non-verbal consensus within a large group; and (c) how the group’s microtradition can be seen to have gradually emerged as a semi-autonomous vehicle for compositional voice via a process of decentralisation, moving beyond elements related to ‘ensemble sound’ to also include group-specific ways of working, modes of communication and ‘microsocialities’ (Born, G. 2017. ‘‘After Relational Aesthetics: Improvised Music, the Social and (re)Theorizing the Aesthetic.’ In Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, edited by G. Born, E. Lewis, and W. Straw. Durham, NC: Duke University Press).