Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 2024. ACPA ACPA 2024

• The 'harpe organisée', 1720-1840 : rediscovering the lost pedal techniques on harps with a single-action pedal mechanism (last edited: 2023) author(s): Maria Cleary connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  While preparing for a concert in 2014, I, Maria Cleary, found certain passages impossible to play in Louis Spohr’s Opp. 115 and 118. I consulted Backofen’s methods for harp, where I knew that he had written about double-pedalling. I explored all aspects of pedalling on the single-action harp. The research extended across five historical areas of research: treatises and methods, musical sources where a special solution is written by the composer/publisher, scores with no instructions but where multi-pedalling is implied by the music, historical shoes, and finally images of harpists pedalling. To play Spohr’s music, the harpist uses the heel and toe independently and over thirty-seven complex moves are part of his music. When a pedal is folded or unfolded during a piece, Spohr writes at least one bar’s rest for the harpist. Historical pedalling employs the whole foot, completely off the floor, where most pedals are not fixed. Pedals were moved at the moment where an accidental is written in the music and then released. Pedal markings are unnecessary, as pedalling becomes an inherent part of the musical gesture. The physicality of pedalling creates tensions and resolutions that mirror the musical line.
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• Vokales Instrumentalspiel in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (last edited: 2023) author(s): Claire Genewein connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The performance practice of Italian instrumental music in relation to vocal music and text: Sources and their modern realization. In my work I, Claire Genewein, have shown that in the second half of the 18th century in Italy, one prepared instrumental music for performance with the help of texts. Central to this work is a treatise by Benvenuto Robbio Conte di San Raffaele stemming from the circle around Giuseppe Tartini which demonstrates the various steps of learning instrumental music through text underlay. Based on this, I could show how in various genres (solfeggi, recitatives, arias) numerous composers (Domenico Corri, Francesco Geminiani, Guiseppe Tartini) used texts and singing in preparing instrumental music for performance. The influence of this sort of “vocal” preparation on the interpretation of instrumental music has proved itself to be very fruitful in my own playing as well as in my work with students.
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• Romanticizing Brahms: Early Recordings and the [De]Construction of Brahmsian Identity (last edited: 2023) author(s): Anna Scott connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Despite most pianists' claims of historical deference and creative agency, their performances of Brahms's piano works are nothing like the early-recorded performances of the composer and his students: gaps that are mediated by understandings of Brahms's Classical canonic identity, the performance norms that protect that identity, and those norms' underlying aesthetic ideology of control. This predication of Brahmsian identity on restraint leaves the composer and his students in a precarious situation, as their recordings evidence an approach that is governed by the inhibitions typically associated with Romanticism. This volume, by Anna Scott, seeks to problematize understandings of Brahms's identity: by investigating the origins and vestiges of the aesthetic ideology of control; by analysing and copying the recordings of pianists in the composer's inner circle; and by applying these pianists' styles in ways that are just as disruptive to modern notions of Brahmsian identity as their early-recorded models. In so doing, a thoroughly Romantic performance style emerges that catalyses a fundamental shift in understanding as related to Brahms's identity; thereby opening up a new palette of expressive and technical resources, and both elucidating and narrowing persistent gaps between modern and early-recorded Brahms style, as well as between what performers believe, know, and ultimately do.
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• What late medieval chant manuscripts do to a present-day performer of plainchant (last edited: 2023) author(s): Hendrik Vanden Abeele connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This book is witness to Hendrik Vanden Abeele__s research into the development, construction and creation of a present-day performance practice of late medieval plainchant, based partly on his work with the Belgian chant group Psallentes. The study focuses on sometimes very specific aspects of the performance of plainchant, relating to a rich and diverse body of chant manuscripts. Meanwhile, the constantly recurring personal storytelling draws a picture of research-acts as ingrained characteristics of the every day activities of a musician. The many challenges and obstacles faced when performing plainchant may turn into opportunities, where the performer fills in the blanks with ideas, colours and textures. He may even be tempted to draw outside the lines, countering any practical or historical constraints in a creative way.
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• Thirty Sixth Series of the Next Kind of Series (last edited: 2023) author(s): Wim Kok connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The subject of the research of Wim Kok is __difference and repetition,__ an area which bears a direct relationship to Wjm Kok__s practice, in which the production of work always emerges and passes through series. It is also the title of a book by Gilles Deleuze that has been used as source and reference to explicate the research. Taking this book Difference and Repetition as a departure point, an ongoing series of writings was produced that sought to expose the different angles of the subject. The majority of these texts were published in diverse platforms, constituting an exchange with related subjects and his practice as a foundation for exploring other territories. A selected collection of these texts constitutes the dissertation. The presentation of this research will take place during the defense in the Grand Auditorium of Leiden University.
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• Basso continuo sources from the Dutch Republic c. 1620-c1790 (last edited: 2023) author(s): Kathryn Cok connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The results presented in this dissertation, written by Kathryn Cok, demonstrate the generous contribution that the Dutch Republic has made to the genre of basso continuo, including a survey of twenty-six Dutch sources from the 17th and 18th centuries. Focus has been made on the written record of the practice in the Dutch Republic of the time, including method books, music books where mention is made of basso continuo, dictionaries with detailed descriptions of the practice, and translated foreign treatises, all helping to paint a picture of how the practice was put into effect. Special attention has been given to a relatively unknown manuscript by Jan Alensoon.
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