The assemblage is when the music discovers itself. The term ‘assemblage’ is not in my music dictionary, but it’s the most basic and important part of the communal musical experience. Its sense of building expectation makes it my favorite part of concert time. After the pre-concert talk, and long before the concert mistress rises to her feet and calls for attention, the audience is introduced to, or reacquainted with, the players. They stroll on stage, sit down, do a little light tuning, and begin to warm-up their instruments, and practice the solo bits. This night was a particularly fine assemblage. It formed the base of a fantastical, illusory composition.
Like any great work, each instrument enters in her own time. In the case of the assemblage, that arrival is based on absolutely natural timing. Conditions of wind, rain, parking lot perambulation, and the length of the bathroom line each affected the arrival of a player on the scene. He finds his chair, greets his fellows, and begins the ritual of mouthpiece maintenance. She tightens her bow and smoothes on the rosin. The music is coming to life all around her. A flute begins to flutter in excitement, then shrieks, and suddenly drops down in a rapidly descending scale. Vigorous blasts of tooting brass, clear and warm the cold chambers of trumpet, trombone and french horn. Bows dash back and forth with no regularity of motion, each moving on its own path, creating small crescendos and evolving separate tunes out of the mass of sound. I would recognize these abundantly practiced bits later in the great works, but the sense of the individual’s hard-won, repeated effort would be missing.
A really great assemblage captures the spirit that came before the bison’s skin was stretched taut across the void, that would some day emerge as a great kettle drum. It feels the first breath from the first bow that drew across the violin’s ancient forebearer, Grandma Rebec. It is the resurrection of the dawning of music, when a welter of pipes configured itself into a horn.
Just for a moment I wished that I could be recording this. Yet the real joy of this time is that it never can be captured or repeated. The very awareness of anyone’s interest in it as a whole, would compromise the music that emerges on it’s own. The assemblage is the best piece of all. It is live music walking through the door, unstructured and unplanned. It is the quintessential chance composition. It will never be heard again.
It is the perfect jam.
* The wonderful vintage luggage tag background I used for this project is a free public download from the HauntingVisionsStock site. Thank you D-O-H!
