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Exposition

Swedish Fryksdalsmål as a path to personal authenticity in contemporary music performance: the hidden rhetoric of a native dialect. (last edited: 2024)

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About this exposition

Thinking about dialects, my personal experience is always a feeling of loss: As a child I spoke in Fryksdalsmål, a dialect from the region of Värmland. The dialect is renowned for its singing, musical qualities, which is sometimes stated as one of the reasons for the very strong oral storytelling tradition within Värmland. Today, as a professional flautist living in Gothenburg, some of my dialect washed away over the years. However, I do believe that my playing and musicianship is influenced by the dialect and story-telling from Värmland in several ways. With this exposition-draft, I would like to address the question on how dialectal story-telling can inform musical interpretation. How much interpretational liberty is allowed to a classical music performer? Leech-Wilkinson forms a critique against the belief among the classical music community where musicians “should be transparent (inaudible) mediums for the composer’s intentions" (Leech-Wilkinson 2023) Expanding his thoughts, “classical musicians are brought up to believe that there is broadly one proper performance of any score, the performance its composer imagined; and that it is their job to produce that” (Leech-Wilkinson 2023). This string of thought is based on a discussion of authenticity that is informing the musical world today. On the other hand, and a bit confusing; an individual performing style is also sought after. Summarizing, the norms of the musical world makes the possible interpretation choices rather narrow. Accordingly, a performer of contemporary music would typically go to the composer in question to obtain knowledge as to how a score should be authentically rendered in performance. However, the debate of what authenticity in the performance of scored music may entail has also underlined how composers' intentions for performance may be erratic, entirely lacking or, of course, very detailed. But, what about the personal authenticity of the musician, and its consequences for the quality and credibility of the work as performaed? In this exposition, I explore the notion of story-telling as a fundamental quality in the rendering of a scored composition, and further, that there is a fundamental relation between the rhetorical means in language and in the structuring of music as performed. Further, my artistic PhD project explores the impact of dialect in the formation of an authentic, personal performer's voice. Hence, by learning more about the prosodic patterns in their native dialect, performer's of classical and contemporary music may challenge the norms of fidelity to the composer's intentions, and instead turn to one's own personal experiences of storytelling as a source for artistic experimentation. This exposition-draft discusses how historical analogue voice recordings of Swedish story-tellers and their dialect have a capacity to inform and inspire musical interpretation, by activating and re-vitalising aspects of a performer's individual dialect. The archival recordings are in many ways marked by time and the archival touch, nevertheless, by returning to them from an artistic research perspective we can bring them to life again, and thus, create new micro-stories. This exposition will be completed with professional audio-recordings, providing detailed examples of the relation between the prosodic qualities in the archive materials and the musical shaping in the author's flute performances.

type	research exposition
keywords	Music Performance, Storytelling, flute
date	29/11/2023
last modified	09/02/2024
status	in progress
share status	public
affiliation	Karlstad University, LTU
copyright	Ann Elkjär
license	CC BY-NC-ND
language	English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2415240/2415241

Simple Media

id	name	copyright	license
2415332	Wilhelm Larsson, extract from recording	Isof	All rights reserved
2415349	xxxlöskdjfaölkj	Isof	All rights reserved
2415387	Wilhelm_staying in one key	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415391	Wilhelm_staying in one key	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415406	Wilhelm Larsson_Staying in one key_2	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415409	Wilhelm Larsson_Staying in one key_2	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415520	Wilhelm Larsson_staccato before important words	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415523	Wilhelm Larsson_something funny	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415527	Bozza_cesura	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415531	Funny intervals	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415542	Dialogue_harsh voice	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415545	citerar	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415676	Thinking notes	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415679	Thinking note_Berio	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415682	Berio_thinking note	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415686	Bozza cesur 2!!	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415693	Large intervals_funny	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2415701	Harsh man_Bozza	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2420289	Ann Elkjär - CV English	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2420291	Ann Elkjär - CV English	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2420315	Machine analysis of speech to music notation	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2483792	Background image	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2483797	Background image 2	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511074	delattre	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511078	delattre 240111	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511083	Skärminspelning 2023-12-29 kl. 12.57.16	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511088	20240110 Wilhelm 15.35-18.50	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511152	Working with Berio (end gesture)	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511156	Annotated Berio page 1	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511163	Bozza - överklivning	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511342	background image 3	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved
2511662	Annotated Berio page 1	Ann Elkjär	All rights reserved

References

Arvidsson, A, and K Wolanik Boström, Det berättas...! : Muntligt berättande Som självförståelse, Estradkonst Och Kulturarv, 2022 <https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-190957>
Berio, Luciano, “Sequenza I”, ed. by (Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, 1958)
Bozza, Eugène, Image (Paris: Leduc, 1940)
Institutet för språk och folkminnen, Isof, “Muntliga berättartraditioner” <https://www.isof.se/lar-dig-mer/kunskapsbanker/lar-dig-mer-om-traditioner/muntliga-berattartraditioner> [accessed 30 November 2023]
Institutet för språk och folkminnen, Wilhelm Larsson, “ULMA acc.10765A”, 1940
Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel, “Challenging Performance: Classical Music Performance Norms and How to Escape Them”. <https://challengingperformance.com/the-book/> [accessed 30 November 2023]
Nordmark, D, and H Blomqvist, En värmländsk Litteraturhistoria (Värmlands museum, 2020) <https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-82468>

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