Summing for an End - album 144 - Album collections A, B & C -
Box C - Discs 8 and 9 - Sinphonia 6 and 7
The Capstone - the keystone to all that went before it in my published edition for the British Library National Sound Archive - the National Collection.
Summing for An End - An end. Not the end - it isn’t the end of my music - just this phase of it. This album doesn’t sit in any of my five genres it’s a summing together of the last remaining music I want to publish in this edition as a body - and if I don’t make it much further it will have completed my expression Across Nine discs - in actually three publications - album 144 A, B & C - of 3, 4 and 2 discs respectively. They publish 12 new works - Rh 592 - 601, 604 and 607 and host of Archive material from myself and my Collaborations. So until I work out what to do next - it only remains for me to thank all the wonderful people I have worked with over the last 17 years and The British Library for asking.
Along time ago it seems now, I organised all the music then into an ordering of five Genres - and caped it off with an album of what was left - Album no. 27 -‘Environmental music’ Evm 1 - in a little Tranche all of its own. Album 144 is also a little Tranche all of its own and dose a similar job in summing for an end for this recorded Edition. That’s why I say Album 144 A and B. They are in fact a single album - it’s just my odd way of doing things.
To make things even odder - that first organization of my work into Genres, - of 27 albums - I later called a Group - my Foundational Group, which was followed by four other Chronological Groups - to help people see the picture as it were. So the little bit extra, Album 144 [two parts one album] will sit at the end of the 5th group. Completing an Inner circle of my Solo work. Mixing metaphors like there is no tomorrow. But this - is how I see my work.
In the linear sense of chronology I see five coloured stripes, chaotically weaving in times flow along my Work - each album being of one Genre or another - of one tranche, or another - as I styled them. Then I chop this length - albums 001 to 143 into 5 Chronological Groups, each shot through with those coloured stripes. This is my solo work - my Edition of me. But yet there are 80 odd albums of music in collaboration - albums that I produced and mastered with the exception of 1 album - for my DCM Label.
These albums are part of the essence of my music - a very important part of my life and one, which the British Library expressly requested I include in my Edition. So the ‘Edition’ itself has two parts an inner Circle [my metaphor] of solo work and an Outer Circle of Collaborative Work. - metaphorically and conceptually separate from each other but obviously contemporary with each other in some hideously complex way that I completely sum over because I just can’t remember and it’s of no importance to the story. Suffice to say it runs alongside the solo work. A second Edition in effect that that Bolts om to the first.
The collaborations have a chronology and a long story in themselves but I can’t map them to my solo work - it all happened too fast. Also works in collaboration don’t have Rh catalogue numbers - only solo works can carry those - collaborative pieces have no Catalogue - they are just parts of their respective collaborations - a title on an album. Thus is the metaphor of an Outer Circle, of my Body of work - grandly seen from a distance.
The linier Chronology of my 144 solo albums however - in or out of the notion of Five Groups and five Genres - maps neatly on to a set of albums on a shelf - 1 to 144. So the collaborative albums sit next to these on the shelf as it were - as 80 odd additional albums. These two ways of looking at the Edition as a whole body - both as metaphorical Concentric Circles and as Albums on a shelf are Complementary and Consistent. Album 144 sits at the boundary of these understandings. On the shelf it [the A and the B package] sits at the end of the solo work and the start of the Collaborative Albums - Summing for an end. Imagine if you will the two linier chronologies - side by side, on parallel time lines, being bent around into a closed Circle - into two closed circles infact, one enclosing the other. The details melt and you have just an Inner and an Outer circle. I then sit at the centre - the solo work being closest to me.
What was left out were hundreds of hours of Arkiv material - parts lines - rejected versions and live tapes. Album 113 ‘Arkiv - A box of Delights’ of twelve discs and ‘Album 144’ of seven discs - are the result of a fine toothed trawl through this chaos in a bid to establish a ‘Complete view of my work for the Edition. Some pieces emerged whole others needed completing or tidying up - works I had meant to bring to publication but just got lost somehow. They have a place in my work but missed the numerical Rh catalogue at the time and can’t now fit directly in. I denote these now as ‘Rh Arkiv’. These recovered Archive pieces are outside or left out of the given chronology of my Rh catalogue - which numbered acknowledged works at their completion [the initial completion before any subsequent revision where that given number is belongs now to that piece]. Rh Arkiv simply nods to the notion of an subsequent Acknowledgement of a work - an acceptance of it as part of my extended body of work - rescued or completed - but not now numerable in that ordered sense of the conventional Rh Catalogue - 001 to 601
Just to be clear however - my first 15 works, were not recorded by me and Rh originally denoted recordings by me - Rh for recording [Rhythm actually but in effect recording]. Very early on it came to mean Acknowledgment of a work as part of the Body of my work. So those fist 15 pieces now needed to be included in the catalogue - so, I denote them as ‘Rh P1 - 15’ - ‘P’ as ‘Prior to’ or ‘Pre Rh 1.’ Sorry for that extra confusion but such is life on the fly - one must then be careful and Logical and consistency will arise.
Further to that are a number of collaborative archive pieces which I include in these Arkiv Boxes - but which cannot carry an Rh catalogue label which Singularly denotes a solo work.
A real distinction between the ‘Album 113 Archiv’ and ‘Album 144’ is the intention. Album 113 is a deep trawl through the Archives and Album 144 contains ten important New Works and it is just another album in that sense except that in Summing up for An End it also contains some pieces that I initially missed or rather subsequently found.
Some of these new pieces are complexly new from source - others are derived from archive sources but are in themselves new works and take an Rh catalogue number.
Summing for an End though these new pieces don’t take a Genre label - those five Genres I have closed - the catalogue number is now enough. I once needed those labels but now I don’t
With that understanding then - I give you album 144.
Now let’s turn to the internal structure of the Album.
It is obviously an album in two halves - the A and the B production of 3 and 4 discs respectively containing 10 new works - Rh 592 - 601 important to complete this stage of my work for the Edition as a point in time. These appear chronologically as you would expect - filling each disc in turn - I construct All my albums to CD length presupposing they were discs for someone’s collection, to write to disc for themselves or at some point to be physically issued as such. The remaining space is filled with Rh Arkiv material, pieces that have come to light from a search of my Archives. Then there are some pieces from my collaborations and that it is then a summing up for both areas. There is nothing more to be found - I looked very carefully.
As a last nod to fate I introduce a Third if absurd Box - Box C for a Sixth and a Seventh Sinphonia - Rh 604 and 607. Where my music finally Fragments itself out of existence.
[] Album 144 box A.
disc 1
Curvilineal - Fourth suite for Cello - Rh 592
Sonata for tuned metal no. 4 - Rh 593
disc 2
Sonata for Tuned Wood - Rh 594
Careful Wood Box - Rh 595
Inventions for Metal Door - Rh 596
Very Subtle music - Rh 597
disc 3
Sonata for steel Casing - Rh 598
Conjuring Dance - for percussion and 2 horns - Rh 599
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