Orpheus Institute Series – serie

A revealing study of the physical presence of the musician in musical performance. Fingers slipping over guitar strings, the tap of a bow against the body of a cello, a pianist humming along to the music: contemporary composers often work with parasitic, non-conventional sounds such as these. Are they to be perceived as musical elements or do they shift attention to the physical effort of music-making, contact between a body and an instrument? Composer Paul Craenen explores ways in which the musician’s body is revealed in musical performance. He leads us from Cage, Lachenmann, Kagel and their contemporaries to a discussion of how today's generation of young composers is writing a body paradigm into composition itself. Micro-temporal physical gestures and instrumental timbre provide the key to unveiling the physical presence of both a musician and a ‘composing body’. The author's concept of ‘intercorporeality’, along with the idea of an alternating linear and non-linear relationship of the composing body to time, casts new light on the relationship between musicians, composers, and music consumers. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Exploring the complex and intimate relations between sound, score and notation. ‘Sound and Score’ brings together music expertise from prominent international researchers and performers exploring the intimate relations between sound and score and the artistic possibilities that this relationship yields for performers, composers and listeners. Considering “notation” as the totality of words, signs, and symbols encountered on the road to an accurate and effective performance of music, this book embraces different styles and periods in a comprehensive understanding of the complex relations between invisible sound and mute notation, between aural perception and visual representation, and between the concreteness of sound and the iconic essence of notation. Three main perspectives structure the analysis: a conceptual approach that offers contributions from different fields of enquiry (history, musicology, semiotics), a practical one that takes the skilled body as its point of departure (written by performers), and finally an experimental perspective that challenges state-of-the-art practices, including transdisciplinary approaches in the crossroads to visual arts and dance. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content). Contributors: Virginia Anderson (Experimental Music Catalogue), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute), Sandeep Bhagwati (Concordia University Montréal), Robin T. Bier (University of York), Maria Calissendorff (Royal College of Music, Stockholm), Miguelangel Clerc (Leiden University), Kathleen Coessens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Orpheus Institute), Jeremy Cox (European Association of Conservatoires – AEC), Darla Crispin (Orpheus Institute), Anne Douglas (Robert Gordon University), Gregorio García Karman (University of Huddersfield), Yolande Harris (Leiden University), Susanne Jaresand (Royal College of Music, Stockholm), Tanja Orning (Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo), Paul Roberts (Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London), Anna Scott (Leiden University), Andreas Georg Stascheit (Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen/Dortmund University)

Exploring experimental attitudes in musicExperimental Affinities in Music brings together diverse artistic, musicological, historical, and philosophical essays, enhancing a broad discourse on artistic experimentation, and exploring various experimental attitudes in music composed between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries.The golden thread running through the different chapters is the quest for inherently experimental musical practices, a quest pursued from interrogating, descriptive, or challenging perspectives, and always in relation to concrete music examples.Experimental is taken as an adventurous compositional, interpretive, or performative attitude that can cut across different ages and styles. Affinitiessuggest connectors and connections, convergences, contiguities, and adjacencies that are found in and through a diversity of approaches and topics.The texts share a common genesis: the lectures of the International Orpheus Academies for Music and Theory convened by Luk Vaes (2011) and Paulo de Assis (2012, 2013). The affinities found in this volume include essays by Lydia Goehr, Felix Diergarten, Mark Lindley, Martin Kirnbauer, Edward Wickham, Lawrence Kramer, Hermann Danuser, and Thomas Christensen, as well as interviews with pianist Leon Fleisher, with pianist-composer Frederic Rzewski, and with composer Helmut Lachenmann.Ebook available in Open Access.This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).ContributorsPaulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Thomas Christensen (University of Chicago), Hermann Danuser (Humboldt University), Felix Diergarten (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis), Leon Fleisher (pianist), Lydia Goehr (Columbia University), Martin Kirnbauer (University of Basel), Lawrence Kramer (Fordham University), Helmut Lachenmann (composer), Mark Lindley (University of Hyderabad), Frederic Rzewski (pianist-composer), Luk Vaes (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Edward Wickham (St Catharine’s College, Cambridge)

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; thus the Orpheus Institute is of the same generation as the field it was established to explore. This festive volume in honor of twenty 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 Ostersjo (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Gertrud Sandqvist (Malmo 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)

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.ContributorsRichard 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)

