Notational actants: new musical approaches through the material score
(2024)
author(s): AI Grayson
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
This exposition brings together a collection of images, thoughts, and descriptions of the initial stages of a doctoral research project that explores the concept of 'notational actants': materially-focused, 3-dimensional objects intended for touch-based interpretation in musical performance. The majority of the content in this exposition was created during a one-month residency at Mustarinda (Hyrynsalmi, Finland).
"An Actor Prepares": A musician's approach to a selection of techniques by Konstantin Stanislavski
(2022)
author(s): André Teixeira
published in: KC Research Portal
The belief that imagination’s engagement and emotional connection with what I play enhance my performance propelled me to do this research. However, these are not systematically integrated in instrumental practice. Thus, it seemed to me that the twentieth century theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski’s ‘system’ would be the perfect basis for such a quest.
The starting point were acting techniques from his first book "An Actor Prepares": the "given circumstances", imagination-related ("supposed circumstances", “inner visions”, "magic if”) – and emotion-related ("emotion memory", "sensation memory", "surroundings"). Partly supported by existing literature, these techniques were linked with the instrumentalists' work and tested out in a self-case study through three interventions.
The process consisted of making video recordings of the 'before' and the actual interventions, which were guided by the filling out of intervention forms designed by me. The techniques were applied on three distinct piano passages of Richard Strauss’ melodrama for narrator and piano "Enoch Arden". Furthermore, I did interventions’ reports to provide more palpable insights about the experience, namely the effects of each technique on the performer.
The outcome was evaluated through a questionnaire filled in by a group of listeners, comprising musicians and non-musicians, and by me.
The responses generally show that the techniques were effective. However, the recordings were perceived as very similar. Also, the listeners’ perception sometimes differed from mine.
Nevertheless, the reports allow us to conclude that these techniques might affect the performer’s focus, creativity, self-confidence, knowledge about the works and also self-knowledge.
IN - The creation of an immerive music performance
(2017)
author(s): Jonathan Bonny
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Jonathan Bonny
Main Subject: Classical Percussion
Research Supervisors: Gerard Bouwhuis, Fedor Teunisse
Title of Research: IN – the creation of an immersive music performance
Research Question:
How can immersive performance concepts be used to create a better connection between a musician and his audience?
Summary of Results:
In my research, I reflected on several aspects of a concert and how I want to communicate with my audience. Throughout the research I realised that finding ways to immerse an audience is easier said than done. My belief in immersion as a tool to guide listeners towards a certain atmosphere, attitude or interpretation is nevertheless still as strong as before. More than ever, I am convinced that this is the way for me to perform. This is particularly the case for contemporary music where inexperienced listeners might appreciate some guidance. This paper aims to inform (performing) readers of the possible (positive and negative) consequences of creating an immersive performance. Creating an immersive performance is difficult. It takes a lot of time, something musicians often do not have. In addition to learning the music, the performer needs time to brainstorm about the kind of immersion that supports the musical idea and does not distract from it. The line between the two is very thin. Once the immersion concept is established it often takes a lot of preparation to execute it. To bring elaborate ideas to fruition musicians will need the help of technicians, engineers, other artists etc. This explains why immersive performances are often organised by ensembles that rely on a bigger production team and budget. The danger here lies in the fact that those teams are often too far removed from the actual content of the music. Realising this made me think about other ways to connect with an audience. I concluded that besides immersion, also attitude and mindset are very powerful tools to decrease the distance between a performer and the audience. Low-tech solutions like literally performing very close to or surrounded by them are very effective to emotionally connect with the audience. Because of the reflective character of the topic I chose to write my dissertation in the form of an essay. My goal is not to present 'the ultimate truth' but to inspire myself and other musicians to create a personal (contemporary) performing identity.
Biography:
Jonathan Bonny (°1992, Bruges) studied classical percussion at the School of Arts in Ghent, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. He is actively building towards a music culture that knows no distinction between genres and he is consistently looking for innovative ways to present contemporary arts to a bigger audience. He co-founded Headliner (adventurous music collective), Kunstenfestival PLAN B (contemporary arts festival) and IHEART (band).
Repository - storytelling and rhetorics
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): A M Elkjär
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This repository displays a first attempt to analyse how a storyteller från the region of Värmland, Sweden, employs musical qualities in his stories.
Thinking about dialects, my personal experience is always a feeling of loss: As a child I spoke in Fryksdalsmål, a dialect from the region of Värmland. The dialect is renowned for its singing, musical qualities, which is sometimes stated as one of the reasons for the very strong oral storytelling tradition within Värmland. Today, as a professional flautist living in Gothenburg, some of my dialect washed away over the years. However, I do believe that my playing and musicianship is influenced by the dialect and storytelling from Värmland in several ways.
