‘curse tablets’, is a collection of six miniatures for keyboard instrument or organ manuals, six experimental graphic scores, and a text created for use in performance. Interpretations of the piece can combine these materials freely for any instruments or combinations of instruments. Each of the six miniatures is dedicated to another composer with whom I have previously worked or whom I admire; this is used to emphasise the petitionary element of archaeological finds of curse tablets in the piece. Taken as a whole, this combination of composition methods consider the possibilities of existing curse tables as forms of speculative notation. Rather than simply re-presenting these as materials for performance, they are subject to multiple processes of musical translation into scores, performances and recordings; here I emphasise the production of the score and the creation of an album as a statement that represents my holistic perspective on the music. This perspective has been further influenced by the translation of the musical materials by several performer-collaborators who have engaged with the piece and its materials, sometimes creating additional materials themselves. In order to integrate these approaches into the identity of the piece, a further method of composition has been integrated into the project: that of creating remixes that combine many elements of multiple performances into a single, composed piece that reflects the emerging aspects of a single performer’s approach to the music, or that of a duet or group of performers. This further method of musical translation has also proposed ways of thinking about the notation’s diversity and the music’s identity, and the ways that that identity might propose what a musical ‘curse tablet’ might be. As a corollary, the nature of speculative notation is also considered to be a musical proposition.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39280