"Encumbered with useless graces": Ornamentation and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-century Scottish Music
(2024)
author(s): Jonty Coy
published in: KC Research Portal
Throughout the eighteenth century, a steady stream of Italian musicians travelled to Scotland, in search of artistic and commercial success. Inspired by the enterprise of their Scottish counterparts, many published collections of “Scots Tunes,” such that by the end of the century a rich body of repertoire had emerged. Italians and Scots alike valued this repertoire for various reasons: for some, these tunes represented an idealised vision of pastoral simplicity; for others, a fossilised record of the music of past generations; for others still, these tunes were a vehicle for the expression of nationalistic sentiment.
This repertoire presents a challenge to Early Music practitioners today, who must contend with the fact that this music has been transmitted through textual sources and oral tradition. To this end, many musicians engage with elements of Scottish Traditional performance practice – a practice that often diverges from, and is at times incompatible with, dominant understandings of eighteenth-century performance practice.
In this thesis, I summarise some of the ornamentation techniques employed by Scottish Traditional musicians, investigating their possible influence on Italian Scots Tunes sources. I contend that comparative analysis of these sources can inform performances of this repertoire, by revealing implicit relationships between notation, performance practice and aesthetic judgements. Further, I survey current trends in the historical performance practice of Scots Tunes, interrogating the ways in which this repertoire is framed by modern conceptions of “folk” music. I observe that this repertoire continues to be valued within a variety of aesthetic frameworks, which are themselves revealed, upheld, and reproduced through performance practice.
Breathing into the Ecological Trauma: The Case of Gruinard Island
(2020)
author(s): Christoph Solstreif-Pirker
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
With the performative investigation of Gruinard Island, Scotland, an exemplary non-site of anthropocenic extinction, this research exposition aims for alternative ways of encountering space in the midst of the present ecological crisis. The research exposition suggests an inclusive way of breathing, thinking, and living that merges “with experience, art, ethics, technology, mysticism, science, etc.” (François Laruelle: Principles of Non-Philosophy).
Facing our own imminent extinction, ecological thought can no longer fall back on ideologies toward-death but has to investigate how the immediacy of our planetary all can be encountered in the fullness of its ambivalence. With this affirmative approach, a feminine, birthing approach unfolds, that makes the otherness of the environment an ally for forging practices of vibrant becoming, political responsibility, and mutual trust.