Heterotopia of the Practice Room: Casting and Breaking the Illusion of Tristan Murail’s Tellur for Solo Guitar
(2023)
author(s): Maarten Stragier
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
A combination of highly unusual extended playing techniques with open intabulated notation makes the solo guitar work Tellur altogether unique in Tristan Murail’s catalogue. When placed in the broader discursive context of Murail’s compositional philosophy, this unique configuration of elements causes a quandary. The composer aims to integrate “the totality of sonic phenomena” into his compositional language, and within this context he maintains a traditional view of musical authorship. However, how does a performer reconcile this perspective with a score of which the combination of unconventional techniques and open notation leaves so much of the sonic material to their individual discretion and know-how?
This exposition offers the first performance-led study of this conundrum in Murail’s music and writings. Using Lydia Goehr’s historical study of the work-concept as a point of orientation, I explore the functioning of Werktreue in Tellur. I show that the processual structures that should make up its “ideal” score are correlative with the composer’s abstraction of the guitar, which is in its turn correlative with the guitarist’s unconventioned heuristics. I argue that confronting traditional musical authorship with this system of correlation creates a discursive aporia, but not a practical impossibility. Rather the discursive aporia brings to light what I call the “heterotopia of the practice room.” In this heterotopia, I as a performer navigate a musical reality that simultaneously reflects and contests a tradition of classical music performance built around the regulative work-concept.
Transforming performance- an inquiry into the emotional processes of a classical pianist
(2021)
author(s): Francisca Skoogh
published in: Research Catalogue
This artistic research PhD project challenges classical music performance culture through a series of experimental collaborative projects. My particular interest lies in how this culture shapes the psychological experience of performance from the perspective of the individual musician. The project’s aims can be further defined through the following research questions: a) How can I better understand the psychological impact that the traditions and ceremonies of classical music have on my performance? b) Departing from my own practice, what other factors affect me emotionally during performance? c) How can experimentation with the traditions of performance culture in classical music provide different modes of emotional regulation in staged performance?
This thesis is a compilation of projects and publications in which I explore classical music performance through my individual experience as a soloist. Selected concert performances of classical works, experimentation with performance settings, and the creation of two commissioned works, play central roles.
The method and design builds on the qualitative study of several case studies of my practice as a concert pianist in collaboration with other musicians, choreographers and composers. The methodological approach entails combinations of autoethnographic methods, stimulated recall and thematic analysis. The theoretical framework is twofold, and rests on psychological and psychoanalytical perspectives as well as on a socio-historically driven analysis of the music-theoretical concept of Werktreue.
Some artistic results are available online in The Research Catalogue and others are published on the CD Notes from Endenich (Daphne Records). The combined outcomes of the project suggest, that musicians can benefit from an increased awareness of factors that affect the western classical music performer. While this thesis is specifically directed towards other musicians, it is also my hope that the findings can be valuable also in other research fields. Without the active contribution from musicians and artists into the investigation of how they function as performers, and of the values that accompany them on-stage, it is difficult to understand which needs should be addressed scientifically. For music researchers, there are many opportunities to dig into the different aspects of performance, but it is vital to let musicians show the way by collaborating within the field of Artistic Research, and thereby, together with musicians, find new ways to transform their experience of performing.
In Search of A Lost Language: Performing in Early-Recorded Style in Viola and String Quartet Repertoires (October 2019)
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Emlyn Stam
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Early recordings made between the 1880s and mid-1930s reveal a wide gap between the performance practices of a century ago and those of today. Though many contemporary musicians often claim fidelity to composers’ intentions, they clearly prefer to avoid the risks associated with playing in ways familiar to the very composers to whom they pledge fidelity. Given this state of affairs, I, Emlyn Stam, suggest a re-thinking of the concept of Werktreue, predicated upon the notion that 19th-century performers enacted their fidelity to works and composers by creating altered and highly personalized versions of the detail, structure and time of composers’ works. My own performances aim to enact this performer-centred Werktreue in order circumvent the frequently restrictive nature of modern performance practices while closing the gap between these practices and those heard on early recordings of viola solo, viola/piano and string quartet repertoires.
The question my work engages with is: how might viola and string quartet playing in the performer-centered, moment-to-moment and communicative style heard on early recordings be brought about today? In order to achieve this aim, the study of relevant literatures on early-recorded style is combined with historical research and the detailed analysis and ‘all-in’ copying of early recordings.