Hoe maken we iets uit niets? Door te improviseren. Iedereen kan het. Maar waarom kan de een gemakkelijker improviseren dan de ander?
Toekomstmuziek is een lofzang op ons oermenselijke vermogen tot improvisatie. Improviseren wordt vaak in de eerste plaats geassocieerd met theater of jazzmuziek. Niet voor niets concentreert dit boek zich op de manier waarop de hersenen ons in staat stellen om te luisteren naar muziek en vooral ook om zelf te musiceren. Maar de creatieve vaardigheden die daaraan ten grondslag liggen hebben we iedere dag nodig! Of we nou een brood bestellen bij de bakker of een praatje maken met de buurman, we improviseren de hele dag door, dag in dag uit. Improvisatie is nauw verweven met creativiteit en vrije wil; met hoe we leren en hoe we leven.Neurowetenschapper en jazzmuzikant Artur Jaschke brengt in kaart wat er in onze hersenen gebeurt als we improviseren en muziek beluisteren of beoefenen. Hij laat zien hoe belangrijk het is om ons brein een leven lang te blijven trainen in het maken van intuïtieve beslissingen. Daar worden we niet alleen gezondere mensen van - in een steeds meer door algoritmen gedomineerde wereld zorgt het ook voor een mooiere toekomst.
The practices and perception of music creation have evolved with the cultural, social and technological contexts of music and musicians. But musical authorship, in its many technical and aesthetic modes, remains an important component of music culture. Musicians are increasingly called on to share their experience in writing. However, cultural imperatives to account for composition as knowledge production and to make claims for its uniqueness inhibit the development of discourse in both expert and public spheres. Internet pioneer Philip Agre observed a discourse deficit in artificial intelligence research and proposed a critical technical practice, a single disciplinary field with "one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique. ... A critical technical practice rethinks its own premises, re-evaluates its own methods, and reconsiders its own concepts as a routine part of its daily work."
This volume considers the potential for critical technical practice in the evolving situation of composition across a wide range of current practices. In seeking to tell more honest, useful stories of composition, it hopes to contribute to a new discourse around the creation of music.
"Truth happens to an idea." So wrote William James in 1907; and twenty-four years later John Dewey argued that artistic experience entailed a process of "doing and undergoing." But what do these ideas have to do with music, or with research conducted in and through music-that is, with "artistic research"? In this collection of essays, fourteen very different authors respond with distinct and challenging perspectives. Some report on their own experiments and experiences; some offer probing analyses of noteworthy practices; some view historical continuities through the lens of pragmatism and artistic experiment. The resulting collection yields new insights into what musicians do, how they experiment, and what they experience-insights that arise not from doctrine, but from diverse voices seeking common ground in and through experimental discourse: artistic research in and of itself.
The concept of assemblage has emerged in recent decades as a central tool for describing, analysing, and transforming dynamic systems in a variety of disciplines. Coined by Deleuze and Guattari in relation to different fields of knowledge, human practices, and nonhuman arrangements, "assemblage" is variously applied today in the arts, philosophy, and human and social sciences, forming links not only between disciplines but also between critical thought and artistic practice. Machinic Assemblages focuses on the concept's uses, transpositions, and appropriations in the arts, bringing together the voices of artists and philosophers that have been working on and with this topic for many years with those of emerging scholar-practitioners. The volume embraces exciting new and reconceived artistic practices that discuss and challenge existing assemblages, propose new practices within given assemblages, and seek to invent totally unprecedented assemblages.
Our contemporary, globalised society demands new forms of listening. But what are these new forms? In Listening to the Other, Stefan Östersj challenges conventional understandings of the ways musicians listen. He develops a transmodal understanding of listening that is situated in the body-a body that is extended by its mediation through musical instruments and other technologies. Listening habits can turn these tools-and even the body itself-into resistant objects or musical Others. Supported by extensive multimedia documentation and drawing on examples from the author's own artistic projects spanning electronics, intercultural collaboration, and ecological sound art, this volume enables musicians to learn how to approach musical Others through alternative modes of listening and allows readers to discover artistic methods for intercultural collaboration and ecological sound art practices.
This book is closely linked to a series of cutting-edge artistic works, including a triple concerto recorded with the Seattle Symphony and several video works with ecological sound art. It represents the analytical outcomes of artistic research projects carried out in Sweden, the UK, and Belgium between 2009 and 2015.
