The score for Sequential Dukes exists as a paradox in transparent, unobtrusive form, its very design appearing unburdened by any imposition on the music. Its notation, a choreography of notes, lines, dots, spheres and rests, invites us into an ambiguous space where spatial clarity and tonal density operate not as contradictions but as continuities of one another. This work seems to question not only the nature of music as performance but also the ontology of sound and notation as separate entities and as parts of a whole.
In considering the nature of this score, one must first confront the essential dualism it suggests between the appearance of simplicity and the layered complexity it calls for in interpretation. Thomas Nagel's concept of what it is like—the subjective quality of an experience—becomes relevant here, for "Sequential Dukes" invites the musician into an unusual role as both a conveyor of music and as an interpreter of silence, a negotiator of both the structured and the unformed. The question becomes not only what it is like to play Sequential Dukes but what it is like to inhabit its notation, which gestures as much toward its silences as it does to its sounds.
The score of Sequential Dukes might seem to guide the player directly, suggesting a transparent clarity in its notation that emphasizes spatial arrangement, yet this clarity also embodies an intentional ambiguity. Each note, each sphere, and every space between marks is a placeholder not merely for sound but for the absence of it—for that quality that is both distinctly part of the music and yet simultaneously outside it. In this, the piece invokes an objectivity of form while simultaneously demanding subjective interpretation, as each flutist must find their path within the score’s spaces.
The philosophical exploration of the tension between objective and subjective perspectives is vividly relevant here. Just as Nagel argued that the mind cannot be reduced to physical processes alone, the notation on the page cannot be reduced merely to a sequence of sounds. They invite the musician to enter into a space where the boundaries between presence and absence, sound and silence, are blurred. The player must confront not only the score as it exists in a physical form but as it exists in a mental, interpretive space.
"Sequential Dukes" opens a dialogue between transparency and opacity in its form, drawing the performer to contemplate what it means to create sound in relation to a score that seems, paradoxically, transparent yet opaque. The notational clarity here is striking, but this clarity does not simplify; rather, it expands the responsibility of the performer to construct meaning from what is deliberately left unresolved. Nagel’s sense of aesthetic distance—the gap between the external object and the subjective experience of it—suggests that, for the performer, the act of engaging with "Sequential Dukes" is akin to an exploration of the meaning of each note, with each sound representing not just itself but also its space within the totality of the composition.
This aesthetic distance allows for a kind of ethical engagement between the performer and the work, where each sound is not imposed but rather proposed as part of a wider landscape of interpretation. To play Sequential Dukes is not merely to reproduce the notes but to embody the spaces between them—to enter into a creative relationship with the score’s sparse notation, which invites the player to bring their own subjectivity into play without overpowering the work’s form.
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