ABSTRACT
Working with a large number of people presents a challenge for a composer interested in the social and functional relationship between individuals in a group. It is harder still when individual freedom and contingency are used as means to effect new situations, with localized decision-making controlling aspects of largerscale movement and structure. In an orchestra in particular, the historically evolved hierarchical structure mitigates against such individualism: the developing focus of Christian Wolff’s music for large groups, however, has been the attempt to find other ways to allow individuals to be organized and to organize themselves. Centring on the use of smaller sub-groups to promote interactive playing, his work exemplifies the use of different levels of contingency to mediate the relationship between players when writing for large groups, examining the way in which hierarchical and collective organization operates between both the people and the musical material.
