Doctors In Performance
4th Festival Conference of Music Performance and Artistic Research
Programme and Abstracts Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Doctors In Performance
4th Festival Conference of Music Performance and Artistic Research
Programme and Abstracts
Tallinn, 1–3 September, 2021 Steering Committee Dr. Anu Vehviläinen (Sibelius Academy / University of Arts Helsinki) Dr. Markus Kuikka (Sibelius Academy / University of Arts Helsinki) Prof. Denise Neary (Royal Irish Academy of Music) Prof. Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre) Dr. Sarah Callis (Royal Academy of Music)
Organizing Committee (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre) Prof. Kristel Pappel Prof. Marje Lohuaru Prof. Allan Vurma Hanneleen Pihlak
Editor of the booklet – Richard Carr Design and layout – Maite Kotta Executive Editor – Anu Schaper, Kristel Pappel, Hanneleen Pihlak Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Press, Tallinn 2021
Organizer
Partners
Supporters Welcome to the Fourth DIP Tallinn 2021
Dear doctors in performance, dear colleagues, guests and friends!
It is a great pleasure and honour to host at the “Doctors in Performance” (DIP) festival conference 2021 in Tallinn, at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. It is very gratifying that, despite the difficult times of the Covid-19 pandemic, our international friends and colleagues have found their way to Tallinn, either in person or online. Artistic research has already become an established practice both in doctoral studies in creative disciplines and more broadly – also for the educators who teach these disciplines. It can be said with satisfaction that the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre has been a pioneer of artistic research in Estonia. The first artistic doctoral dissertation was defended at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in 2004, and since then, 45 doctoral students have defended their research in the fields of music and theatre. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of international cooperation in this field, and the generative capacity of this joint activity is also evidenced by this festival conference. I wish you all an interesting, inspiring conference that opens up new perspectives on artistic thought and creativity!
Ivari Ilja Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Rector
3 In the last decades, artistic research has developed rapidly in many countries and gained increasing recognition. There is no doubt that the three “Doctors in Performance” (DIP) festival-conferences – the first of which took place in September 2014 in Helsinki, inaugurated by the Sibelius Academy (SibA) – have played an important role in this. It is our colleagues at the Sibelius Academy who came up with the idea of combining artistic research and musical performance in the framework of this event in order to highlight the creative pursuits of musicians and researchers. The second DIP took place in 2016 at the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) in Dublin, and the third, three years ago, at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (LAMT) in Vilnius. After the festival-conference in Vilnius, the Steering Committee of DIP proposed that the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre should have the honour to be the organiser of the fourth DIP in September 2020. In autumn 2018 none of us could have foreseen that a year and a half later borders would close, universities would lock their doors and interactions would be transferred to the virtual world due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. In such conditions we had to take the decision to postpone the event by a year. Although the current situation is still far from normal, we hope to be able to run a hybrid version of DIP with all of your support. We extend a warm welcome to everyone who has been able to join us in Tallinn and to all those participants joining the festival online! We are eagerly awaiting the presentations of our two keynote speakers – Neil Heyde, cellist and researcher at the London Royal Academy of Music (RAM), and singer and music psychologist Allan Vurma from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. We ask for your patience and understanding in the event of any technical hiccups, which we shall try to resolve as quickly as possible. The Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre has participated in DIP since the second festival-conference in Dublin. Our university has taken the lead in doctoral artistic research in Estonia. The first PhD in Music was awarded in 2004. To date, 45 doctoral theses in music and theatre have been defended, various articles have been published, and the book series “Studies on Artistic Research” has been launched. As a result of several years of collaboration between EAMT, the Estonian Academy of Arts, and the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School, a
4 · Doctors In Performance 2021 significant document was finalised this year: the Estonian Artistic Research Framework Agreement, which aims to define and develop artistic research and to ensure its place in the educational landscape and in society. The framework agreement was signed by the Rectors of the three universities in June 2021. It is unlikely that this document would have seen the light of day had it not been for international role models and like-minded partners. Our doctoral studies in artistic research have received significant impetus from the activities of AEC, EPARM and ELIA and, of course, from the DIP festival-conferences. In preparing the fourth DIP, we have received much support and rapid reactions to our questions from the Steering Committee of DIP: Sarah Callis (RAM), Markus Kuikka (SibA), Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli (LAMT), Denise Neary (RIAM) and Anu Vehviläinen (SibA). Our special gratitude goes to our Finnish colleagues Anu Vehviläinen and Markus Kuikka for meaningful, friendly and constructive discussions. Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli from Vilnius has always been on hand with advice. In autumn 2018 the DIP organising committee started work at EAMT with dedicated contributions from members Marje Lohuaru and Allan Vurma as well as assistants Aleksandra Dolgopolova and Liina Jääts at the beginning and Hanneleen Pihlak in the intensive preparation phase this year. The festival- conference has received continuous support from the senior staff of EAMT – Rector Ivari Ilja and Vice Rectors Margus Pärtlas and Henry-David Varema. We are deeply indebted to our technical team led by Nikita Shishkov and Innar Järva and to Marek Vilba and Ilja Goor, the Administrative Head of EAMT Halls. In their various roles, the lecturers of EAMT and former and current doctoral students in music have given their contribution. A big thank you to everyone! The diverse topics covered in the 21 papers, 10 recitals and 14 lecture-recitals of the fourth “Doctors in Performance” reflect contemporary thinking in music, which encompasses, unites and transforms different fields, pushing the boundaries of current knowledge. Participants include familiar names from previous conferences as well as those joining us for the first time. We hope that everyone will feel comfortable in the Great Hall – which was opened in 2019 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre – as well as in the Organ Hall and Chamber Hall of our Academy. Wishing you inspirational days furthering artistic research! Kristel Pappel Head of the Centre for Doctoral Studies, EAMT On behalf of the Organising Committee
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 5 Contents
Practical information...... 10 Programme...... 13 Concert-performance...... 21
KEYNOTES Neil Heyde Dialogues with recordings: Digital Memory and the Archive...... 22 Allan Vurma Crossover between singing and science...... 24
ABSTRACTS Lucy Abrams-Husso From the Studio – from Recording to Performance...... 28 Molly Adams-Toomey Contextual Research and Analysis as Tools for Artistic Interpretation in Petr Eben’s Song Cycles...... 29 Giovanni Albini Mathematics for music composition at the service of performance...... 31 Lore Amenabar Larranaga QUARTER-TONE ACCORDION: Exposing a New Instrument to a New Audience through New Music...... 33 Marcella Barz Integrating Technology into Artistic Practice...... 35 Christian Bester The Influence of Indigenous Bushmen Musical Elements and Significant Compositional Traits on Niel van der Watt’s Song Cycle Die Wind Dreun soos ‘n Ghoera, ‘n Siklus Boesman-Mites. (The wind drones like a Ghoera, A Bushmen Myth Song Cycle)...... 37 Felicita Brusoni A Voice Beyond the Edge: Michael Edgerton’s Anaphora – Nonlinear dynamics in the extra-normal voice...... 39 Karolina Dąbek The Listener’s Experience in Spatial Music...... 42 Lorelei Dowling In what ways is the contraforte a viable instrument for expanding the colour palette of twenty-first century ensemble writing? The unknown sonic palette of the contraforte: the role of choice and tacit knowledge in discourse...... 44
6 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Vittoria Ecclesia Art and Rigour: a personal path in adapting methodologies for Artistic Research...... 47 Olga Heikkilä Linguistic embodiment of Pierrot lunaire’s Sprechstimme...... 49 Julian Hellaby The Topic of Piano Performance...... 51 Marianna Henriksson Stirring the Humours – Galenist Affect Theory and Performing Early Music with New Dance...... 53 Jörg Holzmann Early Film Documents as Sources for 19th Century Performance Practice...... 55 Justyna Jablonska The Musical Ornament in Cross-cultural Performance. Adapting the Carnatic Gamaka to the Cello...... 57 Mieko Kanno Empathy in Musical Performance...... 59 Kristi Kapten Playing the Text in Rachmaninov’s Songs Op. 38...... 60 Krzysztof Komendarek-Tymendorf Recent Polish music for Viola Solo (pieces composed during the current pandemic)...... 62 Kirill Kozlovski Contextualization of Yuri Shaporin’s piano music...... 65 Paola Livorsi Melting sound: listening through corporeality...... 67 Emma Lloyd Are you listening? Indeterminacy and micro-gesture in improvisation...... 69 Hui Han Lui Evolution of Body Movements: Piano Techniques and Playing Approaches in the Classical Period...... 71 Matthew Mazanek Implicit Curriculum: Improvisation Pedagogy in Guitar Methods 1760–1860...... 73 Vincenzo De Martino The Representation of the Sea in Selected Piano Works by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: A Performative Approach...... 75 Agnė Mažulienė The practice of figurate music composing: from sketch to score...... 77 Martina Mičija Palić Croatian Female Pianists and Piano Pedagogues: their Role in the Development of Pianistic Tradition in Zagreb...... 78
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 7 Libero Mureddu Joy Against the Machine – A machine-controlled improvisation for human players...... 80 Sasha Mäkilä Different versions of Leevi Madetoja’s first symphony – a question of primary source for the new critical edition...... 83 Per Anders Nilsson Modular Improv System...... 84 Anne Elisabeth Piirainen Meandering Identities: Interpreting clarinet compositions by Alexander, Grigory and Yulian Krein in the context of Russian, Jewish and French music traditions...... 87 Uljas Pulkkis Psychoacoustic orchestration analysis as composing aid – a new method and a helpful tool in the creative process...... 89 Charles Quevillon Excarnation and Sacrifice of an Electric Guitar...... 91 Phoebe Robertson Numerology and Russian Orthodox Existentialism in Sofia Gubaidulina’s Music for Flute, Strings, and Percussion (1994)...... 93 Anna Rutkowska Creation in Cooperation. Marimba music by Polish composers – originals and transcriptions...... 95 Anastasiia Sharina The Principle of classifying Piano Pieces with the use of Extended Techniques (based on the Examples of Solo Works by Ukrainian composers)...... 97 Julianna Siedler-Smuga Percussion Theatre elements in marimba music – evolution or revolution?...... 99 Sebastian Silén Nordic perspectives on the Violin Sonata...... 101 Eveliina Sumelius-Lindblom Messiaen’s Préludes as an individual manifestation of 1920’s French Modernism...... 103 Iulia-Magdalena Toma Effects of the repertoire on the musculoskeletal system in both high-school and expert pianists...... 105 Juhan Uppin The development of the traditional playing style of the Teppo-type accordion in the 20th century and creating a traditionally informed performance practice. “In Mind” (artistic title of the recital)...... 107 Ilze Urbāne The Phenomenon of the Italian Flute School...... 109 Anu Vehviläinen What’s a Performance? Playing Rachmaninoff in Social Media...... 111
8 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Diāna Zandberga The Polystylistic Freedom of the Piano Works by Imants Zemzaris...... 113 Christine Zerafa The Pianist as a Duo Partner: Understanding my Role in the Rehearsal Process with Singers and Instrumentalists...... 116
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 9 Practical information
MAIN VENUE Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Tatari 13 10116 Tallinn eamt.ee
WiFi information: Network: EAMT public Password: pianoplayer
GETTING AROUND Free public transport Thanks to its small size and compact layout, Tallinn is easy to get around on foot or by public transport. DIP participants can use public transport free of charge with the specially generated conference QR ticket sent by mail and printed on name tags. Simply remember to validate each entry at the orange validators at the front door of the vehicle. To do this, place the QR code (displayed on a smart device screen or printed on paper) against the code reader screen at the lower part of the validator.
Locations Please scan the QR code for a map with the main locations, including nearby lunch options and ATMs.
10 · Doctors In Performance 2021 DURING THE CONFERENCE The registration/help desk will be open throughout the conference. Team members will be wearing yellow name tags – if you need assistance, please go to the registration/help desk or ask someone wearing a yellow name tag for help.
EAMT floor plan 1. floor Great Hall: Opening, Keynotes presentations, Concert-performance Foyer: Registration/help desk, welcome reception
4. floor C405 Chamber Hall: Lecture-Recitals, Papers A404 Organ Hall: Papers, Lecture-Recitals
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 11 Refreshments There will be coffee breaks mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Please note that lunch is not provided, but the EAMT is situated in the city centre with several lunch options nearby. Please check the locations map for some suggestions.
SOCIAL EVENTS · Concert-performance and welcome reception 1 September at 18.00 The concert-performance takes place at the EAMT Great Hall and is a synthesis of several art forms. See page 22 for more info. A buffet reception at the Great Hall Foyer will follow directly after the event.
· Dinner at Fotografiska (Telliskivi 60a/8) 2 September at 19.00 Fotografiska is located in Telliskivi Creative City and can be reached by public transport or on foot. You can either walk through the Old Town (around 2 km from the hotels) or take tram no. 3 or 4 from Vabaduse väljak (direction Kadriorg or Lennujaam) to Hobujaama and change to tram no. 1 or 2 (direction Kopli). The closest stop is Telliskivi, from where it is a few hundred meters’ walk to the restaurant.
· Arvo Pärt Centre tour 3 September, 14.15–19.00 The bus to the Arvo Pärt Centre departs at 14.15 from Tatari street (the exact point of departure will be given during the conference). The Centre is situated in Laulasmaa, 35 kilometres from Tallinn. The scheduled return from Laulasmaa is at 18.00. Time Zone EEST (Eastern European Summer Time)
12 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Programme Lore Amenabar Larranaga QUARTER-TONE ACCORDION: Exposing a New Instrument to New Audience through Music Justyna Jablonska The Musical Ornament in Cross- cultural Performance. Adapting the Carnatic Gamaka to the Cello Chamber Hall Lecture recitals Chair: Giovanni Albini Krzysztof Komendarek- Tymendorf Recent Polish music for Viola Solo (pieces composed during the current pandemic) Ilze Urbāne The Phenomenon of the Italian Flute School Great Hall Recitals Chair: Kerri Kotta Floor Foyer) th Hui Han Lui Evolution of Body Movements: Piano Techniques and Playing Approaches in the Classical Period Coffee break (Great Hall Foyer and 4 Martina Mičija Palić Croatian Female Pianists and Piano Pedagogues: their Role in the Development of Pianistic Tradition in Zagreb Iulia-Magdalena Toma Effects of the repertoire on musculoskeletal system in both high- school and expert pianists Anastasiia Sharina The Principle of classifying Piano Pieces with the use of Extended Techniques (based on the Examples of Solo Works by Ukrainian composers) Registration in Great Hall Foyer Parallel sessions Organ Hall Online papers Chair: Maksim Štšura 11.00–11.30 11.30–12.00 10.00–10.30 10.30–11.00 9.30–10.00 8.45–17.00 9.30–11.30 WEDNESDAY · 1 SEPTEMBER 2021
14 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Anne Elisabeth Piirainen Meandering Identities: Interpreting clarinet compositions by Alexander, Grigory and Yulian Krein in the context of Russian, Jewish and French music traditions (with Kirill Kozlovski, piano) Chamber Hall Lecture recitals Chair: Margus Pärtlas Digital Great Hall Opening Prof. Kristel Pappel, EAMT Prof. Ivari Ilja, Rector of the EAMT Dr. Anu Vehviläinen, DIP steering committee Hanneleen Pihlak, EAMT Keynote presentation Prof. Neil Heyde (Royal Academy of Music, London) Dialogues with recordings: Memory and the Archive Chair: Kerri Kotta Great Hall
Pierrot Phoebe Robertson Numerology and Russian Orthodox Existentialism in Sofia Gubaidulina’s Music for Flute, Strings, and Percussion (1994) Olga Heikkilä Linguistic embodiment of lunaire ’s Sprechstimme Lunch Parallel sessions Organ Hall Online papers Chair: Sten Lassmann 15.30–16.00 15.00–15.30 12.00–13.30 13.30–15.00 15.00–17.45 Wednesday · 1 September 2021
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 15 Sasha Mäkilä (in person) Different versions of Leevi Madetoja’s first symphony – a question of primary source for the new critical edition (paper) Vincenzo De Martino (online) The Representation of the Sea in Selected Piano Works by Mikalojus Konstantinas: A Performative Approach Chamber Hall Lecture recitals Chair: Margus Pärtlas Concert-performance Welcome reception at Great Hall Foyer Great Hall Floor Foyer) th Charles Quevillon Excarnation and Sacrifice of an Electric Guitar Matthew Mazanek Implicit Curriculum: Improvisation Pedagogy in Guitar Methods 1760–1860 Lorelei Dowling In what ways is the contraforte a viable instrument for expanding the colour palette of twenty-first century ensemble writing? The unknown sonic palette of the contraforte: the role of choice and tacit knowledge in discourse Coffee break (4 Organ Hall Online papers Chair: Jaak Sikk 18.00 Ca 18.45 16.45–17.15 17.15–17.45 16.15–16.45 16.00–16.15 Wednesday · 1 September 2021
16 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Anna Rutkowska Creation in Cooperation. Marimba music by Polish composers – originals and transcriptions (recital) Julianna Siedler-Smuga Percussion Theater elements in marimba music – evolution or revolution? Chamber Hall Online Lecture recitals Chair: Riho Esko Maimets Kapten Kristi Playing the Text in Rachmaninov’s Songs Op. 38 (with Ksenia Rossar, soprano) Kirill Kozlovski Contextualization of Yuri Shaporin’s piano music Great Hall Recitals Chair: Anu Vehviläinen Floor Foyer) th Agnė Mažulienė The practice of figurate music composing: from sketch to score Coffee break (Great Hall Foyer and 4 Jörg Holzmann Early Film Documents as Sources for 19th Century Performance Practice Vittoria Ecclesia Art and Rigour: a personal path in adapting methodologies for Artistic Research Marianna Henriksson Stirring the Humours – Galenist Affect Theory and Performing Early Music with New Dance Registration and information at Great Hall Foyer Parallel sessions Organ hall Papers Chair: Sarah Callis 11.00–11.30 11.30–12.00 10.00–10.30 10.30–11.00 9.30–10.00 9.00–17.00 9.30–11.30 THURSDAY · 2 SEPTEMBER 2021
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 17 Die . (The wind drones Sebastian Silén Nordic perspectives on the Violin Sonata Christian Bester The Influence of Indigenous Bushmen Musical Elements and Significant Compositional Traits on Niel van der Watt’s Song Cycle Wind Dreun soos ‘n Ghoera, Siklus Boesman-Mites like a Ghoera, A Bushmen Myth Song Cycle) Chamber Hall Online Lecture recitals Chair: Marje Lohuaru Eveliina Sumelius-Lindblom Messiaen’s Préludes as an individual manifestation of 1920’s French Modernism (lecture recital) Diāna Zandberga The Polystylistic Freedom of the Piano Works by Imants Zemzaris Great Hall Keynote presentation Prof. Allan Vurma (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre) Crossover between singing and science Chair: Kerri Kotta Great Hall Recitals Chair: Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli (online) Floor Foyer) th Break (4 Anu Vehviläinen What’s a Performance? Playing Rachmaninoff in Social Media Christine Zerafa The Pianist as a Duo Partner: Understanding my Role in the Rehearsal Process with Singers and Instrumentalists Mieko Kanno Empathy in Musical Performance Lunch Parallel sessions Organ Hall Papers Chair: Toomas Siitan 16.30–17.00 15.30–16.00 16.00–16.30 15.00–15.30 12.00–13.30 13.30–15.00 15.00–18.00 Thursday · 2 September 2021
18 · Doctors In Performance 2021 (in person) Julian Hellaby The Topic of Piano Performance Juhan Uppin The development of the traditional playing style of the Teppo-type accordion in the 20th century and creating a traditionally informed performance practice. “In Mind” (artistic title of the recital) Uljas Pulkkis Psychoacoustic orchestration analysis as composing aid – a new method and a helpful tool in the creative process Dinner at Fotografiska Restaurant and Rooftop Garden, Telliskivi 60a-8 Chair: Markus Kuikka Giovanni Albini Mathematics for music composition at the service of performance 17.30–18.00 19.00 17.00–17.30 Thursday · 2 September 2021
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 19 Lucy Abrams-Husso From the Studio – from Recording to Performance Marcella Barz Integrating Technology into Artistic Practice Chamber Hall Lecture recitals Chair: Theodore Parker Per Anders Nilsson (online) Modular Improv System Emma Lloyd Are you listening? Indeterminacy and micro-gesture in improvisation Felicita Brusoni A Voice Beyond the Edge: Michael Edgerton’s Anaphora – Nonlinear dynamics in the extra-normal voice Great Hall Closing remarks and discussion (Steering committee) Great Hall Recitals Chair: Allan Vurma Libero Mureddu Joy Against the Machine – A machine-controlled improvisation for human players (online) Floor Foyer) th (online) Molly Adams-Toomey Contextual Research and Analysis as Tools for Artistic Interpretation in Petr Eben’s Song Cycles Paola Livorsi Melting sound: listening through corporeality (with Marek Pluciennik, film artist) Departure to the Arvo Pärt Centre Lunch and guided tour Karolina Dąbek The Listener’s Experience in Spatial Music (paper) Information at Great Hall Foyer Organ Hall Lecture recitals Chair: Kristi Kapten 11.30–11.45 Coffee break (Great Hall Foyer and 4 10.30–11.30 9.30–10.30 11.45–12.45 13.00–14.00 14.15–19.00 11.45–12.15 9.00–14.00 9.30–12.45 Parallel sessions FRIDAY · 3 SEPTEMBER 2021
20 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Concert-performance
1 September, 2021 18.00 Great Hall
Sinikõrgustele / Infinite Blue Heights
· Claude Debussy (1862–1918) Rhapsody No. 1 for clarinet and piano (1910) Vittoria Ecclesia, Maila Laidna
· Unsuk Chin (1961) Etudes No. 5 Toccata and No. 6 Grains for piano Ilana Lode
· Giovanni Albini (1982) String Quartet No. 8 Op. 39 (2013) Allegretto maestoso Lasso Adagio, espressivo e sofferto Madrigale String Quartet Prezioso: Robert Traksmann, Mari-Katrina Suss, Helena Altmanis, Andreas Lend
· Tze Yeung Ho (1992) Duo for voice and harpsichord vihik (f) värv – vissen (2020) Ksenia Rossar, Anneli Tohver
· Riho Esko Maimets (1988) sinikõrgustele / Infinite Blue Heights for piano duo (2019) Maila Laidna, Tiiu Sisask
Artistic director Prof. Marje Lohuaru
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 21 KEYNOTES
Dialogues with recordings: Digital Memory and the Archive
Neil Heyde Royal Academy of Music, London [email protected]
Journalistic criticism of recordings has a history as long as the medium itself. Since the late 20th century there has also been a quickly expanding analytical literature, perhaps particularly influential in helping to shape changes in approaches within HIP. However, outside HIP, performers and composers rarely communicate explicit responses in their own practice to the performance dimensions of the legacy captured in recordings. Of course, there are challenges in establishing means for music makers to engage closely with this material. (Fear of ‘copying’, for example.) Is this an area in which doctoral work could, or should, be blazing a trail? In this keynote, I offer some thoughts on ‘delivery’ (actio) and ‘presence’ to provide context for some new music that models some of the ways in which we might enter into dialogue with iconic recordings. Digital Memory and the Archive is the collective title for a set of six pieces for cello written for me between 2015 and 2020 by the American composer Richard Beaudoin. (The title is taken from a 2013 collection of essays by the German media theorist Wolfgang Ernst.) Each of the pieces is a response to a specific recorded pairing of performer and piece, analysed in millisecond-level detail: Casals recording Bach, Gould recording Schoenberg, Argerich recording Chopin, Debussy ‘recording’ his own music (a Welte piano roll), Monk improvising on Johnny Green (‘Body and Soul’), and Maggie Teyte and Alfred Cortot recording Debussy. Through processes of mapping and encoding (both notational and physical) these pieces afford a rich engagement with some of the elusive performance dimensions of these extraordinary recorded documents, and in turn suggest other ways in which we might realise performance as ‘dialogue’.
