Codarts
About this portal
Welcome to the online Research Catalogue of Codarts University of the Arts, Rotterdam.
The catalogue is an online forum for our Master of Music students to share and develop their artistic research with their coach and network, and to publish the final results.
contact person(s):
Santiago Cimadevilla ,
Christiaan van Hemert url:
http://www.codarts.nl/
Recent Activities
-
The Practice Guide for the Sequenza VII
(2020)
author(s): Maxime le Minter
published in: Codarts
The Sequenza of Berio is for me a special piece from the oboe repertoire. It is one of the only piece coming from what we consider modern music which oboe players arriving to a certain level need to master because this piece is now being asked in most of international competitions and even sometimes for audition for certain ensembles. This piece is also one of the most challenging of our repertoire. Written in 1969, this piece includes many difficulties for the performer such as extended techniques and high level technical difficulties. Because of the many audio versions that are available, it is in our days possible to get an idea of how the piece can be performed. however, I have made in this research a comparison between two reference recordings and how many differences can be found. Some other versions of the piece have been made in order to help the performers to practice the Sequenza. Jaqueline Leclair wrote a “a” version that can be found when you buy the piece in the store. That version, with the allowance of Berio, is a measured version of the piece intended to help the performer play the piece in a literal way and gives guidance regarding the tempo and the necessary time for this piece to be performed. This version has been refused by Heinz Holliger, who argued in letters with J. Leclair about how difficult and out of context her version can be, compared to the normal version. We will see in this research that this version is actually irrelevant to the original concept/idea of the piece if performed literally and also that it brings more troubles that it solves problems because of the impossibility to perform the piece in such a tempo.
The method I used to go through this process is, based on a reference recording, to show the difficulties point per point. For more clarity, I have divided the research per section, and I have put in each section the difficulties that were relevant to me, according to the comparison I have made between versions of the piece, and my own technical struggles. On each of those difficulties, there is a recording of the experimentation, including different ways of playing it, and a recording of which version is the easiest for the performer. Each result and their difficulties have been discussed with one of my three specialists and experimented and recorded by myself so I strongly believe in the result of each of the difficulties I am talking about. Also, every oboe player is different and the best way of tackling those technical issues might be different for all of us, so what I am trying to do here is to help the performer who perform his piece and the results are all according to my own way of playing and of my strong and weak point as a oboe player. I would recommend to the reader to have a flexible view on that work and to take what is helpful for the player. I would be glad to have any performer telling me that he would have used one section of this whole research.
-
Discovering improvisation tools in Jazz
(2020)
author(s): Ella van der Mespel
published in: Codarts
Initially I viewed having these two years of my study as a chance to be able to recognise my capabilities, strengths and weaknesses and then delve into the unknown. Improvisation has been something I have longed to have the confidence and skill to be able to do. I have never had any previous training in improvisation and no chance to experiment with it. However by having the desire to gain fundamental skills in improvisation comes a deep fear of the unknown; that there is a chance of failure – that I would never reach the means to be able to improvise in a way that would bring me satisfaction. While accepting that there is always this possibility, my will and determination to experience improvisation and to find my own way to express myself through it, greatly outweighed my fear.
I have always been greatly impressed by those who are ‘brave’ enough to improvise, especially in public -to be able to experience performing with no pre-conceived idea as to what will happen and to have every aspect of musical freedom at one’s disposal. So long as one can improvise fluently, anything is possible with regard to playing and performing music - to have a unique voice which has not been corrupted by others opinions and musical wishes. This was my original and rather romantic idea of what improvisation was. I have since learned that there is far less freedom and more rules than I could have ever imagined.
Whilst having this uneducated and therefore idealistic notion of improvisation, there has been a deep embedded fear – to play music that has not been previously notated and therefore able to be decoded. A fear of playing a ‘wrong note’ – out of key and being unable to get back on the ‘right path.’
I have always loved musical genres where improvisation occurs frequently, such as in folk music and jazz. Despite being raised in a predominantly classical music environment, I have always had an affinity with music played by the greats, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. As my musical tastes began to broaden, the artistry of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli came into the picture.
Perhaps it is therefore of no surprise that Django Reinhardt’s Nuages was the first tune I thought of when considering improvisation as my research topic. Over the last few years I have been fortunate enough to live in a house full of students studying Jazz. They constantly played records, and introduced me to so many artists and jazz vocabulary. During an evening of listening, we stumbled across jazz violinist Didier Lockwood performing Nuages. I fell in love with his performance and started fiddling around with it in the privacy of my home. It is from Didier’s performance that my research began to take shape.
-
Arranging and performing Flamenco music for marimba
(2020)
author(s): Emilio Saura
published in: Codarts
When I started my bachelor, I always have had the motivation to play a flamenco piece. I thought it would be important for me and my career, to be able of playing pieces from different styles. Also because I was not really motivated with the contemporary repertoire which I was playing in my bachelor years.
I have been connected with the Spanish music, given that is my own music and I have listened flamenco music since I was young, because of my culture and the location of my hometown. But I´d never listen a marimbist playing flamenco. It was in 2014 in a flamenco festival close to my hometown (el cante de las minas, La Union) when I saw for the first time a marimba player playing a piece (an accompaniment for a singer) of flamenco. Instead of guitar, there was a marimba doing the accompaniment for the singer. Sound that marimba produced when the percussionist played those chords in the Phrygian mode called my attention suddenly.
