Music & Practice, Volume 11 (2024)
Editorial
Is this the end of musicology or can practice help?
by Erlend Hovland | Read Full Text
Scientific
by Evelyn Buyken and Katrin Losleben | Read Full Text
Abstract
Music and bodies ‘become’ through co-creational processes of sound and different human and non-human bodies within social contexts. We conducted in-depth micro-phenomenological interviews with six cellists to understand better the relationship between musicians – traditionally understood as those who produce sounds – and the sounds themselves. This novel method allowed us to zoom in on the moment of the creation of sound. Drawing on Karen Barad’s accounts of intra-action, we theorize within the field of artistic research how sounds, materials, and bodies become with each other and iteratively co-constitute the musician-persona, the sound, and the instruments.
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This Is Your Pen on Music – Using Self-Notations to Investigate Free Improvisation
by Clément Canonne and Nicolas Donin | Read Full Text
Abstract
How can improvisers describe their own performances? How can we get a sense of their understanding and representation of the core elements of their music? While these issues are usually addressed through either ethnographic or experimental studies, here we chose to hybridize the two approaches, relying on verbal, notational, and behavioural data produced through a series of workshops with expert improvisers from the Umlaut collective (Paris/Berlin). As part of these workshops, we devised an experiment calling for the musicians to play a short solo, then discuss how they would write it down if they were to play it again, then actually notate it, and finally comment on the self-notation. The findings, based on solos and duets by five musicians, offer a detailed picture of 1) the notational culture of current improvised/experimental music, including verbal and graphic notations; 2) the musicians’ implicit ontologies of music, i.e., how they deal with notions such as similarity, persistence, and reproducibility in their improvisational practice; and 3) how the interactional dynamics of duet affects those notions forged in solo playing. Against a simplistic view of notation as being adverse to improvisation, we advocate a heuristic use of self-notation in the analysis of those musical practices that are neither alien to, nor dependent on notation.
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‘Declamatorischer Gesang’: Historical Singing Technique and Aesthetics in Vienna at the Time of Schubert
by Bernhard Rainer | Read Full Text
Abstract
This study posits that the vocal practices of Schubert’s era differed fundamentally from those of the present day. Singers in Vienna during the early nineteenth century likely produced a sound closer to speech, with far less muscle contraction in the vocal resonators and a flexible larynx position that produced a more natural tone than modern classical technique. Additionally, the use of varied vocal registers allowed for more colourful means of expression. Furthermore, published reviews of the time suggest that the use of continuous vibrato – an integrative element of modern vocal production – did not develop until mid-century, thus roughly at the same time as other significant changes in singing technique. Conversely, pitch sliding techniques that are frowned upon today, such as the cercar della nota and portamento, were frequently used. Moreover, recent findings indicate that the essence of the declamatory style of Johann Michael Vogl, the singer said to have directly influenced Schubert’s Lieder writing, is preserved in the treatise Leitfaden einer Gesanglehre by the former professor of the Vienna conservatory, Anton Rösner.
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A Feeling in his Bones: The Outtakes from Glenn Gould’s 1955 Goldberg Recording Sessions
by Michael Rector | Read Full Text
Abstract
Glenn Gould’s debut studio album – Bach: The Goldberg Variations – launched him to international fame. The outtakes from those sessions feature a concert pianist’s fixed approach to most movements, nevertheless they show why Gould objected to concert performance. Gould favoured extreme interpretations. In fast movements he sought virtuosity, repeating maniacally consistent interpretations at breakneck speed. In slow movements he prized a kind of freshness or novelty of phrasing, approving the take which is most dissimilar from the other takes. Gould’s approved take is usually the last version he recorded. He can often be heard approving these immediately after finishing playing; his judgment of their quality is based on his feeling during the performance rather than later re-listening. The 1955 Goldberg outtakes show that Gould thought his best playing lay outside his comfort zone. The greater experimentation in his later recordings may have been an outgrowth of this preference. If so, some of Gould’s unconventional interpretations might be read as a dialogue between his philosophical positions and his embodied sense of playing music at the keyboard.
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Preliminary Notes on Relational Performance Practice
by Anders Førisdal | Read Full Text
Abstract
This text was written as part of the artistic research project Performing Precarity (2019–23). The project was hosted by the Norwegian Academy of Music and generously financed by The Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills. One strand of the project focused on sharing and interdependency in musical performance, in the sense that performers can share or perform together on the same instruments or larger network(s) of instruments – what I will term networked performing apparatuses. The exploration of the question of sharing in avant-garde music performance practices in relation to the idea of precarity resulted in the text Preliminary Notes on Relational Performance Practice and the video paper Being Together. The Preliminary Notes text addresses the question of precarity in terms of precarious situations and precarious projects before suggesting an analytic framework for discussing relational performance practice in music. Two works, rerendered by Simon Steen-Andersen and b by Simon Løffler, are discussed in close detail before the notion of relational performance practice is read along the lines of a Derridean violent opening to ethics.
The video paper Being Together is a companion piece to the Preliminary Notes text and can be accessed through the Performing Precarity Research Catalogue presentation.
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Reports & Commentaries
by Nivea Freitas | Read Full Text
Abstract
This article documents the conception process of Cuckoo Land, a narrative recital with animated film and multimedia that won a prize at the CLAB Festival 2018 competition in Hamburg, Germany. The festival encouraged innovative concert proposals outside traditional formats. The article discusses the challenge of redefining the performer’s role, in order to break away from conventional concert norms, particularly in classical music, where adherence to a “reified text” has historically limited creative expression. Cuckoo Land is presented as a case study for performers seeking to explore new dimensions in concert music, foster interdisciplinary collaborations, and carve out opportunities, as “emancipated performers”, in the evolving landscape of the performing arts. It is also shared, how curatorial work and dramaturgy can afford for the creation of new contexts for music to achieve different interpretative perspectives.
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by Kyriacos Michael | Read Full Text
Abstract
In the context of music performance, the term ‘immersive’ is largely undefined, posing challenges for creators seeking to develop works that incorporate immersive characteristics. By synthesizing various theories and identifying effective practices, this paper seeks to provide a taxonomy of immersive characteristics for the music performance medium. Thus, the taxonomy aims to inform potential practitioners, and how its application may lead to more positively perceived immersive performances. The following characteristics have been identified as key developmental components of immersivity in music performance: proximity, envelopment, sound and visual processing, as well as audience engagement. This list is not exhaustive, but it offers a set of key components that can be employed to produce distinctive and meaningful immersive experiences for audiences.
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by Markand Thakar | Read Full Text
Issue editors
Dr. Anders Førisdal, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo
Dr. Christina Kobb, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo
Dr. Erlend Hovland, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo
ISSN: 1893-9562