Projects

Rewriting for the salon

Luca Montebugnoli

Au début du XIXe siècle l’art de l’arrangement vit son âge d’or : à une époque qui ne connait pas encore de reproduction technique du son, la publication de transcriptions de symphonies, concertos et opéra pour petits ensembles permet l’écoute ou l’évocation au salon des œuvres destinées au concert public ou au théâtre. La redécouverte de cette pratique dans toute son ampleur et sa créativité est le propos de ce projet de recherche. A travers l’analyse et l’étude musicale des partitions, il ambitionne non seulement à la compréhension historique et esthétique du phénomène, mais à la reconstruction et l’expérimentation d’un savoir-faire, celui de l’arrangement, qui était propre aux musiciens de l’époque et que la modernité a progressivement oublié. La vie musicale parisienne dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle fera de cadre historique à la recherche en raison de la centralité que la ville acquiert au cours de la période.

Acoustic Feedback and Corporeality

Filipa Botelho

Acoustic Feedback and Corporeality is a research project situated at the crossroads of acoustic feedback composition and interactive performance practises that include movements of the performer on stage. Grounded on the assumption that neither sound nor movement can be composed or choreographed independently from each other, the central aim of the project is the study, design and development of new modes of interaction between sound and movement focusing on the role of the performer’s body and its multiple corporealities (sound producer, gestures, movement, presence). Methodologically, the project will develop several “experimental systems” (Rheinberger 1997) containing instruments, microphones, loudspeakers, light, spaces, sound, and video in order to generate unexpected but controlled sonic and visual events. More than a goal, acoustic feedback becomes one parameter among many others. Besides the doctoral dissertation, outputs will include performances, conference presentations, articles, web-based expositions, and a user-friendly booklet on acoustic feedback practises.

Sonic Silhouettes, Musical Movement

Winnie Huang

On the international stage, we are seeing an increasing presence and growing phenomenon of musical-gestural pieces. Musical-gestural pieces feature prominently physical elements for visual aesthetics, explicitly notated by the composer. Notated as musical scores, performed by highly trained musicians, the role of the musical-gestural performer is one that spans multiple disciplines, between music and movement, and requires a multifaceted and highly skilled interpreter with specific capabilities. The rise of this genre, demands investigation from the point of view of the performer providing insight for future artists and academics in this field.

My doctoral trajectory will investigate the collaborative process in musical-gestural pieces. I will develop a performance practice allowing understanding of the skills required, with a focus on notational and practice problematics, and the physical embodiment of the pieces during the process. Research in the genre of musical-gestural pieces will be completed through artistic collaborations with composers in this field, through analysis and examination of the process, and through public performances. Necessary understanding of this phenomenon will create informed composers and performers, and allow the artistic community the unique opportunity to better comprehend this genre, generating broader interest in new musical-gestural works.

Early Music Beyond Authenticity: Interpretation and Composition outside the Work Concept

Carlo Diaz

As a fluid development form my concept of compositional practice as the either conscious or subconscious reuse and re-processing of pre-existing materials, and so from the idea that all new music is necessarily embedded with the historical, I propose a new historical mode for Early Music wherein curation, editing, and performance are identified as fundamentally creative activities. I propose the application of poststructural philosophy and contemporary historical theory by Michel Foucault, Hayden White, Roland Barthes, Keith Jenkins, and other to the practice of Early Music. My objective is both to shed the Romanticist and Modernist aesthetics and theory inherent in recent research and performance of music written before 1800 and to suggest a new aesthetic and theory where history operates outside of empiricism and narrativity.