The Nuts and Bolts
The “Performance Indication Project” is a regularly updated documentation of my ongoing project on San Francisco Bay Area public transit systems. If you’re curious to know a little more about what’s going on here, then read on. Or leave it a bit of a mystery and just head to the diary entries above.
What is a “Performance Indication?”
If you’ve ever seen a piece of sheet music, you probably noticed nestled among all the notes some descriptive words or phrases, often in Italian. These are examples of "performance indications" and are used by a composer to convey to the performer how the music should be played. For example, a composer may wish a piece to be performed Allegro (quick, lively, bright) or Largo (very slow and dignified), Forte (loud or strong) or Piano (soft).
Where did these particular Performance Indications come from?
A friend first turned me on to these indications. They come from the works of composers George Crumb, Erik Satie, and John Zorn.
What exactly are you doing with them?
The moment I laid eyes on these performance indications, I fell in love with them. They weren’t anything like the familiar Allegros and Pianos I had come to take for granted. Rather, instead of limiting themselves to the standard conventions of musical notation, these composers created their own phrases and directives to instruct the performer how the music should be played. I find these indications really beautiful - like little snippets of poetry. Nonetheless, they are fundamentally directives. So as directives, I wondered if they could be employed as such, but in a different context.
As a frequent user of public transportation, I decided to print these performance indications on strips of paper and leave them randomly on the seats of busses and trains. In some ways, our daily life sometimes seems to be a performance, so wouldn’t it be nice once in a while to come upon a little guidance how to perform it? A composition of daily life with musical notation.
My hope is that passengers will discover a performance indication and then do with it as they wish. Perhaps they will enjoy the simple beauty of the phrase. Perhaps they'll just ignore it. Or perhaps someone will find the indication "with bravura!" sitting on their seat and decide to proceed through the rest of the day and perform... with bravura.
And for intrepid web-surfers like yourself, maybe you will find a performance indication to be inspired to follow.
Periodically, I’ll add a new performance indication to this blog, and then document people’s reaction (or lack thereof).
Enjoy!
