Squalid and Obscure: Timbral Word Painting at the Arpa Doppia
(2017)
author(s): Hannah Rose (Kit) Spencer
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Kit (Hannah Rose) Spencer
Main Subject: Baroque Harp
Research Supervisor: Kate Clark
Title of Research: Squalid and Obscure: Timbral Word Painting at the Arpa Doppia
Research Question:
Can timbral refinement, through synthesized notation and subsequent technical exercises, enhance contrast and word painting in arpa doppia continuo realisations of Seconda Prattica songs?
Summary of Results:
While functionally versatile, the arpa doppia, an Italian harp of imposing size with multiple layers of resonating strings, revealed its nature as fondamento, in the subtle art of continuo. Direct contact with the open strings gave singers, accompanying themselves on the harp, unparalleled control over the instrument’s timbral potential. This is reflected in the role of the instrument within musica secreta, private concerts at the courts of Ferrara and Modena stylistically favouring word painting and chromaticism, in ensembles such as the concerto delle donna and Baroni sisters. The expressive freedom of their art influenced poets and composers and contributed to the development of the seconda prattica at the turn of the sixteenth century. Indeed, voice and harp were held up as the ideal way to perform epic poetry, a reflection of the mesmerising contrast and colour their combined forces could deliver. How do we find this unique skill-set today from a broken line of tradition, contending with limited, conflicting primary resources? There is very little surviving repertoire specific to the instrument, and other sources such as paintings are static representations with considerable variation in position and placement of the instrument, body and hands, making it hard to replicate. In the years dedicated to exploring the arpa doppia, we harpists uncover these insights through shared motions and motivations of our forebears— finding a way to play like them by trying to vividly colour the text as they did. This is a way artistic research can bring to life the spectrum of lost practice and technique. My research has resulted in the creation of timbral notation for the arpa doppia, easily added to music notation and publishing software. This notation is designed to help recreate as much as possible all the timbral refinement found by the hands of masterful singer-harpists. It documents, builds upon and preserves the invaluable research of historical practitioners, using visual, contact-based diagrams to provide clarity in understanding this evocative and highly specialised art form. With this foundation of timbre and text, it aims to reconstitute the virtuosity, influence and innovation of the original arpa doppia players, through our shared practice today.
Biography:
While playing as the Australian Youth Orchestra's Principal Harpist, and as a fellow of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Kit Spencer's Honours degree culminated in studying Berio's infamous Sequenza II with its foremost interpreter, Alice Giles. Her passion for colour, gesture and bass lead her to arpa doppia, beginning with Andrew Lawrence King's St. Petersburg production of Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Bauska Castle, Latvia.
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.
Audio Descriptive Synthesis
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Eddy Savvas Kazazis
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This thesis examines the viability of audio descriptors within a synthe-sis context. It provides insight into acoustical modeling based on verbaldescriptions by quantifying the relationships between verbal attributes oftimbre and a set of audio descriptors. Various predictive models of verbalattribute magnitude estimation (VAME) are also tested. The results showthat is possible to create, classify and order sounds according to a verbaldescription. Finally, audio descriptive synthesis (AUDESSY) is introduced.This technique offers the possibility to synthesize and modulate sounds ac-cording to sonic morphologies, which are revealed by audio descriptors.
Timbral Microperspectives
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Martyna Kosecka
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Project "Timbral Microperspectives" rediscovers the processes leading the composer in his/her artistic preferences through the immerse analysis of the factors of artistic discovery, lifelong learning, and contribution. The starting point for executing "Timbral Microperspectives" research lies in investigating innovative solutions in various tuning systems' interrelations within a musical composition. Driven by the initial idea for distinct timbral concepts, creative, quite often non-musical impulses or attraction by certain sound phenomena, Martyna Kosecka tries to rediscover and establish microtone's functioning in the harmonic landscape of music, as well as its overall significance in the creation of her new musical work. What is the process of transformation of the artist within the artistic process? What can be the possible triggers that shape our decision making in art? How if to document our choice-making and analyze it along with the growth of artistic creation itself?
This project contributes to the dialogue within musical aesthetic and artistic research theories. It provides a new look at the compositional processes and corresponding methodology practices in an artist's self-development.