Saunders, J (2025) Taskmasters and purposeless instructions: make-work as a compositional frame. In: Royal Musical Association 61st Annual Conference, 10 - 12 September 2025, University of Southampton, UK.
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Abstract
Work is, at times, arbitrary and somewhat pointless. In daily life the weight of purposeless tasks is a constant frustration, driven by a disconnect between the required work and its utility (Graeber 2018). We are given, and give, instructions to follow, often with no questioning of their value to ourselves or others, simply accepting them at face value. Equally in music we give instructions to others via scores which do not always question the rationale for the prescribed activities (Saunders 2017), instead assuming some kind of aesthetic outcome is in itself justification. In this paper I make connections between the perceived lack of value in many contemporary work contexts and the assumed validity of instruction-giving in music, considering the balance between purpose and task subservience in rule-based compositions. I reflect on recent projects, including my own, which require players to undertake a series of simple, repetitive activities that are in themselves relatively pointless, operating within a network of arbitrary rules and constraints, trying–or not–to complete the tasks as best they can. It questions whether the make-work we experience in daily life can be repurposed in music as a process for understanding how we construct value through decision-making, and the way these actions are observed by others.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | bullshit jobs, instructions, grammar, make-work, purposelessness, scores, tasks |
| Subjects: | M Music and Books on Music > M Music |
| Divisions: | Bath School of Music and Performing Arts |
| Research Centres and Groups: | OpenScores Lab Research Group |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Sep 2025 16:44 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Sep 2025 16:44 |
| URN: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/17273 |
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