Fredrik Rasten

Murmurations
XVI - XX (2021)

Thoughts on instrumentation:
All the Murmurations hitherto are composed as solo performer pieces for a special adapted fretless guitar with movablebridges, played with three e-bows on one guitar. Different setups (one guitar, two guitars, acoustics, electrics, added
voice etc.) are collected in different groups within the series of pieces.
However, these pieces can be realized by any instrumentation capable of producing the specified amount of sounding
pitches and their respective registers (see ‘pitch ranges’ below).
A timbral similarity between the instruments (or voices) is favoured, but not a requirement.
For instance, a sextet of strings would work well (with the order of voices as in score):
1 - violin / viola
2 - violin / viola
3 - cello
4 - violin / viola
5 - violin / viola
6- cello

Notes / Instructions:
For the succession of the pieces, each instrument’s note starts off where it ended, so there is a harmonic continuity
between the pieces. If more than one part is played, the order should generally be obtained.
However, one can also feel free to combine the parts as wanted.
There are no note values in the score, but for any of the voices, a note or pause lasts until it is succeeded by a new noteor pause in the given voice.
Note durations are free / flexible, and the graphic spacing between notes is generally not a guide to the pace of themusic, but merely showing the succession of the note or pause entries.
The music should unfold with a focus on stability of tuning, combined with a sense of melodic movement.
Each sonority should last long enough to be tuned and then perceived for a while in their “tuned state”, but without
the music ending up being too static - it should have a sense of forward movement. When a sonority is difficult to tune,
take your time to adjust. The searching and fine tuning is an intrinsic musical and human part of this music.
As a general rule - more time should be spent in the intended, tuned sonority than in the searching / tuning process.
When a chain of change occurs within one part, the movement can generally be a little bit faster, like a melodic phrase.
The end of a note should primarily be followed by a little pause (a few seconds long) before starting the new note.
However, glissandi between the notes, with or without a little pause between them, is a viable variation.
Cent deviations from 12-tone equal temperament are written under each note.
The accidentals belong to the Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI pitch notation by Marc Sabat
and Wolfgang von Schweinitz.
More information about the accidentals: http://www.marcsabat.com/pdfs/notation.pdf

Symbols and signs:
1 - One-directional arrows show the succession of events where the narrowness of the graphical spacing makes it
potentially hard to read (note that the graphical narrowness is accidental / random, and hence not a guide to themusical pace, which is free):2 - Bidirectional arrows between notes signify a crossfade between the two notes in question, meaning that note 1 entersby a fade-in while note 2 is already sounding - then they sound for a while together before note 2 fades out as
note 1 keeps sounding. This process is repeated a few (between 3 to 6) times ad lib.
Legato bows and / or pauses show how the music proceeds after this process, either with one note sounding, with bothnotes sounding, or with both notes paused. The parentheses between a note mean that this note already is sounding
from before.

3 - Some places the ‘crossfade’ described above occurs not between two notes, but between two groups of multiple notes,(sometimes also including temporal change within a group - note sounding before eventually paused etc..):4 - Dotted, vertical lines show that two events should happen at the same time (more or less)5 - bidirectional arrows between a note and a pause in the same system shows a movement back and forth between thepitch fading in and fading out again into silence, repeated ad lib.

Pitch ranges
lowest to highest note in each voice (shown by excerpts from the score)

1st voice from top:

2nd voice from top:

3rd voice from top:4th voice from top:

5th voice from top:

6th voice from top:ViG + 37