More volumes on 'Deleuze and Artistic Research':Machinic Assemblages of DesireAberrant NuptialsDeleuze’s and Guattari’s philosophy in the field of artistic researchGilles Deleuze’s intriguing concept of the dark precursor refers to intensive processes of energetic flows passing between fields of different potentials. Fleetingly used in Difference and Repetition, it remained underexplored in Deleuze’s subsequent work. In this collection of essays numerous contributors offer perspectives on Deleuze’s concept of the dark precursor as it affects artistic research, providing a wide-ranging panorama on the intersection between music, art, philosophy, and scholarship.The forty-eight chapters in this publication present a kaleidoscopic view of different fields of knowledge and artistic practices, exposing for the first time the diversity and richness of a world situated between artistic research and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Within different understandings of artistic research, the authors—composers, architects, performers, philosophers, sculptors, film-makers, painters, writers, and activists—map practices and invent concepts, contributing to a creative expansion of horizons, materials, and methodologies.This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).ContributorsVOLUME 1: Paulo de Assis, Arno Böhler, Edward Campbell, Diego Castro-Magas, Pascale Criton, Zornitsa Dimitrova, Lois Fitch, Mike Fletcher, Paolo Galli, Lindsay Gianoukas, Keir GoGwilt, Oleg Lebedev, Jimmie LeBlanc, Nicolas Marty, Frédéric Mathevet, Vincent Meelberg, Catarina Pombo Nabais, Tero Nauha, Gabriel Paiuk, Martin Scherzinger, Einar Torfi Einarsson, Steve Tromans, Toshiya Ueno, Susanne Valerie, Audronė ŽukauskaitėVOLUME 2: Éric Alliez, Manola Antonioli, Jūratė Baranova, Zsuzsa Baross, Anna Barseghian, Ian Buchanan, Elena del Río, Luis de Miranda, Lucia D’Errico, Lilija Duoblienė, Adreis Echzehn, Jae Emerling, Verina Gfader, Ronny Hardliz, Rahma Khazam, Stefan Kristensen, Erin Manning, John Miers, Elfie Miklautz, Marc Ngui, Andreia Oliveira, Federica Pallaver, Andrej Radman, Felix Rebolledo, Anne Sauvagnargues, Janae Sholtz, Mhairi Vari, Mick Wilson, Elisabet Yanagisawa

Logic of Experimentation offers several innovative and ground-breaking perspectives on music performance, music ontology, research methodologies and ethics of performance. It proposes new modes of thinking and exposing past musical works to contemporary audiences, arguing for a new kind of performer, emancipated from authoritative texts and traditions, whose creativity is propelled by intensive research and inventive imagination. Moving beyond the work-concept, Logic of Experimentation presents a new image of musical works, based upon the notions of strata, assemblage and diagram, advancing innovative practice-based methodologies that integrate archival and musicological research into the creative process leading to a performance. Beyond representational modes of performance--be it mainstream or historically informed performance practices--Logic of Experimentation creates an ontological, methodological and ethical space for experimental performance practices, arguing for a new mode of performance. Written in an experimental style, its eight chapters appropriate music performance concepts from post-structural philosophy, psychoanalysis, science and technology studies, epistemology, and semiotics, displaying how transdisciplinarity is central to artistic research. An indispensable contribution to artistic research in music, Logic of Experimentation is compelling reading for music performers, composers, musicologists, philosophers and artist researchers alike.

What does it mean to produce resemblance in the performance of written music? Starting from how this question is commonly answered by the practice of interpretation in Western notated art music, this book proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes, conventions and territories of music performance. Appropriating reflections from post-structural philosophy, visual arts and semiotics, and crucially based upon an artistic research project with a strong creative and practical component, it proposes a new approach to music performance. The approach is based on divergence, on the difference produced by intensifying the chasm between the symbolic aspect of music notation and the irreducible materiality of performance. Instead of regarding performance as reiteration, reconstruction and reproduction of past musical works, Powers of Divergence emphasises its potential for the emergence of the new and for the problematisation of the limits of musical semiotics.

What are musical works? How are they constructed in our minds? Which material things allow us to speak about them in the first place? Does a specific way of conceiving musical works limit their performative potentials? Which alternative, more productive images of musical work can be devised?Virtual Works--Actual Things addresses contemporary music ontological discourses, challenging dominant musicological accounts, questioning their authoritative foundation and moving towards dynamic perspectives devised by music practitioners and artist researchers. Specific attention is given to the relationship between the virtual multiplicities that enable the construction of an image of a musical work and the actual, concrete materials that make such a construction possible. With contributions by prominent scholars, this book is a wide-ranging and fascinating collection of essays, which will be of great interest for artistic research, contemporary musicology, music philosophy, performance studies and music pedagogy alike.Contributors: David Davies (McGill University, Montreal), Andreas Dorschel (University of the Arts Graz), Lydia Goehr (Columbia University, New York), Kathy Kiloh (OCAD University, Toronto), Jake McNulty (Columbia University, New York), Gunnar Hindrichs (University of Basel), John Rink (University of Cambridge)

