The Reflective Musician

Håkon Austbø

The relationship between performance and reflection is rich and complex. Great performances can sometimes seem the spontaneous products of mysterious inspiration; however, most musicians would agree that, to attain its full potential, a performance must arise from a thorough investigation of the artistic acts of interpretation and expression appropriate to the work. When this investigation becomes an overt research process, artistic choices begin to be based on conscious critical and self-reflective evaluations and decisions — and the resulting performance to be informed by a wide range of hermeneutic and analytical approaches. But the promise of such a multi-stranded approach is vulnerable, and sometimes compromised, when the performer’s skill and knowledge in the associated disciplines does not measure up to their performative artistry and insight. Since Artistic Research, in particular, often posits a model in which all associated knowledge should reside within the performer, this can be problematic. So, is there an alternative model that, nonetheless, maintains the skills of artist and scholar in a mutually beneficial configuration? And, if so, how does such a model uncover the kinds of performing knowledge that may lead to a specific, unique interpretation? This exposition reveals a constellation of approaches around a central premise, namely that musical interpretation may be read as an inherently creative activity based on its own systems of knowledge which, whether conscious or intuitive, ought to be capable of being articulated in words as well as in practical music-making. In articulating this premise within the project, the process of interpretation is seen as emerging, ideally, as a form of co-creation, as it were, in which the performer ‘composes’ the work anew from inside the act of performance and, in doing so, works in a creative partnership with both composer and audience. Among the possibilities offered by such a model is the prospect that the term ‘performer’ can become a multiple entity of individuals engaged in a creative partnership of their own and articulating in words the impulses and mechanisms at work in this partnership.

No media selected. Please add or select a media file for this tool.

Intellect and emotion

What is the nature of the interaction between thinking about music and performing it, and how might this interaction affect performance outcomes?

Bartok: Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion

Brahms: Piano quintet

Architecture of a project

History of The Reflective Musician

... See more

Chopin: Ballade no. 3

Research Questions:

1) What kind of performing knowledge might lead to specific, unique interpretations?

2) What kind of interpretations might lead to ‘new knowledge’?

3) How can this cycle of knowledge → interpretation → new knowledge be studied?

4) How can what is learned through this cyclical process best be articulated and disseminated?

5) To what extent is it a process that can benefit from the collaborative input of a team of artists and researchers?

6) What could such a team-based project teach us about the co-creative aspects of the bringing-into-being of specific, unique interpretations?

Repertoire, reflection, research

How the fusion of musical thought and practice and the contribution of this to musical understanding lies at the heart of the Reflective Musician project

... See more

Chopin: Polonaise-Fantasie

Late style

What characterises “Late Style” and what can we learn more generally about the deeper forces in music from the investigation of works created when experience is at its most mature?

The Reflective Musician

Interpretation as co-creative process

Beethoven: String quartet op. 131

Brahms: Klavierstücke op. 118

Vier ernste Gesänge op 121

Schoenberg:

Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11

Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19

Mozart: Piano Concerto KV453

New approaches

What kinds of deeper knowledge may be accessed when works are ‘curated’ in new ways, whether in terms of the nature of their presentation or even involving elements of re-composition?

Nils Henrik Asheim: The Schubert Moment