Introduction
This research is focused on the creative development of an artistic stage performance, combining operatic music by Handel with contemporary performance art. Through this I will explored how I can combine my duality as a performer: the early music singer and the contemporary performer and creator. This project and its connected research are a part of my artistic development as a musician, creator and performer, and the urge to explore this music and the questions that has arisen has grown out of previous projects and ideas.
The goal of this research is to help me to explore this field with my own artistic identity and gather experience and specific knowledge that can lead to new projects, collaborations and further develop the outreach of my artistic work.
Research question
I see this research as a tool to guide the development of the project. I want it to inform my choices and strengthen the reflection on the artistic idea, process and product. For this reason, I have chosen the following research question:
How can I create a stage performance combining and connecting my two sound worlds/style identities as a performer?
Through using operatic music by Handel with thematic inspiration from the book ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad, I seek to answer this question.
Method for the project
Already from the beginning of my studies, I have been interested in exploring repertoire by setting it in new situations through arrangements and use of other instruments. The questions and discussions raised by crossover (combination of styles) projects have always intrigued and inspired me. In the final year of my bachelor’s degree, I had the chance to explore this in a stage performance setting. It was an opportunity to experiment with the combination of different stage styles. I wanted to see how I could approach the music drama, or simply the performance of classical vocal music, as a performance art piece.
The process began with an idea and then focused it on a theme. Different images were shaped to scenes, the ideas were developed to clearer scenes with “movement” and the overall action in the scenes: from where to where, sketched out. A simple narrative was then formulated and described.
The different scenes were then experimented with on the floor, thus shaping the ideas more clearly, like continuing to shape clay into a more concrete form.
This process of trying out raw ideas, thinking, reshaping and slowly building the piece was highly satisfactory and gave me total control over the process and outcome. It kept the creative process flexible and improvisational as well as focused and decisive.
Visitance from the Garden (2018): https://youtu.be/jKYb_mzj3DI
I therefore chose to approach my master project in a similar manner, using the experience from the drama project as a guide and inspiration. I decided to start with two explorations: one with a selection of music by Handel, and one with the book Heart of Darkness, keeping them separate in the beginning. The plan was to start by extracting themes from the two: describing the main themes in the story and choosing the ones I find most interesting or intriguing and making a selection of Handel arias by connecting them to different emotions and affects, i.e., anger, remorse, sadness, determination, different levels of energy.
By doing this I will gather a pool of elements, ideas and music that do not necessarily fit together. These will work as raw material and create a frame wherein my creative journey can start.
The next step would be to experiment with different combinations of the material to build different scenes, bigger building blocks that would shape parts of the performance. Other media like lighting and sound design will also be considered at this stage, introducing them to the work and bringing in different ways of connecting the already existing material. In planning to work in the same way I had done with my stage performance piece in my bachelor’s, I am aware that a major part of the process will be going back and forth between the “drawing board”, where the ideas were shaped and trying out the ideas on the floor. In this way, I believe that I will be able to shape and adjust the creative process in whatever way I want while creating the performance.
I constructed several performance-focused tasks that will allow me to approach my questions from different angles. These include practical assignments ‘on the floor’ testing dramaturgical movement and interaction with objects while performing the music, as well as reflecting on the possible interpretations of and themes in the musical material. I will also explore how I can use electronic tools for sound production. Some tasks will be focused on how to reimagine the music through electronics and bring them into the stage situation to create new colours and spaces for the different scenes to happen. After each task is undertaken, I will write a reflection on the process and the outcome. The alternation between creative tasks and the reflection in writing will be at the heart of this research. Through this, I will collect tools and develop reflection processes on how I will build my performance, and how I can reimagine and reconstruct Handel’s music in a contemporary context.
Previous projects
In the past few years, I have been experimenting with arrangements and the use of electronics in my repertoire. This has grown into several projects and other collaborations with composers and contemporary musicians. It has become a tool for exploring repertoire in an inspiring and personal way. I have developed a style and a competence that informs my work.
The project that has contributed the most to this development is the ongoing “The John Download Project”, in collaboration with composer, producer and sound designer Harald Jordal. The project explores the music of the great British songwriter and lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626) through a contemporary art-pop expression. It takes the shape of a full-length pop-music album, with eleven tracks that together create an entity through their variation in expression, theme, arrangement and intensity. Each song explores different styles and moods. Some use contrast as a comical and surprising element, while others try to find artistic honesty through the arrangement and performance.
This musical journey started with the question: What would a different stylistic wrapping and exploration do to the communication of the songs and lyrics of Dowland?
As I started the creative experimenting, several possible outcomes and versions presented themselves: would the music “survive”, in the way it is traditionally performed and what it normally communicates within classical performance practice? Would it die, in the meaning of being degraded or reduced to something lacking its original meaning and aesthetics, and only serve as a fragile frame for some wacky synth-pop arrangements? Or could it be reborn, through discovering new layers of meaning and different ways of communicating through alternative performance practices? The project seeks to explore and discover all of these outcomes.
My experiences and reflections from this project played an important part in the development of the idea for my master project (se chapter Reflection on idea). Several of the tools I use were developed in “The John Download Project”. Many of the questions I reflect upon are relevant for both projects, and they have therefore also informed each other. The main difference between these projects is that the master project is staged and live. This is a vital element that brings the questions that I explored in the earlier projects into a completely new context. I now also have a visual element to work with and take responsibility for.
Why Heart of Darkness
We often seek something raw and real in art and through performing. By reading Heart of Darkness, I realised there is a dark side to this, a dark side of the moon if you like. I was wondering if I could create the same feeling or experience I had had while reading the book in a stage performance, luring the audience towards some sort of window and to make them realise things, unsaid things, about themselves and about the art they were witnessing. For me this encompasses many things, but mainly the brutality of human nature, the brutality of nature in general, the unbalance in society, the entitlement to power and position, our history and its relationship to the modern world. I wish to use my inspiration and the connection I found from this book as a starting point to create something of my own in a stage setting that explores the same feelings and the same confrontational effects. The themes and the content are open to interpretation.
The first thought that led to the idea for this project was the wish to explore how I could use the book Heart of Darkness as a source of inspiration. The text and story left a very strong impression on me, and a feeling that I had been shown some profound deep darkness in human nature, an abyss of despair that was frightening and compelling but also thrilling. I was led to a window through which I became a secret witness to some horrible truth. Through this window I became the silent participant of the real darkness; a darkness where all colour and shade of light is sucked inn only to become more of that same darkness.
Because my research is focused on combining the two sides of me as a performer, the early music singer with the contemporary performer, I wish to reflect and argue for the use of the book as inspiration, as it will inform both my creative and reflective process. There are several points with this piece of literature that makes it relevant for me.
The main thing is the narrative structure. Everything is narrated and described but in two layers. We are first placed in a situation where a story is told, or about to be told. We are told about a ship sailing up the Thames towards London, and that the old sailor Marlow is reminded of a trip he made several years ago when he was sent up the Congo River commanding a steamboat. We are then told this story by Marlow, and gradually forget the first situation of narration we were presented for. We are reminded of this outer structure of the narrative only twice, when something interrupts Marlow’s story. The narrative technique of focusing on the narrator is in a way inherited from the long tradition of storytelling found in the epic poems, originating in ancient Greece. This genre in literature was originally a performative artform, oral before it transformed into a literate art form. Heart of Darkness borrows some elements from epic poems: there is the travel, the quest in search for something, in this case the man Kurts. The journey takes us also into the unknown, the jungle in a foreign land, and the cornerstone of the story is the main character’s struggle with the mission and the path he must follow.