Boundary objects in Informed Phrasing
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Nadav Katan
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Informed phrasing is a doctoral research project which aspires to form performative methods informing phrasing from both the cognitive and the Schenkerian views. A main objective of this project, is to shape the 'informing' process as performative, yet containing analytical and theoretical insights that alternatively would be reached in a non-performative manner . Therefore, the term Informed phrasing in this paper is referred as a performative process that involves analytical and cognitive inquiries which are made by and through the practice of musical performance. In this respect, I attempt in to incorporate analytical and theoretical fields into the performance processes and by that to transform those fields from theoretical terrains into performative methods. In order to fuse analytical methods and cognitive theories into musical performance in a performative manner, I must firstly introduce the concepts that allow those different terrains to relate to each other and to integrate into musical performance. These connections are only possible through the 'boundary objects' of these fields: reductions, universal structures, and classical improvisation. In this paper, I will present and discuss those boundary objects which relate the aforementioned terrains to each other and to musical performance. Thereafter, I will describe the integration of these boundary objects in the methodology of the Informed phrasing research project.
Powers of Divergence – Online Repository
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Lucia D'Errico
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This exposition is thought as an online repository of media for the book "Powers of Divergence". Exposition and book, in combination, are part of my doctoral dissertation, and should be read together.
The research project which this exposition refers to is integral part of the five-year research programme Experimentation vs Interpretation – Exploring New Paths in Music Performance in the Twenty-First Century or MusicExperiment21, funded by the European Research Council, hosted at the Orpheus Institute of Ghent (BE), and led by Paulo de Assis. The programme has explored and developed notions of “experimentation” in order to propose new performance practices of Western notated art music.
This research project proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes and conventions of musical interpretation. Crucially based on a strong creative and practical component, it presents a new approach to the performance of Western notated art music. In this new approach, corresponding to an artistic practice supported by reflections and research, the performance of past musical works is not regarded in its reiterative, reconstructive, or reproductive function. This new practice instead insists on performance as a locus of experimentation, where “what we know” about a given musical work is problematised. The performative moment becomes both a creative and a critical act, through which new epistemic and aesthetic properties of the musical work emerge.
This new practice insists on the unbridgeable divergence between codification (score) and materiality (sounds, gestures). Rather than being minimised, this divergence is amplified, so that performance happens through sounds and gestures unrecognisable as belonging to the original work as an interpreter would approach it. Instead of relying on the culturally constructed system through which symbolic categories are biunivocally connected to material events, this practice exposes the arbitrariness of such a system, together with the boundaries of its epistemic implications.
The activity of interpreters and executants focuses on the balance between objectivity (the instructions contained in the score, the “facts” accumulated around the musical work, etc.) and subjectivity (the performer’s freedom, his/her expressivity, etc.). This new practice goes beyond both objectivity and subjectivity, embracing an experimental approach to music performance that challenges traditional notions of interpretation. Whereas execution and interpretation relate to an ideal and aprioristic sonic image of the musical work (as Platonic copies), the performance practice proposed here posits itself as production of simulacra: thus performance becomes a sonic “image” that relates to what is different from it (the score) by means of difference, and not by attempting to construct a (supposed) identity. In this process, internal resemblance is negated, together with the idea of composition as origin and performance as its telos.
New Artistic Possibilities with The Max Maestro - An Animated Music Notation System for Non-Professional Performers
(last edited: 2016)
author(s): Anders Lind
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The Max Maestro – an animated music notation system was developed by the author to enable the exploration of new artistic possibilities for composition and performance practices within the field of contemporary art music. More specifically, to enable groups/crowds of non-professional performers regardless of musical background to perform fixed music compositions written in multiple individual parts. Furthermore, The Max Maestro was developed to facilitate concert hall performances where non-professional performers could be synchronised and perform along with an electronic music part and/or a professional chamber/symphony orchestra. This exposition presents the background, the content and the artistic ideas and possibilities with The Max Maestro System and looks at three live concert hall performances where The Max Maestro was implemented. An artistic research approach with a qualitative methodology was adopted for the study. Empirical data from the three performances were analysed through the lens of the author as a composer. This exposition contributes with new knowledge to the field of animated music notation and how to facilitate performances including non-professional performers in a contemporary art music context.
Freeing the Creative Mind - An exploration of thought patterns and their effect on musical performance
(last edited: 2016)
author(s): Makram A. Hosn
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The subject of the Psychology of performance has interested me more than anything in the past few years. The reason behind this is that I believe that all trouble that I encountered as a musician (fears, creative blocks, procrastination...) are products of my mental activity. I set out to observe my own mental activity, conscious and unconscious and to collect data from related literature and scientific research to utlimately attempt to reprogram my thought patterns to work for me, rather than against me. The end product is this "reflective practitioner" research that I've completed for my Master of Music degree entitled "Freeing the Creative Mind".
This exposition brings together a collection of images, thoughts, and descriptions of the initial stages of a doctoral research project that explores the concept of 'notational actants': materially-focused, 3-dimensional objects intended for touch-based interpretation in musical performance. The majority of the content in this exposition was created during a one-month residency at Mustarinda (Hyrynsalmi, Finland).open exposition comments (0)
The subject of the Psychology of performance has interested me more than anything in the past few years. The reason behind this is that I believe that all trouble that I encountered as a musician (fears, creative blocks, procrastination...) are products of my mental activity. I set out to observe my own mental activity, conscious and unconscious and to collect data from related literature and scientific research to utlimately attempt to reprogram my thought patterns to work for me, rather than against me. The end product is this "reflective practitioner" research that I've completed for my Master of Music degree entitled "Freeing the Creative Mind".open exposition comments (0)