Research Catalogue

activities

• Doctor of Arts (2011) connected to: Polifonia
  Degree: Doctorate, Leiden University (Netherlands), Orpheus Institute (Belgium), recipient: Andrew Wright (old account, do not use as supervisor)
  
• Corporeal Co-articulation and Musical Conception in the Performance of Polyphonic Piano Music
  Polifonia project, Principal Investigator: Andrew Wright (old account, do not use as supervisor)
  Divergence in expression can help to delineate the independence of simultaneously sounding voices, resulting in an interpretational texture that can be called polyphonic. Such divergence affects the structure of the music, and in the case of piano music helps to overcome the similarity in timbre between voices. Parallel to the compositional aesthetic considerations of counterpoint – balance of consonance and dissonance – an aesthetic balance of convergence and divergence in expression is desirable. Voices are thus shaped (in articulatory, dynamic, and temporal expression) by their own individual contour but also meet the other voices in the musical conception of the whole, each voice acting as a site of negotiation whose shape is influenced by the shape of the other voices. The Cartesian paradigm would suggest that these interpretations take place in the mind and subsequently emerge from the fingertips. Thus, interpretation is conceived in the mind and then the body learns to obey. If we are to take seriously the proposition that musical gesture is monistic – that is, sweeping across the Cartesian divide – it follows that the opposite is also true: examination and development of the embodied practices involved in such a polyphonic execution can open up new possibilities in the imagination. Thus, voices meet in the body as well as in the mind, and the restructuring of embodiment into simultaneous divergence allows the hierarchical conception of musical structure, mapped to the body through coarticulation, to expand into a third dimension. This research focuses on expressive divergence on a similar timescale between two simultaneously sounding voices, examining these questions: 1. If divergent expression depends on physical and conceptual competencies, how can these be defined and developed? How do divergent gestures combine in the body? If the body and its competencies conditions the musical imagination, how can it be used as a site of creativity? Conversely, how can the musical imagination be freed from the constraints of physical competency? 2. What happens when the expressive tension between voices is pushed to an extreme and the texture becomes deconstructed? How can this inform an aesthetic? 3. How does divergent expression affect the structure of the music? How can it be applied to all piano music, regardless of whether or not it is highly contrapuntal? The methods employed in examining these questions will include case studies and artistic experiments designed to abstract various parts of the polyphonic experience – textural, conceptual and physical – and to increase the expressive tension between voices to the point of deconstruction. The outcome will include a written dissertation, a book of exercises and artistic products – concerts and recordings.