22 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Neil Heyde is Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal Academy of Music in London and for over twenty years has been the cellist of the Kreutzer Quartet. Around the quartet’s special contribution to the 21st-century evolution of the medium he has developed a unique approach to the instrument, played out in work as an improviser and in his work with composers. A long-term project on instrumental choreography (exploring the physical delivery of the music as a fundamental element) has produced many outcomes, including a film and documentary of his work with Brian Ferneyhough on the extraordinary Time and Motion Study II for solo cello and electronics (available on iTunesU) and a DVD Quartet Choreography (MSVDX101). He has edited Faber’s series of 19th-century music for stringed instruments and is currently completing the volume of Debussy’s sonatas for the Œuvres Complètes de Claude Debussy in Paris.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 23 Crossover between singing and science
Allan Vurma Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre [email protected]
In this lecture the author describes how conducting scientific investigations and having a background in both science and classical voice has helped him to find answers to the questions that have arisen in his activity as a professional singer and voice teacher. Two topics will be addressed in more detail. The first of these concerns the metaphorical vocabulary used by singers and voice teachers to communicate various aspects of vocal technique. The results of acoustic investigation and perception tests shows that figuratively “placing the voice forward” may refer to various aspects of voice production, such as singing with the open pharynx and lower larynx to create the “singer’s” formant, raising the frequency of the second formant of the vocal tract by arching the tongue further forward in the mouth, and/or raising the first formant of the vocal tract by opening the mouth wider. Furthermore, voices belonging to the higher voice categories are perceived by listeners to be positioned more “forwardly”. The second topic concerns the influence of the timbral difference of two tones on decisions about their pitch relationship. Successively presented viola tone (which has soft timbre) and trumpet tone (which has bright timbre) seem to be best in tune for both musicians and non-musicians when the frequency of oscillation of the brighter trumpet tone is about 20 cents flatter than that of the viola tone. A similar timbre induced pitch shift also occurs in the tenor voice – viola comparison. During the lecture, several sound examples and animations will be presented, and the benefits of the research results with regard to music practice will be discussed.
24 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Allan Vurma is a professor of musicology at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. For over thirty years he has also been a soloist and vocal coach in the professional Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, ever since its foundation in 1981 by the conductor Tõnu Kaljuste. This choir is world-famous for its close and fruitful collaboration with the composers Arvo Pärt and the recently deceased Veljo Tormis. Besides being a singer (with an MA equivalent vocal training), Allan Vurma has also long been interested in theoretical questions of singing, voice acoustics and music perception, partly as a result of his broad educational background (he also holds an MSc in radio-engineering and a PhD in musicology). He is the author of around twenty academic papers published in peer-reviewed journals such as Musicae Scientiae (where he is also a member of the editorial board), Music Perception, Psychology of Music, Journal of Voice, Frontiers in Psychology, and a number of others. In addition to all these activities he has written music criticism and is the author of a monograph about the famous Estonian bass-baritone Mati Palm.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 25 26 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Abstracts From the Studio – from Recording to Performance Lecture-Recital
Lucy Abrams-Husso Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected] / www.lucyabrams.net
During Spring 2021, I recorded my first solo album of works for clarinet and electronics as part of my artistic doctoral research project on contemporary American and Finnish music. This lecture-recital will discuss a case study from this research chapter. Recording contemporary music is a wholly different performance experience from performing live, requiring different types of decision-making. During this lecture recital I will discuss how starting with recording affected my musical preparation and the formation of my musical ideas. I will also analyse how my performance changed when shifting from recorded to live performance.
PROGRAMME · Nina Shekhar – Honk if you love me for clarinet and electronics · Minna Leinonen – Pheme for clarinet and electronics
Lucy Abrams-Husso, originally from Chicago, has been based in Helsinki, Finland since 2013. She received Bachelor’s degrees in clarinet performance and anthropology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Master of Music degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Sibelius Academy. Formerly Co Principal and Eb clarinet of the Oulu Symphony, Lucy is a freelance musician in southern Finland and has been a doctoral candidate at the Sibelius Academy (University of the Arts Helsinki) since 2016. Her project focuses on Finnish and American contemporary music, and her research has been supported by grants from the Wihuri, Aaltonen and Finnish Cultural Foundations.
28 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Contextual Research and Analysis as Tools for Artistic Interpretation in Petr Eben’s Song Cycles Lecture-Recital
Molly Adams-Toomey Royal Irish Academy of Music [email protected]
This lecture-recital will be an in-depth exploration of two song cycles by Czech composer Petr Eben (1929–2007), Písně Nejtajnější (Most Secret Songs) and Písně Nelaskavé (Loveless Songs). Through selections from these two song cycles, this lecture recital will investigate the ways in which contextual knowledge of a musical work, as well as thorough analysis of the score, may serve to enhance a performer’s artistic interpretation of the work. The lecture recital will demonstrate that score analysis, contextual research, and practical performance enrich and inform each other, and that a fuller concept of the music to be performed can be achieved through the marriage of all of these approaches to the works. This lecture recital will demonstrate that when approaching the works of composer Petr Eben, in particular, contextual research and analysis are not only important, but are essential for a full understanding of his vocal works, and are therefore necessary for a singer seeking to build a rich and meaningful artistic interpretation of his song cycles. The lecture recital will demonstrate this by using examples of analysis of selections from Eben’s song cycles, with reference to Eben’s composition techniques. Such techniques include the influence of Moravian folksong and Gregorian chant, the use of both serial and diatonic musical structures, the influence of the cadence of the Czech language on Eben’s vocal settings, and the choice of poets whose works Eben set to music. The lecture recital will also examine the wider context of Eben’s life, his musical influences, and the circumstances in the Czech Republic at the time the song cycles were written. The lecture recital will explore how these factors may have influenced Eben’s composition, and therefore how they may inform a singer’s interpretation of Eben’s song cycles. Each examination of the song selections will culminate
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 29 in a performance of the song, with an invitation to consider how contextual research and analysis might have informed the artistic interpretation of the song in question. The lecture recital will conclude that when approaching a performance of Petr Eben’s song cycles, contextual research, analysis of the score, and artistic interpretation in performance are inseparable. By approaching the song cycles with the mindset of both a performer and a researcher, singers may create an interpretation that better communicates a fuller understanding of the meaning to be found in Eben’s works.
PROGRAMME · Selections from Písně Nejtajnější (Most Secret Songs) by Petr Eben 1. Cestami Lásky 2. Rozhovor 3. Loučení 4. Jdu za Tebou
· Selections from Písně Nelaskavé (Loveless Songs) by Petr Eben 1. Zed’ 2. Na Příklad 3. Stesk
Molly Adams-Toomey is a DMusPerf student at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, pursuing her Doctorate degree in Vocal Performance under the supervision of Denise Neary. Originally from Newark, DE, U.S., she received her Masters of Music in Vocal Performance and Choral Conducting from Binghamton University, N.Y., as well as her Bachelor of Arts in Music. She is a member of both Phi Eta Sigma and Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, as well as a member of Mu Phi Epsilon Professional Music Fraternity. Adams-Toomey is a mezzo- soprano who has studied under Imelda Drumm, Mary Burgess, and Timothy LeFebvre. She has performed with several companies including Tri-Cities Opera, the Young Victorian Theatre Company, and Irish National Opera. Molly has focused her academic research on Czech music, and particularly on the works of Czech composer Petr Eben. She is a member of the Dvořák Society for Czech and Slovak Music.
30 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Mathematics for music composition at the service of performance Paper
Giovanni Albini Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Conservatorio “A.Vivaldi” Alessandria [email protected] www.giovannialbini.it
Mathematics is a valuable tool for composers that can lead to unique findings, outputs and aesthetics. In this context, the aim of this paper is to show how mathematics could serve to find both new materials for composers to compose with and new technical issues for performers – findings that could extend and enhance the capabilities of both. Different mathematically informed compositional strategies elaborated by the author in the framework of his artistic research will be introduced and explained, as well as some representative scores for piano and for solo guitar composed by means of these strategies. Their capacity to establish a new set of relevant technically demanding musical sections will be then discussed, also in relation to the experience of some performers in studying them.
Giovanni Albini (b. 1982), composer, ukulelist and music theorist, is a tenured professor of Music Theory, Solfège and Music Perception and head of research at the Conservatory of Alessandria (IT), lecturer at the Conservatory of Pavia (IT), and academic member of the Istituto di Studi Superiori dell’Insubria “Gerolamo Cardano”. He teaches the seminar Quantitative Methods for Art at the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, an Italian Public Institution devoted to research and higher education. He holds a BM, an MM, a PgD and a PhD in Composition, a BS and an MS in Mathematics and an MM in Classical Guitar. His theoretical research focuses on mathematically informed aesthetic theories of music composition, mathematical music theory and its application to composition, and he has devoted himself with special interest to soundtracks for interactive media, algorithmic music and non linear composition systems. He has given several lectures on these topics at many
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 31 universities and conservatories including Curtis Institute of Music, Yale University (USA), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MX), Open University (UK), Lithuanian Union of Composers (LT), and Politecnico di Milano (IT). He has written several concert music scores as well as many tracks and sound designs for video art, exhibitions, multimedia, commercials, trailers, videogames and television. He is the founding Artistic Director of the highSCORE New Music Center and of the highSCORE Festival, today’s principal Italian Contemporary Music Festival offering masterclasses. He is also a ukulelist devoted to the modern and classical repertoire who commissions and performs new contemporary classical music for the ukulele, as well as transcribing classical and renowned contemporary and twentieth century scores for it. He is co-director of the forthcoming First Ukulele International Conference (UIC 2021) – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Performance, Composition, and Organology, to be hosted by the University of Milan in December 2021. He is an official endorser of Aquila Corde Armoniche.
32 · Doctors In Performance 2021 QUARTER-TONE ACCORDION: Exposing a New Instrument to a New Audience through New Music Lecture-Recital
Lore Amenabar Larranaga Royal Academy of Music [email protected] www.loreamenabar.com
My first experience of the quarter-tone accordion was in 2015, when I attended a concert at the Helsinki Music Centre. That evening’s programme included the premiere of a concerto by Jukka Tiensuu entitled ‘Anomal Dances’ for quarter- tone accordion and symphony orchestra, which was performed by Professor Veli Kujala. The vast sound world created by the sonic capabilities of this instrument began my obsession to own and perform on my own quarter-tone accordion. However, two vital components stood in the way of my quarter-tone journey: a technically unimpeded instrument on which to play, and a generous body of repertoire from which to choose. As such, the next natural step was to design, develop and manufacture a quarter-tone accordion that I could introduce to new audiences through new music. Unlike most other quarter-tone accordions in use today, the design of my accordion allows the production of quarter tones on both the right and left- hand manuals. White, black and blue buttons are used to differentiate between the natural, half-flat/sharp and quarter-flat/sharp pitches, as can be found on the manuals of the Fokker organ. The range and timbral possibilities of this instrument are expanded through the use of fifteen registers on the right-hand manual and seven registers on the left-hand manual, resulting in a sounding range of E-natural-2 to B-quarter-sharp-6 in the right hand and E-natural-1 to D-quarter-sharp-6 in the left hand. I have facilitated a strategic and detailed investigation of the instrument that combines self-reflective artistic practice with an exploration of the boundaries of the instrument through the commissioning of a new body of collaborative
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 33 works. Through this investigation I intend to analyse the tonal characteristics of my accordion in relation to other microtonal instruments, discovering in this way its place within the microtonal spectrum.
PROGRAMME Excerpts from: · Barafostus’ Dreame (2020) – D. Gorton · My Time is Your Time (2020) – D. Bousted · Blind Spots (2020) – J. Batty · Hyperchromatic Counterpoint: II. Passacaglia (2006/09) – V. Kujala
Lore Amenabar is a musician based in London. She completed both her Bachelor and Master studies at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, graduating with first-class honours. At the present time she is pursuing a PhD at the Royal Academy of Music in London and is kindly supported by La Caixa Foundation. During her years of study she has been awarded many important prizes in both national and international competitions: first prize in the multi-instrumental competition Youth Basque Musicians, as a soloist and in chamber music; first prize in Juventudes Musicales de España multi-instrumental competition (2016); and in 2017 she won third prize in Arrasate Hiria International Competition. Despite her youth, Amenabar has given many concerts, having the opportunity to première various works including, amongst others, ‘Niin kauan minä trampaan’ by Paavo Korpijaakko, with the string quartet of the Helsinki Philharmonic (Helsinki 2016), ‘She Keeps Walking Over Paper’ by Claudia Molitor (London 2020), and ‘Unbroken’ by Howard Skempton (London 2021). She has also performed as a soloist in various Spanish cities in a Tour organised by Juventudes Musicales de España.
