Embodying Failure: Music Performance, Risk and Authenticity

Somatechnics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imogene Newland
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Charles Ives ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Interdisciplinary Practice ◽  
Musical Gesture ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Site

Certain trends in the recital of Western art music composition and performance have embraced indeterminacy through an emerging sonic aesthetic that seeks to redefine the notion of failure. From Charles Ives' adoption of bi-tonality in the early twentieth century to the ‘glitch’ movement in contemporary computer music, this article traces ways in which musicians have sought to embrace the risk for failure in performance with special attention to virtuosic instrumental music ( Cascone 2006 ; Rodgers 2003 ; Godlovitch 1998 ; Rosen 2002 ). Drawing upon the author's recent interdisciplinary practice-led research ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ (2010) and adopting a choreographic approach to the re-appropriation of musical gesture, the author explores how the risk for failure contributes to live musical experience. This discussion is then extended to the process of corporeal acquisition necessary in rehearsing and performing a piece of music which, the author suggests, results in a degree of gestural self-simulation. In this way, the performer's personal authenticity is discussed as a potential locus of failure in which the physical manifestation of emotional expression helps to determine empathetic identification between performer, spectator and instrument ( Kivy 1995 ). Drawing upon Steven Baker's notion of ‘botched taxidermy’ (2000), the author suggests that this empathetic identification creates a space in which the potential risk for failure might be considered intrinsic to conceptions of corporeality in music performance. In this way, live musical experience is posited a site of risk in which the performer, as a desiring subject, emerges as the embodiment of failure. A short excerpt of the case study ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ may be viewed at: http://www.imogene-newland.co.uk/perf_women_md.php

scholarly journals Involving Experiences: Audiencing and Co-reception in Pleasure Garden

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-227
Author(s):  
JOSEPH BROWNING
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Sound Installation ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
A Site

AbstractThis article takes a site-specific, interactive sound installation called Pleasure Garden as a space for thinking about contemporary forms of musical experience. I develop a relational account of the ‘co-reception’ of Pleasure Garden, not centred on listening subjects, but distributed across audience members, artists, researchers and the more-than-human assemblage of the installation itself. I also discuss the effects of several overlapping cultures of ‘audiencing’ associated with Western art music, sound art and other forms of cultural experience – variously individualistic, distracted and participatory – characteristic of late capitalism. Tracing how Pleasure Garden both responded to and was interrupted by these wider forces, I take this case as suggestive of a deep ambivalence: that musical experience is at once powerfully conditioned and generatively uncertain. Throughout the article, problems of method, interpretation and representation intertwine, raising questions about how to study forms of musical experience that evade conventional ethnographic enquiry.

Dialogue and beyond

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine King ◽  
Anthony Gritten
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Physical Knowledge ◽  
Ensemble Performance ◽  
And Performance

This chapter explores the nature of dialogue in ensemble music performance, interrogating the ways in which ‘communication’ and ‘interaction’ occur in the context of rehearsal and live performance of western art music. An expanded conceptual model is proposed in which the epistemic difference between rehearsal and performance is characterized by a paradigm shift from communication (which we define as a one-way process of dialogue, illustrated by turn-taking) to interaction (a two-way process of dialogue, illustrated by reciprocity). The authors argue that interaction draws upon an embodied physical knowledge that is predominantly gestural and corporeal, alongside which (verbal) communication is one small contributory component. Finally, they claim that it is more propitious to understand the central role of embodied knowledge in ensemble performance in terms of interaction rather than communication.

Musical training improves memory for instrumental music, but not vocal music or words

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-159
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. P. Wilbiks ◽  
Sean Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Verbal Material ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Facilitative Effect ◽  
Musical Excerpts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Brain

In previous research, there exists some debate about the effects of musical training on memory for verbal material. The current research examines this relationship, while also considering musical training effects on memory for musical excerpts. Twenty individuals with musical training were tested and their results were compared to 20 age-matched individuals with no musical experience. Musically trained individuals demonstrated a higher level of memory for classical musical excerpts, with no significant differences for popular musical excerpts or for words. These findings are in support of previous research showing that while music and words overlap in terms of their processing in the brain, there is not necessarily a facilitative effect between training in one domain and performance in the other.

Time–space structuring in spontaneous play on educational percussion instruments among three- and four-year-olds

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Young
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Instrument Design ◽  
Children's Music ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Relational Processes ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Percussion Instruments

This article reports on a study which investigated the spontaneous instrumental music-making of three- and four-year-olds in typical pre-school educational settings in London, UK. It argues that many prior studies of children's music-making have analysed and evaluated such activity against models drawn from the practices of Western art music and its conventions of analytical theory, and suggests that this approach has certain drawbacks. The study adopted a grounded theory methodology moving through three phases in different nursery classrooms. Each phase was characterised by successive focusing and refinement of methodological tools in response to the emerging findings. Data were collected on videotape which was then repeatedly reviewed, transcribed and categorised. The children's music-making was analysed as relational processes in time and space involving the two-way interplay of child and instrument. Structures in space delineate the child's movement within the spatial potentials and constraints of the instrument design. Structures in time describe how movements and movement ideas were strung together in ever-lengthening portions.

