At the Dramstadt Summer Academy 2016, I was waiting for a concert to start. The person sitting next to me seemed like she didn’t want to miss a second of what was happening around her, but wanted to get to know me, too. Her name is dejana sekulić (she prefers lowercase), she is a violinist, and the very last thing I heard before the concert started was “I’m interested in the temporality of the impossible”. I can’t remember anything else about that concert, because that must be one of the coolest titles I’ve ever heard.

I composed for her “Impossibilities of DDMMYYYY”. In dejana’s own words: “The piece is quite literally a forever-changing piece – its form (‘score’) is a video generated from extremely various sources, appearing in front of the performer (and the audience) for the first time only in the very moment of the performance itself.”

The concept of the temporality of the impossible opens up the imagination and points out many things I love and hate about music written for the violin. The “temporality” cancels the “impossible”; someone will always rehearse the unplayable. However, I decided to use the time dimension exactly to create the impossibility; the practice and preparation are now exactly the things that you do not have. It isn’t improvisation either; it is failing with great virtuosity.

An impossible piece raises philosophical and ethical questions of communication and collaboration between the composer and the performer. dejana and Miika discussed some of them at the 7th PSN conference. A link to the talk will be provided soon. We are also hoping to analyse the questions further in an article format soon.

“Impossibilities of DDMMYYYY” for solo violin was written inspired by and for the ”Temporality of the Impossible”, Dejana Sekulić’s artistic PhD research, taking place at the CeReNeM and ReCePP, at the University of Huddersfield (UK).

The video score

The video score is written anew for every premiere and rehearsal, to maintain the impossibility of the performance, but some things about the notation remain the same.

• Two big screens are recommended for speciality and movement
• Musical notation (of any kind) should be played or sung accordingly
• The text introduction should be followed accordingly
  • These are often memories, such as “Play the first piece you performed in public”
• indicates reading or recitating the given text
• Copying the sound is indicated by two symbols: 
  • First, indicates listening to the sound
  • Then,  indicates reproducing the heard sound (with instrument, voice, body, etc.)
•  indicates dancing according to the given choreography
• Previous versions have also included
  • Costume changes (the costume was discussed before)
  • Use of props (playing with a plastic flower that was given as a surprise)
  • Meditation
• Typically, the different actions should be performed simultaneously, for example, an academic question that should be answered while changing the costume and simultaneously listening to music that should be copied.

Premiers

3/6/2019 at la Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France

25/2/2020 at the University of Huddersfield, England

26/5/2024 Music Biennale Zagreb

13/7/2025 Performance Studies Network conference at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, as part of our academic talk