Music reflects subjectivity and identity: that idea is now deeply ingrained in both musicology and popular media commentary. The study of music across cultures and practices often addresses the enactment of subjectivity "in" music - how music expresses or represents "an" individual or "a" group. However, a sense of selfhood is also formed and continually reformed through musical practices, not least performance. How does this take place? How might the work of practitioners reveal aspects of this process? In what sense is subjectivity performed in and through musical practices? This book explores these questions in relation to a range of artistic research involving contemporary music, drawing on perspectives from performance studies, phenomenology, embodied cognition, and theories of gendered and cultural identity.
Contributors: Steve Benford (University of Nottingham), Richard Craig (freelance performer and researcher), David Gorton (Royal Academy of Music, London), Christopher Greenhalgh (University of Nottingham), Adrian Hazzard (University of Nottingham), Juliana Hodkinson (Grieg Academy, University of Bergen), Maria Kallionpää (Aalborg University), Zubin Kanga (Royal Holloway, University of London), Catherine Laws (University of York/Orpheus Institute), Jin Hyung Lim (Keimyung University), Thanh Thy Nguyn (Malm Academy of Music, Lund University/Vietnam National Academy of Music), Stefan Östersj (Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology/Orpheus Institute), Deniz Peters (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz), Eleanor Roberts (University of Roehampton), Anne Veinberg (Orpheus Institute)
Futures of the Contemporary explores different notions and manifestations of "the contemporary" in music, visual arts, art theory, and philosophy. In particular, the authors in this collection of essays scrutinise the role of artistic research in critical and creative expressions of contemporaneity. When distinguished from "the contemporaneous" of a given historical time, "the contemporary" becomes a crucial concept, promoting or excluding objects and practices according to their ability to diagnose previously unnoticed aspects of the present. In this sense, the contemporary gains a critical function, involving particular modes of relating to history and one's own time.
Written by major experts from fields such as music performance, composition, art theory, visual arts, art history, critical studies, and philosophy, this book offers challenging perspectives on contemporary art practices, the temporality of artistic works and phenomena, and new modes of problematising the production of art and its public apprehension.
Contributors: Andrew Prior (University of Plymouth), Babette Babich (Fordham University), Geoff Cox (Fine Art at Plymouth University / Aarhus University), Heiner Goebbels (Justus Liebig University), Jacob Lund (Aarhus University), Michael Schwab (Orpheus Institute), Pal Capdevila (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute), Peter Osborne (Kingston University London), Ryan Nolan (University of Plymouth), Zsuzsa Baross (Trent University)
The Western history of aesthetics is characterised by tension between theory and practice. Musicians listen, play, and then listen more profoundly in order to play differently, adapt the body, and sense the environment. They become deeply involved in the sensorial qualities of music practice. Artistic practice refers to the original meaning of aesthetics-the senses. Whereas Baumgarten and Goethe explored the relationship between sensibility and reason, sensation and thinking, later philosophers of aesthetics deemed the sensorial to be confused and unreliable and instead prioritised a cognitive or objective approach.
Written by authors from the fields of philosophy, composition, performance, and artistic practice, Sensorial Aesthetics in Music Practices repositions aesthetics as a domain of the sensible and explores the interaction between artists, life, and environment. Aesthetics becomes a field of sensorial and embodied experience involving temporal and spatial influences, implicit knowledge, and human characteristics.
Contributors: Kathleen Coessens (Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, Orpheus Institute), Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen), Michaël Levinas (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris), Fabien Lévy (Hochschule für Musik Detmold), Lasse Thoresen (Norwegian Academy of Music), Vanessa Tomlinson (Queensland Conservatorium of Music), Salomé Voegelin (University of the Arts London)
Multidisciplinary analysis of experimentalism in music and the wider arts today
Experimental Encounters in Music and Beyond opens a necessary dialogue on experimental practices in the arts and negotiates their place in contemporary society. Going beyond the music-historical usage of the term "experimental", this book reimagines experimentation as an open working definition encompassing multiple forms of artistic attitudes and processes. The texts, images, and sounds offer multiple traces, faces, and spaces, revealing what experimentalism in music and the wider arts entails today. With perspectives from a range of disciplines-from choreography through composition to philosophy and beyond-the different experiences and artistic projects documented and discussed explore the complexity of experimentation in a way that is all the richer for being never-ending.
Contributors
Richard Barrett (Institute of Sonology, The Hague), Sebastian Berweck (pianist and performer), Kathleen Coessens (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Frederik Croene (pianist and composer, Belgium), Chaya Czernowin (Harvard University, Cambridge), Anne Douglas (Grays School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen), Bob Gilmore + (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Valentin Gloor (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), David Gorton (Royal Academy of Music, University of London), David Horne (Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester), Efva Lilja (Dansehallerne, Copenhagen), Svetlana Maras (independent music professional, Radio Belgrade, Electronic Studio), Melinda Maxwell (Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester), Christopher Redgate (Royal Academy of Music, University of London), Jan C. Schacher (Royal Conservatoire, Artesis Plantijn University College, Antwerp, and Zurich University of the Arts), Reto Stadelmann (composer and musician, Germany), Steve Tromans (Middlesex University, UK), Penelope Turner (singer, musician, and performer, UK and Belgium)
The impact of Hegelian philosophy on 19th-century music criticism.
