Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 2024. ACPA ACPA 2024

• The relationship between gesture, affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of French tragic opera from Lully to Rameau (last edited: 2023) author(s): Jed Wentz connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Jed Wentz explored the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en musique in a number of videos.
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• Extended Piano Techniques in Theory, History & Performance Practice (last edited: 2023) author(s): Luk Vaes connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  So-called "extended techniques" have suffered a consistent lack of understanding from a theoretical, historical and practical point of view. Although most of them __ e.g. playing directly on the strings, cluster- and glissando-techniques __ exist in a substantial part of the repertoire for the piano and have done so for more than a couple of centuries now, the use of the techniques on stage still sparks off negative reactions by audiences, composers, performers and tuners as well as owners of pianos. Any one-sided approach towards appreciation has proven to be inadequate: academic analyses do not succeed in handling the matter satisfactorily, endeavors by musicians to teach and advise on the "proper" use of the techniques have come short of applying an in-depth and a historically informed perspective. A comprehensive and exhaustive survey of the extended techniques as a whole can serve to alleviate the risk that the relevant repertoire sinks into oblivion, contributing to a reassessment of the subject, in turn benefitting contemporary professional performance practice, concert programming, composers__ interest and musical as well as music-historical education. The subject and its related terminology are scrutinized and (re)defined where necessary. The acoustical properties of the techniques are explained from the perspective of the performer to ensure proper insight in the way they produce sound. Over 16.000 compositions have been considered to write the history of improper piano playing, comparing manuscripts with first and subsequent editions of solo as well as chamber and concerto music, original compositions as well as transcriptions, from the "classical" as well as the "entertainment" sector. Original preparations collected by John Cage were tracked down and described in minute detail so that alternatives can be considered on the basis of professional information. Historical recordings as well as personal experiences and interviews with composers are used to pinpoint historical performance practices. To help the pianist prepare for concerts with the relevant repertoire, measurements of the internal layout of the most common grand pianos are listed in order to anticipate possible problems in advance. Author: Luk Vaes
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• Johan van Meurs : een studie over een pionierend orgeladviseur (last edited: 2023) author(s): Jaap Brouwer  connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This research of Jaap Brouwer is only available in Dutch In deze studie staan twee onderzoeksvragen centraal. De eerste betreft de vraag naar de kwaliteit van de orgeladviezen uit de jaren dertig van de vorige eeuw en de invloed daarvan op de orgelbouw uit die tijd; de tweede betreft de vraag naar het belang van de dispositieverzameling van Johan van Meurs.
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• Calypso music : identity and social influence : the Trinidadian experience (November 2016) (last edited: 2023) author(s): Clarence Charles connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Calypso, Identity and Social Influence, The Trinidadian Experience seeks to establish links between calypso music and the construction and maintenance of identities, and to locate the genre as a mechanism or as part of a mechanism that has exerted on-going social influence within Trinidadian society. It chronicles the evolution of calypso music from its emergence in Trinidad, and highlights contingent institutions, peculiar traditions, and salient events that have shaped the socio-political and cultural landscape there during the Colonial and Post-Colonial periods. The study, undertaken by Clarence Charles, is descriptive and explorative, and follows an interdisciplinary route that integrates historical fact, socio-anthropological philosophy, psychological, musicological, and ethnomusicological thought, and notes from my own ethnographic research. It analyses a large corpus of written material, and audio/visual recordings of music performance and participation in calypso and carnival-related events by practitioners and audiences alike.
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• The Polyphonic Touch. Coarticulation and polyphonic expression in the performance of piano and organ music (last edited: 2023) author(s): Andrew Wright connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Performances of solo keyboard repertoire can sound more or less polyphonic depending on the performer’s use of divergence in expression. Rather than being a purely cerebral experience, this expressive divergence is situated in an ecological relationship between keyboard and player where the gestural dynamics of technique and musicianship overlap. Specific body schemata relating to expressive divergence are therefore foundational to the interpretive freedom of the performer in creating polyphonic expression, and feature transparently in the musical result. This dissertation of Andrew Wright theorises expressive divergence by examining the embodiment of single voices through the hierarchical structuring of coarticulation, and by showing how these multi-layered gestures combine in the polyphony of expression. This performative view of polyphony is contextualised not only in musical practice, but also in the wider interdisciplinary use of polyphony as a metaphor. Single-player polyphonic expression is shown to enact or demonstrate an inner experience of the plurality of subjective agency, an experience made possible by its embodied dimension. Besides verbalising and theorising polyphonic expression, this dissertation provides experiments and exercises useful for developing such a practice, as well as examples of its application in concert.
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• Thinking through the guitar: the sound-cell-texture chain (last edited: 2023) author(s): Marlon Titre connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Although the guitar has been part of the classical music tradition for centuries, writing for the guitar remains a formidable challenge for many composers. Where orchestral instruments have a long history of scoring guides that help composers develop their craft, the number of studies dedicated to guitar scoring remains scarce. This has led to a myriad of scoring problems in guitar works written by non-guitarist composers, often evidenced in unplayable passages and underdeveloped textures. The present study of Marlon Titre aims to fill this gap by establishing and developing guidelines for effective use of the classical guitar__s scoring potential. These guidelines are described through the sound-cell-texture chain, a model introduced in this study that identifies building blocks for guitar scoring that are believed to give the composer access to the scoring potential for the guitar. The second aim of this study is to use the findings of the research to compose a set of new guitar etudes.
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