Puerto Rico: A Site of Critical Performative Pedagogy (original) (raw)
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The (Musical) Performance at Stake: An Ethnomusicological Review
2020
I have always considered the observation of a musical manifestation more or less as the analysis of a musical "performance." My recent interrogations and research about what is, in fact, a "performance"? have led me to formulate an observation. While looking for an answer in the performance studies literature, it is quite clear that music is not included as a subject of analysis but appears more as an object or a pretext to the analysis of the meaning(s) hidden behind the music, the best example being theater. A simple Internet search for "performance studies" only shows a few titles on music. Even The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory (2016) presents performance with keywords like "Drama and Theater" and "Literature." Also, looking to different performance studies programs and courses syllabi from American universities like New York University, Brown, Northwestern, University of California, Davis, etc., it is quite clear that the notion of "performance" is widely associated with communication. 1 Though it surely is, this understanding appeals to a very particular intellectual lineage, characterized by the writings of eminent authors like philosophers John L. Austin (1962) and John R. Searl (1969), cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1982, and drama theorist Richard Schechner (1988), for whom the performance is at first a way to observe language, ritual, and everyday life interactions.
The New State of Play in Performance Studies
Music and Letters, 2017
In an essay published in 2004, 1 John Rink characterised the field of 'Performance Studies' in music as consisting of 'three overlapping domains': historical performance practice, the psychology of performance, and analysis and performance. Within these he found a series of problematic biases: towards Western art music, solo piano repertoire, and the study of tempo and dynamics. Of these, historical performance practice (or HIPhistorically-informed performance) is much the oldest, dating back at least as far as the work of François-Joseph Fétis in the 1830s, and gaining in prominence later that century. At the time of Rink's essay, the field was already starting to embrace the study of historical recordings, building on the pioneering work of Robert Philip, has been labelled as a subdiscipline in its own right: 'phonomusicology'. 2 (I prefer to see recordings and videos more simply as a sourcetype for the study of musical performance, with only limited application for the previous century, and almost none for earlier periods.) The study of historical performance practice now includes historical instruments and techniques, performance style and normative practices in specific times and places, and selfreflection on methodological and aesthetic considerations appertaining to the field in general. 3 The psychology of performance emerged from the early 1980s onwards, not least through the important work of John Sloboda and Eric Clarke. Analysis and performance came to the fore in the 1990s, stimulated by a debate following the publication of Wallace Berry's Musical Structure and Performance in 1989, 4 and has been notable for major contributions from Rink, Jonathan Dunsby, and Nicholas Cook. 5 The field has spawned subdisciplines since Rink's essay, and I would identify a further important domain already established at that time-critical, philosophical, and theological reflection on performance, which sometimes draws upon wider
Musical Performances are (not) Artistic Research
This text is a slightly reworked version of a keynote speech I gave in Aveiro (Portugal) during the PERFORMA 2015 Conference on Musical Performance, organized by the University of Aveiro, the Institute of Ethnomusicology (INET-MD), and the Brazilian Association of Musical Performance (ABRAPEM).
Performance and performativity have emerged as key concepts in social and cultural theory. The recent rise of the interdisciplinary field of performance studies has shifted our understanding of performance as mere entertainment to performance as ‘a way of creation and being’ (Madison and Hamera 2006: xii, original emphasis). As a result, the concept has expanded to encompass everyday action and interaction, as well as ritual and cultural events beyond the stage, influencing a wide range of academic fields. At the intersection of cultural studies, theatre studies, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, gender studies and psychology, studies of performance and performativity clearly grapple with questions about the complex interrelation between the individual, culture and society.
Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts
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The creative potential and work of the performer in new music extends from the moment of conceptualising a concert to the moment of presenting it on stage and comprises many areas between and around those two points. In this thesis I explore the nature of this activity, from the act of playing itself to the commissioning and creating of new pieces, curatorial and collaborative tasks, and the actual concert presentation. I deliberately include interrelations between performer and music promoters, composers and the audience. This leads me to further areas of investigation, namely the question of the performer's leadership, the charismatic bond with the audience and the creation of what I call "concert aura". I do not strive to offer all-purpose formulae for the "perfect concert" or for the ideal collaboration.
NTNU Open Access, 2018
In this artistic research project, I have performed contemporary works and reflected upon my artistic practice in order to make the processes and insights accessible to a wider audience. This is presented in this pdf as a written reflection, as well as the website exposition www.makingsense.no showing a shortened presentation of my artistic research project, with video and sound examples, as well as the three final artistic presentations realized in November 2017. My reflections have been developed from a performer’s perspective; I have worked with both embodied knowing with my instrument and cognitively with interpretation and the performer’s development. I outline, explain and show a means by which this can be realized. In order to do this, I open the space before and after the musical performance through reflection on the complex process of preparing a work for concert: from practice, rehearsals, and musical analysis of the works, to what happens during the performance. I hope to awaken an interest in both performer and listener of contemporary art music with respect to the musician’s role and the psychophysical inner work of the musical performer. I have throughout the project aimed at developing my musical performance and tacit knowledge, broaden and contextualize my artistic research and performances in an international context, and to contribute to new knowledge about interpretation, embodiment and presence from a performer’s perspective. My initial research question and research aims have been guides and sources of motivation throughout my project and have helped me define the parameters of my research. I have built my reflections on and around concepts related to these aims as tools for understanding and artistic development. This project develops strategies for performing contemporary music, strategies that are inspired by rhetoric performance practices, the creation of presence in performing, and how to use such practices to become a freer interpreter of contemporary music. The artistic research project is by nature a multi-faceted endeavour and has created an intriguing laboratory setting in which my contemporary music performance could be continually thought and reworked. The title Making Sense refers to my intention to create an embodied feeling of sense through my performances both for performer and listener, without a logocentric meaning 1) Initial research question: How can I perform contemporary classical music to communicate more directly with the listener, by working with presence as a performer, and using prosody (the melody and rhythm of the language) as an inspiration for performance? My main research aims have been: * to explore different methods for reaching an intensified presence in performing. * to describe the process of learning and performing a musical work – both physically and mentally thus using and documenting a reflective practitioner approach to musical experience. * to create new understandings about practice with particular attention to contemporary music. This artistic research project has been inspired by music- as-speech. I aim to develop a more internally controlled playing, and to use affects as a sort of artistic “raw” material for expression, in other words, to develop “the psychophysical musician”. When I talk about affects I see them as autonomous intensities in the body, independent of our conscious self and happening before our feelings. I think of the embodied affects in the music as being not the actual notes on the score nor the personal feelings of the performer, but rather a use of the raw material in ourselves in the interpretation of the music. Jane O’Dea describes it as: ”[…] not their own personal emotions, but the expressive content enshrined in the score” (O’Dea, 2000, p. 57). As the performer I am not trying to add my feelings to the expressions of the music, but use these embodied affects as a resource in the performance. My writing communicates my reflections on working with artistic development. Language has become a key to communicate the thoughts and processes of a performative inquiry, and gives an explicit verbal account of the implicit knowledge and understanding embodied in artistic practices and products, while at the same time art may escape or go beyond what can be expressed by words and resist (academic) conventions of accountability. In my project, I studied these questions through one performer, myself, and give a reflective account of the lived experience of developing as a performer while broadening my knowledge through artistic research. My study accounts for the specific ways in which meaning is created as interaction between performer, embodiment, and audience, and opens up space for a more subjective type of reflection than traditional scientific research allows for. With this in mind, I could say that I have attempted to explore the world of musical performance rather than explain it.