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The study of collaboration between performers and composers is a flourishing area of research, but an aspect of creative work that remains unexplored is contemporary compositions that employ period instruments. These projects add another dimension to the collaboration between composer and performer. All musical instruments have their own histories, but period instruments magnify them by bringing the musical past into the present through their particular historical and cultural baggage.
This paper examines the interactions between composer Evan Johnson and clarinettist Carl Rosman in the making of a new work, indolentiae ars, a medium to be kept (2015) for nine-key basset clarinet. This is the first contemporary commission composed for such an instrument, and a significant aspect of their collaboration has been to develop a new instrumental rhetoric, and, correspondingly, to find ways of notating it. The commission forms a case study that is part of a wider research project that aims to consider the nature of creativity and the ways in which performers experience opportunities for creativity across different contexts.
The particular instrument employed in this collaboration, a reconstruction of the instrument associated with Mozart’s collaborator Anton Stadler, has its own distinctive qualities: huge flexibility of colour, yet limited ergonomic and mechanical properties and greater intonational instabilities. Period instruments are connected to particular repertoires and practices, and raise aesthetic questions such as the extent to which contemporary composers embrace or reject these historical associations. As Johnson put it, ‘To what degree is this just an exotic quasi-clarinet, and to what degree is it a specifically eighteenth-century instrument?’
Through analysis of episodes from the compositional trajectory of the piece, the paper illustrates how the particular historical, cultural, social and ergonomic affordances of the instrument are gradually enmeshed into the ‘here and now’ of the present collaboration. The findings present an alternative interpretation of what it means for composers and performers to work together; an understanding of creative work that is bound up with history as well as co-presence. The paper also demonstrates the ways in which musical skill is grown and developed through shared experience, and sheds light on the symbiotic nature of creative collaboration, since Johnson was reliant upon the technical expertise of the performer in order to create a relationship with an unfamiliar instrument and performance practice. Equally, Rosman was compelled to interrogate his conventional performance practices in order to develop skilled practices and a fluency that is specifically tailored to this specific instrument and the musical work. Indolentiae ars could ultimately be characterised as a diachronic encounter between performer, composer and instrument that brings to the surface the interdependence of the latent histories and practices that lie within musical instruments.
Conceptually, this paper takes an ecological perspective (Ingold 2011; Clarke et al 2013), proposing that creativity is a distributed phenomenon, entangled within a complex interweaving of social, material and historical influences. It also draws on Richard Sennett (2008) and Tim Ingold’s (2013) work on craft and material engagement, suggesting that the interaction between a practitioner and a tradition entails a synthesis of action, perception and prior experience. The methodology employed is ethnographic in approach, using as its foundation thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) of a significant body of qualitative data gleaned through semi-structured interviews with composers, performers and instrument makers, and audiovisual footage of a number of workshops (undertaken with the analysis software nVivo). Close analyses of sketch material and score annotations are also presented. This approach draws on the work of Amanda Bayley (2009; 2011) and Eric Clarke et al (2013) who have used similar observational methods to examine the creative processes in the sphere of contemporary concert musics.
Often it may seem that electroacoustic music provides fewer resources and less evidence for musicologists to work on when investigating creative processes. Electroacoustic works are produced in the studio, often composed directly onto disc
October 9, 2015 26 min
Sustainability, a computer music work’s chance of surviving far into the future, even if the composer and the performer at the première are no longer supporting the work and the implementation technology has long become obsolete and/or una
October 9, 2015 30 min
1. Introduction L’analyse des processus de création musicale ne cesse d’élargir son domaine d’action vers les musiques faisant appel aux moyens électroniques et informatiques. Les contributions récentes sont nombreuses, notamment dans
October 9, 2015 27 min
The musical composition process has been studied so far mostly from an individual perspective (e.g. Donin07). Alternatively some studies have addressed the issue of collaborative composition (Donin06). In this study, we are interested in a
October 9, 2015 31 min
In an autonomous field such as that of contemporary music, or new music as it is commonly called in the American context, it is the creators themselves who are called on to evaluate the work of their peers. This evaluative work is familiar
October 9, 2015 29 min
La dimension créative de l'interprétation musicale constitue l'un des postulats fondateurs des performance studies : constater la variété des interprétations d'une même œuvre, y mettre de l'ordre, considérer ce qu'elles signifient et
October 9, 2015 27 min
Since the beginning of recording, there have been debates about the balance of and interaction between the technological and artistic processes at play in the recording studio. It would seem that in classical music, recording has not achiev
October 9, 2015 30 min
En psychologie cognitive, plusieurs recherches auprès de musiciens experts ont permis de définir ce qui constitue des répétitions efficaces (Parncuttt and McPherson, 2002; Jørgensen and Lehmann 1997), d’identifier le rôle de l'expressi
October 9, 2015 28 min