34 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Integrating Technology into Artistic Practice Lecture-Recital
Marcella Barz Technological University Dublin [email protected]
The purpose of my doctoral research is to explore the performer’s process of using music technology in artistic creation in order to gain understanding about the complex relationship between musicians and technology. Through the investigation of my own practice as a clarinettist/bass clarinettist, I have been documenting my process of creating and collaborating on new works for clarinet/ bass clarinet and live electronics. The technology I am using includes Ableton Live’s software and the recently developed SABRe multi-sensor and remote. In this lecture recital, I will offer auto-ethnographic and practice-based approaches to integrating sensors into performance, supported by performances of three compositions for clarinet/bass clarinet and electronics. The first composition is Frank Lyons’ Stung for bass clarinet and live electronics. I have remixed the electronic part of this composition for use with sensors. I will use my performance of this work to demonstrate a modular conceptualization of audio effects. With this set-up, the effects are organized into ‘scenes’ which correspond to different parts of the score. The second work, Dréimire Mhuire for clarinet and live electronics, is my own. I created this to explore the possibilities of the ‘sound world’ concept, a three-dimensional space of audio effects that the performer can freely navigate through with physical movement. The third composition, Stories in the Wind, is the result of collaborative work with Chinese composer Yue Song. In this work, audio effects are tied to precise locations in the score and this presents new challenges for integrating the sensors. Programming the sensors for these works required careful consideration of physical space and movement and how these relate to the electronic sounds. My discussion of these works will focus on the conceptualization of space and movement and how it has re-shaped my practice as an artist.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 35 PROGRAMME · Frank Lyons – Stung for bass clarinet, electronics, and fixed track (10 min) · Yue Song – Stories in the Wind for bass clarinet and electronics (6 min) · Marcella Barz – Dréimire Mhuire for clarinet and electronics (3 min)
Curious ears led Marcella Barz from Kamloops, Canada to Dublin, Ireland to pursue contemporary bass clarinet performance. She is currently a doctoral student at the Technological University Dublin exploring the production of electronic sounds using sensors. Marcella collaborates with Irish composers on a regular basis to produce international performances and gives workshops for composers interested in composing for the clarinet(s). She currently teaches clarinet at Maynooth University. Previously, Marcella graduated with a Master of Music in clarinet performance from the Dublin Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Victoria in Canada.
36 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The Influence of Indigenous Bushmen Musical Elements and Significant Compositional Traits on Niel van der Watt’s Song Cycle Die Wind Dreun soos ‘n Ghoera, ‘n Siklus Boesman-Mites. (The wind drones like a Ghoera, A Bushmen Myth Song Cycle) Lecture-Recital
Christian Bester Northeastern State University, Oklahoma [email protected]
In Ghoera, Afrika-verse vir kinders (Ghoera, African Verses for Children), poet Hennie Aucamp demonstrates an affiliation with and reflection of his surroundings, such as the tribal communities he experienced as a child. This group of African children’s poems, published by Protea Boekhuis in 2011, became the source of inspiration for composer Niel van der Watt’s song cycle Die wind dreun soos ‘n ghoera, ‘n Siklus Boesman-mites. This study investigates and identifies significant compositional traits that contributed to van der Watt’s song cycle. To explore and understand the nature of such influences, the author considers the composer’s early childhood; religious world views; student life; social, environmental, and political ideas; personal tonal language; and western musical elements. To ascertain possible indigenous Bushmen musical elements in van der Watt’s song cycle, the study traces the history of the Bushmen and their marginalization, followed by a brief survey of historical writings on Bushmen music, and an identification process utilizing musicologist Percival R. Kirby’s research on Bushmen music as a foundation. This study suggests that Hennie Aucamp’s poetry and Niel van der Watt’s song cycle represent a reconciling vehicle for cross-cultural understanding generating awareness and greater appreciation of the life, myths, oral traditions and music of the Bushmen.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 37 PROGRAMME · Niel van der Watt (b. 1962) – The Wind Drones like a Ghoera – A Bushmen Myth Cycle 1. Die Son (The Sun) 2. Die Sterre (The Stars) 3. Die Maan (The Moon) 4. Die Son en die Maan (The Sun and the Moon) 5. Die Melkweg (The Milky way) 6. Die Wolke (The Clouds) 7. Die Wind (The Wind) 8. Wieglied (Cradle Song)
Christian Bester – Baritone Keith Critcher – Piano
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “Impressive”, native South African baritone Christian Bester has resided in the United States since 2006. In South Africa, Christian made his professional debut as Schaunard in La Bohème for ProMusica Theater. His European debut and engagements include Zaremba in Polin Blut for the Americke Jaro Festival in the Czech Republic, and both Papageno and one of the Armed Men in Die Zauberflöte for the Amalfi Coast Festival in Italy. Opera successes include critically acclaimed performances of Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva, Belcore, Enrico, Marcello, Germont, Guglielmo, Escamillo, Dr. Malatesta and Gianni Schicchi. Orchestra engagements include: Fort Worth Symphony, Kwazulu Natal Philharmonic, Manitowoc Symphony, Lone Star Wind Orchestra, Allen Philharmonic, and Dallas Symphony Orchestra League. A recent winner of Hawaii Public Radio’s International Art Song Contest, Christian is a sought-after recitalist with regular performances throughout the United States, Australia, Wales, and South Africa.
38 · Doctors In Performance 2021 A Voice Beyond the Edge: Michael Edgerton’s Anaphora – Nonlinear dynamics in the extra-normal voice Recital
Felicita Brusoni Lund University, Malmö Academy of Music [email protected] www.felicitabrusoni.com
The recital is focused on my research involving contemporary voice. My approach to singing research is becoming more systematic as the result of beginning to work on concepts central to the extra-normal voice, a term coined by Michael Edward Edgerton. This approach to voice is based on voice science, the aims of which are to investigate the boundaries and/or limits of vocal sound production. In this presentation I propose to introduce a) a methodology by which the voice can be systematically investigated which is relevant for composers, performers and scholars, and b) to perform a composition by Edgerton, Anaphora (2001), which is focused on 56 classes of vocal multiphonics. Perhaps a few words on Anaphora would be relevant at this point. This composition aims to list nonstandard vocal gestures, which are categorized according to the degree of voicing present as either voiced or unvoiced. Subsequently all of the voiced/unvoiced alternatives are combined to form larger meta-sonorities so that we hear voiced & voiced sounds, voiced & unvoiced sounds, unvoiced & unvoiced sounds, and three or more elements. Additionally, Edgerton was doing research in the fields of bioacoustics and physics into the dynamics of the voice, not in terms of sound level, but of system function. These nonlinear aspects discussed in scientific literature are integrated into Anaphora. In my presentation and performance I will discuss the importance of the nonlinear dynamics that form the foundation for nonlinear vocal phenomena, which are seen as vocal behaviours that deviate from normal periodic phonation, or as many objects
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 39 that were formerly considered extraneous acoustically, aesthetically and physiologically when compared to melodic singing. Extended vocal techniques have been around for the last 60 years, thanks to vocal pioneers famous for their determination to cross boundaries. But now, thanks to new tools from acoustics and medical imaging, we have the possibility to scientifically study and codify issues surrounding the sound production of phenomena ranging from multiphonics to biphonation to deterministic chaos. Another major theme of my research will focus on codification; not only in terms of notation, but also of finding a unilateral stock of knowledge useful for both composers and performers, thanks to scientific demonstration. To codify the extended techniques for voice also means to find a way to study them, to repeat them easily, in short to put the 21st century voice at the same level as other instruments, if we talk about nonlinear phenomena. Thanks to previous research, we now know that singers with a proper training are able to use nonlinear vocal phenomena intentionally, which means that they are able to control the recurrent production of complex sonorities. Such research is deeply indebted to Edgerton’s book The 21st-Century Voice, which may be considered as the foundation stone in this field. It establishes the methodologies of codification and divulgation of the vocal techniques, and should therefore have the same importance in its field as Daniel Kientzy’s sax method or Robert Dick and Pierre-Yves Artaud’s flute method. Furthermore, a performer is also a link between composers and audiences: what better way could a revolutionary piece like Anaphora have found to reveal Edgerton’s innovations than through public performance? A further purpose of my artistic research is to link the many different studies that investigate non- normal vocal techniques, including studies from the medical field. Then, in order to make visible our findings, to bring the various materials (recordings, scores and videos of artistic and pathological voice) together into an archive, both online and physical, based at the Malmö Academy of Music in Sweden, to make the future of extra-normal voice accessible to anyone interested. I would like Edgerton’s piece Anaphora to be considered not only as a fundamental piece for contemporary singing, which has been compared to Berio’s Sequenza III, but most of all as the starting point of my research focused on the boundaries of the safety zone of voice.
40 · Doctors In Performance 2021 PROGRAMME · Michael Edward Edgerton – Anaphora for solo voice (2001)
Anaphora is a study of 56 classes of vocal multiphonics that explore voiced & voiced; voiced & unvoiced; unvoiced & unvoiced; and three or more sources. Since the publication of his book The 21st-Century Voice (2004), the American composer Michael Edgerton has become one of the leading experts in the search for the expressive possibilities of contemporary voice. No other composer has so systematically and unconditionally applied a compositional approach to every possibility of the human voice. Anaphora is at the same time a sound study, in which his research on 56 different classes of vocal multiphonics is presented, opening up a new sound universe. In this system, Edgerton categorizes multiphonics in three large tone and noise groups: voiced-voiced, voiced-unvoiced and unvoiced-unvoiced (with additional amendments).
Felicita Brusoni is a soprano, vocal performer and artistic researcher in Music at the Faculty of Performing Arts in Malmö. After her studies at the Philharmonic Academy and a degree in DAMS at the University of Bologna, she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Singing and a first- class Master’s Degree in Vocal Chamber Music at the Conservatory of La Spezia. Her research concerns extended techniques for the contemporary repertoire, which she deals with for solo voice, with electronics or other instruments; she has also had experience in the field of Early and Baroque music (for example, her recording of Carissimi’s Oratorios for the Bongiovanni label). Her opera and musical theatre repertoire ranges from early twentieth-century music (Britten, Menotti, Puccini) to the contemporary. She has sung premières of works written for her by Italian and foreign composers in national and international festivals, including the Biennale di Venezia, Camino Contro Corrente, Contrasti MotoContrario (Trento), Musica Futura (L’Aquila), New Made Week, New Music Project San Marino, Rive Gauche, Rondò by Divertimento Ensemble, Sound Spaces (Malmö), Suoni Inauditi (Livorno), Stockhausen- Konzerte und -Kurse Kürten. She received the award of Best Singer Interpreter at the New Music Project San Marino 2018 and the Jury Prize at the Festival Note tra i Calanchi 2019 (Bagnoregio).
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 41 The Listener’s Experience in Spatial Music Paper
Karolina Dąbek Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków [email protected] / pisanezesluchu.pl
The traditional model of “still and silent” listening (Richard Sennet 2002), which has been characteristic for classical music since the second half of the 19th century, is based on silent, ostensibly passive and disciplined behaviours. It is connected with such elements as the manifestation of the social order (restraint of emotion “became a way for middle-class audiences to mark the line between themselves and the working class”, Sennet 2002), the architecture of new opera houses and concert halls (the meaning of space, its size, splendour, internal and external appearance, arrangement, design, materials used, etc., as elements which can influence the listeners’ behaviour, Christopher Small 1998), aesthetic distance, the Kantian concept of disinterested pleasure and understanding art as an object. According to Stephanie Pitts, “The unspoken conventions of listening behaviour […] are implicit even in the architecture of many concert halls, which place audience members at a distance from performers and firmly declinate the social and musical aspects of concert-going through fixed seating” (Pitts 2005). In contemporary music the situation of the listener is different – especially in the case of music which is both spatial (“topophonic”, when the performers’ arrangement is spatial, e.g. they surround the audience) and acoustic (when the performance of the piece requires the participation of a musician who plays live). This kind of music breaks with the traditional set-up in which the boundaries and distances between the stage and the audience are clear and fixed, and more than any other music it is dependent upon the presence of the listener. It is strictly connected with the actual participation in the live performance; any other way of listening to or perceiving acoustic and topophonic pieces (e.g. through recording) will be incomplete. The aim of the paper is to present a specific approach towards spatial music that underlines the importance of the listener’s experience and, at the same time, considers the possible impact and meaning of the physical space
42 · Doctors In Performance 2021 (the place of the performance) as well as of the presence of other human beings during such an experience.
Karolina Dąbek is a music theorist and reviewer. She obtained her Master’s degree in 2018 at the Academy of Music in Krakow and began PhD studies at the same institution. In her research she has focused mainly on 20th- and 21st-century avant-garde music. Currently spatiality in music and the problem of music perception stand at the centre of her interest. She won the Editor-in-Chief of The Polish Music Publishing House Award and the Debutant Prize in the Polish Music Critics Competition “Kropka 2015”, and the Main Award in the Polish Music Critics Competition “Kropka 2017”.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 43 In what ways is the contraforte a viable instrument for expanding the colour palette of twenty-first century ensemble writing? The unknown sonic palette of the contraforte: the role of choice and tacit knowledge in discourse Paper
Lorelei Dowling Kunstuniversität Graz/Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst [email protected]
When I began my artist research topic on ways in which the contraforte could become a viable instrument for expanding the colour palette of twenty-first century ensemble composition, I did not realize that choice, as well as implicit knowledge and physiology, would play a major part. The contraforte, introduced in 2001, is an entirely new instrument designed to improve, extend and ultimately replace the contrabassoon. While a limited amount of information exists about the contrabassoon, there is even less information about the contraforte. Hence, the writing for the contraforte in both solo and ensemble works has yet to reveal its full potential. The challenge is to take this instrument beyond the sustained notes of its predecessor, the contrabassoon, and launch it into untapped explorations of greater heterogeneous and homogenous sounds in new music. As part of my methodology for this artistic research I chose to collaborate with four established composers.
44 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The more technically adept I became on the contraforte, the more freedom I had, and therefore the more options I had to create new sounds. As I added to the spectrum of extended techniques that I discovered and could fluently produce, I was able to offer a rich colour palette to inspire the composers I was collaborating with. My choices often led to ‘controlled accidents’ (Gorton and Redgate 2018), an aficionado’s dream of unexpected discoveries. Composers tend to pigeonhole large, low resonating instruments as slow, sluggish Neolithic creatures, unable to innovate or break out of this mould. This is how the contraforte (and contrabassoon) are still perceived. I have strived to challenge and change this picture, and some of the contemporary techniques I will present show this. But how did I discover these contemporary effects if they did not yet exist? What was my process? All instrumentalists make choices: from fingerings through extended techniques to improvisations. Most composers leave the choice of a multiphonic up to the instrumentalist. In the new pieces developed for the contraforte I began asking myself why I chose a particular multiphonic when no specific one was stated. Why this quarter tone fingering when I had developed several for each note? Which range to sing while playing? Which partial to bring out when overblowing? Choice is often overridden by intuition or implicit knowledge. Why? To answer all these questions, I will play selected examples from three new pieces composed for me: · Georges Aperghis –Tag ohne Nacht (2020 – Kairos) · Georg Friedrich Haas – Was mir Beethoven erzählt (2020) · Alberto Posadas – Ga (2021)
I believe that performer/composer collaboration is intrinsic to artistic research, particularly when charting the unknown territory of a new instrument and its performance potential. When some of the outcomes of the discourse are the results of choice, tacit knowledge, close work with phenomena and ‘controlled accidents’, another level of understanding is achieved in the research.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 45 Australian born Lorelei Dowling, bassoonist/contrafortist, is a world-renowned contemporary specialist. Since 1994 she has been a member of the ensemble Klangforum Wien. Lorelei has given lecture-recitals all over the world, most notably at the Manhattan School of Music, the Moscow, Venice, and Paris Conservatoires, Singapore University, the Royal Northern College of Music, and for the International Double Reed Society in Ithaca, Wisconsin and Birmingham. From 2013 to 2019 Dowling was the bassoon instrumental lecturer for the Master’s in Composition at the Katarina Gurska Centre for Music, Madrid. In 2018 Dowling joined the Faculty of the Lucerne Festival Academy. In the same year she began a Dr Artium at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts, Graz, where she has been the bassoon/contraforte teacher for the postgraduate course for contemporary studies since 2009. She presented her doctoral project at the 2019 EPARM conference. In 2020 she began teaching contrabassoon at the Music and Arts University in Vienna.
46 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Art and Rigour: a personal path in adapting methodologies for Artistic Research Paper
Vittoria Ecclesia Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre [email protected]
Artistic research is gaining more and more ground in academia, but because of its relatively recent establishment in the academic environment there is still a lack of standard “tested” methodologies. The methodologies used in artistic practices can be creative and innovative, and are usually borrowed and adapted from other fields. However, performers and artists in general may struggle with ideating rigorous methodologies for their practices and cannot easily find pre-existing ones to apply. The advice to look towards other disciplines’ qualitative methods and borrow them, although reasonable, is also vague and can be confusing for young researchers. In particular, the adaptation process can raise issues. In this contribution, I will present my own use of three borrowed qualitative methodologies, how I adapted them to support my research practice on the clarinet, and the benefits and the problems that arose. The methodologies I will consider are autobiographical design, borrowed from Human Computer Interaction; autoethnography, borrowed from social sciences; and thematic analysis, borrowed from psychology. I aim at advocating for creativity and critical reflection when adapting methodologies for artistic practices, providing my work as an example while remaining open to dialogue and insights from other practitioners.
Vittoria Ecclesia (born 1994) is an Italian clarinettist. She studied in the class of Sandro Tognatti at the Conservatorio G. Cantelli of Novara, where she obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in 2017. In addition, she holds a Bachelor’s Degree cum laude in Linguistic Mediation
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 47 from the Università Statale of Milan, obtained with a thesis on the translation of English used in the domain of classical music. Vittoria obtained her Master’s Degree cum laude in Clarinet Performance from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in July 2020. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD (in Music) at the same institution. An active orchestral player, she has appeared with Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino, Orchestra Sinfonica Carlo Coccia, Orchestra Accademia Teatro alla Scala, EMTA Sinfonietta, MYO Mediterranean Youth Orchestra. She is currently substitute second clarinet at the Estonian National Opera Orchestra.