scholarly journals Unraveling mysteries of personal performance style; biomechanics of left-hand position changes (shifting) in violin performance

PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Visentin ◽  
Shiming Li ◽  
Guillaume Tardif ◽  
Gongbing Shan
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Case Series ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Violin Performance ◽  
Personal Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Teaching Learning

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most often transmitted through aural traditions that include both verbal instruction and performance modeling. In most parts of the world, violin is taught in a manner virtually indistinguishable from that used 200 years ago. The current study uses methods from movement science to examine the “how” and “what” of left-hand position changes (shifting), a movement skill essential during violin performance. In doing so, it begins a discussion of artistic individualization in terms of anthropometry, the performer-instrument interface, and the strategic use of motor behaviors. Results based on 540 shifting samples, a case series of 6 professional-level violinists, showed that some elements of the skill were individualized in surprising ways while others were explainable by anthropometry, ergonomics and entrainment. Remarkably, results demonstrated each violinist to have developed an individualized pacing for shifts, a feature that should influence timing effects and prove foundational to aesthetic outcomes during performance. Such results underpin the potential for scientific methodologies to unravel mysteries of performance that are associated with a performer’s personal artistic style.

Chills and Tempo

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-462
Author(s):  
Daniel K. McEvilly
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
The Right

A correlation between "chills" and specific tempos might partially account for the notion of the "right tempo" in Western art-music performance. Thus, as a call for empirical research, I hypothesize that, for a given passage of music, there is a set of specific optimal tempos (related by transposition and/or proportion) for which the character, coherence, and vitality of the music can be significantly more well marked than for all other tempos.

Imaginary Spaces: New Malaysian performance contexts for intercultural exploration

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Blackburn ◽  
Jean Penny
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Electroacoustic Music ◽  
Potential Models ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Fundamental Research ◽  
Second Phases ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Grant Scheme

The Imaginary Space: Developing models for an emergent Malaysian/Western electroacoustic music is a Fundamental Research Grant Scheme project funded by the Malaysian government in which intercultural investigation is centred within an electroacoustic performance environment. A unique series of music outcomes and potential models reflecting a symbiosis of Malaysian and Western art music through composition and performance are emerging for instrument(s) and electronics. This paper focuses on the first and second phases of the project investigating Western flute, Malaysian serunai and pensol nose flute with electronics. Multi-stranded investigations of connections are identified within the conception, composition, realisation and reception of these works. Performer perspectives are given through two case studies. Our purpose is to illuminate understandings of intercultural connections, to begin to re-conceptualise cultural research paradigms, and to see what we can discover about performance contexts and engagement with individuals, cultures and traditions. The research is contextualised within the philosophical theories of Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty and Ingold. Investigating the role of technology in this context impels a discussion of how these elements generate a new, multifaceted environment, the space in which intercultural and performative understandings can emerge. This article focuses on how these performance contexts become a place for research and new understandings.

scholarly journals Unraveling mysteries of personal performance style; biomechanics of left-hand position changes (shifting) in violin performance

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Visentin ◽  
Shiming Li ◽  
Guillaume Tardif ◽  
Gongbing Shan
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Case Series ◽  
Hand Position ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Violin Performance ◽  
Personal Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Teaching Learning

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most often transmitted through aural traditions that include both verbal instruction and performance modeling. In most parts of the world, violin is taught in a manner virtually indistinguishable from that used 200 years ago. The current study uses methods from movement science to examine the “how” and “what” of left-hand position changes (shifting), a movement skill essential during violin performance. In doing so, it begins a discussion of artistic individualization in terms of anthropometry, the performer-instrument interface, and the strategic use of motor behaviors. Results based on 540 shifting samples, a case series of 6 professional-level violinists, showed that some elements of the skill were individualized in surprising ways while others were explainable by anthropometry, ergonomics and entrainment. Remarkably, results demonstrated each violinist to have developed an individualized pacing for shifts, a feature that should influence timing effects and prove foundational to aesthetic outcomes during performance. Such results underpin the potential for scientific methodologies to unravel mysteries of performance that are associated with a performer’s personal artistic style.

Incorporating improvisation into classical music performance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juniper Hill
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Improve Technique ◽  
Professional Musicians ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Western Art ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Historical Practices

The paucity of improvisation over the last 150 years of western art music is an anomaly. This chapter discusses why and how classical musicians today might incorporate more improvisation into their practice and performance. Examples from professional musicians demonstrate innovative approaches to classical improvisation as well as methods for renewing historical practices in modern contexts. As a developmental tool, improvisation can be used to deepen understanding of traditional repertoire, improve technique and aural skills, expand expressive possibilities, discover a personal voice, and lessen performance anxiety. Methods for increasing improvisation in public performance are also illustrated, including the preparation of improvised cadenzas in canonical repertoire, the exploration of multiple possible score interpretations, the practice of functional improvisation for church services, and the adventure of boundary-challenging creative acts. The chapter concludes by addressing challenges and constraints faced by potential improvisers in today’s classical music culture, especially in relation to education (when important enabling skill sets are left underdeveloped), career pressures (when deviations from convention are risky) and value systems (when improvisation is considered wrong and the creative capacity of performers is deemed inferior). Classical performers are encouraged to take some of their training into their own hands and assert their right for greater artistic autonomy.

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