This paper presents some key results from a doctoral study undertaken by the author into elite performers’ decision making. Professional concert soloists spend many hours developing and refining their performances via a complex process of d
October 9, 2015 27 min
It has been well argued that ‘the score’ underdetermines performance in significant ways, leaving room for unique performance outcomes (Cook 2004, Clarke 2012), the products of which underpin the current classical music economy. The attribu
October 9, 2015 33 min
Following a cross-disciplinary approach, we will explore two different musical improvisation cultures, one issuing from the jazz tradition in the United States, the other from Northern Indian classical named Hindustani music. At the crossro
October 9, 2015 28 min
When playing an acoustic instrument, the musician applies force from his body to the instrument’s exciter, which is amplified by the resonator. Except for vocal music and electronic music, the hands of the musician are the main vectors of s
October 9, 2015 31 min
Since the digitization of the realization tapes of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (Stockhausen, 1955-56) and their availability for research from 2012 it has been possible to gain new insights into the creative process of the
October 9, 2015 30 min
Simha Arom and Susanne Fürniss (1992) assert that Aka polyphony is fundamentally pentatonic, yet does not operate under any sense of absolute pitch or fixed interval size. Their groundbreaking study of this phenomenon documents various ins
October 9, 2015 23 min
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October 9, 2015 28 min
The exchange of ideas and sounds generated from combining Chartwell Dutiro’s mbira music from the Shona tradition of Zimbabwe with a classically trained string quartet results in a creative practice that defines its boundaries through the a
October 9, 2015 29 min
Bien que la musique d’avant-garde après la Deuxième guerre mondiale ait plus que jamais valorisé la figure de l’« auteur » (le compositeur) au détriment de ses médiations (commanditaires, interprètes, exégètes, etc.), certaines figu
October 9, 2015 29 min
Serious art music may seem to have lost its relational aspect and to be veering off into modernist oblivion lost in the noise of exponential technological development. Whether or not this is fanciful, there’s no doubt there are challenges —
October 9, 2015 21 min
The music of Flemish composer Cipriano de Rore (1515/6-1565) was eagerly sought by patrons and printers alike. One of the most coveted of his compositions was the monumental setting of the eleven-stanza canzona in honor of the Virgin Mary b
October 9, 2015 26 min
October 9, 2015 01 h 10 min
Prologue Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931—the same year that Stravinsky began composing his Duo Concertant. Huxley quoted from The Tempest and other Shakespearean plays in his New World, whereas Stravinsky in his Duo quoted from
October 9, 2015 27 min
The paper gives an overview of several of the surviving live and studio recordings of the song Fire, as performed by the Jimi Hendrix Experience between 1967 and 1969. The pivotal points consist in two versions of the song dating to January
October 9, 2015 25 min
Entre 1903 et 1904, le compositeur Déodat de Séverac (1872-1921) écrit une suite pour piano intitulée En Languedoc, dans laquelle un ensemble de procédés compositionnels relevant de ce qu'on peut nommer une "écriture imrpovisatrice"
October 9, 2015 25 min
La dialectique, bien connue dans la critique génétique, entre la reproduction de modèles pré- composés et la transgression de ces modèles est un angle d’approche qui permet de se demander comment un compositeur produit une œuvre origi
October 9, 2015 30 min
La dialectique, bien connue dans la critique génétique, entre la reproduction de modèles pré- composés et la transgression de ces modèles est un angle d’approche qui permet de se demander comment un compositeur produit une œuvre origi
October 9, 2015 30 min
Communément appelés par les journalistes sportifs à « laisser parler [leur] créativité » (Natation Magazine, n° 93, 2008), les entraîneures et le musicien de l’équipe de France sont en réalité contraints à composer avec ce qu’ils
October 9, 2015 29 min
Communément appelés par les journalistes sportifs à « laisser parler [leur] créativité » (Natation Magazine, n° 93, 2008), les entraîneures et le musicien de l’équipe de France sont en réalité contraints à composer avec ce qu’ils
October 9, 2015 29 min
Dans le champ des musiques actuelles et de la chanson, coexistent deux types de supports : le disque (ou version phonographique) et le concert (ou version scénique). Si ces supports cohabitent, leur statut ontologique ainsi que leur proces
October 9, 2015 19 min
Dans le champ des musiques actuelles et de la chanson, coexistent deux types de supports : le disque (ou version phonographique) et le concert (ou version scénique). Si ces supports cohabitent, leur statut ontologique ainsi que leur proces
October 9, 2015 19 min
Collaboration has been a constant feature of electroacoustic music, due to the complexity of the technology. Since the beginning, all laboratories and electronic music studios have involved the presence of different individuals with diverse
October 9, 2015 24 min
Collaboration has been a constant feature of electroacoustic music, due to the complexity of the technology. Since the beginning, all laboratories and electronic music studios have involved the presence of different individuals with diverse
October 9, 2015 24 min
Bien que la musique d’avant-garde après la Deuxième guerre mondiale ait plus que jamais valorisé la figure de l’« auteur » (le compositeur) au détriment de ses médiations (commanditaires, interprètes, exégètes, etc.), certaines figu
October 9, 2015 29 min
October 9, 2015 25 min
This paper aims at deepening the relationship between digital technology from the one side and compositional thought and techniques from the other, focusing on Marco Stroppa’s music of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This relationship will
October 9, 2015 28 min
Friedemann Sallis’ Music Sketches (2015) is the first comprehensive overview of sketch studies research. For all its impact on musicology since its rise in the 1970s, this field has only rarely been considered critically, e.g. Thomas M. Whe
October 9, 2015 01 h 10 min
October 9, 2015 01 h 36 min
Do you notice a mistake?