48 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Linguistic embodiment of Pierrot lunaire’s Sprechstimme Paper
Olga Heikkilä Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy, Docmus Doctoral School [email protected] www.uniarts.fi/henkilot/olga-heikkila
Since the premiere of the first interpretation of Sprechstimme in Arnold Schoenberg’s (1874–1951) Pierrot lunaire (1912) by Albertine Zehme (1857– 1946), who commissioned the work, there has been an ongoing debate regarding the value of the pre-linguistic expressive power of the work’s words. This paper presents an acousmatic way of working with voice, body and mind that is meaningful to me as a singer, which I have labelled experiential performing. In understanding the pre-linguistic expressive power of Sprechstimme through the lens of experientialism, I have devised this method to form a dialogue between the semiotic meaning of the word, its sound and realization with the vocal instrument through the use of metaphor, to explore concepts beyond the experience of only the sound in itself while performing. It accounts for the perceived sense of intuition that can form through working with sound, presenting a way of using this as a tool for self-understanding. It highlights the theories of Julia Kristeva (b. 1941), Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) and Roland Barthes (1915–1980) regarding voice and body, exploring where this connection can take the mind of the performer as well as that of the listener. This is illustrated through my use of the experiential performing of Pierrot lunaire to gain insights into lived experiences of the text and music, which reveals an inner wisdom about listening to oneself as an instrument that can be negotiated through the pre-linguistic expressive power of the words. While the connectedness of sound promotes a continual encounter with the other – that which is hovering to the side of any given object or body – it also supplies us with a rich medium for intimate sharing. From my perspective, this functions as an extremely provocative combination: that the agitating and contaminating
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 49 behaviour of any sound is a tone and at the same time a means for rupture and attachment, interference and nurturing assurance, and resistance and solidarity. The mouth assembles together what may appear external and separate from the body; it produces links and connections, across material and immaterial states; it choreographs numerous exchanges, and it breaks and cuts into them; it sustains, regulates, and nurtures; it sounds and signifies – it “interrupts and connects” to proliferate the rhythms passing across the “saying and the said”. It is my hope that my research can provide a route for bringing forth a diverse range of tellings, for a diverse range of bodies within a diverse set of circumstances. Telling is immediately a giving of narrative, a crafting of the story, as well as a caring for what it purports or reveals. In the telling I also stand behind the words – I give myself over not only to the particular narrative, but also to the dialogical arena this telling uncovers. An arena that swells with the weight of voice, with the tussle that is speech; an arena that is always in motion. The telling and the narrative form a couple, one that I track here as a complex linguistic embodiment – an oral assemblage.
Olga Heikkilä is an opera singer and a Doctoral Candidate at DocMus, Sibelius Academy (Uniarts Helsinki). Her artistic research of five concerts and a written thesis is entitled “À tour de Pierrot Lunaire – Demarcation of singing and speaking”. Three of the concerts are completed and Heikkilä is working on her second article aiming for graduation in 2022. Heikkilä is a Master of Music (2015) and Theology (2007) and holds an Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Music from the Royal Opera Academy (DK). She has given several conference presentations at Uniarts Helsinki events (2016–2021) and lecture concerts at the third “Doctors in Performance” conference in Vilnius and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Heikkilä’s first article “Sprechstimme behind the screen” is scheduled to be published in the Trio academic magazine of the Sibelius Academy in 2021. Supervisors of her doctoral project are Anne Kauppala (Sibelius Academy) and Jane Manning (The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, UK).
50 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The Topic of Piano Performance Lecture-Recital
Julian Hellaby Independent researcher [email protected] / www.julianhellaby.com
Leonard Ratner’s book Classic Music: Expression, Form and Style pioneered the notion of topics as “subject for musical discourse” (Ratner 1980: 9) and, with their appearance, a particular theory of musical meaning was able to gain traction. Thus later writers such as Raymond Monelle (2000, 2006) and Robert Hatten (1994, 2004) took this theory down a semiotic path, the former expanding Ratner’s Classical focus to include the Romantic period. In this he has been accompanied by Kofi Agawu (2009) and Janice Dickensheets (2012). Monelle also briefly touched on topics in 20th- and 21st-century music and there has been a small body of writing on the subject of 20th-century composers’ topical use by, amongst others, Márta Grabócz (2002), Walter Frisch (2008) and Johanna Frymoyer (2017). Nevertheless, the focal period for the majority of publications on the subject has remained the 18th century and, significantly, the very substantial Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory (2014) hardly explores any repertoires outside those of the Classical period. Furthermore, topic-related performance is only considered in passing – there are just three chapters, largely concerned with the interpretation of Mozart’s music. It is therefore the aim of this paper further to extend the study of topicality by assessing how performance can interact with its perceived presence in music other than just that of the Classical period. For the pianist, an appreciation of topicality has the capacity to affect interpretative decisions, especially if the topic is not named in a work’s title (e.g. ‘Minuet in G’) but is discovered within the setting of a parent work such as a ballade or a fantasy. For example, the identification of a nocturne topic in a Chopin ballade or a march topic in a Schumann fantasy piece provides interpretative insights which can be projected in performance. The Topic of Piano Performance thus explores the interface between topic and interpretation as it applies to 19th- and
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 51 20th-century piano music, and concludes by proposing a model to illustrate how topics as interpretative informants might operate alongside others such as musical structure or scored directives. The presentation also features illustrative performances by the presenter of music by Mozart, Chopin and John Ireland.
PROGRAMME · Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Sonata in A major K331 (3rd movement) · Frédéric Chopin – Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23 · John Ireland – Rhapsody
Julian Hellaby PhD, MMus, BMus, LRAM, ARAM, studied piano with the distinguished pianist Denis Matthews and later at London’s Royal Academy of Music. He has performed as solo pianist, concerto soloist, accompanist and chamber musician in continental Europe, the Middle East, South Africa and throughout the UK, including recitals in the Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room. More recent two-piano work with pianist Peter Noke has featured performances across the UK as well as in Hong Kong and China. Julian has taught academic music at Coventry University and the London College of Music and is also an ABRSM examiner, moderator and public presenter. He has released several CDs for the ASC and MSV labels, and his book ‘Reading Musical Interpretation’ was published by Ashgate in 2009. His second book, ‘The Mid-Twentieth-Century Concert Pianist: An English Experience’, was published by Routledge in 2018. He has also written a number of journal articles on piano- related subjects and is currently editor for a forthcoming multi-author anthology concerning topic theory and performance.
52 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Stirring the Humours – Galenist Affect Theory and Performing Early Music with New Dance Paper
Marianna Henriksson Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy, DocMus Doctoral School [email protected] www.mariannahenriksson.com
In my artistic research I concentrate on early 17th century Italian music and the underlying concepts of music’s ability to affect people on a humoral/bodily level. I study the philosophical-medical ideas current in the 17th century, such as humoral pathology, and the conceptions of musical passions as bodily events. In the artistic components of the degree I perform both solo repertoire and collaborative projects, setting these early music performances on a contemporary stage. My research questions are: how was music’s bodily affectivity understood in the 17th century and what influence does this knowledge have on my work as a performer today?; how to make the music move the affects on a bodily level today?; how do the old theories turn into material for early music performances in a contemporary performative context? In this presentation I will present my collaboration with choreographer Anna Mustonen: two of my doctoral concerts have been performances in cooperation with her, and we currently continue our work combining early music and new dance. Our collaboration is based on the shared question of how to move the body internally through music and dance. I discuss how the early concepts of musical affects have functioned as a background for our collaborative work. I present some practices that we have developed during our work through rehearsals and workshops, and I will show video excerpts from our performances.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 53 Harpsichordist Marianna Henriksson graduated from the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki (Master of Music 2010) and the Universität der Künste, Berlin (Konzertexamen 2012). She performs in Finland and all over Europe as a soloist and as a member of many different ensembles. She takes a special interest in interdisciplinary collaboration and has created performances combining new dance and early music, e.g. a choreographed version of Monteverdi’s Vespers (2018) as a collaboration with choreographer Anna Mustonen, the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and the Zodiak Centre for New Dance Helsinki. Together with Mustonen she was awarded the Finnish State Prize for Performing Arts 2018 for their work on dialogue between music and dance. Henriksson’s debut solo recording Frammenti del discorso amoroso was released on Sibarecords/Naxos in April 2018 and nominated for the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s album of the year 2018. She is working towards a doctor’s degree in music specializing in 17th century Italian music at the Sibelius Academy Docmus Doctoral School.
54 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Early Film Documents as Sources for 19th Century Performance Practice Paper
Jörg Holzmann Bern University of the Arts [email protected] www.joergholzmann.de
Similarly to audio recordings or piano rolls, early film documents have proved to be a valuable source of information when examining 19th Century Performance Practice, as they reveal additional insights that allow us to reconstruct the physical and haptic details in the playing of performers from the past. A silent amateur documentary film, for example, shot in 1929, shows the practising violinist Bronisław Huberman (1882–1947) executing a change of positions. Since he accidentally paces up and down in the room, in contrast to concert performances, his thumb guidance is captured from the back of the violinist. This rare episode of only a few seconds proves that the fingers first move into the lower position before the thumb is pulled, instead of – as is common today – being pushed down with the other fingers at the same time. This shows that the violin was not clamped tightly under the chin, but that the left hand still had a stabilizing function. This purely technical detail reveals a greater willingness for audible position changes (portamento) and shows how the bowing and thus the sound effects are different in a historical violin position with a free chin, so that the interpretation analysis finds a haptic correspondence which can be physically understood in subsequent experimental re-enactments. Thanks to the very specific depiction of body language in a sound film, these re-enactments are suitable for emphasizing subtle questions of the physical presentation of classical music. Compared to today’s practice, an almost contradictory picture emerges: While musicians often combine rhythmic precision and textual fidelity with sweeping body movements during the performance, interpreters trained in the 19th century seem to strive for the opposite: their noticeably calm posture goes hand in hand with increased expressiveness and
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 55 numerous freedoms with regard to the musical text. Of course, the evaluation of film documents must be preceded by a source-critical examination, which, in addition to the well-researched technological side, also takes into account the recording situation and elements of the staging. An initial overview suggests that the earliest recordings of classical music performances were closely based on realistic performance situations, and in several cases the new medium of film was even explicitly used to preserve the musical tradition of the 19th century, for example in 1926 in the (possibly lost) didactic sound film series of the Berlin University of Music, or a number of performances with classical music among the short films known as “Vitaphone shorts” from the early sound film era in the USA, in keeping with the taste of the then still exclusive audience for this new medium. The paper proposes to describe the source material, offer a first categorization, show ways of tracing it and, of course, explain how to gain knowledge from these special films and how to apply this to musicological research. The last-mentioned of these is accompanied by instructions for an experimental approach using musical instruments.
Jörg Holzmann first studied classical guitar at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, where he graduated from both the artistic and pedagogical courses with the highest marks. He was subsequently active in solo and chamber music as guitarist and oboist, worked as guitar teacher at several music schools, continued his studies in composition, and successfully took part in international guitar competitions, winning prizes at important festivals in Spain, India, Korea and the USA. From 2017 to 2021 he studied musicology, literature and art history in Stuttgart, Halle (Saale) and Leipzig, his master’s thesis dealing with piano rolls recorded by women. At the same time, he was employed at the Musical Instruments Museum Leipzig. In 2020 he became research assistant at the Bern University of the Arts in the “Historical Embodiment” project under the direction of Professor Kai Köpp, evaluating the musicological benefits of early film documents.
56 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The Musical Ornament in Cross-cultural Performance. Adapting the Carnatic Gamaka to the Cello Lecture-Recital
Justyna Jablonska Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, St Andrew’s University [email protected] www.justynacello.co.uk
Gamaka is a musical ornamentation and expression inherent to Carnatic (South Indian) music. Gamaka is not simply an accompaniment to the svara, a “note” in Western Classical music, but plays a more fundamental role in musical expression. It reflects the aesthetic goal in the Carnatic tradition of imitating the nuance and lyrical expressiveness of the human voice, which it does by creating uninterrupted connectivity between musical pitches. My lecture recital will explore how the cello, an instrument not present in the Carnatic tradition, can be used to render the gamaka. I focus, in particular, on how different left-hand fingerings can impact and affect each gamaka and how to logically organise this process. Through extensive one to one lessons with a Carnatic violinist, I have deconstructed and recombined the methods used in producing gamakas and applied these to cello-playing techniques. The experimental nature of my study – testing variants of left-hand fingerings to perform gamaka – intends to contribute to performance-based and academic work on how the cello can be adapted to different musical traditions. It reflects how new sonic and technical possibilities for the cello can be created and develops underplayed areas of cello practice. Its findings are not exclusive to cello-playing techniques, and it also seeks to contribute to the wider understanding of microtonal music.
Justyna Jablonska’s music experience goes beyond the classical repertoire, in which she holds a Masters degree from the RNCM, taught by Peter Dixon (Principal Cello, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra). Since her appearance at the Lucerne Festival Academy in 2014, where her
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 57 focus was on contemporary music (working with Sir Simon Rattle, Barbara Hannigan and Matthias Pintscher), she went on to study privately with Eric-Maria Couturier from the Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain. Her experience with the Lucerne Festival led to ongoing performances as part of the Lucerne Festival Alumni. She is a PhD candidate at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, focusing on collaborative work with Carnatic violinist Jyotsna Srikanth, drawing on Carnatic traditions and free improvisation. She is a recipient of the Carnegie Trust PhD Scholarship.
58 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Empathy in Musical Performance Paper
Mieko Kanno Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected]
Music can touch you while you cannot touch music. Empathy characterises the power of music. This presentation introduces a group project at the DocMus Doctoral School of the Sibelius Academy which aims to explore and develop conceptually a new ‘interface’ to be shared between musicians and audience. We ask: what kinds of relationship can we imagine and design between musicians and listeners in the future?; and how do we create an environment in which non-canonic music can be experienced in its own right, from its own perspectives? Empathy requires both equality among the people who experience it and an effort from them in order to gain a holistic understanding of something that is previously unknown to them. We focus on these features of empathy in developing the new interface in musical performance. We use a system called ‘scalable performance’ to enable calibration of concrete parameters in the development of this interface for communication. ‘Scalable performance’ may be described as an operational toolbox with parameters that can be adjusted according to each performance situation. We examine and analyse the existing system, and then consider additional or alternative parameters and their scalability. Rather than creating something completely new, our intention is to develop musicians’ existing craftsmanship, and become more strategic in the approach towards musical communication. Artistic researchers who are currently carrying out doctoral and postdoctoral projects at the Sibelius Academy form the basis for this project. This presentation will reference their work.
Mieko Kanno is Professor of Artistic Research in Music Performance at the Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki. She is a violinist, and her research focuses on the development of musical practice from the perspectives of a performer, researcher, and educator.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 59 Playing the Text in Rachmaninov’s Songs Op. 38 Lecture-Recital
Kristi Kapten Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre [email protected] / kristikapten.com
My lecture recital focuses on Rachmaninov’s Songs for Soprano and Piano Op. 38, with the aim of demonstrating how a pianist approaches complex art songs and how a deeper understanding of a composer’s compositional style in general can be gained in the process. I will explain some of the steps that pianists can take to interpret and master an art song, even long before they meet with a singer in rehearsal. The lecture recital will culminate with a complete performance of the set. Working on vocal chamber music repertoire is always a rich source of potential discoveries for a pianist, both in terms of enhancing pianistic agility and musical understanding. For example, experiencing the sensations of a specific language in our fingertips helps to expand our palette of touches on the keyboard. Analysing a composer’s vocal repertoire provides a unique window into his or her inner world, due to the nature of the process of writing songs. While the composition of an instrumental work is usually born from the composer’s own original musical idea, the first impulses for creating a song normally arise as the composer reads a poet’s text. The composer, in this case, is first an interpreter himself. Analysing how the text has been interpreted, which form has been chosen, and what role the music embodies at any point in the narrative, gives us a deeper insight into how the composer’s mind works. In the case of composers who are equally masterful at writing songs and solo piano music, many of these observations can be transferred to better understand their instrumental works. Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) was gifted with an innate feeling for singing which he nourished throughout his life in collaborations and close friendships with various great singers of his time. His heartfelt melodies, which flow naturally, often within a small range of intervals at a time, following the rhythm of the spoken text, are characteristic of both his vocal and instrumental writing.
60 · Doctors In Performance 2021 In his songs for voice and piano, lines are often polyphonically intertwined, creating consistent conversations between the two “instruments”. Rachmaninov is especially generous and meticulous with his instructions for articulation on the keyboard, often giving its expression speech-like precision. Rachmaninov wrote more than seventy songs for voice and piano and justifiably considered his last set of Six Songs Op. 38 among his best accomplishments in that genre. Pianistically intense in every respect, these songs are notable for their daring harmonic language, rhythmic complexity, multi-layered textures and strong unity between text (subtext) and music. In the lecture-recital I will highlight these features and contemplate on the nature of interpreting songs, with references to ideas by Constantin Stanislavski, Rachmaninov and various other musicians.
PROGRAMME · Sergei Rachmaninov – Six Songs for voice and piano Op. 38 No. 1 “Noch’yu v sadu u menya” / “At Night in my Garden” No. 2 “K ney” / “To Her” No. 3 “Margaritki” / “Daisies” No. 4 “Krysolov” / “Pied-Piper” (“Rat-catcher”) No. 5 “Son” / “Dream” No. 6 “A-u!” / “A-oo!” (“The Quest”)
Kristi Kapten, piano Ksenia Rossar, soprano
Kristi Kapten is an Estonian concert pianist. She is the winner of the Tallinn International Piano Competition (2011) and holds a PhD in artistic research (obtained in 2017). She has given concerto performances and solo recitals in many countries and festivals. As a sensitive stage partner Kristi Kapten has established partnerships with outstanding singers and instrumentalists. Her Glasgow-based piano trio, the Kapten trio, was selected for Chamber Music Scotland’s Residency Project in the years 2017–2019. Kristi Kapten has studied at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (Bachelor; PhD) with Prof. Peep Lassmann, and at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Masters’) with Prof. Fali Pavri. She has presented her doctoral thesis “A Pianist’s Approach to Learning Ligeti Etudes” in several lecture recitals, including at the International György Ligeti Symposium in Helsinki (2017). Kristi Kapten teaches Vocal Chamber Music at the EAMT and continues to be active in the field of artistic research. Ksenia Rossar is a doctoral student at the EAMT (vocal chamber music, with Prof. Helin Kapten).
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 61 Recent Polish music for Viola Solo (pieces composed during the current pandemic) Recital
Krzysztof Komendarek-Tymendorf Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk [email protected] tymendorf.com/en
I wrote my doctorate on Questions of Performance and Interpretation Regarding Fyodor Druzhinin’s 1959 Sonata for Viola Solo and Mieczysław Weinberg’s 1982 Sonata for Viola Solo No. 3, Op. 135. After my PhD, which I obtained on September 10, 2018, my current research focuses on discovering and popularizing Polish compositional work for Viola Solo. My current explorations are on developing undiscovered Gdańsk music for the viola, developing my own transcriptions from works for other instruments such as the piano for the viola, and performing and commissioning new works from contemporary composers. All the pieces presented at the conference have been specially composed very recently by the greatest Polish composers and are dedicated to me. According to the commissions, the pieces were all to be composed during the time of the pandemic. During the research introduction I will also talk about the Polish composers’ school, and current styles and directions in contemporary Polish music. I will introduce the composers’ profiles and discuss the compositions composed for me in detail. Most of the pieces were recorded at the end of 2020 for the American Odradek Records label. My recital on the conference is thus the world premiere of these pieces.
