What is a flux?

A flux is a passage in the music where one varies between (fluctuates) a short series of patterns, often just two, and arrives back at the start. When the flux is between two objects, he tends to denote them by the Greek capital letters for Theta and Phi (see the image). 

I could have titled this article: "what is a pattern?" A pattern functions as a fundamental unit in the majority of Lubomyr's compositions (caveat: the ones that I've seen!), especially his early ones. The continuous music began with 'pattern-work', he often says. The early exercises such as the Meditations hark back to the origins of his music. I think it is important to note many of his more recent compositions are not so easily divisible into blocks of patterns - but they're also fantastically more difficult; Lubomyr has said that 'pattern-work' is necessary to discover the physical and mental aspects of his technique, to get your foot in the door, hold it open, and widen it further. I recommend the pieces "Illirion" and "Butterfly" for people wanting a sense of what his music sounds like when it departs from pure pattern-work.

Lubomyr did have some early influence from the ambient minimalists, especially Terry Riley, but he never wanted to recreate minimalism, which his music is often mistaken for. So! What is a pattern? It is not a minimalist's cell. If the cells in minimalism are musical ideas replacing the analogue of a bar of classical music, I think it is more accurate to say that a 'pattern' in Lubomyr's music functions more as a replacement for a note or very brief chord sequence, as a snapshot of a harmonic idea; the pattern is maintained and extended for an often "arbitrary" duration (but not really; the human player acts on their emotional whim, but their understanding of the music guides a sense of how long is too long or how short is too short) in order to let the piano sing, rather than just briefly bark and die. Maybe 'note' is sometimes wrong; what is better, perhaps, is (living) tone.

Similarly, fluxes need not be played to the letter; if you modulate differently from one to another, or change the right hand at a different time to the left, it is all fine - probably. And it is definitely fine if you are playing organically and understand the piece without feeling limited by the score.

• "Do not worry of fear when the pattern of the changing notes (in either or both hands) becomes inverted or in the 'wrong' order, either at point of change in patterns, or in flux changes; for mindlessness will restore the 'correct' order by peace and gentleness. The knowledge of the figure as a block will re-establish the figure into its true position, while the mind maintains the flow without panic or destruction. It occurs by 'remote control'."

Of course, you might be confused by the fact that the above patterns appear to be written as a bar. This confusion is artificial, because you are looking at the marks on a page and these do not represent the music. The bar is there only to divide patterns; the score is there as a crutch to help you 'perceive the music' (something Lubomyr often says) but it can only take you so far. It takes a while, but one really has to adjust to interpreting scores in a different way - coming to them with a different attitude - when learning Lubomyr's music. On attitude - in a recent interview with Lubomyr, he compared one of my recent concert performances with the playing of another of his students, who is an extremely well trained classical, concert pianist.

• "The most blatant difference is one of attitude"

Is what he said of that comparison; there, he was regarding me as an example of a "continuous pianist". 

I have often been asked about how the rhythm works in continuous music. It is something of a mystery to me as well. When you look at the page and see the pattern in its entirety, sometimes it is clear what the best thing to do is. But, as you can see from the above extract, sometimes there are essentially no markings whatsoever. Does this mean the piece has no intended, or correct, rhythm? Not really. It just means you have to find it in practice. Sometimes patterns are difficult until your mind views them in just the right way, and when that happens the correct rhythm is unlocked as well - the rhythm often being too complex to faithfully write down in the score. Moreover, dictating the rhythm in the score would be destructive, since the rhythm must, above all, be organic. That does not mean it can be arbitrary; rather, it means that whatever the continuous pianist generates in the moment is one of the many flavours of 'correct'. It is definitely possible to play one of his pieces incorrectly!

Though I indicated it's not always true, it is usually the case that the two hands play notes of equal duration, during one of these fluxes or patterns (and when it is not true, it is still true that each individual hand maintains essentially equal durations). This doesn't mean that one of his pieces could be faithfully scored, via traditional notation, using (say) only quavers. He has done this before, when experimenting with producing public scorebooks, but he is never happy to do it. In the above, the lines you do see on the few notes which have stems - which traditionally would mean 'quaver' - certainly do not mean quaver, which is instead a rigid eighth of a measured bar.  The notes tend to be of equal duration, yet this duration is not at all fixed and can either subtly or dramatically change throughout a piece.

Better to say the notes are locally of an equal duration; now, why is that? Why do fluxes tend to have this feature, such that classically trained musicians might ask me: "so it's all semiquavers, then?" (a fair but misleading question)

It is not from a lack of imagination. There are three essential reasons I can think of right now:

(1) The introduction of something like "quaver-quaver-quaver-minim-quaver-dotted crotchet-quaver" into one of these patterns would be awfully disruptive to the natural flow of the hand, in this music. It would be like jogging on an highland trial, enjoying all the scenery, taking the time to delight in what you will and then having your drill sergeant bark at you to stop for precisely one second, bid you jolt forward for another two seconds, before finally allowing you to resuming again. It can be done, but it is not for this music. To be clear, I am not trying to suggest, via this metaphor, that precise rhythms in classical music are disruptive - they're part of the many forms. This music just happens to be different. Similarly, Lubomyr's music tends to not have a time signature (because "your time", whatever that means, is more important than a marked 6 : 4 ratio, and when he does mark ratios he says he does so that you might perceive their significance, not that you might sweat and strain to really make sure you perform them exactly)

(2) In general, notes are not played and then released in time for the next one. Classical music has a legato mode, but predominantly this continuous music operates in an extreme version of that (not always - see e.g. the 'dry spell' runs in the middle of Butterfly) and, as a part of this desire to be 'living' in every way, your fingers may be resting on a note long after they were told to do so by the score. You cannot enforce rhythms with an irregular note duration if your hand is melting into the keyboard.

(3) We don't need to have it any other way! Having, for the most part, locally equal note durations obviously places some kind of restriction on what is possible (and all musical forms are somewhat restricted from being like other musical forms, unless you take the view that musical forms do not, or should not, exist) but the restriction is not keenly felt. Continuous music does not find itself in rhythmic poverty. While your hand is all a-running and a-flowing in a pattern (which is, again, like a note or brief  chord sequence) you can mentally pluck out specific sub-notes, give them a particular voice, vary your pressure and emphasis - Lubomyr often plays with great attention given to every single note, even in a blisteringly fast run - and then in the developing of the pattern through time an emergent rhythm will come, and it will carry many other sounds you were not expecting. The music is absolutely not monotonous or robotically repeated. It is most important to be aware of this possibility, though it is not always easy to do.