Music's status as an art form was distrusted in the context of German idealist philosophy which exerted an unparalleled influence on the entire nineteenth century. Hegel insisted that the content of a work of art should be grasped in concepts in order to establish its spiritual substantiality (Geistigkeit), and that no object, word or image could accurately represent the content and meaning of a musical work. In the mid-nineteenth century, Friedrich Theodor Vischer and other Hegelian aestheticians kept insisting on art's conceptual clarity, but they adapted the aesthetic system on which this requirement had been based. Their adaptations turned out to be decisive for the development of music criticism, to such an extent that music critics used them to point out musical content and to confirm music's autonomy as an art form. This book unravels the network of music critics and philosophers, including not only Hegel but also Franz Liszt, Franz Brendel, and Eduard Hanslick, whose works shaped public opinions of music.
De Mazeppa-vertelling inspireerde in de 19de eeuw tientallen kunstenaars, waaronder groten als Byron, Hugo, Géricault, Delacroix en Liszt. De auteur bespreekt circa veertig gedichten, toneelstukken en romans, waaronder een integraal gepubliceerde, volkomen onbekende Nederlandse Mazeppa-novelle uit 1853. Daarnaast bespreekt hij het genre hippodrama - een niet meer bestaande vorm van spektakel waarin het paard de hoofdrol speelt - want juist in circussen en theaters als Carré is het Mazeppa-verhaal over een periode van ruim zestig jaar overal ter wereld scenisch opgevoerd. Dit type voorstelling evolueerde in een aantal aanvankelijk stomme Mazeppa-films. Voorts worden tientallen Mazeppa-schilderijen getoond, waaronder een onbekend schilderij van Delacroix dat de schrijver in Caïro wist op te sporen. Het boek besluit met ca. zestig muziekwerken die op het Mazeppa-gegeven geïnspireerd werden: van avondvullende opera's tot onbeduidende salonstukken voor piano.
Het rijk geïllustreerde en geheel in kleur uitgebrachte boek werd geschreven voor de cultuur minnende lezer die geïnteresseerd is in de dwarsverbanden tussen de verschillende kunsten.
The Orpheus Institute celebrates 20 years of artistic research in music. Artistic research in music is now at a generational stage of development. How should it deal with its own maturing? From a kaleidoscope of individual pursuits, ethos and methodologies have emerged to encompass more distributed approaches. This transformation has taken place in parallel with changes in the dynamics and structures of culture, its institutions and constituencies. Artistic research maintains a productive dialectic between its potential status as discipline or as practice. It has developed topoi, tropes and its own canon of cases, texts and figures. How does it negotiate relationships with institutions, disciplines and bodies of theory while retaining the critical perspective of the artist? Twenty years ago the Orpheus Institute was founded in Ghent to pursue research through the practice of musicians and thus the Orpheus Institute is of the same generation as the field it was established to explore. This festive volume in honour of 20 years of the Orpheus Institute reviews the initial trajectory and looks ahead to the institute's new position.
Contributors: Tom Beghin (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Leonella Grasso Caprioli (Conservatorio di Vicenza), Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Esa Kirkkopelto (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Kari Kurkela (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Susan Melrose (Middlesex University, London), Stefan Östersj (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Gertrud Sandqvist (Malm Art Academy), Huib Schippers, Vanessa Tomlinson, Paul Draper (Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University), Luk Vaes (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Janneke Wesseling/ Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University)
The variety and complexity of cadence.
The concept of closure is crucial to understanding music from the "classical" style. This volume focuses on the primary means of achieving closure in tonal music: the cadence. Written by leading North American and European scholars, the nine essays assembled in this volume seek to account for the great variety and complexity inherent in the cadence by approaching it from different (sub)disciplinary angles, including music-analytical, theoretical, historical, psychological (experimental), as well as linguistic. Each of these essays challenges, in one way or another, our common notion of cadence. Controversial viewpoints between the essays are highlighted by numerous cross-references. Given the ubiquity of cadences in tonal music in general, this volume is aimed not only at a broad portion of the academic community, scholars and students alike, but also at music performers.