62 · Doctors In Performance 2021 I am a viola specialist in Poland. I regularly give viola courses, and I participate in lectures and recitals at the International Viola Congress and other conferences in Poland. The viola is my passion and my life.
PROGRAMME · Kamil Cieślik – Impression for viola solo (2020) · Tadeusz Dixa – Elegy for viola solo (2020) · Maciej Zimka – Strange Waves for viola solo (2020) · Magdalena Kurdziel – Summer Evening for viola solo (2020) · Anna Rocławska-Musiałczyk – Spaces for viola solo (2020) · Krzysztof Komendarek-Tymendorf – Acronym for viola solo and electronics (2021)
Krzysztof Komendarek-Tymendorf has for many years been among the most eminent Polish musicians of his generation. At the age of seven he started playing the violin. He comes from a family with deep musical traditions and is a descendant of the eminent Polish composer Michal Kleofas Oginski (1765–1833). In 2012 he graduated with an M.A with honours from the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk in the viola class of professor Irena Albrecht. At the age of 24 he started working at the Academy of Music as an assistant professor in the viola class. In July 2018 he defended his doctoral dissertation; currently he works as an assistant professor-adjunct at the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. He perfected his skills at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien with Prof. Wolfgang Klos and Ulrich Schönauer and as a guest student of the Swedish National Orchestra Academy in Göteborg. He has also studied under eminent viola masters such as Alexander Zemtsov, Matthias Buchholz, Avri Levitan, György Gulyás Nagy (Auer String Quartet) and Piotr Szumieł. He is a laureate of numerous competitions, prizes, awards and scholarships. He made his debut as a soloist with the Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Sopot and as a chamber musician with the famous Polish oboist Tytus Wojnowicz in the Tadeusz Baird Zielona Góra Philharmonic.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 63 In 2019 he graduated with honours from postgraduate studies in Culture Management in Government, Local Government and Non-Governmental Organizations at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, also receiving the award of the Director of the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is currently an MBA student at the University of Adam Mickiewicz University and Poznań University of Economics. He was invited to represent the Stanislaw Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk and to give recitals at the 41st International Viola Congress in Krakow in 2013, the Viola Arte National Viola Conference in Gdańsk, the 43rd International Viola Congress in Italy in Cremona in 2016, the Fira B! conference in Palma in Majorca in 2017, the Luxembourg Classical Meeting – Music: LX in Luxembourg, and the Music Export Conference in Warsaw in 2017, and in Pomeranian broadening the field of culture – Conference of Researchers and Practitioners in 2017 in Gdańsk. He was Member of the Polish delegation representing Poland at the POLAND booth powered by Culture.pl at the biggest classical music fair, Classical: Next, in Rotterdam in 2017. In 2012 Tymendorf received the Gdańsk Cultural Scholarship, and in 2014 he was nominated for the most prestigious award in the field of culture in the Tricity – Splendor Gedanensis for 2013. At the end of November 2016 Tymendorf was awarded the prestigious Young Artist Award in Culture and the Audience Award by the Gdańsk Municipal Council. In 2016 he was invited together with such artists as Piotr Beczala, Jan Lisiecki, Adam Baldych and Lukasz Borowicz to support good music as an ambassador for the nationwide social campaign Save the Music. For more information about the campaign, see savethemusic.eu. In 2020 he made his phonographic debut with the CD entitled ReVIOLAtion with the label NAXOS (Germany). The CD won numerous awards, such as the prestigious Supersonic Pizzicato Award in Luxembourg, Music & Stars Awards – The World Shining Talent (Gold Star – Best Instrumentalist CD), 5 camertones in Diapason Magazine in France, and received very high national and international reviews. The album was nominated (4 categories – Solo Recording – Instrumental, Instrumentalist of the year, Young artist of the year, Classical music without borders) for the most important music award in Germany – Opus Klassik Award 2021. In 2021 he released a second album, Quantum of Silence, with the label ODRADEK RECORDS (USA). He receives outstanding reviews from leading industry media: Diapason (France), Fanfare (USA), American Record Guide (USA), MusicWeb International (UK), Pizzicato (Luxembourg), El Eniversal (Mexico), Český rozhlas (Czech Republic), Music Island Recommends – June 2021, Ruch Muzyczny, Magazyn Presto, Gazeta Wyborcza, etc. His recordings are broadcast around the world. The artist is a protagonist of viola and new music and has performed over 20 world premieres. Contemporary composers dedicate their works to him. His articles are published, amongst others, in the Journal of the American Viola Society (USA) and on meakultura.pl. He leads intensified concerts, and carries out pedagogical and didactic activity in Poland and abroad. Currently, he plays a master viola made by Wojciech Topa in 2020.
64 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Contextualization of Yuri Shaporin’s piano music Recital
Kirill Kozlovski Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected]
Yuri Shaporin (1887–1966) was far more famous in his lifetime than he is today. Today, his works are hardly performed at all, which is, at least historically, quite unfair: in the 1930s and 1940s his music was widely played both in the Soviet Union and abroad. Gerald Abraham, a British musicologist and expert in Soviet music, wrote of Shaporin’s cantata On the Field of Kulikovo in the 1940s: “In giving so much space to Kulikovo, perhaps the finest musical work Soviet Russia has yet produced, despite its reliance on the idiom of the last-century Nationalists, I have left myself little room to discuss the opera, The Decembrists.” (Gerald Abraham, Eight Soviet Composers, Oxford University Press, 1943, p. 97). The overall aim of my research project is to question the general and rather one- sided opinion of Shaporin as the “court composer” of the Soviet rulers and to examine his piano music within the broader context of Russian music. I argue that a big part of Shaporin’s reputation in the Soviet Union was based on a rather biased and politically-charged approach, misinterpreting Shaporin’s essentially eclectic style as a showcase for socialist realism. This is probably the reason why Shaporin’s music was forgotten so quickly in the 1960s after the composer’s death: the delayed rise of modernism could well have resulted in a view of Shaporin’s aesthetics as nothing more than a reactionary strategy designed to please the authorities and avoid conflict with them. In my recital I propose to look at his Second Piano Sonata, one of his most daring and ambitious works, as stemming from two different Russian musical traditions simultaneously. First of all, there is a strong link to the “Moguchaya kuchka” (Mighty Handful) tradition; as some researchers claim, Shaporin can truly be seen as a third-generation kuchkist. On the other hand, there is also a strong tie to the Scriabinist tradition, which is often overlooked when examining Shaporin’s output. Therefore, placing Shaporin’s Sonata alongside Mussorgsky
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 65 and Scriabin elucidates the composer’s complex creative strategies and facilitates understanding of his output as an aesthetic and social phenomenon.
Programme · Modest Mussorgsky (arr. Igor Khudolei) – Shchelkalov’s Monologue and Varlaam’s Song from Boris Godunov · Alexander Scriabin – Enigma Op. 52 No. 2 · Alexander Scriabin – Poème languide Op. 52 No. 3 · Yuri Shaporin – Piano Sonata No. 2 Op. 7 Allegro agitato. Alla toccata. Andante. Molto lirico Finale. Moderato assai – Molto vivo con fuoco
Kirill Kozlovski is a Belarusian-born Finnish pianist. His piano teachers included Irina Semenyako, Matti Raekallio, Ilmo Ranta and Avo Kouyoumdjian. Kozlovski holds a doctorate from the Sibelius Academy for his research into the music of Dmitri Shostakovich (2017). His present research projects concentrate on Soviet piano music as well as performance practices within the Soviet piano school. As a laureate of both national and international piano competitions, Kozlovski has given solo recitals and been a member of chamber ensembles at international festivals in France, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Estonia, Spain, Finland and Belarus. He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Finland and abroad, collaborating with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Janos Fürst, Dima Slobodeniouk and Klaus Mäkelä, to name but a few. Kirill Kozlovski performs regularly with Finland’s foremost singers including Jorma Hynninen, Monica Groop and Mika Kares.
66 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Melting sound: listening through corporeality Lecture-Recital
Paola Livorsi Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected] / core.musicfinland.fi/ composers/paola-livorsi
This proposal opens up the collaborative process between a composer (Paola Livorsi) and a moving image & performance artist (Marek Pluciennik), which led to the concert Sounding Bodies, held in Helsinki on 14.11.2020. It was the fourth presentation of Livorsi’s artistic research “Human voice and instrumental sound: an investigation of voice likeness”. The research concerns the relations between human voice and instrumental sound, from an embodied and performative point of view. It investigates the way of speaking and the body language of string instrument players and their instrumental sound. Mother-tongue has a particular relevance in this process. Sounding Bodies included six string instrument players (the Jousitus ensemble), two dancers, live electronics, projections and light design. It took place in Helsinki, in the peculiar Space for Free Arts – a former bomb shelter from the Cold War, a deep cave in the rock about a hundred metres long. It investigated the relations between human voice, string instruments, gestures, and sound qualities. The dancers, Giorgio Convertito and Vera Lapitskaya, and the players used their spoken voices in connection with movements and gestures. Pluciennik made two 16 mm films especially for this performance. The sound combined spoken voices and a variety of string instruments sounds, together with the rhythms and timbres of analogue projectors – transformed live, with a palette of analogue devices. “Melting sound: listening through corporeality” will bring to “Doctors in Performance” a presentation of this work. The presentation will include a theoretical part as well as a performance of 15 minutes: Livorsi and Pluciennik
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 67 will transform live optical sound and film through analogue projectors and a small set of analogue music devices. Livorsi and Pluciennik have been collaborating since 2016 and have realized four projects together, three of which were presented in the Helsinki Music Centre.
PROGRAMME The presentation (20 min.) will include the most recent updates from Livorsi’s doctoral research and its theoretical background, as well as the previous artistic project realised. It will focus on the project Sounding Bodies, an example of performance as embodied thought (references A. Arlander, G. Grisey, G. Deleuze, P. Alperson, P. Ramshaw). The concept of voice likeness is explored in the research through a multidisci- plinary approach, including acoustics, music psychology, neuroscience, and expanded cinema. The second part will include a performance (15 min.), where Livorsi and Pluciennik will transform live optical sound and film through two 16 mm film analogue projectors and a small set of analogue music devices.
Paola Livorsi, composer/researcher. Her work includes acoustic and electroacoustic music, sound installations, and multidisciplinary projects – with the photographer Silvia Reichenbach, the poet Saila Susiluoto, the visual artist Hilda Kozári, and the filmmaker Marek Pluciennik. She has received commissions from many musicians, and her work has been supported by Finnish institutions and foundations. vimeo.com/paolalivorsi
Marek Pluciennik is an independent filmmaker and live art practitioner based in Helsinki. The main concern of his work is the materiality of the film medium. Aside from films, his work is site specific, ephemeral projection performances and installations. His films have been screened among others at the Madatac07 Festival in Madrid, the Images Film Festival in Toronto, and the International Short Film Festival in Tampere. His performances have been shown in contemporary art galleries and festivals in Latvia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, Hungary and Italy. Marek-pluciennik.mystrikingly.com
68 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Are you listening? Indeterminacy and micro- gesture in improvisation Recital
Emma Lloyd Independent Artist [email protected] emmajanelloyd.com
Through improvisation and performance, I explore the way in which minute details of sound can become key events, points of change, or thematic material in a performance. A physical gesture, such as pressing the hair of the bow on the bridge of the violin will produce an indeterminate collection of sounds with particular pitches, or identifiable rhythms. Bowing extremely close to the bridge brings out unstable partials of the fundamental, giving a complex shape to the note. A child laughing in the distance or a car horn can be forcefully ignored or can be invited into the music, depending on how the sound is responded to by the performer and by the listener. From these initial almost imperceptible occurrences, an entire sonic journey can be developed. Instability and unpredictability in sound production have traditionally been considered negative attributes, particularly in the field of classical music. Contemporary composers and improvisers are showing how these behaviours can be exploited and enjoyed. Extending the period of time in which a musical event exists, the use of silence, amplification, displacement, and response are some of the ways in which these micro-gestures can be given meaning and in which the listener’s attention can be drawn to them. Firstly, I will discuss how I allow my instrument to lead certain aspects of my performance by using physical gestures that produce indeterminate sounds. The details of these – the micro-gestures that arise – shape the piece of music as I improvise. The second part of my presentation will be an improvised performance using some electronic processing and pre-recorded material as well as live violin.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 69 PROGRAMME Two contrasting scenes of improvisation bringing together external sound/field- recording, electronic processing, pre-recorded instrumental samples and a live violin part. The performance will demonstrate the ways in which this concept of micro-gesture can take life in performance.
Emma Lloyd is an international performer, improviser, composer, and artist. She has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She performs as a soloist and in small ensembles, working often with live electronics, and collaborating regularly with composers. In addition to the modern set-up, she plays a baroque violin and performs both baroque and contemporary music written specifically for this instrument. As an improviser, Emma’s performance tends to be quiet and intimate in nature, exploring the innate timbral qualities of the violin, and discovering some of the often hidden sounds that can be found with her unique combination of technique and tools. Ensembles include KUBOV, a violin/electronic duo with Jess Aslan, a duo with pianist Karin Schistek, violin/viola duo Deux Mèches with Rachel Koblyakov, and violin/cello/electronics duo with Justyna Jablonska.
70 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Evolution of Body Movements: Piano Techniques and Playing Approaches in the Classical Period Paper
Hui Han Lui Maynooth University [email protected]
Physical approaches in piano playing such as techniques and postures are elements that have changed over time and have also affected the music produced in several ways, one of these being body movements. Just as ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, the techniques, postures, gestures, and body movements used in piano playing have developed and evolved from the 18th century to the present. As techniques and postures passed from master to student directly influence the body movements and gestures of performances in each period, with the potential to have a further effect on the sound, this paper examines the three major treatises from the classical period by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Carl Czerny. C.P.E. Bach’s Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, published in 1753, was considered as one of the most important treatises of the Classical period and was spoken highly of by Classical pianists. Beethoven, in particular, used the treatise when teaching the young Czerny. Towards the end of the Classical period, Mozart’s student, Hummel, published A Complete Theoretical and Practical Course of Instructions on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte in 1828, while Beethoven’s student Czerny published the Theoretical and Practical Piano Forte School, Opera 500 in 1839. These treatises were used to reconstruct the techniques and playing approaches of the Classical period. The techniques were then applied on a modern grand piano. These treatises showed significant differences in playing styles despite some similarities that could be observed between Bach and the latter two composers’
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 71 treatises. In my presentation, I will mainly discuss seating positions, body postures, and hand and finger movements, with reference to Bach, Hummel, and Czerny’s treatises, and how they affect the movements and playing of a pianist. A preliminary application of period instructions on appropriate musical examples, along with motion-tracked body movements, will be included in the presentation.
Hui Han Lui is a PhD in Music (Performance) student working under the supervision of Dr Antonio Cascelli and Dr Alison Hood. Prior to pursuing her PhD, she gained a Bachelor of Music (Performance) from University Putra Malaysia and an MA in Performance and Musicology from Maynooth University, both with first class honours. She has an interest in performance studies, and during her MA studies she focused on researching body movements and gestures in piano performance. During her MA studies she completed a thesis entitled “Formalizing Body Movements and Gestures in Piano Solo Work: Estampes by Debussy”. As a pianist, her achievements include obtaining a Licentiate of Trinity College London (LTCL), as well as being selected as one of the scholarship recipients of the YAMAHA Scholarship Program 2017, and as one of the finalists at the First International Aswara Piano and Vocal Competition.
72 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Implicit Curriculum: Improvisation Pedagogy in Guitar Methods 1760–1860 Paper
Matthew Mazanek Royal Irish Academy of Music [email protected] www.matthewmazanek.com
In the nineteenth century, the guitar was in a fervent state of metamorphosis and experienced an unprecedented rise in popularity among lower- and middle- class amateur learners. As a result, music education was forced to transition, and guitarists increasingly turned to publishing methods which catered to a mass market of ‘leisure’ learners. This new educational movement was not immediately concerned with performing and reproducing musical works; instead, a wide variety of musical skill sets were cultivated for which improvisation was vital. Twentieth century research in early music has revitalised the study of improvisation with a focus on the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. Recent research has neglected the specific teaching techniques employed in the nineteenth century and this paper directs its analysis towards how and why lower- and middle-class amateur guitarists learned to improvise in the nineteenth century. Guitarists shared a unique concern with learning how to improvise since preluding, modulating between songs and spontaneously varying accompaniments were vital parts of the performance practice. By using a variety of techniques resembling those found in the partimento tradition such as bass motions, modulations, and the canevas de prelude, guitarists learned ‘fretboard harmony’ for its application in improvisation and accompaniment. Francois de Fossa’s appendix, which ends Dionisio Aguado’s 1825 Escuela de Guitara, is devoted entirely to ‘exercising one’s fantasy in modulation’ and is one example of the many explicit efforts to teach improvisation. Nineteenth-century guitarists developed unique ways of teaching students to improvise, and this presentation provides insights into the links that were cultivated between compositional and instrumental technique, revealing an implicit curriculum centred around spontaneous composition.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 73 This research addresses the role pedagogy plays in the flourishing of improvisational skill and why, in the early twentieth-century, improvisation swiftly declined.
Matthew Mazanek (born 1990, New York State) is a classical guitarist currently finishing his Doctorate in Musical Arts at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His doctoral dissertation, “Implicit Curriculum: Improvisation Pedagogy in Guitar Methods 1760–1860”, explores teaching improvisation as found in the guitar method books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His research investigates the interpretations of instrumental technique and shows how this encompasses skills beyond the reproduction of musical works. With methodologies that intersect historically informed pedagogy, improvisation, and phenomenology, Mr. Mazanek aims to apply theory and research to practice through his teaching and performance.
74 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The Representation of the Sea in Selected Piano Works by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis: A Performative Approach Lecture-Recital
Vincenzo De Martino Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre [email protected]
The piano music of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) forms a substantial and varied repertoire ranging over the composer’s lifespan and is therefore integral to his overall artistic profile. The heterogeneity of his pianistic style certainly intrigues and inspires performers through a remarkably diverse palette of styles and undertones. The representation of the sea is a fairly recurrent topic in Čiurlionis’s whole artistic output, generally characterized by a profoundly holistic approach that draws equally from his own life experiences, creative flair and spiritual dimension at the same time. In this sense, the composer’s profound fascination with this subject matter can be traced back to different backgrounds, which coexisted and intersected with each other over his lifetime and his creative path. In this lecture recital I identify three main stages leading from the composer’s perception of the sea to its rendering as an object of artistic representation: direct observation, the use of spirituality as a filter, and artistic reworking. Having established this, I focus on examining two piano works that may be regarded as particularly representative of this trend: the set of preludes known as Jūros etiudai (“Sea Etudes”) VL 309–313 and the suite Jūra. Mažų peizažų ciklas (“The Sea. Cycle of Small Landscapes”) VL 317. As I will demonstrate, these compositions provide clear evidence of a pianistic style intended to evoke the distinctive qualities of the sea, such as fluidity, expansiveness and depth, each of them recurrently associated with specific musical features. A colouristic intention is also evident, as the pianistic writing
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 75 is often enriched by figures aiming at recalling specific optical effects related to water, such as the darkness of the abyss or the sparkling over the surface, each of which correspond to quite specific pianistic approaches. This aspect will also be illustrated during the lecture recital through the performance of selected music examples.
