Academy of Creative and Performing Arts

About this portal
The portal is used for the presentation of dissertations, papers, essays, artistic work, and work-in-progress of the ACPA PhD candidates. Furthermore, it is used by supervisors and other coaches to insert comments on the work of these candidates.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen 
,
Gabriel Paiuk 
url:
http://www.hum.leiden.edu/creative-performing-arts/
Recent Issues
Recent Activities
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Audible absence: searching for the site in sound production
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Ambient sound is a standard term used by sound practitioners to denote the site-specific background sound component that provides a characteristic atmosphere and spatial information in a sound work. In this project Budhaditya Chattopadhyay sets out to examine how ambient sound is used as a site-specific element to create spatial awareness in sound production. Taking a critical attitude towards the notions of diegetic sound, mimesis, presence, artistic transformations of soundscapes, and technological innovations, the project highlights the inherent similarities and differences between the ways ambient sounds are used in film and sound art; the aim has been to investigate how the latter practice informs the former and vice versa. The dissertation cites examples from a substantial number of representative Indian films and focuses on three of the recent sound artworks. These case studies are examined via critical listening, historical mapping, and thorough analyses of the sound production processes. The project also draws inputs from prominent sound practitioners in the form of semi-structured interviews.
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Discantare Super Planum Cantum : new approaches to vocal polyphonic improvisation 1300-1470
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Niels Berentsen
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Today’s performances of medieval polyphony have a lot in common with those of other ‘classical’ or ‘early’ music. Ensembles perform pieces written by known or lesser known composers, which the listener can revisit by listening to recordings or reading a score. In the middle ages, however, the performance of compositions was only one of the ways available to singers for creating polyphonic music. The ability to improvise a second or third voice above a plainchant melody, called discantare super planum cantum (‘singing above the plainchant’) or cantare super librum (‘singing on the book’), was a crucial skill for a church musician in the middle ages, and singers were trained at this from an early age.
Niels Berentsens’ project aims to expand our knowledge of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century polyphony, through music-historical scholarship as well as practical experiences. An in-depth investigation of the material remains of late medieval musical culture—compositions and theoretical writings about music—forms the basis for experiments with polyphonic improvisation above plainchants together with colleague-singers and students. The project has developed new ways of understanding late medieval polyphony, which are useful not only for teaching and analysis, but which may form a stimulus for contemporary performance practices of early music as well.
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Repertoire for a Swedish bassoon virtuoso: Approaching early nineteenth-century works composed for Frans Preumayr with an original Grenser & Wiesner bassoon
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Donna Agrell
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Frans Preumayr's nineteenth century virtuosic bassoon repertoire. An approach with a fine Grenser & Wiesner bassoon from Dresden: Issues of material and technique.
What techniques and tools must be developed by period bassoonists in order to successfully approach the performance of Frans Preumayr's virtuosic repertoire?
"A Very Fine Eleven-Keyed Stained Maple Bassoon by H. Grenser & Wiesner, Dresden, circa 1825" - as titled in an entry in a London auction catalogue - is one of the few surviving examples of a complete period bassoon with all its parts, offering valuable information for both period instrument builders and players today.
This research project of Donna Agrell is based specifically on the unique opportunity that the Grenser & Wiesner instrument presents us with: an investigation of early nineteenth century bassoon works written for the Swedish virtuoso Frans Preumayr by composers such as Franz Berwald and Bernhard Henrik Crusell. Solutions for technical problems found in this repertoire are sought and described, and include a discussion of reed styles and fingering systems for the period bassoonist.
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Dolce Napoli: Approaches for performance
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Inês de Avena Braga
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This thesis of Inês de Avena Braga examined two previously neglected topics, Baroque Italian recorders and the Neapolitan Baroque repertoire for the recorder, and then combined both aspects. First, information was collected on all Italian Baroque recorders currently known, including biographical references about the makers of these recorders, as well as technical drawings, measurements and photographs. The practical experience with the copies of a few of those recorders was described by the author. Second, the Baroque repertoire composed in Naples for the recorder was researched, uncovering a rich and forgotten corpus of music written and copied between 1695 and 1759. The Neapolitan recorder works were also listed with a brief analysis and further commentary on the recorder part, with a view of connecting the works with the instruments that might have once been used to play them. Furthermore, an overview of the social and cultural atmosphere of Naples in the early eighteenth century was offered as contextualization to the musical ambience, aided by iconographical references. Conclusions on performance practice are presented as a result of the combination of both research aspects. The artistic outcome of this study has brought together, also in performance, the two main aspects of the research: 'new' instruments and 'new' works.
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Het Urban Future-project
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Hans Scholten
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Central to this research of Hans Scholten is the Urban Future-project, which consists of a large archive of artworks made from 2002 until now. The original question underpinning this project was: what influence do chaos, entropy and fragmentation have on the viability of the rapidly developing urbanizing world?
In the course of the research project, the (literature and field) explorations led to the assumption that there is a demonstrable and necessary link between the quality of life in the city and vital social cohesion on the one hand and chaos, entropy and fragmentation on the other. In the artistic part of the research focuses on the question: is it possible to make the supposed connection between quality of urban life and chaos, entropy and fragmentation visible in artwork and, if so, how? In the written dissertation, working methods and strategies are contextualized and analyzed. The visual part derives from an artist's position which uses non-verbal, sensorial strategies to reach new insights. It mainly focuses on the visual and aesthetic possibilities of aspects of fragmentation, chaos and entropy because Scholten considers these aspects, as productive forces, to be the core of the experience of urbanization.
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Finding one's own voice as an indigenous filmmaker
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Itandehui Jansen
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In this dissertation of Itandehui Jansen, the ‘Voice’ of the filmmaker from a political and aesthetic perspective is examined. Within film practice the own ‘Voice’ refers mainly to the aesthetic style of a filmmaker. Within the field of postcolonial studies 'Voice' is related to the access that postcolonial subjects have to the production of discourse. Movies and other media can be seen in this context as a form of discourse. For Indigenous filmmakers both approaches to ‘Voice’ and having a ‘Voice’ are important.
This study explores the way in which Indigenous filmmakers, particularly from Latin America, express their 'Voice' both politically and aesthetically in their films.