
IVE MUSIC
IVE LISTENING
IVE COMMUNICATION
REFLEX Invisible Score
& Practice
The Reflex Invisible Score is the notation technique Keren Rosenbaum developed to compose relationships among sound, movement, image, and physical action. Through earphone click-tracks and other cues, it activates an invisible layer between the performers: a relational field that the audience hears as the music unfolds. Each score is a practice of Reflexive Listening.
The Reflex Invisible Score grew from a composer’s question: how can a score hold relationships that I hear, see, and taste together? Keren Rosenbaum’s synesthetic experience led her to compose lines for sound, movement, light, words, and physical action, and to search for notation that lets performers enter the relations among them. The scores began with CRUMPLE IT in 1988, and the Reflex Invisible Score notation took its form in 1992. The score is called invisible for the layer it activates between the performers: a relational field the audience hears unfolding while its notation stays hidden. In the original scores, each performer received a click-track through earphones. The click-tracks set the timing relations among the players, so their lines could meet, separate, and return together with a precision invisible to everyone in the hall. In Inbetween, a duet published in Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21 (2009), two click-tracks hold the violin and cello within this shared field. A Reflex Invisible Score notates the composition and the listening it asks for. It sets out what each performer does, when lines meet, and which cues pass between them, while leaving the realization to the decisions performers make as they play. Each performance becomes one realization among many, shaped by the people, the place, and the moment. Performing from these scores is how Reflexive Listening is practiced. A performer follows their own line while hearing how it meets the others, and what they play changes what they hear next. Within a single phrase, a performer may step back to reflect on what is happening, or sense reflexively how listening and playing shape each other as they unfold. The score gives both a place to happen. Since 1988, the Reflex Invisible Score has grown into a body of over 400 scores and variations, gathered in fields that reach from the concert hall into daily life. The Reflexive Preludes, Perspectives, Scales, and Études hold the foundations of the practice. The Reflexive Compositions, the REFLEX Ensemble repertoire, the OperaGames, Festivals, and Exhibitions carry it into performance. Reflexive Kids, Family, Cooking, Story, Reality, and Playground bring it home. Each title pairs an action with IT. LISTEN TO IT – CRUMPLE IT began the collection in 1988. The SynesWALK Scales open listening through the senses, from EarWALK #1 – LISTEN FAR-NEAR-INBETWEEN to TasteWALK – A SOUND. CONDUCT IT – A DEMOCRACY OF DICTATORS brings the ensemble into the score, and the City OperaGame DREAM COOK JUMP extends it to a whole community, with live tasks reaching performers through earphones, light, and video. In the kitchen, LET IT RISE – BREAD becomes a score too, and in daily life, PROTECT IT – YOUR RED DOT. The Zero to 100 IT Collection is the visual evolution of the Reflex Invisible Score. It grew from the composer’s question and from the wish of Playground Masters such as Isabel Taurel, Kiki Ylimutka and Danny Felsteiner Mekori to practice with scores everyone can read. Its scores are designed so people without prior musical knowledge can perform them, and through them practice the mindset of The Playground Approach (ALP). The collection holds Études, the basic scores, and their Variations. Two names guide the collection. Zero to 100 is Rosenbaum’s name for the relational field itself, the field every score brings us back to, and where it sustains our living presence. IT is the core of what moves us, drawn as a red dot. It is the core of each person, and with it their calling and their responsibility. A musician might recognize IT in the words “that’s my sound.” Every score shares one structure. The recursive process of FIND – PLAY – SHARE – CREATE crosses the I–YOU–WE–WORLD perspectives, so each score sets its own crossings: I FIND X I PLAY, YOU SHARE X WORLD FIND… As the crossings change, the same action opens new relations. Each score invites performers to play from their IT within the Zero to 100 field, listening as it meets the IT of others. From these scores grew The Playground Approach, where their structures are explored in artistic, educational, therapeutic, and organizational settings. Each score begins with something clear to do, and listening carries it further.