Logic of Experimentation: Rethinking Music Performance Through Artistic Research

Abstract

The performance of Western notated art music is usually associated with the notions of execution, recitation, transmission, reproduction, or interpretation, relying on the existence of a commonly accepted, sedimented musical text, and on a set of stabilised conventions that regulate the communication between composer, performer, and audience. From this perspective, performance is the moment for the concrete sonic representation of an already known sound structure. This book challenges this view, proposing a different perspective, understanding performance first as a space of problematisation, not of representation. It proposes a critical stance on the diversity of the available musical sources and materials, stressing their epistemic complexity and their potential for productive reconfigurations, suggesting new modes of creatively operating with them. Moving beyond the work concept, the book presents a new image of musical works, based upon the notions of strata, assemblage, and diagram, and proposing innovative practice-based methodologies that integrate archival and musicological research into the creative process leading to a performance. This view is not primarily intended as a rejection of interpretation, but as a movement towards a space of problematisation that is situated beyond interpretation, and that might include interpretation as one component of its fabric. Thus, my effort is to push interpretation into post-interpretation. It is, however, important to make clear that post here is to be understood neither as an epochal category, nor simply as chronologically following interpretation, but rather as a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with interpretation. It involves subjecting the traditional relationship between music and interpretation to a critical reconsideration. This critical deconstruction of interpretation creates a productive tension with representational models, which resist change, and it is a proposal for critical renderings infused by research and inventiveness. Musical practice becomes primarily a critical act, allowing performances to be critical studies of the works performed, significantly in, by, and through the means of performance itself. In this sense, performance gains a supplementary dimension, and can be thought of as an independent form of art: independent of works of music, of supposedly uncorrupted traditions, and of idealised reconstructions of past practices and instruments. Consequently, this view also argues for a new kind of performer, emancipated from authoritative texts and traditions, and open to 21 Experimentation versus Interpretation gained visibility within the musicological subfields of performance science and performance studies, at least since the 1990s. In his essay "From Experimental Music to Musical Experiment," Frank X. Mauceri (1997, 193), distinguishing between the use of the word experiment as a historical or stylistic category and its use in science, states: "Experiment is a technique by which evidence is gathered in suppor...

Choro hodierno: uma proposta de contextualização

“…Sendo uma pesquisa conduzida e fundamentada numa prática complexa, a investigação artística resultaria na criação de conjuntos únicos de conhecimento (Coessens, Crispin e Douglas, 2009), direcionados e concentrados na performance, representando um esforço de pesquisa diferente que teria por objetivo estabelecer um procedimento experimental para a execução de qualquer trabalho (Assis, 2018). Isto posto, espera-se que a produção artística dos pesquisadores seja valorizada, sendo considerada uma parte indispensável aos resultados pretendidos pela investigação artística (Correia et al, 2018), além de possibilitar a reconstrução da experiência artística, da ação e do pensamento (Coessens et al, 2009).…”

“…Geralmente, artistas estão interessados na criação de novas realidades, desconstruindo antigos conceitos mito poéticos e os reconstruindo dentro de uma nova configuração (Correia et al, 2018). Sendo assim, o emprego de uma abordagem que promova a problematização através de um questionamento aberto e flexível, promovendo a descoberta e a redescoberta de informações antes não percebidas seria um dos conceitos chave da investigação artística (Assis, 2018).…”

“…Espera-se que a investigação artística promova -além da criação de obras e interpretações-reflexões sobre as contextualizações, os caminhos, as metodologias, as experimentações e os processos criativos, a fim de colaborar com a compreensão e a expansão do conhecimento sobre a produção artística (Correia et al, 2018). A busca por novidades e resultados sem precedentes não seriam os únicos objetivos da investigação artística, mas também o desejo de ampliar e reconfigurar os campos daquilo que é visível, expressável e audível (Assis, 2018), refletindo o processo artístico através de meios que exponham os conhecimentos, os questionamentos e as dúvidas relacionadas à exploração e à experimentação da trajetória investigativa do artista (Coessens et al, 2009). Por fim, talvez o grande desafio da investigação artística seja conseguir gravitar entre o mundo acadêmico e o mundo da arte, por meio de negociações que definem o espaço no qual ocorre a pesquisa e a abordagem experimental à prática empírica (Östersjö, 2017).…”

Music as play: a dialogue

“…Since the Academy, and partly as a result of it, 1 my ideas developed into a music ontological thought strongly inspired by the differential ontology of Gilles Deleuze. A detailed account of my "new image of work" will be a major part of my forthcoming monograph Logic of Experimentation (De Assis 2018), but I wish to present its fundamental traits in this chapter, not least because they explain the title of this book, and of the Orpheus Academy 2016. I will proceed in three steps: First (section 1), I will point out some of the problems with currently available music ontologies, as they have been discussed in recent years (mostly) by analytic philosophers.…”

Powers of Divergence : An Experimental Approach to Music Performance

“…Predicated upon the existence of a fixed source text (the score), which preserves an idealised concept of the authorised "musical work," and on a performer bringing the musical experience itself into renewed existence, the concept of "interpretation" implies a centripetal approach from the performer towards the supposed "essence" of the artwork itself and it is strongly related to other time-bound concepts, such as Werktreue, "authenticity," "composer's intention," and, crucially, to certain editorial practices, particularly the Urtext. (Assis 2012) The work done by MusicExperiment21 therefore has aimed at challenging traditional modes of thinking, both about the nature of musical works and about the practice of their performance. On the one hand, it has problematised the ontological character appointed to musical works by some musico-philosophical traditions (see Assis 2018, chapter 1).…”