PROGRAMME · M. K. Čiurlionis – Unidentified Cycle No. 10 “Sea Etudes” VL 309–313 (13–14 min.)
Born in Cagliari (Italy) in 1992, Vincenzo De Martino began to study piano at the age of six under the guidance of Mrs. Elisabetta Steri. From 2011 to 2015 he studied with Prof. Maria Lucia Costa at the State Conservatory of Music “G. P. da Palestrina” (Cagliari), where he was awarded a Bachelor’s degree with the highest honours. From 2015 to 2017 he studied with Prof. Jurgis Karnavičius at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (Vilnius), where he was awarded a Master’s degree. In 2021, he completed his Artistic Doctorate at the same institution, where as a researcher he has taken part in conferences (“Doctors in Performance”, 2018; LMTA Annual Conference, 2019) and published articles in peer- reviewed journals (Ars et Praxis, 2019; 2020). He has attended masterclasses with Gabrielius Alekna, Pascal Devoyon, Gintaras Januševičius, Kevin Kenner, Francesco Libetta, Jean- Marc Luisada, Orazio Maione, Claudio Martinez-Mehner, Pascal Nemirovski, Fali Pavri, Mūza Rubackytė, Irene Veneziano, and Andrius Žlabys. He has been a finalist and winner in several international piano competitions, including the Stasys Vainiūnas International Piano Competition (Vilnius) in 2018. In 2019 he received an award from the President of the Republic of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė for his achievements in international music competitions. He regularly gives concerts in Italy and across the Baltic States, both as a soloist and in collaboration with other artists.
76 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The practice of figurate music composing: from sketch to score Paper
Agnė Mažulienė Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre [email protected]
The concept of the score as a visual code of the composition’s structure is more than 600 years old: the manuscripts of XIV–XVI century composers such as Baude Cordier, Ghiselin Danckerts, Ulrich Brätel and others show the earliest attempts to integrate musical and visual parameters, resulting in one-page circular, triangular, cross-shaped notation, as well as more complex solutions (e. g. spiral or chessboard-shaped scores). Several XX–XXI century composers, including Horatiu Radulescu, George Crumb, Bronius Kutavičius, Ričardas Kabelis, and others, disappointed with the limits of conventional notation as well as boundless graphic notation, revived this tradition in their pictorial scores, which are not only beautiful to look at, but which also strictly relate compositional and visual parameters. This paper focuses on the practical aspects of this peculiar type of composition, to which the author suggests the name figurate composition. The paper presents the three strategies of figurate composition, namely figurate pre-composition, the process of creative work, and figural post-composition (finding the geometrical reductive expression to conventional notation). The author of the topic illustrates each of these strategies with the works of renowned composers, as well as with her own creative examples.
Agnė Mažulienė is currently studying figurate music composition for her Art.D. at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, where she previously obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in musical composition. She is active in the Lithuanian compositional field: her works are performed by professional ensembles such as Musica Humana, Giunter Percussion, the Jauna Muzika choir, and the Melos vocal ensemble, as well as the St. Christopher chamber orchestra. In her creative work she explores the potential of figurate composition, linking it to diverse compositional methods.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 77 Croatian Female Pianists and Piano Pedagogues: their Role in the Development of Pianistic Tradition in Zagreb Paper
Martina Mičija Palić Zlatko Baloković Music College [email protected] balokovic.hr/zlatko-balokovic-music-college
The continuous institutionalized tradition of the development of pianistic activity and piano pedagogy in Zagreb can be traced back to 1872 and the founding of the so-called piano classroom of the Croatian Music Institute music school, which in 1920 eventually became the Zagreb Academy of Music, the leading music education institution in Croatia. At first pianism in Zagreb was strongly influenced by the Austrian and Czech piano traditions, and later, at the brink of the twentieth century, by the German, French and Russian traditions. However, it was only with the activity of the piano pedagogue Svetislav Stančić and his successors that the Zagreb Piano School would be recognised as a school of national significance, and one which is actually the dominant Croatian piano tradition. In the context of the genesis and development of the first pianistic tradition, which later became the Zagreb Piano School, the activities of female pianists and piano pedagogues will be presented, emphasizing the fact that they are important stakeholders in the formation of Croatian pianism. In the context of the circumstances of late nineteenth and early twentieth century society, especially with regard to the status of women in society, the influence of female pianists and piano teachers, unique for its time, governed the development of pianistic tradition in Zagreb in the fields of music education, concert activities and the professionalization of pianism. Analysing the individual contribution of female pianists within the framework of pianistic activity in Zagreb I will show their achievements in pedagogical and performance practice, despite prejudices against the intellectual and artistic activity of women at the time. The author of this paper conducted the first comprehensive scientific study of Croatian pianism as part of her doctoral dissertation defended in 2019.
78 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Martina Mičija Palić is a pianist, piano teacher and musicologist. She graduated in piano in 2003 from the Ino Mirković College of Music and later continued her music education at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. Currently, she works as a piano teacher at the Zlatko Baloković Music College and is an associated collaborator at the Faculty of Teacher Education in Zagreb. She is the president of the Croatian Music Center association and artistic collaborator of the Projekt Lazarus ensemble. In October 2019 she completed her postgraduate doctoral studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and obtained a doctorate, defending her doctoral dissertation entitled “Pianists of the Zagreb environment from the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century in the light of contemporary pianism and piano pedagogy”. Her research interests include topics in literature, music, history of pianism, piano pedagogy and music management.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 79 Joy Against the Machine – A machine-controlled improvisation for human players Recital
Libero Mureddu Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy, MuTri Doctoral School [email protected] / www.liberomureddu. com
In this recital I will perform the work performed in my first doctoral concert. The knowledge of a free improviser is a highly specialised and complex knowledge, used to generate and elaborate musical material, musical structures, and interaction strategies with other players, all of which take place during performance. This knowledge operates simultaneously on a number of intertwined areas such as instrumental practice, formal choices, imagination and emotions, the performer’s corporeality and his/her connection with time and space. The numerous elements at play constantly inform each other and cannot be organised in a hierarchical order. My practice-led research proposes a multidisciplinary and holistic framework that seeks to reveal, to the performers and the audience alike, the multifaceted nature of the improvisers’ embodied knowledge and how
80 · Doctors In Performance 2021 this knowledge is used in an improvised performance. The five doctoral concerts will be the laboratory settings in which the study of the embodied knowledge will take place in real-time, with the help of interactive software, visualisations, improvising machines and machine learning algorithms. In my first doctoral concert, called ‘Joy Against the Machine’, I researched the relationship between what we do when we improvise, the ‘what’ being the materials used in a performance, and its relationship with the time ‘when’ we perform a certain material. I devised a performance setting in which the ‘what’ and the ‘when’ were decided by a machine, to analyse the performers’ reactions to this constrained setting and possibly give an answer to the question whether the ‘what’ and he ‘when’ can be separated at all, and if it is possible to establish a hierarchy between the two. However, the work on the concert has generated additional research questions. Do we humans, or at least the subgroup of free improvisers, enjoy obeying a machine rather than a fellow human? Are free improvisers able to create meaningful performative actions even if the ‘what’ and the ‘when’ are dictated from the outside, and if so, where does this ability come from? My answer to the last question is that under a constrained situation such as the one I created for this concert, a free improviser is particularly forced to rely on his/her embodied knowledge, as there is no time to think in advance what to do and how to do it. The performance was divided in two parts, the first part being a free improvisation set performed by the ensemble. In the second part the players had to follow textual instructions played back by the software. All the instructions were randomly chosen at the time of the performance from a common pool that contains over two hundred instructions. Each performer was assigned a separate colour- coded timeline in which the instructions were played back at different speeds. The instructions were projected on to a screen to be visible to the audience and the players alike. The visualisation of the instructions on one hand allowed the audience to follow in real time the reactions of the performers, and on the other helped me to analyse the performers’ choices after the concert, as the concert was video recorded. For the ‘Doctors in Performance 2021’ recital, I invite the audience to send their instructions, which will be used during the performance. Each audience member can send up to five instructions, in English, by completing an online form by 1st September. The online form may be found at the following link. www.liberomureddu.com/dip2021
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 81 PROGRAMME · Septad ensemble: Free improvisation · Libero Mureddu: Joy Against the Machine #2
Performers · Libero Mureddu: piano, electronics and visualisation, concept and artistic direction · Livia Schweizer, flute · Mikko Raasakka, bass clarinet · Veli Kujala, quarter-tone accordion · Aino Juutilainen, cello, visualisation and additional concept · Antonio Borghini (ITA/DE), double bass · Janne Tuomi, drums and percussion
Born in Italy but resident in Helsinki since 2003, Libero Mureddu has studied composition at the Conservatory ‘G. Verdi’ of Milan and music technology at the Music Technology Department of the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. He is currently pursuing his artistic doctorate at the MuTri Doctoral School at the Sibelius Academy. In his research, Libero Mureddu investigates the role of embodied knowledge in a free improvisation performance, and how this knowledge can be observed, analysed, and used to develop free improvisation languages. A versatile musician, during the past twenty-five years his musical experiences on the European scene have ranged from contemporary and experimental music to jazz and popular music. He currently leads ‘Septad’ and ‘Hexad’, two Helsinki-based ensembles that gather together improvisers from jazz and contemporary music backgrounds. Active as a teacher, he is currently teaching contemporary and free improvisation at the Sibelius Academy and at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki.
82 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Different versions of Leevi Madetoja’s first symphony – a question of primary source for the new critical edition Paper
Sasha Mäkilä Uniarts Helsinki, Centre for Artistic Research [email protected] / www.sashamakila.com
Leevi Madetoja (1887–1947) is one of the most important Finnish composers of the 20th century, best known for his opera Pohjalaisia (The Ostrobothnians) and his vast choral output. Madetoja composed his first symphony in 1916, but it was not published until 1984, long after the composer’s death. In preparing the critical edition of this symphony, the central question has been what should be used as the primary source. In the course of my research, I have discovered that after the premiere of 1916 the composer made substantial changes to the work in 1923, as well as several cuts and minor changes later on, which he cemented in the 1943 autograph copy of the score. It is possible to build a timeline of the changes based on the markings in the original autograph score, the marginalia of the orchestra parts, and the contemporary reviews and analyses of the work. In this presentation I will illuminate the history of the work with various types of evidence, and play some excerpts of the symphony from my performance in 2020, where the public was able to hear the work in its original guise for the first time in a hundred years.
Dr Sasha Mäkilä is an orchestra conductor and Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Artistic Research at the University of the Arts Helsinki. The main focus of his research is the orchestral music of the Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja. Mäkilä’s other research interests include the technique and pedagogy of conducting, conductorship, and Russian music culture.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 83 Modular Improv System Lecture-Recital
Per Anders Nilsson University of Gothenburg, Academy of Music and Drama [email protected]
This project applies a systemic modular approach to musical improvisation. One aim is to allow participating musicians to be as free as in free improvisation, while preserving and developing a distinctive sonic identity. The point of departure is to rely neither on fixed compositions nor on predetermined set lists. The idea is rather to create a collection of pre-created musical modules (think Lego pieces) that can be combined in many ways and with different functions. In performance, a participant may bring up any module at any moment, and accordingly any other participant can respond by continuing, joining, bringing in a contrasting module, playing freely, or being silent. The system allows, and indeed demands, participating members to perform two different musical activities: on the one hand to be composers, and on the other performers. I call these activities design time and play time. Design time is outside time activity that deals with articulation and application of ideas and knowledge. Play time is about real time activity with interaction with the environment, embodied knowledge, and the present. At the outset a group starts with a small number of modules, or even free improvisation, and eventually, collectively creates a growing collection of modules. Features of the system: Design Time · the repertoire is built on a collection of independent musical modules · a musical module must be immediately recognisable as well as being repeatable · a module may be: melodic/harmonic cells, sound types, interaction patterns, distribution of roles, and metaphors · anyone may and shall contribute new modules to the shared collection of modules
84 · Doctors In Performance 2021 · the system is non-hierarchical · there is no designated leader: anyone and no-one is leader, all participants have equal rights and responsibilities · the system is self-organizing at many levels: on the design time level any musical idea might be part of the collection, and on the play time level any player might bring up any module at any time Features of the system: Play Time · players must know all modules by heart · any modules can be played together in collage form · players may bring up any module at any time · players are free to improvise · improvisation may become a future module Research Topics One question of interest is to investigate the balance between responsibility and freedom. It is about freedom from and freedom to. Do all players like having responsibility and freedom? Another aspect to research is group dynamic features such as power relations, role-taking, distribution of roles, and conflicts.
PROGRAMME I plan to give a lecture/performance: playing the saxophone, together with a Digitone sequencer/synthesizer, interleaved with a presentation of the concepts of the project. The aim is to demonstrate how different pre-existing modules can be combined in different ways. Playing solo with a digital machine, however, somewhat limits the concept, therefore I shall include in the performance video snippets from group performances, in addition to presenting some modules out of context.
Per Anders Nilsson (born 1954). Professor in Music and Media at the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg. Improvising musician and composer. Studied music 1981–87 at the University of Gothenburg. In 2011 Nilsson defended his doctoral thesis “A Field of Possibilities”. Nilsson and Palle Dahlstedt are currently running the research project “Systemic Improvisation” supported by the Swedish Research Council. In the 70s and 80s
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 85 he managed his own bands as well performing occasionally in other constellations. In 2009 Nilsson toured Sweden with Beam Stone featuring the saxophone player Evan Parker. In 2014 duo pantoMorf toured with AMM in Sweden. Releases: the solo CD Random Rhapsody in 1993; the group Natural Artefacts released CDs in 2001, 2005, 2014 and 2019: Strings And Objects with Nilsson/Sandell, and duo pantoMorf with Palle Dahlstedt (www.lj-records.se) in 2008 and in 2009 with Beam Stone on the English label PSI.
86 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Meandering Identities: Interpreting clarinet compositions by Alexander, Grigory and Yulian Krein in the context of Russian, Jewish and French music traditions Lecture-Recital
Anne Elisabeth Piirainen Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected] www.annepiirainen.com sites.uniarts.fi/web/clarinet-music
In this lecture recital the clarinet music of Alexander (1883–1951), Grigory (1879–1955) and Yulian Krein (1913–1996) is illuminated from a performer’s point of view. The musical legacy of the Jewish-Russian musical family Krein has remained vastly undervalued. The three composers Alexander, Grigory and Yulian Krein created unique works within the classical repertoire, combining stylistic elements of Russian Post-Romanticism, French Impressionism and Jewish traditional music. Each of them found an individual voice, though there are also correlations in the styles of all three composers. Each of them used Jewish themes in their early works, but under Stalin’s dictatorship the Jewish traditional elements vanished from their compositions. In the music of the Krein family, striking stylistic changes can be traced during that period of repression, during which all religious activities were gradually banned, including artistic activities with Jewish content. Even in the Soviet Union after Stalin, compositions with Jewish themes remained widely disregarded. As a consequence, a number of excellent and valuable works have been neglected until the present day and are awaiting a merited rediscovery. The work of these three composers offers a curious amalgam of musical influences, ranging from Jewish traditional music through Ravel to Prokofiev.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 87 PROGRAMME · Yulian Krein – Sonata for clarinet and piano · Grigory Krein – Two Pieces for clarinet and piano Excerpts from works by Alexander, Grigory and Yulian Krein
Anne Elisabeth Piirainen, clarinet and lecturer Kirill Kozlovski, piano
Finnish-German clarinettist Anne Elisabeth Piirainen is a dedicated chamber musician, soloist, teacher and researcher. She graduated as Doctor of Music on the topic of “Clarinet Music from Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1991: Discovering an Unexplored Side of the Clarinet Repertoire” at DocMus, Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts. Currently Dr. Piirainen is a visiting researcher at the Sibelius Academy, carrying out an artistic postdoc research project on clarinet compositions with Jewish themes by Alexander, Grigory and Yulian Krein in cooperation with Dr. Kirill Kozlovski, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Her extensive musical education includes degrees from the Royal Antwerp Conservatory, the Rotterdam Conservatory and the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. A prizewinner of the prestigious Carl-Nielsen-Competition in Odense, Denmark, Dr. Piirainen has appeared as soloist with orchestras in Germany, Russia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland.
88 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Psychoacoustic orchestration analysis as composing aid – a new method and a helpful tool in the creative process Paper
Uljas Pulkkis Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected]
In the last 20 years I have composed more than 30 works for symphony orchestra. During the rehearsals of these works I have encountered numerous situations when the intended target instrument could not be heard through the orchestration. Discussions with my colleagues and orchestral conductors revealed that not only do fellow composers share the problem with me, but similar problems are also encountered in the standard repertoire. Due to limited rehearsal time, the solution to the problem is usually to lower the dynamics of everybody but the target instrument. This solution is effective, but affects the intensity of the music, as musicians must hold back their playing. Also, the dynamics may play an important role in the dramatic arch of the work. I offer another solution to the problem. With the computer program I have coded myself, and which is available online, the user can investigate the orchestration of the entire score before the rehearsals. The program name is Score-Tool. Score-Tool reveals which specific instruments are causing the inaudibility of the target instrument and lets the user see the effects of altering the dynamics. For a composer, the program gives an opportunity to investigate the effects of alternative orchestrations and gives suggestions for acoustically ideal instruments and registers. The basis of the program is a database of the acoustical features of the orchestral instruments. The main feature is a masking curve caused by the instrument’s sound. For the masking curve I have used a psychoacoustic model created for digital audio compression. This model has been widely tested in commercial applications, and it is clearly defined in terms of ISO-standard (ISO/IEC 11172-
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 89 3:1993). Other features are spectral centroid (describing brightness), MFCC (describing timbre), coefficient of variation (describing homogeneity) and spectral peaks, which are used for determining audibility. With the help of Score-Tool it is possible to maintain the intensity of the music in passages with problematic orchestration. For a composer, the program gives a possibility to pre-evaluate the orchestration before making it public. It also provides ideas and solutions for the composer’s own artistic work.
