Research Catalogue

The master’s thesis "I lydarlæte" is an artistic exploration of lydarlæte. Lydarlæte is a music tradition with roots dating back to the beginning of the 1800s and is music that was meant for listening – at a time when Hardanger fiddle music was otherwise associated with dance or ceremony. Through an exploration of musical details and characteristics in traditional lydarlæte, the goal of the research is to create new music that has both a distinctive character and a connection with traditional repertoire. The work draws inspiration from different musical traditions, including traditional and experimental folk music, spectral music, and contemporary music. The investigation is presented and exemplified through reworkings of the three lydarlæte tunes Smedalslåtten, Guro, and Lydarlått etter Ola Okshovd, which are based on recordings of Ola Nilsson Lie (1898-1957) and Andris A. Dahle (1925-1995). The first part of the thesis sheds light on traditional lydarlæte from Valdres, addressing their emergence, central performers of the first era, and the repertoire. The various aspects of the investigation are then presented; these include musical parameters such as combination tones, tonality, and fiddle tunings, as well as time understood through Henri Bergson and musical time. The main approach used in the reworkings of lydarlæte has been termed “zooming in – unfolding” and is inspired by Gerard Grisey’s work on Les Espaces acoustiques. Finally, the three reworkings are presented. The work is hermeneutically rooted and draws on theoretical perspectives from Hans-Georg Gadamer.

The following is a three-pronged alternative master thesis based on the core research inquiry “What is musical-cultural appropriation and how do we, as musicians and artists, tackle it in practice?”. One part of the thesis is a case study of Paul Simon’s seminal album Graceland (1986) as a key example of musical-cultural appropriation in practice and how one’s habitus plays a role in their approach to a select culture(s). The next part of the thesis provides a brief overview of autoethnography as a research method and how it instrumentalizes this researcher’s own diametrically opposed personal-cultural positionalities (as both appropriator and appropriated, minority and majority) as a part of the answer to the question of musical-cultural appropriation. The final part of the thesis is a songwriting log that utilizes autoethnographic techniques in order to demonstrate and interrogate real-time musical-cultural appropriation in practice.

En utforskning av låtskrivingsverktøy og metoder i prosess mot å skrive et album

Gjennom de siste to studieårene på NMH har jeg gjennomført et masterprosjekt sammen med bandkollega Oskar Johnsen Rydh som i stor grad har dreiet seg om kompositoriske og performative eksperimenter med vårt band Yawn. Dette har innebært å skrive musikk med bruk av poly-tempo, mikrotonalitet, algoritmisk improvisasjon og utvidede komposisjonsteknikker som å ta i bruk lys som et aktivt visuelt uttrykk i kombinasjon med musikken. Arbeidet har vært planlagt, gjennomført og dokumentert gjennom tre internasjonale turnéer og én albumutgivelse i perioden 2021 - 2023.

Mit masterprojekt handler om at undersøge mit overlappende virke som komponist og udøver. Mit udgangspunkt har været kvintetten Caktus, som jeg har arbejdet med siden 2017. Jeg har både skrevet ny musik samt arrangeret musik for Caktus i en udvidet storband-besætning sammen med orkestret Ojkos, og har desuden spillet eksisterende Caktus kompositioner med to helt nye meget forskellige ensembler. Idéen har været at undersøge hvad der sker med mine kompositioner når de spilles i helt nye konstellationer, hvordan jeg komponerer for hhv. Caktus og Caktus i udvidet besætning, og hvordan instrumentering, menneskelige møder, indstudering og energier påvirker musikken.

Oskar Johnsen Rydh - Master