For this reason, I started to investigate deeper on the flamenco, trying to play some pieces from famous composers like Paco de Lucia, Tomatito, Moraito, Paco Peña, etc. until the moment that I thought that I had to do something else because it was not enough for me. Consequently, I took one of my favourite pieces and also one of the famous pieces of Paco de Lucia: Fuente y Caudal.
For all of this, I formulated my first following research question:
``How can I arrange these pieces of flamenco keeping the idea of the music but with the sound of the marimba?´´
This question was huge and without a concrete message, because I wanted to arrange pieces but I didn´t know yet how many and more important, in which shape. When I really thought about how many pieces I wanted to arrange I decided to write the new research question, which was the following:
How can I create my own version and arrangement of the pieces Fuente y Caudal by Paco de Lucia and La chanca by Tomatito in the marimba?
But this question still needed more information so; I decided to write another one and which the current version of the research questions is:
``How can I create and perform my own arrangement of the pieces Fuente y Caudal by Paco de Lucia and La chanca by Tomatito keeping the main features of flamenco music?
With this research question, I can show also the goal which I want to arrive. How I said before, I was not really motivated with the repertoire that I was playing. I had to play always contemporary pieces which I even really liked. Then, in my master, I wanted to explore different possibilities on the marimba, and the best way to do it was playing a different repertoire.
My main goal is can be able to make arrangements of flamenco pieces and create my own repertoire based in this music. Even, I would like to show that marimba is not just an instrument for contemporary or classical music. Marimba is still a new instrument which we have to discover new sounds and new possibilities.
-
A new face of the cello
(2020)
author(s): Belén Ruiz Vega
published in: Codarts
As a cellist, I always enjoyed the classical repertoire but since I started to play this instrument I have tried to reproduce my favourite songs in the cello. Once I developed my cello skills, I started to write transcriptions of the songs played by my favourite bands such as Metallica or Scorpions. Years later, I had the opportunity to spend time researching this topic. So I decided to base my master research on arranging and performing heavy metal songs for cello ensemble.
In order to develop my research, I contacted experts related to this topic either for being in contact with heavy metal and rock or for being a cellist outside of the classical world. I listened to hundreds of songs and versions of those songs to take ideas and inspire myself for the arrangements and performances.
Finally, I did experiments in order to get different sounds or techniques from other instruments such as slap from the bass or death growls from the singers.
As a result of my research, I did three arrangements from different styles within the heavy metal, heavy metal itself, thrash metal and melodic death metal. Throughout this research, I developed my arrangement and performing skills, starting from a basic arrangement from cellos and drums to three cellos; and ending with an arrangement from a standard heavy metal band with new techniques included, to four cellos.
During this journey, I could improve step by step my skills and show all the progress in the last part of my research combining all the knowledge acquired through the process. As this topic was unexplored, my research could be a base for musicians interested in arranging and performing heavy metal.
With it, I wanted to bring closer the cello to all the people. Nowadays, classical music is losing audience and this new point of view can be a tool to have an impact on a new public. Since the last century, the cello has been included in a lot of popular songs, from The Beatles to Pink Floyd. Bands increased the use of the cello to the moment that ensembles of cellos, such as Apocalyptica or Break of Reality, decided to do something new and bring this instrument to different styles of music and showing the versatility of the cello.
-
Preserving The Fire - Implementing the jazz language of Woody Shaw
(2020)
author(s): T. D. Nobel
published in: Codarts
This artistic research addresses the intellectual legacy of jazz trumpeter Woody Shaw, with the main purpose of implementing his jazz language into that of my own, without losing my musical authenticity, in order to add a more modern sound to my bebop-oriented jazz language. It demonstrates how experiments result in the creation of a new method for designing musical patterns, combining two (or more) tonal modes with symmetrical aspects of the music of classical composer Bela Bartok; a method I call Cross-Symmetric Approach (CSA).
Following this CSA-method, eight patterns were constructed in order to support taking (hence: playing) structured steps beyond the borders of functional harmony, in the spirit of Woody Shaw. Due to the extended practice of both these eight CSA-patterns as well as numerous constructed exercises involving perfect fourth intervals in order to support the open and modern sound the patterns create, it is my goal to demonstrate that I can preserve the ‘fire’ of Shaw’s legacy without literally copying his jazz language. The newly gained vocabulary widely extended my possibilities for approaching chord changes and stretched my definition of harmonic consonance
-
Rite and identity of the cantaor flamenco in my own musical language
(2020)
author(s): ADRIÁN CRESPO BARBA
published in: Codarts
While flamenco harmony and rhythm has been widely used for creating new compositions, the use of flamenco voice in contemporary music is almost non-existent. The aim of this research was to uncodify the idiosyncrasy of the cantaor flamenco in order to apply it in a different musical context, starting from a solo instrumental piece and taking it to larger instrumental settings. To make this possible, the voice of the cantaor has been disaggregated into its melodic behaviour, its rhythm or its timbre.
The process consisted of transcribing examples of flamenco vocal recordings; analyzing many hours of videos, interviews and iconography to understand the cantaor’s rite; the participation of experts in the field like Mauricio Sotelo, Arcángel or Niño de Elche among others; and working side-by-side with the performers. The result came with three new compositions: ‘Cántico II: A la memoria de Antonio Mairena’, for trombone quartet, video media and soundtracks; ‘Cántico III’, a piece for voice, delay system and large ensemble; and ‘Cántico IV: Saeta por seguiriya after Velazquez’s ‘Cristo crucificado’’, a piece for electronic music, 3D animation and performative acting. In addition, this is probably the first study that treats in a deeper way the behaviour of the voice in the performance of cantes like fandangos or cañas, so it can open new perspectives on the field of flamencology.