The Poison Pie Publishing House presents:

Hebeloma's Swamp Fantasy Overture
a post-existential musical score
generated through a non-idiomatic improvisational creative process

Hebeloma Crustuliniforme
(link to main page of score)

Forward: Three Brief Notes

A Musical Score
For those who hear naturally the music embodied in these written words, no further explanation is necessary. For other readers, a brief justification follows. Ostensibly a novella, Hebeloma's Swamp Fantasy Overture is a musical score of a modestly unconventional form. It follows a tradition in improvisational music of non-idiomatic formats for conveying musical ideas. We need think no further than Pauline Oliveros who allowed instructions for meditation to guide her music, Anthony Braxton who generated abstract diagrams describing his compositions, Fred Van Hove who regarded the editing of silent films as a "real score", or Butch Morris who developed a system of conduction, which blended composition and improvisation in transient gestures. That an author should describe a novella as a score requires a lesser suspension of disbelief, compared to these more ambitious precedents.

The Size and the Instrumentation of the Ensemble
As written, Hebeloma's Swamp Fantasy Overture is intended for an ensemble of nine musicians, though independent-minded interpreters should feel no obligation to adhere to this original intent. Each performer is assigned one of the nine roles in the novella:

  • the narrator
  • the heroine
  • the custodian
  • the faerie
  • the frog prince
  • the oracle
  • the first paramour
  • the second paramour
  • the cultist
While the author imagined various combinations of instruments with which this score could be performed, at their request no prescription is reproduced here. The selection of the instrumentation is secondary to the identification of an ensemble of players with sympathetic relationships and ears for improvisational narrative. With that said, there remains an expectation that the role of narrator is performed by a percussionist of one sort or another, setting the rhythm of the retelling.

The Duration of the Piece
This work contains 365 parts, one created each day of the year in 2021. The writing from each day is a measure. If each measure were performed in one second, then the piece would last six minutes; if ten seconds, then an hour; if a minute, then six hours. If performers chose to rigidly mimic the tempo of the author, then each measure is a day and the piece would unfold over the course of a year. We expect realizations of this score, should any ever come to pass, to fall somewhere within the limits of this temporal spectrum.

Staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House
May 31, 2021

written while listening to:  Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey - Uneasy (ECM Records, ECM 2692, 2021, Germany, lpx2, discogs.com)

This work is made available to the public, free of charge and on an anonymous basis. However, copyright remains with the author. Reproduction and distribution without the publisher's consent is prohibited. Links to the work should be made to the main page of the score.