Uljas Pulkkis (b. 1975) graduated in 2002 from the Sibelius Academy of Music in Helsinki. He also studied mathematics and computer science at Helsinki University. Pulkkis’s prizes in composition include 1st prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, 1st prize in the Unesco Rostrum in France, 3rd prize in the Gustav Mahler Competition in Austria, and many lesser prizes in Finland. Pulkkis has composed mainly orchestral music, which has been performed among others by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Orchestra, the Belgian National Orchestra, the Dutch Radio Orchestra, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Pulkkis has also written three operas, which have been performed at Finnish festivals. He is currently composing his fourth opera, which is a joint commission by the Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles and the Sibelius Academy. The opera also forms part of Pulkkis’s artistic research.
90 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Excarnation and Sacrifice of an Electric Guitar Paper
Charles Quevillon Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy, MuTri Doctoral School [email protected] charlesquevillon.com
In the summer of 2020 I created and presented the artwork Le Refuge des Cordes in the Forum Box gallery in Helsinki. The work is a performance/installation. It is a room-sized interactive sonic sculpture that aims to transform the electric guitar into a sacred space by exploding and dismembering all its parts. Therefore, this work can be interpreted as a symbolic excarnation of an electric guitar. In 1967 Jimi Hendrix set his electric guitar on fire during a live performance at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival in California. Hendrix’s action can be viewed to symbolize the sacrifice of an electric guitar, one of the oldest mortuary rites. In his words: “I’m gonna sacrifice something here I really love... There is nothing more I can do than this.” The purpose of this paper is to compare the two events described above and the artistic path and context that led to them. In doing so, it examines the mythical and enchanting dimensions of electricity and how this can enable a sacred view of technological objects to emerge. The electric guitar is an example of a medium through which it is possible to interface between the intangible, “unknown”, electric world and the sonic, “known”, musical world. The central question that this paper aims to answer is: How can a music performance become a ritual? This presentation is part of an artistic research project at the Sibelius Academy, Music Technology department in Helsinki, Finland. This practice-based project is entitled: Sacred technologies: an autoethnographic exploration of a musician’s relationship with electronic technology.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 91 Charles Quevillon is a Canadian composer/performer living in Finland. He studied for six years at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal and worked for ten years with choreographer Tedd Robinson on 25 projects, some of which he performed as a musician/ dancer in Canada’s most prestigious dance festivals. He also collaborates with Finnish visual artist Maija Tammi, with whom he created the exhibition Immortal’s Birthday, which was presented in Forum Box, Helsinki last summer. Charles Quevillon is a doctoral student at the Sibelius Academy in the Music Technology department. His research focuses on the symbolic use of electronic technologies in music performance.
92 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Numerology and Russian Orthodox Existentialism in Sofia Gubaidulina’sMusic for Flute, Strings, and Percussion (1994) Paper
Phoebe Robertson Manhattan School of Music [email protected] phoeberobertsonflute.com
Much has been written on Sofia Gubaidulina’s contributions to the concertante repertoire for strings (Offertorium) and non-Western instruments (In Croce). Yet her compositions in this genre for flute have gone largely unexplored. In Music for Flute, Strings, and Percussion (1994), Gubaidulina combines her lifelong fascination with Russian Orthodox mysticism with a pervasive use of numerology and sequences through her juxtaposition, on the small and large scale, of the numbers 3 and 5. In interviews and writings from the past 20 years Gubaidulina has repeatedly expressed her affinity for the tradition of Bachian numerological symbolism – as explored in Tsenova (2002) and Milne (2008) – and for mathematical phenomena such as the Fibonacci sequence (Lukomsky 1999). Through polyrhythm, metrical changes, instrumentation, and sectional divisions, Gubaidulina places the numbers 3 and 5 in direct opposition and combination. The meaning of these numbers draws from the tradition of Christian numerology which places 3 as the number of the Trinity and 5 as the number of the Cross: the wounds of Christ which bind humanity and the Divine (Siegele and Clayton). In so doing, Gubaidulina roots this composition in the Christian existentialism of Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, who states that artistic creativity exists at the intersection between a linear progression of time and the creative inspiration that takes place within another realm (“Every creative act is performed in existential time and is merely projected in linear time”, The Meaning of the Creative Act). By the 1990s, Gubaidulina had firmly adopted Berdyaev’s philosophy into her
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 93 own conception of art, describing her “vertical” and “horizontal” process of inspiration, creation, and reception (Kurtz). Gubaidulina’s relationship with Berdyaev’s philosophy of creation and their shared belief that artistic creation occurs at the midpoint between “existential time” and “linear time”, with the number 3 representing the Divine as understood in the persons of the Trinity, dwelling in “existential time”, and the number 5 representing the union of divinity and humanity (“linear time”) from both a spatial and a theological point of view. This paper will explore the presence of the juxtaposition of 3 and 5 in all its guises throughout the work’s parameters and the specific musical topics being suggested in those moments in which the juxtaposition comes to the fore. Subsequently, I will discuss the interpretation of these moments and the order in which they are presented through the lens of Berdyaev and Gubaidulina’s shared artistic and religious philosophy of the intersection of existential (vertical) and linear (horizontal) time.
Flautist Phoebe Robertson’s playing has been featured on BBC Radio 3 and in records on the Linn and NYOC labels. Her appearances as soloist include concerto performances with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Symphony New Brunswick, and the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, and she has premiered works by composers from eight countries. Ms. Robertson is a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. She has presented lecture-recitals and papers at the Canadian University Music Society Conference, the College Music Society Northeast Conference, and the Ottawa Graduate Music Student Conference. Her research on sexuality in Greek myths as depicted in music by Debussy and Ravel appears in the Eidolon Journal of Classics. Her doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Dr. Edward Green, will discuss phenomena of ontological and societal opposition in concertante flute works by Sofia Gubaidulina.
94 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Creation in Cooperation. Marimba music by Polish composers – originals and transcriptions Recital
Anna Rutkowska Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow [email protected] / www.marimbann.com
The marimba – an instrument known for years as a folk instrument, as a member of the orchestra’s percussion section, and as a contemporary music medium – is currently experiencing a real boom in interest among composers and performers. This phenomenon is taking place thanks to the considerable evolution of the instrument’s technical possibilities in terms of its playing and to an increasing focus on the performative approach to the instrument itself. During recent decades there has been a vast increase in the number of percussionists directing their professional paths to chamber music and to solo marimba playing. This fact has led to the creation of more and more marimba literature in which two directions are taken – composing and arranging – so that it has also become the responsibility of the performer to co-invent ways to play certain pieces and to break down some fake dogmas about “what is right or wrong, possible and impossible” in marimba playing. At the present time I am pleased to be a part of this process of creation, both as an arranger and as a performer, the latter both solo and as a member of the marimba ensemble Dalbergia Duo.
PROGRAMME · Frédéric Chopin – Polonaise B flat major · Krzysztof Penderecki – Air from Three Pieces in Old Style (arr. Tim Alhoff) · Paweł Korepta – Krzyżu Święty (arr. Anna Rutkowska) · Marta Ptaszyńska – Scintilla · Radosław Mateja – Pętle II/Loops II · Ignacy Jan Paderewski – Menuet, Sarabande (arr. Peter Klemke)
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 95 · Karol Szymanowski – Mazurek (arr. Dalbergia Duo) · Paweł Korepta – Dalbergia Duo Theme: Seedling and Trembling Leaves Dalbergia Duo: Anna Rutkowska & Julianna Siedler-Smuga
Anna Rutkowska, DMA, is an active and open-minded Polish marimbist and percussion artist with a great desire and determination to discover new fields of music. She graduated with honours from the instrumental department at the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland (2009), and this was the starting point of her career. In 2017, having completed her Doctoral Studies at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Krakow, she received the academic Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Fine Arts. Rutkowska has performed at many festivals in Poland and abroad. Her classical music touch and her inner fire create the unique blend of impressions and expressions one can experience during her stage performances. Since 2017 Anna has been a member of Dalbergia Duo – an ensemble focusing on cooperation with composers from all over the world, performing new pieces and giving new marimba life to old ones.
96 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The Principle of classifying Piano Pieces with the use of Extended Techniques (based on the Examples of Solo Works by Ukrainian composers) Paper
Anastasiia Sharina Petro Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine [email protected]
At the beginning of the 20th century a new phenomenon in the field of art music was the introduction of extended techniques for various musical instruments. The main idea of using extended ways of playing the piano was to find atypical sounds and reveal the timbre palette of the instrument. It is worth noting that today the system of extended piano techniques includes many methods of sound- production. The analysis of academic works, mainly by American and European authors, shows a considerable number of different classifications of extended piano techniques (Ishii Reiko, Jean-François Proulx, Luk Vaes, etc.). The main principle for the classification of non-standard methods is the division of the piano into several parts, on which these techniques are used. Most often, researchers consider using extended piano techniques separately on strings, the keyboard, and other parts of the instrument (metal frame, pedal mechanism, etc.). This research focuses on the study of solo piano pieces by Ukrainian composers of the second half of the 20th and the early 21st centuries which use non-standard ways of playing. My classification offers a new idea for considering extended piano techniques. First of all, I start from a work that involves unconventional playing methods. An attempt is made to classify these techniques not as a separate phenomenon, but as
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 97 directly living within the work. Works for piano solo in which extended methods of playing are used could be categorised according to three features: 1. the number of techniques: – use of one or two methods (Euphoria by V. Kyianytsia); – use of complex methods (Greetings M.K. by V. Runchak); 2. the degree of use: – extended techniques are used only partially, whilst traditional piano techniques prevail (Romantic elegie for home music-making/Piano Sonata No. 2: When tired heart by I. Shcherbakov); – traditional and extended piano methods are used on equal terms in percentage and functional ratio (Aqua Sonare by A. Korsun); – piano works are entirely based on extended techniques (De(zember) by А. Кobzar). 3. by the number of performers: – only soloist (That’s it! by S. Zazhytko); – soloist and assistant (Piano Sonata No. 3: AER by V. Tsanko).
Anastasiia Sharina is a postgraduate student of the Petro Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine. The subject of her research is contemporary art music, extended piano techniques, Ukrainian music of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Her study “Extended techniques in music for piano solo by Kyiv school composers (using glissando as an example in “Aqua Sonare” by A. Korsun)” was awarded the first prize at the Ukrainian competition of students’ academic works on «Musical art» and «Cultural studies» (2018, Kyiv). She is the author of three articles and has taken part in many academic conferences in Ukraine.
98 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Percussion Theatre elements in marimba music – evolution or revolution? Lecture-Recital
Julianna Siedler-Smuga Doctor of Performing Arts [email protected] / juliannasiedler.pl
Percussionists have always been treated as the musicians who can experiment the most. Throughout the years of music history when composers gradually added new instruments or objects with new sounds (e.g. anvil, horn, whistle) they included the parts for such instruments among the percussion parts. Later on, thanks to the international inspiration of orchestral parts, percussion instruments from different continents – oriental, latino etc. – appeared, with the intention of creating atmosphere in the musical work. In the 20th century percussion theatre was begun thanks to the activity of composers such as John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Vinko Globokar and Frederic Rzewski. Marimba music was developing at a similar time, with most composers of marimba music initially being marimba artists. Later on young composers wanting to experiment and to find their own musical identity, searching for something new in a musical field that had already been explored, started to connect percussion theatre with marimba music. This kind of composition required more competence, flexibility, responsibility and knowledge on the part of the performer. I would like to find the answer to the question as to whether marimba music with unconventional sound extractors, prepared bars and elements of percussion theatre is a natural step in music evolution or whether it remains a revolutionary point of view in contemporary music. I would like to give a historical overview and base my lecture on marimba works, both solo and chamber music, and to find out whether there are many marimba works with percussion theatre elements. During my lecture recital I would like to present the Polish heritage in this genre: Marta Śniady – in the pink, Nina Fukuoka – Belgian rare groove & breakbeat, Kuba Krzewiński – Adm-Room. At the end of the lecture recital I will perform in the pink by Marta Śniady.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 99 PROGRAMME · Marta Śniady – in the pink (for two prepared marimbas, video & playback) Performed by the Dalbergia Duo: Dr Julianna Kamila Siedler-Smuga & Dr Anna Rutkowska
Julianna Siedler-Smuga graduated with honours from The Grazyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Lodz with the degree of Master of Music (2012). In 2014 she obtained her Master in de Muziek degree (marimba podium) in the marimba class of Ludwig Albert and Chin Cheng Lin at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen (Artesis Plantijn Hogeschool Antwerpen). In 2012 she continued her education at doctoral studies level at her alma mater. In the academic year 2011/2012 she obtained an Erasmus Scholarship and studied at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, where she had the pleasure to meet and work under the direction of G. François, B. Quartier and B. Bouckaert. In 2018 Julianna obtained her Master’s Degree with distinction in Percussion Theatre at LUCA Lemmensinstitute Leuven. In 2013 she reached the semifinals of the International Marimba Competition in Opole, and in 2014 she passed the pre-elimination stage for the International Marimba Competition in Bamberg; she also took a part in the Yamaha Scholarship Competition 2013. As a soloist she can be seen playing in her own concerts and also at many festivals (inter alia: Musica Privata, Umami Live Berlin, Film Music Festival in Lodz, Musica Moderna), masterclasses and academies in Poland and abroad. She cooperates with many orchestras as an orchestral musician. She constantly improves her knowledge through masterclasses with percussion virtuosos. Since 2014 she has been teaching students at every educational level. In the years 2013–2017 she was a member and co-founder of the Equilibri Duo. Since 2017 she has been a member of the Dalbergia Duo, an active percussion duo, of which she was a co-founder. In 2019 Dalbergia released their first CD, “Roots”, with Polish music for marimba duo.
100 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Nordic perspectives on the Violin Sonata Lecture-Recital
Sebastian Silén Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected] www.sebastiansilen.com
The lecture recital explores violin sonatas from the turn of the last century by three important Nordic composers, the Finnish Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), the Norwegian Christian Sinding (1856–1941) and the Swedish Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871–1927). These composers were all well respected during their lifetimes and played an important role in their respective countries’ cultural lives. They also knew each other personally and are known to have influenced each other’s compositional style. What is particularly interesting about Nordic sonatas is that a tension exists between the nineteenth century Nordic musical ideals and the traditionally Germanic sonata form. It has even been stated that Nordic music is inherently incompatible with the classical forms. The Swedish composer and critic Peterson- Berger is also known to have said that all instrumental music which aims to sound Nordic in style needs to use the song tradition – rather than the instrumental one – as a starting point. As we explore these instrumental sonatas by Sibelius, Sinding and Stenhammar, we will discover numerous different ways in which this tension is either resolved or embraced. All three composers had received an important part of their education in Germany, but gradually began developing their artistry in a different direction. At the core of this presentation lies the question of whether a shared Nordic tonal language exists. The matter is made more complicated by observing that while the Nordic countries share part of their history, they are culturally distinct. The lecture will highlight and demonstrate musical elements which can be associated with Nordic music and illustrate these elements through musical examples. From a performer’s perspective one gets the impression that in these works the sonata tradition is filtered through the Nordic ideals and values that
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 101 these Nordic composers personified. At the same time a knowledge of Nordic culture and Nordic music can serve as guide when interpreting these works. While a unified Nordic musical expression is conspicuous by its absence, all these works can be interpreted as representing different aspects of Nordic culture. Taken together, they reveal certain fundamental assumptions which seem to lie behind the written score.
PROGRAMME Excerpts from: · Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) – Sonata for violin and piano in F major, JS 178 (1889) · Christian Sinding (1856–1941 – Sonate im alten Stil, Op. 99 · Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) – Sonatine, Op. 80 · Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871–1927) – Sonata for violin and piano in A minor, Op. 19 Performances in collaboration with pianist Satu Elijärvi
Violinist Sebastian Silén has since 2017 undertaken doctoral studies at the University of the Arts, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. As part of his doctoral studies Silén has published two peer-reviewed articles, issued a CD which includes works by Fredrik Pacius, Robert Kajanus and Jean Sibelius, and has prepared sheet music publications of the works recorded on the CD in collaboration with Fennica Gehrman. Silén has won prizes in national and international competitions and has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in festivals around Europe. He also played the role of Jean Sibelius in the 2015 documentary The Forgotten Music of Sibelius. Silén has been supported by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre in Finland, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Héléne och Walter Grönqvists Stiftelse, the Sibelius Academy Foundation, and the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland – Fredrik Pacius Memorial Fund.
102 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Messiaen’s Préludes as an individual manifestation of 1920’s French Modernism Lecture-Recital
Eveliina Sumelius-Lindblom Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy, DocMus doctoral school [email protected]
My doctoral project so far has mostly treated the radical neoclassical tendencies of 1920’s French Modernism. I have focused on the music of the group of Les Six, Eric Satie and Igor Stravinsky, especially from the viewpoint of their intertextual aesthetics. I have also analysed my own methodological path and found new interfaces between music and 20th century philosophy. This concert-lecture approaches the “shadow region” of French Modernism through Olivier Messiaen’s early masterpiece, Préludes pour piano (1928–1929), which is relatively unknown yet nevertheless reflects the wider progress of French Modernism as well as the key elements in Messiaen’s own production. Préludes includes certain unique qualities that the neoclassical part of French neoclassicism consciously avoided, such as using rich harmony, crossing the harmonic and emotional borders, and utilizing extensive musical forms. At the same time Préludes profoundly reveals many idealistic aspects that did not follow the radical programme of Jean Cocteau and the music aesthetics of Les Six. Even though Préludes represents the great originality and complexity of early Modernism, it has not attained similar status in Messiaen’s production and in the canon of 20th century piano music to that of, for example, Catalogue d’oiseaux and Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus. In Préludes Messiaen uses for the first time his system of “limited transpositions” in which every mode represents synaesthesia, a certain harmonic colour. Typical characteristics of the rich harmonic landscape of Préludes are its carefully adjusted chords, the inner notion of dissonance, and its wide emotional scale. The external musical influences come mostly from Debussy-like harmonic and rhythmic gestures as well as Debussy’s procedure of individually naming each prelude. The
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 103 remainder of the key influences are from Bach’s polyphony and Wagner. In terms of their dynamics and timbre, the different textual layers in Préludes appear as distinct and independent, and also offer a remarkable pianistic challenge.
