UNVEILING THE FOLK DANCE IDENTITY OF CARL NIELSEN'S CLARINET CONCERTO OPUS 57: A FYNSKE MODERNIST STORYTELLING
(2022)
author(s): Ettore Cauvin
published in: Codarts
Carl Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto Opus 57 is a work of a problematic nature for both performers and audiences, who always find it difficult to understand its rich yet intricate content. Despite copious written material, many interpretations are unfortunately significantly misleading because of the extreme technical difficulty of the music and the lack of information about the composer’s identity, especially concerning his production for clarinet and the distinct role of the instrument in Nielsen's life.
My research shows that the composer's roots, the development of his production and the uniqueness of Danish folklore and related dances uncover narrative levels which are fundamental to a correct reading, not only of this work but of Nielsen's music in general.
This study aims to create a multidisciplinary performance that combines the original score with dance and storytelling to enhance its peculiar characteristics, such as the bipolarity of characters and the intrinsic reminiscence of elements of Danish folklore within specific sections. Based on an extensive critical literature review and a fruitful expert consultation, I made analyses, charts and transcriptions, attaching explanatory video recordings as the basis of my work.
Thanks to my field research trip to Denmark, I started designing a new performance combining the folk-related investigation and the extra-musical elements linked to Nielsen’s identity, to both the musical interpretation and imaginative dance performance to show the bipolarity of characters as well as portray the inner storytelling.
The goal of my research here is not to demonstrate Carl Nielsen’s compositional willingness but to establish relations which can help the performer and the audience to connect the music to its vital folk heritage, extraordinary customised spirit and distinctiveness in both dance and storytelling.
The artistic result is, in fact, a new hybrid performance of the work which portrays the complex music more consciously and innovatively, combining an informed musical approach with an imaginative choreography and active interplay between the contrasting manic episodes and the homeward feeling of the heartening sections, letting the audience partake in the musical narration.
Despite the complex construction and demanding realisation of this kind of creative approach, I firmly believe that the result of this research makes an essential contribution to the understanding and interpretation not only of this work but of the music and identity of Carl Nielsen and the Danish musical tradition for the world of classical music and beyond.
Further research is needed to shed light on the relations between classical and folk music, within performing arts in general, to strengthen their essential role in today's society to make what is usually considered a niche more accessible to the public by exploiting its unique characteristics for a more sustainable artistic and social usefulness.
From culture to nature and back. A personal journey through the soundscapes of Colombia
(2020)
author(s): Lamberto Coccioli
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies, Birmingham City University: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
The purpose of this essay is twofold: to celebrate the astonishing richness and diversity of Colombia’s natural and human soundscapes, and to reconstruct the process through which my direct experience of those soundscapes has influenced my own creative work as a composer. Reflecting on a long personal and intellectual journey of discovery that plays out on many levels – musical, anthropological, aesthetical – helps bring to the fore important questions on music composition as the locus of cultural appropriation and reinterpretation. How far can the belief system of a distant culture travel before it loses its meaning? From a post-colonial perspective, can a European composer justify the use and repurposing of ideas, sounds and songs from marginalised indigenous communities? In trying to give an answer to these questions through the lens of my own experience I keep unravelling layer upon layer of complexity, in a fascinating game of mirrors where my own identity as a "Western" composer starts crumbling away.
Johannes Kretz and Wei-Ya Lin: con | versation – de | fragmentation
(2019)
author(s): Johannes Kretz
published in: Research Catalogue
This is the exposition for the application of Johannes Kretz and Wei-Ya Lin for the SAR conference in Bergen 2020.
creative (mis)understandings - Methodologies of Inspiration
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Johannes Kretz, Wei-Ya Lin, Samu Gryllus, Zheng Kuo, Ye Hui, Wang Ming, Daliah Hindler
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This project aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities.
The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing interdisciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning.
The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”).
The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results.
The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior investigator) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.
Postcolonial Fandango: Interdisciplinarity between Early Music, Ethnomusicology and Postcolonial Studies
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Camilo Arias
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The musical label of "Latin American Baroque" has been associated with musical cross-breeding, allthough the body of its repertorie (music from colonial archives) documents rather the absence of afro-hispanic or hispanic-amerindian musical features. By accepting the impossibility to find the written the exoticized "Mestizo Baroque", this research chooses to "re-imagine it" from orality. Taking the Fandango musical family as a framework, it enters into playful dialogues between the XVIII century European fandango and its surviving folklore counterparts: the Mexican Son Huasteco and the Colombo-Venezuelan Joropo. Through analysis and transcription of oral sources, style comparison, arrangement, and improvisation research aims to create a musical product that resolves the identity tensions present in the Performance of Colonial Baroque Music.
Grenzen van het hoorbare: over de meerstemmigheid van het lichaam
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Mark van Tongeren
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In our culture, vocal harmonics fuction as independent musical elements since only a few decades. Thresholds of the audible explores the changing relationship between singers, listeners and harmonics. As a research method a series of compositions (Nulpunten/’Zeropoints’) has been developed, which attempt to make a fresh approach to overtone singing and to the sonic source material of the human body. They spark off further investigations of reality and illusion of our auditory world. Using his experiences with Tibetan monks and Sardinian brotherhoods and the ‘transverbal’ oeuvre of Michael Vetter, Mark van Tongeren develops his notion ‘multiphony of the body’. The last word, according to him, must be given to readers/listeners, who are challenged to shift their thresholds of the audible with the cd It starts here and the performance Incognito ergo sum.
Presença de Cheshire
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Maria Peres
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
O projeto desenvolvido auto propõe-se como um lugar de fala da Escuta.
O seu ponto de partida encontra-se com a celebração do Solstício de Inverno em diversos lugares do Mundo — que rapidamente se estende num universo epistémico, cognitivo, com espaços para pensamento e especulação.
Como humanos, possuímos uma abertura natural e particular para com os novos encontros e experiências com o outro — não só pragmaticamente mas também teoricamente e esteticamente. Heidegger foi o impulsionador desta nova relação com o que nos rodeia, e este projeto revela e prolonga o que se encontra sob este embrulho que é esta responsável essência humana.
A aproximação de novos espaços para leitura, de novos espaços de partilha — clubes do livro, conferências académicas, — e novos espaços de conversa possibilitou a definição da perspetiva da metáfora que une toda a reflexão desenvolvida. Reflexão essa que torna notáveis e ressoantes a música, a empatia, a aceitação, a alteridade e a ética.
Uma caixinha de música irá proteger o verdadeiro projeto. Será o meio que irá abrigar e permitir o mergulho sonoro em toda a contemplação experienciada com esta manifestação.
This is the exposition for the application of Johannes Kretz and Wei-Ya Lin for the SAR conference in Bergen 2020.open exposition comments (0)