Composition strategies for the creation of science-based interdisciplinary and collaborative music-theatre
(2024)
author(s): Daniel Blanco Albert
published in: Birmingham City University: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
The practice-based PhD research project comprises the development and application of composition strategies and techniques generated through interdisciplinary collaboration to integrate elements and ideas from non-sonic disciplines into the musical discourse of new music-theatre works, specifically opera. I explore mechanisms of mapping and association that engage with both the specific subject matter of each piece and the creative collaborative environment in which they are created, thus generating different compositional resources that I use to inform the creative process. By using mapping techniques, I can deeply engage and communicate a subject matter on different levels in the musical composition.
The framework for this research is the intertwining of art and science on a variety of levels from a music compositional perspective. Within this framework, I explored the integration of knowledge and data from the natural and social sciences to inform the composition of four science-based music-theatre works: In response to Naum Gabo: Linear Construction in Space No. 1 (2020), Autohoodening: The Rise of Captain Swing (2021), The Flowering Desert (2022), and TRAPPIST-1 (2023).
With this approach, I aim to closely link these works with their particular subject matter instead of being composed based just on my personal musical taste. By consistently and cohesively applying the strategies and techniques explored in this research, the outcome is not creating music about science or music inspired by science, but, instead, music embedded with science in which the scientific data and knowledge inform the composition decisions. The subject matter is therefore intertwined within the musical discourse, its performativity and theatricality, and its relationship with the other disciplines and collaborators involved in the creation of these music-theatre works.
,__ ^_. ||:_DOWN_DEEPCUTS_'LOCK[ANIMÉ.INVENTION] :||,•__\-‘ - - ÉTUDES FOR THE BEGINNING OF AN ONLINE PRACTICE
(2021)
author(s): Josh Spear
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
The Covid-19 pandemic of early 2020 has had a huge and wide-reaching effect. My group made up of four composer-performers called Bastard Assignments was not exempt. We were pulled to continue to make work, the difference now is that we are online at our individual homes and meeting each other on Zoom. Zoom is a company that has been around since 2011 and a lot of us have recently become familiar with it to celebrate birthdays at a distance, catch up with friends, or conduct our business. It was set up by a Chinese computer scientist who only after the ninth attempt at the application secured his visa to live in the USA. Since the beginning of 2020, the worldwide usage of Zoom has risen 67%, its use diversifying from corporate communications to domestic and arts activities. My compositional and performance work with Bastard Assignments is rooted in collaboration, devising, and group creation. It favours memorisation over the use of musical scores, emotional presence over reproducibility. As we take our work together into a purely online workspace, important questions arise. Through a new way of working online, does our adaptability bring about a new form? How will we understand this online work when and if normalcy returns? Skills that we learn as composer-performers are dropped, remade, and tested during this period, how will our practice have changed?
Émergence du « biorelationnel ».
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Mélodie Claire
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Cette recherche, tente d’interroger notre rapport à l’Autre vivant plus qu’humain en élargissant la conception de l’art relationnel au-delà du champ social pour penser la relation en termes d’expérience sensible. Elle cherche à découvrir, voire inventer une pratique que j’appelle « biorelationnelle » pour penser un engagement vers de nouveaux modes de collaboration et d’échanges multi-espèces.
Pour ce faire, j’apprivoise depuis quelques années les possibilités artistiques du biofilm de levures et de bactéries.
Tyrone and Lesley in a Spot: illuminating creative emergence in Composed Theatre
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): David Megarrity
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Tyrone and Lesley in a Spot is a 60-minute intermedial show combining screen and song in performance which has a very musical question at its heart: ‘can a whole show be like a song?’ Ostensibly a concert presentation, its covert intermedial complexities emerged in ‘a unique piece of theatre […] a performance that knows it’s a performance’ (Sullivan 2016).
The show’s development was characterized by a distinct provisionality based in a dialogue between plasticity of structure in the writing, and plasticity of form in the making. Axial thinking (Eno 1996) helped manipulate the variables at play in critical moments of the performance. Creative discoveries were identified as ‘within domain’ (Katz and Gardner in Hargreaves, Miell & MacDonald 2012: 110) firmly locating the show as a project of Composed Theatre. In a highly musicalized creative process many elements were allowed to emerge rather than being predetermined, and this revealed a range of principles of interest to makers of intermedial performance.
Into the Hanging Gardens - A Pianist's Exploration of Arnold Schönberg's Opus 15
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Friederike Wildschütz
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Reflections on the Project “The Voice of the Piano: Performing early 20th century Lieder with Arnold Schönberg's "Das Buch der hängenden Gärten" as central work”
Arnold Schönberg’s “Das Buch der hängenden Gärten”, Op. 15 (1908/09) could be considered the most important song cycle of the 20th century, yet in comparison to German Lieder from the 19th century, it is rarely performed, and existing research does not focus on the pianist’s perspective. The artistic research project “The Voice of the Piano” centred on exploring the work from a pianist’s viewpoint and articulating performer’s knowledge related to it. Key concerns were if it is possible and appropriate to approach Opus 15 through the poetry and “play the words”, if there is a particular “performative feel” to this repertoire related to either the poet or the composer and if Schönberg’s musical language in this cycle that is often considered the starting point of his so-called atonal period requires new skills and competencies from the pianist.
To develop a better understanding of the cycle, Opus 15 was contextualised in three different ways. It was performed together with other Lieder with texts by Stefan George, other Lieder by Arnold Schönberg and other Lieder that were composed in 1908 and 1909. The project resulted in a concert for each of the contextualisations, a final concert and the reflections “Into the Hanging Gardens: A Pianist's Exploration of Arnold Schönberg's Opus 15”. The reflections trace the artistic process and elaborate on the three contextualisations and on how the pianist’s understanding of and approach to the work and its performance changed throughout the project. They reveal insights developed through an in-depth study of the poem texts, the music, relevant literature and recordings and through the practice and performance of the cycle.
Cette recherche, tente d’interroger notre rapport à l’Autre vivant plus qu’humain en élargissant la conception de l’art relationnel au-delà du champ social pour penser la relation en termes d’expérience sensible. Elle cherche à découvrir, voire inventer une pratique que j’appelle « biorelationnelle » pour penser un engagement vers de nouveaux modes de collaboration et d’échanges multi-espèces. Pour ce faire, j’apprivoise depuis quelques années les possibilités artistiques du biofilm de levures et de bactéries.open exposition comments (0)