About this Piece
Notes from Edges (1968):
Each player should have a copy of the score. There can be any number of players. The signs on the score are not primarily what a player plays. They mark out a space or spaces, indicate points, surfaces, routes or limits. A player should play in relation to, in, and around the space thus partly marked out. He can move about in it variously (e.g. in a sequence, or jumping from one point to another), but does not always have to be moving, nor does he have to go everywhere. Insofar as the signs are limits, they can be reached but should not be exploited. The way to a limit need not be continuous, in a straight line. The limits, or points, can be taken at different distances – for example, far away, like a horizon, or close, like a tree with branches overhead – but decide where at any given moment you are. You can also use the signs as cues: wait till you notice one and then respond. Or you can simply play a sign as it is, but only once in a performance.
You will feel all this with sound, but an awareness of limits lets you imagine where the song can go. Deftly arranged by artist Chiara Giovando, this score is not composed of notes, but boundaries like the colors of countries patching together a planet. A suggestion of action, a perception of edges, but without limitations on the movements within.
Instruments travel a terrain of sound shaped only by the suggestion of actions.
— From an essay by Andrew Berardini