Smalley’s Magic Piano: Reconstructing Transformation

Roger Smalley's Transformation was composed during a period of prolific output, intense creative development, and extensive international touring—one ending with the composer's 1976 immigration to Australia. Transformation marks the intersection of music/technology and composition/improvisation that characterized the approach of the performance group Intermodulation (Peter Britton, Andrew Powell, Smalley, Tim Souster, Robin Thompson). Until 2016, despite the work's significance, no further performances were given beyond those of Smalley and Souster in the early 1970s, and the work was never recorded or published. The fact of the work's all-too-brief performance history becomes less surprising upon viewing Smalley's original 1970 sketch, which was presumably the version used for the 1970s performances. Though the sketch is in the composer's impeccable hand, there are notations and performance directions that, while presumably adequate as reminders, are less practical for confident interpretation by others. This paper details the process by which the authors of the present study prepared a new critical edition of Transformation from various sources: Smalley's 1971 score, his sketches for the work, and the BBC recordings of Smalley and Souster. This led, in June 2016, to the first performance of the work since 1971. This article illustrates the significance of the work in the composer's output, particularly its spontaneous, improvisatory approach to technology and the intersection between composition/improvisation that characterized much of Smalley's output as a pianist-composer in the Intermodulation period.