Related Papers
Doctoral thesis, Unigrafia
MUSICAL COMPOSITION AS LINGERING REFLECTION: EXPLORING THE CRITICAL POTENTIAL OF MUSIC
2021 •
Rebecka Ahvenniemi
Presented for public discussion with the permission of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki, in Auditorium PIII, Porthania, on the 13th of November 2021 at 10.15 o'clock. The defence was open for audience through remote access.
The Present-day Composer: Performing Individuality and Producing on Commission
2011 •
alf arvidsson
The composer as facilitator. Composition as an invitation for improvisation and collective processes by the performers.
Alexis Porfiriadis
This paper will examine scores which present processes that constitute the composition and prerequisite or cause the formation of temporary or permanent collectivities. Formation of collectivity before or/and during the performance can be traced as common element in compositions such as Burdocks (Christian Wolff, 1971), Sonic Meditations (Pauline Oliveros, 1971), One minute is more than one minute (Porfiriadis, 2011/12). In Burdocks and in One minute is more than one minute, the musicians must decide about the macrostructure and the microstructure of their performance all together (Wolff, Porfiriadis). In the case of a large number of performers, the ensemble may also decide by choosing representatives (Wolff) or by working in smaller groups (Porfiriadis). In Sonic Meditations, Oliveros states that her verbal score is intended for groups whose performers work together for a long time and meet regularly. In all three cases, composition is synonymous with the process. In Wolff’s piece the performer is invited to be in constant and direct contact with her fellow players (through cueing techniques). In Oliveros’s piece s/he is invited to act in an esoteric way (through techniques of meditation) maintaining contact with her fellow players and the environment while in my score the performers are invited to create collectively a specific structure with the material given. Two of the compositions (Oliveiros’s and mine) make use of verbal notation, while Wolff’s composition in addition to verbal notation makes use of graphic notation as well as elements of conventional notation. The musical and social implications of such practices will be explored through the analysis of these three pieces, while the performance of my score will hopefully trigger a conversation on the meaning of composition as a process.
Disseration: "A holistic view of the creative potential of performance practice in contemporary music"
Barbara Lüneburg
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)
The composer as evaluator: reflections on evaluation and the creative process
2015 •
Annelies Fryberger
British Journal of Music Education
2019 •
Emily Payne
'I am Just Practising: A personal conversation among the boundaries and subjectivties of current musicologies', in: Music and/as Process
Charlotte Purkis
Musicological processes are now more diverse than ever due to the fallout from dialogues between competing models for analysing music and the scope of the territories musicology intersects with. This chapter argues that ‘creative musicology’ is in emergence as an extension and reframing of the work of ‘critical musicology’. Creative musicology seeks to demonstrate ways of relating critical studies to the subjectivities inherent within the creative act of music-making itself, rather than relating only to a constructed musical ‘object’. In highlighting roles that writing practices such as fictocriticism, storytelling, flux-writing, self-reflexivity, autobiography and performative writing are playing in current approaches to understanding music, in this chapter I weave a fabric of questioning to display how imaginative reflection is extending musical reception within musicology. I suggest how connections to writerly experimentation from the other performing arts inform models of practice-as-research applicable to the processes constructing the discipline, as much as to the processes of its products.
Composers in the Community
2013 •
Lorraine O'Connell
Today’s ever-changing contexts of music and music education demand that composers are increasingly required to be an artistic voice for the communities in which they live and work. Yet much teaching of composing in third-level institutions in Ireland, while developing a high level of musical craftsmanship, often fails to promote the vital connection between those skills and the social and civic contexts in which many composers work. The aim of this project was to enhance the learning experience of students in the Conservatory of Music and Drama by giving them the opportunity to apply, adapt and transfer their musical knowledge and skills through leading composition workshops in a primary school, and composing works appropriate for junior performance groups. Working within a qualitative research paradigm and with a focus on reflective practice, data collection included questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and reflective journals. The projected outcomes included the development ...
On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 7
Does "Critical Composition" (Still) Exist? Reflections on the Material of New Music
2019 •
Jonas Wolf
Although the term “critical composition” was paradigmatically used by Nicolaus A. Huber in his text “Kritisches Komponieren” from 1972 (Huber 2000), one can argue that the early atonality and dodecaphony of the Second Viennese School — and their theorization by Adorno — laid the foundation for following generations of composers who perceived their work as a product of critical thinking. Following an Adornian rationale, early atonal composition would be viewed as an immanently negative and aesthetically indrawn last bastion against the historical tendency of the material in Western societies, only pre-conceptually connected to society, whereas many post-war composers turned toward analytical or politically committed forms of composition that introduced music as a means of critically reflecting on the interrelations between musical and social spheres.By outlining the emancipatory potential of John Cage’s music philosophy, I want to counterpoint the conventional notion of “critical composition” as a phenomenon within the post-war avant-garde, which is deeply rooted in the European intellectual tradition of a sovereign subject. Against this background, the critical potentials of contemporary conceptions of composition “as an expanded field of artistic practice encompassing a range of different media and symbolic relationships” (Barrett 2016) can be grasped beyond the ideals of work autonomy and material progress.
Return to SOURCE: Contemporary Composers Discuss the Socio-Political Implications of their Work
Alyce Santoro
During the heat of 1969s fraught political climate, editors of the legendary multi-media magazine “SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde” invited 20 innovative composers and musicians to respond to a single question: “Have you, or has anyone, ever used your work for political or social ends?” Forty-five years later and in the midst of the latest variety of intense current events, sound/conceptual artist Alyce Santoro posed the same question to 20 unconventional composers working today, two of whom answered the question 45 years ago, and six more of whom had works published in SOURCE on other occasions. To view both the complete original 1969 SOURCE article along with the 2015 responses for LMJ, please visit http://www.alycesantoro.com/politics_of_sound_art.html.