Contributors:
Pieter Bergé (KU Leuven), Poundie Burstein (City University of New York), Vasili Byros (Northwestern University), William Caplin (McGill University), Felix Diergarten (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis), Nathan John Martin (Yale University / KU Leuven), Danuta Mirka (University of Southampton), Markus Neuwirth (KU Leuven), Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers (University of Ottawa), Martin Rohrmeier (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and David Sears (McGill University)
A practical guide to the performance of the Art of Fugue (with separate sheet music booklet - 34 p.)
With the Art of Fugue Bach delivered a polyphonic composition for keyboard of unprecedented proportions and complexity. Notwithstanding the vast existing literature on this brilliant work, a performer does not often find answers in it to practical questions such as 'Why is this note not flatted?' or 'How can one make this peculiar voice-leading work during performance?' This book by a leading Bach performer is designed to fill this void and provide a practical guide to the performance of the Art of Fugue. The first part contains an overview of four important Baroque topics related to the concept and performance of the Art of Fugue (rhetoric, metre, syntax, and keyboard technique). The second part basically demonstrates, with reference to the first four Contrapuncti, how the background presented in the first part often enables possible explanations for both text-critical and conceptual issues to be formulated. The final purpose is to achieve as eloquent a performance as possible of these pieces.
Essential reading for anyone interested in artistic research applied to music.
This book is the first anthology of writings about the emerging subject of artistic experimentation in music. This subject, as part of the cross-disciplinary field of artistic research, cuts across boundaries of the conventional categories of performance practice, music analysis, aesthetics, and music pedagogy. The texts, most of them specially written for this volume, have a common genesis in the explorations of the Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM) in Ghent, Belgium. The book critically examines experimentation in music of different historical eras. It is essential reading for performers, composers, teachers, and others wanting to inform themselves of the issues and the current debates in the new field of artistic research as applied to music. The publication is accompanied by a CD of music discussed in the text, and by an online resource of video illustrations of specific issues.
Contributors:
Paulo de Assis (ORCiM), Richard Barrett (Institute of Sonology, The Hague), Tom Beghin (McGill University), William Brooks (University of York, ORCiM), Nicholas G. Brown (University of East Anglia), Marcel Cobussen (University of Leiden), Kathleen Coessens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, ORCiM); Paul Craenen (Director Musica, Impulse Centre for Music), Darla Crispin (Norwegian Academy of Music), Stephen Emmerson (Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Brisbane), Henrik Frisk (Malm Academy of Music), Bob Gilmore (ORCiM), Valentin Gloor (ORCiM), Yolande Harris (Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media - DXARTS), University of Washington, Seattle), Mieko Kanno (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), Andrew Lawrence-King (Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen, University of Western Australia), Catherine Laws (University of York, ORCiM), Stefan Östersj (ORCiM), Juan Parra (ORCiM), Larry Polansky (University of California, Santa Cruz), Stephen Preston, Godfried-Willem Raes (Logos Foundation, Ghent), Hans Roels (ORCiM), Michael Schwab (ORCiM, Royal College of Art, London, Zurich University of the Arts), Anna Scott (ORCiM), Steve Tromans (Middlesex University), Luk Vaes (ORCiM), Bart Vanhecke (KU Leuven, ORCiM)
After a distinguished career of more than 35 years, Ignace Bossuyt retired as professor at the Musicology Department of the University of Leuven on October 1st 2007. As an internationally recognised leader in the field of later-16th-century music, Bossuyt consolidated the department's reputation as a centre of excellence in renaissance music studies. Articles in this volume deal with music from the period on which the dedicatee focussed his own research. Subjects discussed include newly discovered music by Philippe de Monte and Heinrich Isaac, humour in the motets of Orlando di Lasso, the beginnings of music history, compositional procedures in renaissance music, and Tinctoris's art of listening. A wide range of methodological perspectives is offered, including historiography, reception studies, source studies, music analysis, music theory, style studies, and aesthetics of music. The publication is both a Festschrift in which distinguished specialists honour an outstanding colleague, and a Liber Amicorum compiled for a dear friend.
The process of practising is intrinsic to musical creativity. Practising may primarily be thought of as technical, but it is often also musically meaningful, including elements of interpretation, improvisation, and/or composition. The practice room can be a space in which to explore a field of creative possibilities; a place to experiment and to refine ideas.
To date, the literature on practice has been primarily pedagogical and psychological. Little attention is paid to the significance of practice, and especially to the role of embodied experience - of understanding gained through doing - in the forming of musical ideas. The Practice of Practising is primarily concerned with considering practising as a practice in itself: a collection of processes that determines musical creativity and significance. The volume comprises four diverse case studies, in relation to music by J. S. Bach, Elliott Carter, Alfred Schnittke, and Morton Feldman, presenting both solo and ensemble perspectives.
