Collaborative workshop and performance of "...that which echoes in eternity" (Fribbins, 2002-03) by Mine Dogantan-Dack, piano, and Pal Banda, cello.

Performers Mine Doğantan Dack, piano, and Pal Banda, cello, critically reflect on and discuss "…that which echoes in eternity" by Peter Fribbins (2002-03) in a workshop carried out collaboratively with the composer. This document also includes the duo's first live public performance of this piece at a later date. The workshop has two related, yet distinct, research objectives: One is to explore the notion of "composer's intentions" and its relationship to performance. Among the research questions posed in this connection are the following: • What is the performer's role in the generation of musical expression and meaning? Is s/he a transparent medium or a creator on a par with the composer? • Is the score sufficient to infer "the composer's intentions"? • What does it mean to be "loyal to the composer's intentions"? • Is it necessary to be loyal to the composer's intentions to perform a piece effectively? Working on a piece by a living composer, the performers have the opportunity to interact with him and perhaps get a clearer idea about his musical intentions, of which the score is only a trace. During this project, it became obvious that once the piece is committed to notation and becomes a publicly available artefact, it takes a life of its own and is no longer strictly tied to the intentions of its original "author". Performers become an indispensable link in the (re)creation of musical meaning and expression, and in that sense they are co-creators. In this project, the process of preparing this contemporary piece for live performance thus became a collaborative process involving the composer and the performers. The second research objective is to document the cognitive and affective processes that are part of the preparatory phase when performers prepare the piece for live performance, and to relate these to the processes that unfold during the live performance itself. Among the research questions posed are: • During the preparation of a piece for live performance, what kind of decision-making, reasoning, and judging processes do the performers go through? • During the preparation of a piece for live performance, what kind of affective processes do the performers go through? • What is the relationship between the cognitive/affective processes involved in the preparatory phase and the aesthetics of live performance? The workshop marks an early stage during the learning process, and the live performance included is the first public performance of this piece given by the Doğantan Dack-Banda duo. The two videos therefore articulate two "locations" during the journey the performers take from the first contact with a piece to becoming intimately familiar with it through repeat performances. The two documented events are somewhere between these two extreme points in the life of a piece of music.