A Licentiate of Music, Eveliina Sumelius-Lindblom’s profile is that of an interdisciplinary and creative pianist-researcher. As a part of her artistic doctoral degree, Sumelius-Lindblom has specialized in the early 20th century French neoclassical repertoire including the music of the group of Les Six, Satie and Stravinsky. As a researcher Sumelius-Lindblom is especially interested in the philosophical premises of music including the intertextual and aesthetic peculiarities of neoclassicism and conceptual analysis, as well as the embodied and intellectual interfaces of the performer’s working and research methods. During recent years, Sumelius-Lindblom has actively published articles, given papers in numerous international musicological conferences, made radio recordings and streamed lecture-recitals based on her research-based and artistic interests. In 2021, Pro Musica Foundation awarded Sumelius- Lindblom’s long term artistic work with a significant grant, and her last doctoral concert (including Messiaen’s Préludes) will shortly be issued as a CD-release by SibaRecords/Naxos.
104 · Doctors In Performance 2021 Effects of the repertoire on the musculoskeletal system in both high-school and expert pianists Paper
Iulia-Magdalena Toma West University of Timișoara, Faculty of Music and Theatre [email protected]
This research analyses the relation between piano repertoire and symptoms of “playing-related musculoskeletal disorder” (PRMD) in high school pianists and concert pianists (experts); the research was carried out using online questionnaires. The correlation between the repertoire studied and PRMD was confirmed in 21.42% of the expert pianists questioned and in 48% of the high-school pianists. 36% of the high-school pianists manifesting the symptoms identify a specific repertoire practised (Classical or Romantic) as a causative factor. 21.42% of the expert pianists detect a relation between repertoire and PRMD symptoms, of which 14.28% point to the Romantic repertoire, 7.14% to a specific musical work, and 7.14% to passages played loud and fast. Due to the possible negative impact of a specific repertoire on young pianists as well as on those who play mainly a very specific repertoire, both professors and pianists may take into consideration, as a prophylactic strategy, a varied pianistic repertoire diversified in terms of styles and technique, and an individualized approach to piano technique based on the anatomic and physiological particularities of each pianist.
Iulia Toma is currently a sophomore student in general medicine at Victor Babes University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Timișoara, and a graduate of the Faculty of Music and Theatre of the West University in Timișoara, in the latter capacity teaching the piano and doing research as a doctoral degree candidate in the field of musicians’ professional diseases. Iulia Toma has recently won piano prizes including Students’ prize for 2019, in “Gala excelenței
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 105 UVT”, Timișoara; 2nd prize in Music Competition, piano, Malta (2020); and 2nd prize in Salzburg’s Grand Prize Virtuoso international piano competition, Salzburg (2020). Iulia has also given different presentations of her research at the “World Piano Conference”, Novisad, Serbia, first edition online (2020) and at the “Music Cognition Conference”, Cluj- Napoca (2019–2021). Iulia Toma is a member of the PAMA YP committee, as a result of her interest in transdisciplinary music-medicine research.
106 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The development of the traditional playing style of the Teppo-type accordion in the 20th century and creating a traditionally informed performance practice. “In Mind” (artistic title of the recital) Recital
Juhan Uppin Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre [email protected]
The Teppo accordion is a special type of diatonic accordion which was designed by August Teppo in South-Eastern Estonia in the 1890s. As other local musical instrument makers also began to use Teppo’s accordion as an example when making their instruments, it became the most commonly played type of diatonic accordion in Estonia in the 20th century. My doctoral thesis “The development of the traditional playing style of the Teppo-type accordion in the 20th century and creating a traditionally informed performance practice” analyses the specific manner of expression and technique with which the Teppo-type accordion is traditionally played, using as an example 12 outstanding performers born between 1885 and 1958. The aim of the study is to analyse and imitate sound examples to understand the characteristics and values on which the traditional playing style is based and how this style developed in the 20th century. The academic objective is to characterise the style, while the practical goal is to enable performers to acquire and individualise it better. The research questions of the thesis concern how to play the Teppo-type accordion in a manner characteristic of the general tradition or in the style of a specific performer, how to use the elements of style in the
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 107 best way in performance practice, and how to create contemporary music that is rooted in the traditional style. The recital is based on my third doctoral concert “Meeles”, meaning “In Mind / Remember” (June 2021). In the introduction I will talk through the process and methodology of my artistic research and outline some of the main stylistic elements and my conclusions about the style. In the recital I will first perform four traditional pieces from the most influential Teppo-type accordion players to represent how the traditional style developed in the 20th century. I then perform two contemporary pieces – one my own composition and one an arrangement – where I have used some of the traditional stylistic elements as a starting point for composing new music, representing me in this tradition in the 21st century.
PROGRAMME 1. “Minu armas Klaara / Poissmehe polka” (trad. / played by August Teppo) 2. “Venna nutu lugu” (trad. / played by Karl Kikas) 3. “Pühajärve valss / Purjesportlaste laul” (trad. / Harri Kõrvits / played by Kalju Sarnit / arranged by Juhan Uppin) 4. “Galopp +/-” (trad. / played by Aivar Teppo / arranged by Juhan Uppin) 5. “Postep” (Juhan Uppin) 6. “Üle ilma” (Eeva Talsi / arranged by Juhan Uppin)
Born in 1984, Juhan Uppin is a versatile Estonian diatonic accordion and kannel player whose music is deeply rooted in tradition. He began his kannel studies in 1992 and started to play the Teppo-type diatonic accordion on his own in 1999. Uppin earned his Master’s degree in music in 2015 after researching the playing style of Karl Kikas, the most influential Estonian diatonic accordion player in the tradition, and is now continuing this research as part of his doctoral studies, describing how the traditional playing style developed in the 20th century. Uppin has released five solo albums and is also a member of two folk groups. He teaches the Estonian diatonic accordion and traditional music in different institutions and has for many years been the artistic director of folk music in the Estonian Song and Dance Celebrations (2014, 2017, 2019 and in the forthcoming 2023 Celebrations). In 2018 Uppin became the first holder of the title of Traditional Musician of the Republic (Vabariigi Pillimees).
108 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The Phenomenon of the Italian Flute School Recital
Ilze Urbāne Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music [email protected]
While researching the history of the earliest influential French and Italian flute players, it becomes apparent that both share a very diverse and rich historical tradition. Well-known flute players emerged simultaneously in both countries from the eighteenth century onwards, but the Italian school has been undeservedly neglected. The most notable feature of the Italian flute school is the singing quality of its tone, its great virtuosity, influenced by great violin virtuosos like Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840), pushed to the limits. The school emerged from and was greatly influenced by operatic tradition, starting from the time of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), and the phrasing and expression were very close to the singing tradition. One of the very significant features of Italian flute playing is the very rich tone in the first octave, which originated with Severino Gazzeloni (1919–1992). In comparison, the French flute school is characterized by lightness, beauty, taste and style. Italians play with a more direct reflection of emotions in the sound, greater virtuosity, and a very emotional approach to interpretation. The French school was much more united by its methodology than the Italian school, since the latter was led by a greater variety of diverse personalities, and many of the great Italian players like Giulio Briccialdi (1818–1881) and Leonardo di Lorenzo (1875–1962) developed worldwide careers and settled in other countries, including the USA – where Leonardo de Lorenzo, for example, became principal flute in new the York Philharmonic led by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) as well as teaching the most famous American flautist Julius Baker (1915–2003) – and Russia (Ernesto Koheler (1849–1907) and Cesare Ciardi (1818–1853)). The personalities of Italian flute players have varied considerably, a fact which remains true to this day. The lecture recital will consist of a selection of pieces illustrating the Italian flute playing tradition through the view of Italian composers. Starting
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 109 with the influence of opera in the Sonatina by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) dating from 1819, the programme also includes Luciano Berio’s Sequenza (another Italian work in a more avantgarde style written in 1958), Mario Pilati’s Sonata for flute and piano, and Leonardo di Lorenzo’s Suite mythologique.
PROGRAMME · Leonardo De Lorenzo (1875–1962) – “Apollo” for flute solo from Suite Mythologique Op. 38 for flute solo. · Mario Pilati (1903–1938) – Sonata per flauto e pianoforte (1926) Allegro moderato Lento e sostenuto Lievemente mosso · Luciano Berio (1925–2003) – Sequenza for flute solo The pianist in the Mario Pilati sonata is Diāna Zandberga
Ilze Urbāne graduated from the Latvian Academy of Music (the flute class of Vilnis Strautins, 1992). She continued her studies at the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, USA), the Juilliard School in New York (Prof. Carol Wincenc), and perfected her knowledge at Trevor Wye’s Studio in England and with James Galway in Switzerland. Ms. Urbāne is a prizewinner of several international competitions: the second prize of the Concertino Praha International Competition (1986), the first prize of the All-Union Competition in the former USSR (1987), the second prize of the International Competition in Bern (Switzerland, 2000). Ms. Urbāne has performed in the USA, France, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Estonia and Japan. She has played in different American orchestras and appeared as a soloist with prominent European orchestras, such as the Moscow Virtuosi under the baton of Vladimir Spivakov and KREMERata Baltica under Gidon Kremer. Currently Ms. Urbāne is studying in the Professional Doctoral Study Programme “In Arts” in JVLMA.
110 · Doctors In Performance 2021 What’s a Performance? Playing Rachmaninoff in Social Media Paper
Anu Vehviläinen Uniarts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy [email protected]
The one-year pandemic has caused severe wounds to the music industry and to musicians (Brunt et al.; Habe 2021). Obligatory isolation has forced artists to find new ways to carry on their profession (Stuckey et al. 2021). In this presentation I describe my one-month practising process of two Etude-tableaux by Sergei Rachmaninoff, which led to my posting a video of my performance of those works on Facebook. As my process resulted in different types of performance, such as ‘recording for myself’ and ‘posting a video in social media’, I study the concept of a (musical) performance within Clay Spinuzzi’s genre ecology, an analytical framework developed for technical communication research. It studies the way people use different artefacts, such as documentation, notes and interfaces, to mediate their work activities. Genres are thus open systems that are developed and enriched while they are being used and discussed (Spinuzzi 2002). Similarly, a performance is a genre which can be seen as an open system with variable attributes. As an artist-researcher I use an autoethnographic method to discuss a musician’s experience of different performance types. My data includes an autoethnographic diary, 22 iPhone videos, and my own Facebook posting with comments and likes. Firstly, I discuss the practising process during which I recorded my playing every day with my iPhone. I investigate the meaning of these videos for my pianistic and artistic development. Playing only for my iPhone was something between practising and performing; it required concentration and felt stressful, but, unlike in a normal concert, I was able to choose the specific time for the recording freely, which reduced the stress.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 111 Secondly, I discuss what led me to make the spontaneous decision to post the video, since such reflection revealed aspects of how I understand the concept of a performance. I needed to think about the rules of social media where the term ‘audience’ is difficult to define in the first place (Karjalainen & Tienari 2020), and where one cannot really protect oneself from random or even hurtful comments. Anonymous online commenting, especially, tends to be more harsh than face- to-face interaction (Zhang & Kizilcec), but at the same time I trusted that my Facebook friends – colleagues, other artists and friends – would mostly give me encouraging and positive comments. I also discuss how I spent the day, following what happened after my posting, observing likes and comments, and listening to and criticizing my own playing several times. The most interesting result, however, came the following day. Having posted the video and getting Facebook likes and comments about it made me feel as if I had performed in a concert. For a performing musician, every new musical work requires a performance after which it usually feels easier and more concise (Nummi-Kuisma 2010), which was exactly how I felt the following day.
Anu Vehviläinen is a pianist, university lecturer and researcher. Currently she is also the head of the DocMus Doctoral School of the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. Vehviläinen has recorded Karol Szymanowski’s complete piano music and has studied artist-audience interaction in her programme Open Artist & Dear Audience. Her recent research topics are Karol Szymanowski’s piano music, piano praxis, left hand, now-moment, presence, silence, embodiment, social media, genre ecology and the concept of performance. Vehviläinen is a member of the artistic research group Silence Ensemble with dancer Kirsi Heimonen and visual artist Petri Kaverma. She is also the chair of the steering group of the Doctors in Performance Festival Conference.
112 · Doctors In Performance 2021 The Polystylistic Freedom of the Piano Works by Imants Zemzaris Recital
Diāna Zandberga Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music [email protected]
Imants Zemzaris (1951) appeared on the Latvian music scene in the 1970s as a representative of postmodernism, striving for consonant harmony and a sense of neo-romantic beauty, as well as uniting semantically diverse subtexts and associations. The polystylistic freedom and sophisticated genres of the composer’s works combine seemingly contradictory features – neoclassicism, minimalism, elements of instrumental theatre, rock and disco, allusions to and quotes from the works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and other grandmasters. Imants Zemzaris is often inspired by literature, painting and theatre. This is revealed in the poetic epigraphs and programmatic titles of his compositions. Thus, the rich and diverse language of music, with its spontaneity and plenitude of well- known intonations, is able to address a wide international audience. Concert halls have featured Imants Zemzaris’s instrumental chamber music and symphonic miniatures, as well as excerpts from more than 30 theatrical works, but piano music is a particularly bright and unique page of the composer-pianist’s work. The piano is the composer’s closest friend in his searches for new methods and a witness to his amazing creative revelations. Although the composer sees himself as a miniaturist with a range of instant impulses, the extensive forms, including the Piano Sonata No. 2 (2004), demonstrate a masterful ability to think in monumental lines, addressing universal philosophical issues. His lucid, Mozartian Early in the Morning (1975), which conjures up associations with the trembling rays of sunrise, gradually turns into a prayer full of gratitude. In Latvian piano music, it is one of the first examples of minimalism and a new simplicity.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 113 The title of the composition Late Evening (1999) recalls the previous miniature, created twenty-four years earlier, because it is its complete antonym. The allusion to Chopin’s prelude in E minor depicts melancholic reflections at the crossroads of middle age. In the extended-form fantasy dedicated to the revival of nature and the spiritual rebirth of a human being From Springtime (2019), Imants Zemzaris quotes from his own song cycle Three Spring Didactics (1990) and the Piano Sonata No. 2. The change of season from a hot summer day to a freezing full-moon night is depicted in the cycle Five Preludes of Indian Summer (2004). The music is based on excerpts from personal correspondence. Eine andere Wanderer-Fantasie (Another Traveller-Fantasy, 2019) refers to Franz Schubert, but only in the title. The composition is written in the form of double variations, where the song “La Marmotte” by Ludwig van Beethoven contrasts with a seductive and tempting melody by the Brazilian composer Luiz Bonfá (1922–2001) – the jazz standard “Carnival Morning” (Manhã de Carnaval) from the film Black Orpheus, based on the tragic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Hopefully, a trip to the exciting world of piano music by Imants Zemzaris will help discover an important page of Latvian music, because many of the compositions created over the course of half a century are only available as manuscripts and have only now been recorded for the first time by pianist Diāna Zandberga in the album Eine andere Wanderer-Fantasie (SKANi, 2021).
PROGRAMME Imants Zemzaris (b. 1951) · Early in the Morning (1975) · Late Evening (1999) · From Springtime (2019) · Five Preludes of Indian Summer (2004) I Rowan II Summer III Heather IV Seagulls V Moonlight
114 · Doctors In Performance 2021 · Eine andere Wanderer-Fantasie (2019)
Having obtained a master’s degree in piano performance at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music with Prof. Juris Kalnciems, in 2014 Diāna Zandberga completed her PhD studies with Professors Jeļena Ļebedeva and Sergejs Osokins. Between 2000 and 2004 she studied with Lazar Berman at the European Academy of Music in Erba, Italy, and for the next four years improved her performance with Alicia de Larrocha at the Granados Marshall Academy in Barcelona. Since 1996 Diāna Zandberga has won acclaim for a succession of recitals in Latvia, other European countries, Russia and the USA. Her discography includes seven solo albums. Diāna Zandberga is author of the monograph “The Piano Department of the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (1919–2019)” issued by “Musica Baltica” in 2020. Since 2015 Diāna Zandberga has been a member of the Piano Department and from 2021 a Researcher at the Scientific Research Center of JVLMA and the Director of the Professional Doctoral Study Programme.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 115 The Pianist as a Duo Partner: Understanding my Role in the Rehearsal Process with Singers and Instrumentalists Paper
Christine Zerafa Royal Academy of Music [email protected] www.christinezerafa.com
This paper draws on my doctoral research into the role of the pianist as a duo partner when working with singers and instrumentalists. The profession entitled ‘piano accompanist’, ‘collaborative pianist’ and ‘ensemble pianist’, amongst other titles, may seem simple to define at first glance. However, there are many aspects that require further detailed understanding and go beyond the generally perceived picture of the pianist presiding at the piano in “support” of the singer or the instrumentalist. This practice-led research investigates my personal rehearsal experience in various case scenarios of working with a spectrum of musicians with the aim of addressing specific research questions. What is my role in the rehearsal process leading to the final performance? What is it that I actually do in what is regarded as a specialised profession, and what do other musicians that work with me expect from me? The methodology involves video recording rehearsals, followed by in-depth analysis of the rehearsal approach and discussion points through a combination of a reflexive journal, stimulated recall, and methods borrowed from a grounded theory approach. This paper highlights specific discussion points as it aims to bring to light the different artistic roles that I adopt in the rehearsal process through repertoire extracts and video clips from my rehearsals. Two different case studies are used to extract such examples in this paper, both of which involve real-life scenarios of a series of rehearsals leading to a live concert. These case studies involve one collaboration with a singer and another with an instrumentalist, thus also allowing the comparison of my role and rehearsal approach in two contrasting collaborations involving song and instrumental
116 · Doctors In Performance 2021 repertoire. My personal experience is also supported by valuable insights from international pianists who practise the profession as well as instrumentalists and singers. A rigorous interview process has been carried out and the transcripts have been coded so that the various experiences and opinions of these musicians are presented in parallel with the outcomes of my rehearsal analysis. Observations obtained from this empirical research show that my attitude in rehearsal varies, depending on how established the other musician is, the amount of rehearsal time available, the degree of authority I have in the engagement, and my familiarity with the repertoire. My ever-changing artistic role at the piano is exposed, and thus keywords such as ‘sensitivity’, ‘support’ and ‘adaptability’, which are commonly attributed to this profession, can now be further defined through real- life examples.
Maltese pianist Christine Zerafa has appeared in various venues and festivals around the UK and overseas, including the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and St John Smith Square, amongst others. She is in great demand as a chamber music and song pianist, having performed in distinguished festivals including the Oxford Lieder Festival, the Cheltenham Festival and the Malta Arts Festival, and she has also played live on BBC TV and Radio 3. Christine studied with Norma Fisher, Andrea Lucchesini, Michael Dussek and Malcolm Martineau at the Royal Northern College of Music, the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole (Florence) and the Royal Academy of Music. She has most recently completed her PhD studies at the Royal Academy of Music, which focused on her role as a duo pianist working with singers and instrumentalists.
Doctors In Performance 2021 · 117 www.eamt.ee