Etableringen av en norsk klavertradisjon: Interpretative trekk ved Edvard Griegs Ballade op. 24, Geirr Tveitts Sonate nr. 29 op. 129 og Fartein Valens Sonate nr. 2 op. 38.
(2024)
author(s): Einar Røttingen
published in: Research Catalogue
The theme of this dissertation is three important Norwegian piano works. The dissertation includes a main text, a recording and a critical/practical edition of Valen’s Sonata no.2 op.38. By using a musicological/analytical and artistic approach, this dissertation aims to create a greater understanding for these three works as a part of a Norwegian and continental European piano tradition. The main text investigates the contents of the music and how the works are built. It looks at the performance indications in the score and performance practice traditions (historical recordings). References and allusions to other works in the same genres and to similar piano styles are discussed. By looking at possible autobiographical and metaphorical allusions, the dissertation aims at finding an understanding for the works’ origin and meaning. The critical and practical edition contributes for the first time to correct errors and unclear readings of the existing edition and presents a possible realization of Valen’s incomplete score. The main text also includes general criteria for the interpretative choices on the CD. (Norwegian version only, some parts are translated to English as articles)
The Polyphonic Touch. Coarticulation and polyphonic expression in the performance of piano and organ music
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Andrew Wright
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Performances of solo keyboard repertoire can sound more or less polyphonic depending on the performer’s use of divergence in expression. Rather than being a purely cerebral experience, this expressive divergence is situated in an ecological relationship between keyboard and player where the gestural dynamics of technique and musicianship overlap. Specific body schemata relating to expressive divergence are therefore foundational to the interpretive freedom of the performer in creating polyphonic expression, and feature transparently in the musical result. This dissertation of Andrew Wright
theorises expressive divergence by examining the embodiment of single voices through the hierarchical structuring of coarticulation, and by showing how these multi-layered gestures combine in the polyphony of expression. This performative view of polyphony is contextualised not only in musical practice, but also in the wider interdisciplinary use of polyphony as a metaphor. Single-player polyphonic expression is shown to enact or demonstrate an inner experience of the plurality of subjective agency, an experience made possible by its embodied dimension. Besides verbalising and theorising polyphonic expression, this dissertation provides experiments and exercises useful for developing such a practice, as well as examples of its application in concert.