Research is a process that leads to new insights rupturing the existent fabric of knowledge. To prevent this process from disintegrating, its coherence must be assured. Under the heading transposition, seventeen artists, musicians, and theorists explain how one thing may turn into another in a spatio-temporal play of identity and difference that has the power to expand into the unknown.While it does not attempt to define the still evolving field of artistic research, through the idea of transposition this book aims to grasp a quality increasingly important to artistic practice because representational approaches have been losing traction. Taking to heart the lessons of deconstruction, new modes of epistemic relationships are being invented that include aesthetic dimensions. Working with materially concrete positions in a manner familiar to artists can ensure that knowledge does not decay into relativism.Contributors: Annette Arlander (University of the Arts Helsinki), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University), Leif Dahlberg (Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm), Lucia D'Errico (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Mika Elo (University of the Arts Helsinki), Laura Gonzalez (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), Esa Kirkkopelto (University of the Arts Helsinki), Yve Lomax (Royal College of Art, London), Cecile Malaspina (CNRS-Universite Paris 1/Universite Paris 7), Tor-Finn Malum Fitje (independent artist, Oslo), Dieter Mersch (Zurich University of the Arts), David Pirro (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz), Hans-Joerg Rheinberger (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), Hanns Holger Rutz (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz), Michael Schwab (Orpheus Institute, Ghent/University of Applied Arts Vienna), Birk Weiberg (Zurich University of the Arts)

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 (OrpheusInstitute), 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), Michael Levinas (Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris), Fabien Levy (Hochschule fur Musik Detmold), Lasse Thoresen (Norwegian Academy of Music), Vanessa Tomlinson (Queensland Conservatorium of Music), Salome Voegelin (University of the Arts London)

Aberrant Nuptials explores the diversity and richness of the interactions between artistic research and Deleuze studies. "Aberrant nuptials" is the expression Gilles Deleuze uses to refer to productive encounters between systems characterised by fundamental difference. More than imitation, representation, or reproduction, these encounters foster creative flows of energy, generating new material configurations and intensive experiences. Within different understandings of artistic research, the contributors to this book--architects, composers, film-makers, painters, performers, philosophers, sculptors, and writers--map current practices at the intersection between music, art, and philosophy, contributing to an expansion of horizons and methodologies. Written by musicians and artists who have been reflecting Deleuzian and Post-Deleuzian discourses in their artworks, and by established Deleuze scholars who have been working on interferences between art and philosophy, this volume reflects the current relevance of artistic research and Deleuze studies for the arts.This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).Contributors: Suzie Attiwill (RMIT University), Sara Baranzoni (Universidad de las Artes of Guayaquil), Zsuzsa Baross (Trent University), Terri Bird (Monash University), Ronald Bogue (University of Georgia), Barbara Bolt (VCA University of Melbourne), Peter Burleigh (University of Basel / HGK, Basel), Edward Campbell (University of Aberdeen / Centre for Modern Thought), Marianna Charitonidou (University of Paris West Nanterre / National Technical University of Athens), Jean-Marc Chouvel (Paris-Sorbonne University), Guillaume Collett (University of Kent), Zornitsa Dimitrova (University of Munster), Lilija Duobliene (University of Vilnius), Lucia D'Errico (Orpheus Institute), Bracha L. Ettinger (artist, painter, theorist), Henrik Frisk (Royal Academy of Music Malmoe), jan jagodzinski (University of Alberta), Oleg Lebedev (Universite Catholique de Louvain), Gustavo Penha (University of Sao Paulo), Katie Pleming (King's College London), Liana Psarologaki (University of Suffolk), Emilia Marra (University of Trieste), Tero Nauha (Helsinki Collegium), Stefan OEstersjoe (Orpheus Institute), Simon O'Sullivan (theorist, artist), Antonia Pont (Deakin University), Elisabeth Presa (University of Melbourne), Spencer Roberts (University of Huddersfield), Jonas Rutgeerts (dramaturge, performance theorist), Anne Sauvagnargues (University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense), Janae Sholtz (Alvernia University), Steve Tromans (musician, independent researcher), Kamini Vellodi (University of Edinburgh), Paolo Vignola (Universidad de las Artes of Guayaquil), Audrone Zukauskaite (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute).In collaboration with Orpheus Institute

