Watch the sound – listen to the gesture

Kerstin Frödin

This artistic PhD project is based on the author’s practice as a recorder player and chamber musician in contemporary Western art music. Through an initial study of the embodied and tacit knowledge of chamber musicians and how it is articulated through gestural interaction during performance, the perspective of the thesis widens to explore how such qualities can be used as a creative resource in interdisciplinary collaboration. At its core, the PhD work has explored long-term collaborative processes in projects where a series of chamber music works have been brought to a staged context, but always keeping the qualities of chamber music at its centre. The research questions that emerge from these conceptual and artistic aims are: – How can I understand and transfer the communicative and embodied qualities inherent in chamber music playing to staged interdisciplinary contexts? – How can the concept of the gestural-sonic object, and the multimodal understanding of human perception which it implies, constitute both an analytical tool and a source for artistic experimentation? – How can musical interpretation be applied in the creation of staged interdisciplinary performances? The method and design of the project builds on collaborations with artists from the fields of composition, choreography, dance, theatre and visual arts. In the projects, the participating artists have aimed to explore and develop collaborative methods and staged formats where the artforms at the same time have been considered as autonomous and as part of a compound whole. The results of the artistic work are published online in the Research Catalogue. The project findings suggest that interdisciplinary approaches, such as experimental music theatre, composed theatre and choreomusical practices, may enable the liberation from traditional roles, hierarchies and predetermined formats and can lead to what can be described as a radical interpretation of the original score. Through a study of musical gesture – building on a theoretical framework grounded in embodied cognition and phenomenology – the thesis presents examples, both artistic and theoretical, of processes through which boundaries between artistic disciplines have been consciously blurred, thereby providing novel creative opportunities for the classical music performer.

References:

Beckett, S. (2012). The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett: A Critical Edition. (S. Lawlor & J. Pilling, Eds.). Grove Press.

Lindwall, C. (Composer). (2018–2019). What is the word. Svensk Musik.

Lindwall, C. (2021). Hidden voices. # 16 What is the word. Lipparella (Artist). Blue Music Group [CD recording].

Lindwall, C. (Composer). (2019). What is the word. Lipparella (Artist). K. Dunér (Director). [Performance] Liljevalchs, 19. November 2019.

What is the word

Before the premiere of What is the word, I asked composer Christer Lindwall a few questions about the work and our collaboration.

K: Why did you choose Beckett's poem What is the word as the basis for the composition?

C: Beckett's text What is the word has been on my mind for several years. It is open to a variety of ideas and interpretations and can be said to be a poetic description of the disease of aphasia and speechlessness. In its simplicity, it is absolutely brilliant. I have given the music an openness that creates a parallelism with the text, i.e. not interpretative, semantic or symbolic. To make an idea resonate... It leads to a direct connection between text and music and to something that can go beyond the traditional forms of both music and text.

K: What challenges do you experience in writing for baroque instruments?

C: I don't put any emphasis on history in that way. I have no interest in the historical context that these instruments represent, but Baroque instruments have a sonic fragility that is perfectly suited to what I want to achieve in the work.

K: As a composer, what has it been like to be so present during the rehearsal process and stage preparation?

C: For me, it is the first time ever that I have participated in such a long and intense period with musicians. Usually it's just an hour or two when you only have time to talk about technicalities. With Lipparella also performing Quad and the Swedish translation of the poem [What is the word], it creates a context in which the interpretation of my work becomes something much bigger. To go beyond the purely technical – time, space and pitch – and open up to several different perspectives. I have learnt a great deal from this process, not least in my collaboration with Karl Dunér, where I have benefited from his reading, which is not based on the purely emotional but on a more analytical interpretation of the text.

The performance creates parallel worlds between its various elements of text, music, movement and image. Looking at the score afterwards, I realised that there is no formal ending line – perhaps indicating that the process does not end here...

What is the Word (2019) is the title of a staged performance realised in collaboration between Lipparella, composer Christer Lindwall and director Karl Dunér in Liljevalch's exhibition hall. The first part of the performance (before the interval), which is the focus of this exposition, was based on two works by Samuel Beckett, the wordless play Quad (1981) and the poem What is the Word (1989), as well as a new composition by Lindwall, What is the Word (2019) based on the same text.

The staged performance What is the Word and its working process also became the impetus for the documentary film Vad heter det (2023), which was realised in collaboration between filmmaker Tomas Boman and myself. The idea of making a film about the project emerged both as a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensemble's limited possibilities to meet an audience, and as a reflective research method inspired by Merleau-Ponty's understanding of perception and bodily sensibility.

In addition to the film, the research work on this project took the form of writing an essay, Encounter with Beckett – A phenomenological Essay, (Chapter IV of the thesis, also included below).

Christer Lindwall's composition What is the word was recorded by Lipparella as part of the CD Hidden voices (Blue Music Group, 2021) see below.

Figure 1 Encounter with Beckett – A Phenomenological Essay (Chapter IV in the thesis).

Audio example 1 Lipparella plays Lindwall's What is the word

Figure 2 Composer Christer Lindwall

Video 1 Vad heter det (2023) Documentary film by Tomas Boman and Kerstin Frödin.

Video 2 What is the word (2019) full performance documentation, Liljevalchs exhibition hall.

Figure 3 Full score: Christer Lindwall's What is the word

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What is the word

Liljevalchs, 15 November, 2019

Lipparella

Countertenor, Mikael Bellini

Recorders, Kerstin Frödin

Baroque violin, Anna Lindal

Viola da gamba, Louise Agnani

Theorbo, Peter Söderberg

Composer: Christer Lindwall

Stage director: Karl Dunér

Lighting design and technique: Johan Jutterström

Costume: Sara Henriksson

Photo and documentation: Tomas Boman and Kajsa Andersö

Swedish translation of Beckett's What is the word : Magnus Hedlund

Figure 4 Preparations in Liljevalch's exhibition hall: Karl Dunér measures the quadrangle in Beckett's Quad.

Figure 5 Preparations for the musical rehearsal: Anna Lindal, Peter Söderberg and Mikael Bellini.

Figure 6 From one of the interviews for the film Vad heter det: Peter Söderberg, theorbist in Lipparella and film maker Tomas Boman.

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