Research Catalogue

Artistic research project: "Resisting Gentrification: In-situ Performative Protests in Trešnjevka Neighborhood"

Body posture is one of the most important topics in flute playing, it has been important for a long time. How should we actually stand and what is exactly right and wrong? Over the years, much has changed in music, which greatly impacts how we as musicians move and stand. Is what your teacher told you, really the best for you?

Visual communication for ARMADIO ANTI-BORGHESE, Elisa Nicoloso's fashion collection. “With perhaps a somewhat radical spirit I want to destabilize the boring bourgeois schematic. For my collection, the starting point was the typical garments that characterize the bourgeois wardrobe of a classic bank employee. Double-breasted jackets, shirts, pleated trousers and trench coats are broken down into their component simple elements and then reassembled through a different scheme that introduces an unpredictable conflictual element. Garments that try to reconstruct their integrity will fail. So I attempt to annoy composure and morality through the same means they adopt, the scheme.” Elisa Nicoloso In the same way the box in which this display project is contained has been sectioned to his structural elements, attached to the same white cotton fabric the designer used for the collection and reassembled. The integrity however has been lost as the box collapses and dismounts as it gets opened. Not even when it’s closed it restores its initial integrity. The box alters his shape at every use as the overflowing fabric can’t be contained. It’s up to the user to decide whether to try to contrast this incomposture or accept it in the performative act of closing the box. Gloria Furlan

Two of the oldest manuscripts containing trumpet music lie in the Royal Danish Library and were both written in Denmark around the year 1600. They contain hundreds of fanfare-like melodies with little explanation as to how, why, or where they should be played. Written by trumpeters with limited musical education, the manuscripts present a unique challenge in deciphering distinct and personal notation styles. The aim of this research is to shed a new light on the so-called Thomsen and Lübeck manuscripts by stepping into the shoes of the trumpeters of the late renaissance and early baroque. The court of Christian IV (1577-1648), King of Denmark and Norway, was one of the most influential courts of early 17th century Europe and employed a respectable number of at least 123 trumpeters throughout Christian’s 60 year reign. By examining the role and duty of those trumpeters, as well as the culture around trumpet playing in the 16th and 17th centuries we gain a new insight into the festive, vigorous, and loud music of the royal courts. Improvisation plays a big part in interpreting the Danish manuscripts. By applying improvisation techniques described by Italian and German trumpeters in the 17th century, as well as considering the capabilities and limitations of historical instruments, new life is brought to fanfares which might appear monotonous and repetitive at first glance.

Finding an audience we can relate to, or bringing our social circle into our audience is still a struggle for most younger composers. With the Western classical opera audiences ageing and the attempts to bring younger audiences into opera houses and concert halls, we need to ask ourselves as composers who we write for, and how we reach these people. My opera Serenoid which had its premiere in September 2024 at Tête-à-Tête Festival in London came out of a niche space of queer and disabled geek culture in creative online fandom communities that I have been part of since I was a teenager. These groups are hardly engaged with classical music as a genre, their creative focus is on visual art and writing, mostly around an established pop-culture franchise, in this case Star Trek. Often decried as cringy, the spaces in which they move have been melting pots for many people outside of the narrow representation of mainstream media in search for community and belonging since the arrival of the internet. The decision to take Serenoid as a story from an obscure niche space on the internet to the opera stage attempts to speak to its members and therefore open the doors my own community to become part of the “opera audience”. My research describes the process and outcomes of this experiment and hopes to prove that as classical composers we can speak to younger and diverse audiences by openly and authentically being part of the group we write for.

Just as variety and change are the core principles of nature itself, they seem to be essential for music, too. This research examines doubles in the repertoire for flute between 1700–1750 as a specific type of variation. Originating as a vocal tradition of embellishing the second verses of airs de cour, the tradition continued in instrumental music by creating doubles mostly for songs and dance forms, such as Menuet, Gavotte or Sarabande and remained popular until it gradually evolved into the variation form in the second half of the 18th century. The role of the flute in this repertoire is unique thanks to the vogue of the airs the cour among flautists and composers for flute. The presented exposition traces the development of doubles in the flute repertoire of the first half of the 18th century. Highlighting the variety of unique compositional styles, the research distinguishes between three typological categories of doubles: diminutive, ornamental, and those presented in sets of variations, typical of a Galant sonata. The examination and analysis of a representative number of doubles led me to extract elements and patterns, typical for each category, and, in turn, this thorough study of the doubles allowed me to play them with a better understanding. Finally, the synthesis of both the theoretical and empirical approaches provided enough information and inspiration to compose doubles for other musical pieces from the same period. These newly composed doubles are included in the collection titled L’Art de doubler, attached to the exposition.