Identity and subjectivity in musical performancesWho is the “I” that performs? The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to reconsider our notions of the self, expression, and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Although in other performing arts studies, especially of theatre, the performance of selfhood and identity continues to be a matter of lively debate in both practice and theory, the question of how a sense of self is manifested through musical performance has been neglected. The authors of Voices, Bodies, Practices are all musician-researchers: the book employs artistic research to explore how embodied performing “voices” can emerge from the interactions of individual performers and composers, musical materials, instruments, mediating technologies, and performance contexts.This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

New modes of listening and methods for contemporary sound art practicesOur contemporary, globalised society demands new forms of listening. But what are these new forms? In Listening to the Other, Stefan Östersjö 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.This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Performance in the fields of contemporary music, subjectivity and identityMusic 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 Thủy Nguyễn (Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University/Vietnam National Academy of Music), Stefan Östersjö (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)This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

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.Contributors: Gareth Abrahams (University of Liverpool), Katarina Andjelkovic (Atelier AG Andjelkovic, Belgrade), Ian Buchanan (University of Wollongong), Edward Campbell (University of Aberdeen), Iain Campbell (University of Edinburgh), Paul Dolan (Northumbria University, ), Guy Dubious (Independent sound artist, Tel-Aviv), Vanessa Farfan (Independent artist, Berlin), Silvio Ferraz (University of Sao Paulo), Jose Gil (Nova University of Lisbon), Barbara Glowczewski (National Scientific Research Centre, CNRS), Derek Hales and Spencer Roberts (University of Salford / University of Huddersfield), Yuk Hui (Bauhaus University, Weimar), Jan Jagodzinski (University of Alberta), Niall Dermot Kennedy (Trinity College Dublin), George Lewis (Columbia University), Quirijn Menken (Avans University of Applied Sciences), Thomas Nail (University of Denver), Tero Nauha and Llona Hongisto (University of the Arts Helsinki / Macquarie University), Alex Nowitz (Stockholm University of the Arts), Peter Pal Pelbart (Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo), Anne Sauvagnargues (University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense), David Savat (University of Western Australia), Chris Stover (Arizona State University)

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.Contributors: Patricia Alessandrini (Stanford University), Alan Blackwell (University of Cambridge), John Bowers (Newcastle University), Nicholas Brown (Trinity College Dublin), Nicolas Collins (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Agostino di Scipio (Conservatorio de l'Aquila), Daniela Fantechi (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Ambrose Field (University of York), Karim Haddad (IRCAM, Paris), Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Scott McClaughlin (University of Leeds), Lula Romero (Kunstuniversitat Graz), David Rosenboom (CalArts, Los Angeles), Ann M. Ward (Cornell University), Laura Zattra (IRCAM, Paris)

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.Contributors: William Brooks (Orpheus Institute), Richard Shusterman (Florida Atlantic University), Thibault Galland (Universite Libre de Bruxelles), Ivana Miladinovic Prica (University of Arts in Belgrade), Caitlin Rowley (Bath Spa University), Nicholas Brown (Trinity College Dublin / Orpheus Institute), Winnie Huang (Orpheus Institute / Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp), Fiona Smyth and Victoria Tzotzkova (Independent Scholars), Marco Fusi (Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp), Clare Lesser (New York University Abu Dhabi), Garry Hagberg (Bard College), Ann Warde (Independent Scholar), Deniz Ertan (Independent Scholar), Ambrose Field (University of York)

The challenges and limits for musicians dealing with texts.To perform a musical score implies the transformation of a symbolically coded text into vibrant sound. In Performing by the Book? a carefully selected cadre of artist-researchers dissects this delicate act in critical ways. Offering first-hand insights into the notational, structural and interpretative challenges faced by musicians in dealing with texts of all kinds, the chapters traverse the spectrum between the Middle Ages and the age of Stockhausen. In a harmonious blend of scholarly allure and individual artistry, free from academic obfuscation, the contributors keep a keen eye on the limits of interpretation, both in terms of the interpretative process itself and of the balance between textual faithfulness and artistic autonomy. This comprehensive volume is an indispensable guide for everyone interested in the relationship between musical performance and texts.Contributing authors: Niels Berentsen (Haute école de musique de Genève-Neuchâtel (HES-SO) / conductor of Diskantores), Björn Schmelzer (artistic director of Graindelavoix / independent researcher), Jonathan Ayerst (freelance organist and improviser), Elizabeth Dobbin (Le Jardin Secret / Haute école de musique de Genève (HES-SO)), Camilla Köhnken (freelance pianist-researcher / Bern Academy of the Arts), George Kennaway (cellist, conductor, teacher, publisher and musicologist / University of Leeds), Kate Bennett Wadsworth (cellist / Guildhall School of Music and Drama), Nir Cohen-Shalit (conductor and independent researcher), Xiangning Lin (pianist / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore), Clare Lesser (independent performer, musicologist and composer).Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).